Flatliners

E.T.? The beloved Steven Spielberg classic? What's not to like?

When it came out, it was the longest lineup I've ever been in to see a movie. (Second longest was Grease and third was The Color Purple)

I've seen lots of bad movies! When I was in university, a friend and I began a tradition of going Toronto for a day during our Christmas vacation. We'd go shopping, have lunch, and then go see a movie before coming back home. We deliberately chose bad movies to see so that we could make fun of them. That's how I ended up seeing more martial arts movies (with English subtitles) than anyone really should! I don't know if there are good martial arts movies, but the ones we saw were not.

But as for movies that I hoped would be good, Independence Day was the worst. We went to see it the day it came out, and there was a long lineup and a packed audience. To this day, I'm still not sure whether it was supposed to be a comedy because there was a lot of laughter at scenes that seemed to want to be dramatic. And to this day, it's the only movie I've gone to see where people in the audience totally lost interest and just started talking among themselves. And they weren't talking about the movie, either! I remember the two guys in front of us discussing where they were going to go eat after the movie. I've never had a movie-going experience like that before or since.

I just caught Independence Day on TV myself the other night. I also wanted to like it because I like Will Smith. And since we were coming to the end of our Netflix watch of Star Trek: The Next Generation and I love Data the android, I wanted to see something else Brent Spiner had been in. He didn't show up til about 2/3 of the way through and was so oddball (saying a lot for someone who had convincingly played a machine and his "family members"!) that I just couldn't stand him. Or the movie as a whole.....

I hated The Family with Robert Di Nero and Michelle Pfeiffer.  It was so poorly written and wasted two highly talented actors for sure (thank goodness they redeemed themselves in The Wizards of Lies).  It was only because of a snowstorm outside that we didn't walk out on that one. I felt like it needed to apologise to France for setting the movie there.

We did walk out on Oliver! though. The only movie that we did that to.  But neither one of us can stand musicals so that is almost a genre thing, more than a reflection of the quality of the movie. 

BTW: I saw ET and I still don't know why so many people liked it.  It was just a very ordinary kiddies movie to me - nothing to hate about it but absolutely nothing to love about it either.  

Saw about 15 minutes of The Wedding Planner (forced to because it was playing on the bus we were riding in) and gladly stared out the window the rest of the movie all the rest of the ride home.  Even looking into the opposite lane car headlights was more entertaining than watching the rest of that dreck.

And I tried to watch the original Ironman movie on a flight to France one time and just couldn't continue after about 20 minutes. Again staring at the white bulkhead wall of the plane was preferable to me.  

:-)) 

I should add that I actually kind of liked Flatliners (the original 1990 film - I didn't even know there was a remake) .  At least I didn't find it was objectionable in any major way.  Not t hat it was memorable in a good way or anything like that.  It just was an OK movie for afternoon watching when it was rainy.