Two Thumbs Shamefully Up: The Movies You Hate to Admit You Love

Just for a moment, back to something frivolous.

Everyone seemed to have good fun revealing the guilty pleasures that have found a welcome home on their iPods. In that same spirit of disclosure, speak thee now of those movies that are hidden behind the rows of respectable DVDs in your collection? No, not those movies. I mean the ones that were universally panned by critics, but that you simply adore. Or the ones that are of a genre that a person of your particular gender, age, or persuasion shouldn’t be caught dabbling in, yet dabble you do. Surely you all have among your favorite movies, at least one that you don’t like to talk about. So start talking.


I’m prepared to reveal, for the first time in a public forum, that I like the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral. Yes, a chick flick of the highest order. A Hugh Grant vehicle in which his school-boyish stammering and true-hearted roguishness is introduced to an international audience, making him an instant star and affording him the opportunity to dump Elizabeth Hurley for Divine Brown.

For the record, I find Hugh Grant’s act as thin as most of you do, but it works in this film, perhaps because I was seeing it for the first time and did not yet know it comprises the entire output of his instrument, to borrow a term from famed acting instructor, Lee Strasburg. Grant plays the role of the yearning, yet commitment phobic “guy” as well as anyone could. Well, maybe Jack Black could have done it as well, but from what I understand, he doesn’t preview well as the dreamy lead.

Better than Grant are the supporting characters who were all very good and also good for a laugh or two. I’ve always liked the British sense of humour and it could be that this has skewed my perception to the point that a line spoken with a British accent sounds funny to me, while the same line spoken by Pauly Shore would sound stupid. Still, there is some genuine humour here. The comedy most often involves one of the merry band of wedding goers saying something inappropriate, not in a crazy morning DJ kind of way, but delivered more subtly by someone who is socially awkward or indifferent.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie doesn’t involve comedy or any of the four weddings, but the lone funeral. In it, Matthew recites W.H. Auden’s “Funeral Blues” after his companion, the drunken and jolly Gareth, drops dead from a heart attack. Maybe it’s Matthew’s Scottish accent, which for some reason makes people weep instantly, or more likely the way the character delivers the lines, but it is truly touching.

Speaking of accents, Andie MacDowell’s is clearly one of the most fetching in Hollywood. It’s not really Southern Belle, more Southern Siren. Some may find Ms. MacDowell’s voice whiney, and in St. Elmo’s Fire it was, but only because she had to play opposite Emilio Estevez’s uber-annoying character, Kirby. If I recall, I whined a lot during that movie as well.

Four Weddings and a Funeral is a good movie, not a great one. I would never lay out cash to own it, or even rent it again. But if I’m ever couch-ridden and come across it on Lifetime, I’d much rather watch that than Trick My Truck or the NBA finals.

Before leaving you to reveal your celluloid shame, I want to differentiate between a guilty pleasure and a movie that is so bad that you find it irresistible. You know the type, the serious drama that plays as a perfect satire. Road House is a great example of such a movie. I can’t help watch it when it’s on, not so much for the ridiculousness of sissy-dancing-boy Patrick Swayze being passed off as a Zen-guided, backwoods brawler, but for the dialogue that was obviously screen tested for coolness by an arcade-full of mulleted adolescent boys. It’s unintentionally brilliant, but it’s not what we’re looking for here.

We don’t want to know movies that you love for their awfulness, but movies that you honestly think are good and worthwhile, even though it pains you greatly to admit it.*



*Since James Blunt hasn’t yet made his cinematic debut, I’m going to guess that Russ goes with From Justin to Kelly as his favorite guilty pleasure. And I have a feeling that Monkey Boy simply adores anything with Streisand in it, as long as the other monkeys aren't around.