Movies you regret showing to people?

[The Borgified Corpse]

Have you ever been excited to go see something at the theater but then regretted bringing someone else to it who clearly wasn't digging it as much as you were? Or decided that you had to sit someone down and make them watch one of your old favorites only to discover that they loathed the entire experience?

I've had a few of those.

For the last 30 years, nearly every single weekend, my father & I would go see something at the discount theater. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's bad. Sometimes it's forgettable. The point is that we were together and the movie was cheap! I have very few regrets. But there are a couple. I made him take me to see The Avengers back in 1998. In my defense, I was a horny 15-year-old who just wanted to see Uma Thurman in a bunch of skintight outfits. But that's no excuse. That movie was awful. But I think he cut me some slack on that one.

However, based on the look on his face, I'm sure he lost a little respect for me a few years ago when I took him to see Underworld: Blood Wars. I'm a big Underworld fan and well-versed in the mythology of the franchise. But I don't think he's seen any of the other films in the series and I'm sure that he never wants to now.

Since I've spent several Halloweens dressed up as Torgo from "Manos" The Hands of Fate, I decided that it was finally time to show my mother at least part of the MST3K version so that she would understand just who the character was and why the movie had such a profound effect on me. I only intended to show her part of the movie but, much to my surprise, she stayed for the whole thing. She didn't enjoy it though.
Me: "I expected you to leave after the 2nd host segment."
Her: "Well, I kept expecting it to have a point."
Me: "No. No, it really doesn't."

Also, I think my dad & I traumatized my little sister by renting The Devil's Advocate. She was probably way too young for it at the time. I was probably too young for it too. But.... too late now, I guess.

What about you? Any movies that you regret showing to people?

 

[Miss Chicken]

I Once showed Monty Python and the Holy Grail to a boyfriend and he just could not understand the humour at all. He said he only liked realistic movies.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Good question. The year The Prestige came out, I went to see it with a friend and I really liked it. At around Christmas, my family likes to have a movie outing, and there wasn't terribly much that stood out that year, so I suggested we go see it, and I didn't mind seeing it again. Well, both my Sister and my Dad found that it was a bit much, that it was too tense in places, and not exactly Christmas fare.

And the opposite of this, was when a friend really wanted to see Pan's Labyrinth. I was rather skeptical, but I went along anyway. Well, in short, I felt the trailers were misleading, and it led me to an experience I wasn't quite prepared for. I felt it was violent and gruesome, and that it made me feel physically sick. I got the point of the movie, but sometimes, too much is too much, you know?

 

[KimMH]

I Once showed Monty Python and the Holy Grail to a boyfriend and he just could not understand the humour at all. He said he only liked realistic movies.

Oh no. Hubs teaches history so I was certain he would adore it as much as I do. Alas no; all the more for me I guess.

Dragged my brother to see TWOK. He was unimpressed and told my family my Trek fandom problem was getting worse. Little did they know lol.

 

[Unicron]

I Once showed Monty Python and the Holy Grail to a boyfriend and he just could not understand the humour at all. He said he only liked realistic movies.

You should tell him about how the Pythons initially planned to have actual horses, but the limited budget quickly ruled that out. So they settled for the fun of literally depicting the Coconut Effect.

 

[Gary Mitchell]

I was pretty young when my older brother convinced my mom and dad that the movie Lifeforce was just rated R for violence (being a space vampire movie). I don't remember but I supposedly helped sell the idea.
We saw it in a drive in theater. It was a little awkward once it became clear that the vampire woman was naked through most of the movie.
We never lived that one down.

 

[KimMH]

Awkward! I saw Deadpool with my son but thankfully the sex scene was relatively short. I should have known better. *sighs*

 

[Imaus]

I took Sucker Punch to the girl's dorm.

Wasn't received well as I guess, it is a movie squarely for pre/young teen boys. Felt like I was an immature chud at that moment, heh.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

I Once showed Monty Python and the Holy Grail to a boyfriend and he just could not understand the humour at all. He said he only liked realistic movies.

