by Joseph Rossi
“You liked Congo”?
People seem to be shocked when I tell them that I actually liked a movie about talking gorillas. Or that I liked John Carpenter’s Vampires. Or that one of my favorite guilty pleasures is Con Air. Just last night I watched Revenge of the Nerds.
Most people who know me think that just because I have a degree in Film Studies means I’m predisposed to liking films of a certain quality. Citizen Kane, Taxi Driver and Vertigo are some examples. All fine films, classics, and masterpieces. Throw in The Maltese Falcon, Lawrence of Arabia and Schindler’s List and we’ve got a weekend (at my house anyway) of greatness.
But sometimes I just want to sit in my recliner and watch something that will just make my mind melt into a puddle of adolescent grape jelly. I want something sweet, something fatty, something that’ll make me break out. I want junk food. I want to see Stallone blowing the entire cold war away with three bullets, a grenade and an elastic band. I want to see Steven Segal pretend to be a navy seal/cook slinking his way through the bowls of a battle ship to stop the evil Gary Busey from doing whatever it is an evil Gary Busey does. I want to see Dolph Lundgren try to act. And I’m not taking about soulless PG13, MTV edited time wasters like Die Hard 5. I’m talking the good stuff. The stuff we grew up on. Movies that were made for FANS. Not movies that talk down to them. Don’t get me wrong; I wouldn’t pay a full ticket price at a 3D Imax screen for any of these misbegotten excuses. But say something if you will for discount DVD bins and cable TV retro channels; they fulfill their promise to deliver schlock into our lives and we are the better for it.
Film snobbery is something I can’t stand. I don’t think most movies are as bad as certain folks make them out to be. Sure there are bad movies. But there are also good bad movies. Happy Gilmore, for one. Does anyone remember that horrible hunk of trash from before Adam Sandler made it big? You should. It’s rude, crass, vulgar, annoying, insulting and funny. I laughed at certain scenes so hard I started to get nosebleeds. Kingpin, starring Woody Harrelson as a one-handed bowler and Randy Quaid as his Amish-bowling prodigy is, on paper, terrible. But to watch it is to be witness to one of the great forgotten gems of the 90’s. Surely I could be watching The Deer Hunter but who’s got three depressing hours to kill.
Bad movies aren’t really bad. Sure we need carrots and celery now and then. But when you got that craving for pizza, or hotdogs, dill pickle chips, nacho’s, candy, smoked meat…lost my train of thought there. In closing, as much as I can’t wait for the next Martin Scorsese film, I got to fill the void with a little lunacy and laughter. It might just take the likes of Sly or Arnold to accomplish that. Or to a real lesser extent, Segal or the Muscles from Brussels.
