Movies To Walk Out On

I wondered if Althouse was going to make an entire blog post out of this and she did. My response, cross-posted:

Y'all are a bunch of lightweights. Lightweights, I tells ya.

I've seen so many movies I've enjoyed listed here that people walked out on. But I'm not gonna fall for it like Rev and try to convince you they were good or anything.

So, let's see. I walked out of Man Who Fell To Earth. I was a little too young and there with parents and/or guardians. (The opening scene with...uh...Candy Clark and--is it Buck Henry?--taking photos of themselves while having sex...) They've been showing it like crazy on cable and I've been meaning to sit down and watch. Though, now that I think about it, it was following A Boy and His Dog, which itself is pretty chock full of sex, cynicism and violence. So go figger. (You can watch "A Boy and His Dog" online at bmovies.com, too! Ain't the 'net grand!)

I dragged same parents and/or guardians out of East of Eden. Also might've been a good movie but we had just seen Rebel without a Cause and I didn't have any inclination to sit through the exact same movie set a few years earlier on a farm, or whatever.

Like others, I try to see movies I know I'll enjoy, or am able to find some merit in. So I haven't walked out of a movie in decades.

I did make a very, very long bathroom/popcorn run during Troy. I can watch bad movies all night long, but Troy struck me as a sort of vandalism (kind of like East of Eden) of one my most beloved stories.

(I didn't have the same problem with A Knight's Tale, perhaps because the use of "We Will Rock You" up front tells you exactly what they have in mind. Although, had I been looking for something a little truer to life, I would've been pissed.)

Otherwise, let's see, I endured Hilary and Jackie and most recently The Constant Gardener. Oh, wait, no: Atonement. Crushingly disappointing.

I almost stroked out during The Grudge. I don't know if the movie was--well, okay, I'm pretty sure it wasn't a masterpiece--but it was mostly due to going on the opening night of a Sarah Michelle Gellar movie. The kids in front of me would not shut up, would not stop using their cell phones, would not... By contrast, a premiere night showing of Nightmare on Elm Street 3? The audience supercharged that movie. And not entirely because you never knew if someone was just gonna up and shoot someone else.

Mostly I go to movies when there's few or no other people around. Mostly.

For me, the kiss of death is boring. I can take a lot of bad if it's not boring, and boring takes the shine offa whole lotta good--like many of last year's award winners.