Sounds like a weirdo. Best...movie...ever.

 

[DonIago]

Not a movie, but I tried to get a friend into the tv show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" when it was on the air. That night they aired "Gingerbread", and...as an episode to get someone interested in the show, that was simply terrible.

 

[Imaus]

Sounds like a weirdo. Best...movie...ever.

Also as someone who likes 'realistic' movies...that guy's going to be like looking for water in a desert. Cinema is not the place to look for 'realism', no matter how hard you try.

Or maybe he really likes biopics and romcoms?

 

[DonIago]

I suspect you're reading too much into what he meant by 'realistic'.

I need to be in the right mood to appreciate Monty Python myself.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Also as someone who likes 'realistic' movies...that guy's going to be like looking for water in a desert. Cinema is not the place to look for 'realism', no matter how hard you try.

Or maybe he really likes biopics and romcoms?

From a historical standpoint, Holy Grail was supposed to be extremely accurate as far as the portrayal of early Britain.

 

[Imaus]

From a historical standpoint, Holy Grail was supposed to be extremely accurate as far as the portrayal of early Britain.

But not Dark Age Arthurian Britian, the guys are Stone-Castle era Crusaders, so around Richard II's time, not the supposed Arthurian time of c. 400-600 AD.

It's still one of the funniest movies ever made, however.

 

[Miss Chicken]

One of his complaints was that plague did not each England until the 14th century and therefore could not have been around during the time that the King Arthur legends were set in. It is a good thing we turned off the movie before the Holy Hand Grenade and the Cartoon Monster or it might have been my boyfriend, and not just the animator , who had a heart attack.

He wasn’t my boyfriend for long.

 

[DonIago]

One of his complaints was that plague did not each England until the 14th century and therefore could not have been around during the time that the King Arthur legends were set in. It is a good thing we turned off the movie before the Holy Hand Grenade and the Cartoon Monster or it might have been my boyfriend, and not just the animator , who had a heart attack.

He wasn’t my boyfriend for long.

Did...did you explain to him that it was a whacky comedy that wasn't intended to withstand serious scrutiny?

I knew someone once who did medieval reenactment, and claimed a lack of interest in any film that portrayed the period inaccurately, and I found myself thinking there are probably a total of zero films that portray the period without any inaccuracies.

Barring historical fiction that doesn't address any real locations or places or such, I'm not sure how it's even possible to make a film that has 100% fidelity to the time period. Mistakes happen.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

I Once showed Monty Python and the Holy Grail to a boyfriend and he just could not understand the humour at all. He said he only liked realistic movies.
[...]
He wasn’t my boyfriend for long.

Good to hear. I can't imagine a worse red flag.

I took Sucker Punch to the girl's dorm.

Wasn't received well as I guess, it is a movie squarely for pre/young teen boys. Felt like I was an immature chud at that moment, heh.

I would disagree with that assessment. On the surface, the movie looks that way. But it's really more of a deconstruction of those sorts of female-led action/exploitation movies. Still, I think that you have to be in the right mood & frame of mind for that movie. It's difficult to explain. You just have to be willing to let the experience wash over you.

 

[Timewalker]

Did...did you explain to him that it was a whacky comedy that wasn't intended to withstand serious scrutiny?

I knew someone once who did medieval reenactment, and claimed a lack of interest in any film that portrayed the period inaccurately, and I found myself thinking there are probably a total of zero films that portray the period without any inaccuracies.

Barring historical fiction that doesn't address any real locations or places or such, I'm not sure how it's even possible to make a film that has 100% fidelity to the time period. Mistakes happen.

There were times when the local SCA would go to see medieval-era movies, and afterward we would discuss how well it had done in the authenticity department. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves didn't take itself seriously, so we let it go. I loved First Knight (the Arthurian one with Sean Connery and Richard Gere) because there wasn't a hint of magic in it; it was a straightforward adventure. But Hamlet (Mel Gibson's version)... got criticism.

I can forgive some mistakes or creative decisions for the sake of the story. But I won't forgive mistakes or decisions that were made with the attitude of "it doesn't matter; the audience will never know the difference."

Oh, yeah, some of the audience will definitely know the difference. It's why I despise the series Reign. The only accurate things about that mess is that there really were historical people named Mary Stuart, Elizabeth Tudor, and Catherine de Medici. Oh, and Mary was widowed before returning to Scotland. Nothing else about that series was accurate or made any sense. The only reason I watched as long as I did was because Megan Follows can make any character she plays watchable. FFS, when they did the dancing scenes, the actors weren't even in time to the music, not that they were doing authentic Tudor-era dances or music, and weren't wearing authentic Tudor-era costumes.


Now for the flip side of people complaining about inauthenticity... Back in 1987, I worked on a theatre production of Camelot, on the costume crew. I was Lancelot's dresser (he had a lot of very quick costume changes which left no time to get to the dressing room, change, and get back in time for his next scene, so I helped him on and off with his costumes in the wings; some of those changes had to happen in about 30 seconds or less).

I was also the only person on the costume crew who knew what the various pieces of armor were called and how they were worn (thanks to having joined the Society for Creative Anachronism the previous year and getting a crash course in basic armor), so I made sure the other dressers didn't end up putting the wrong pieces in the wrong places, or backwards.

However... even though I was a dresser, I wasn't involved in making the costumes or the armor. And that led to me defending the production when a couple of SCA people went to the show and started criticizing the costumes, the armor, the heraldry, etc. I told them hey, I wasn't on the set crew so I couldn't tell them they got the heraldry wrong. I wasn't on the costume crew, so I couldn't tell them that real armor, isn't made of plastic and held together with staples. And unlike SCA heavy fighters - who are expected to be able to dance while wearing metal armor - the actors and dancers in the theatre had no idea how to do that, neither did the producer, director, or choreographer, so it wasn't required. Plastic painted to look like armor was considered sufficient.

But I did end up fixing the damn stuff one night when Lancelot's armor came apart on stage during a quiet, non-musical scene. Intermission that night saw two of us in the scene shop, with duct tape, staples, glue, and anything else I could think of that would hold that stuff together, fixing Lancelot's, Arthur's, and King Pellinore's armor (the latter two had been about to come apart). So we got it all fixed and they were good to go for the rest of the run. If there were any issues with the dancers' armor, nobody mentioned it to me. But at least I'd figured out how to fix it in case there was a problem. In that case it was actually a good thing the armor was made of plastic. I have no idea how to repair metal armor.


I will say that while I've urged people to watch I, Claudius and haven't regretted it since they generally enjoyed it, I haven't recommended people watch Rome. Yes, it's an exciting series, lots of blood/guts/gore and sex that modern audiences like... but there's a plot hole in the second season big enough to drive a massively humongous freight train through... one that I gather was similar to something that happened in the Tudors series (I wasn't up on Tudor history at the time that series was first on so I didn't spot it myself). Basically, if you're thinking about continuing a series, don't omit the one character that's critically necessary for important historical figures to exist in future episodes.

 

[DonIago]

I was in the SCA myself for a good run (I currently consider myself on SCAbattical), and I think sometimes members forget that it's the Society for Creative Anachronism and not the Society for Compulsive Authenticity.

I don't want to drag this too far off-topic, but the bottom line is that yes, we all have our own individual suspension of disbelief thresholds, but if you (in the general sense) is someone who only wants to watch historical fiction that's going to have reasonably high fidelity, at least don't stomp on everyone else's good time in the process.

I love Army of Darkness and I don't care how inauthentic it is. Same goes for Leo's Man in the Iron Mask.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I loved First Night (the Arthurian one with Sean Connery and Richard Gere) because there wasn't a hint of magic in it; it was a straightforward adventure.

Funny, but we just recently watched this and we didn't like it much. Sean Connery was the best thing about it, but everything about it felt too modern.