14. WHEN BAD MOVIES GO GOOD - Mind vs Celluloid.

Last week I went to see the movie It: Chapter Two straight after work on the Friday of its release. To say I am a fan of Stephen King’s It is an understatement. I have an image of Pennywise, the murderous entity who terrorises the children of Derry in It, literally tattooed into my flesh, based on the covers of the novel which I devoured as a teenager, and the ‘90s TV miniseries starring Tim Curry as the sewer-dwelling clown. It, was one of those stories which spoke to me the first time I found it and hasn’t stopped since. My childhood was essentially one big search for the sort of mystery worthy of making my own group of friends the suburban UK version of King’s “Losers Club”, and my best friend growing up loved It so much that his first novel has been heralded by many of its readers as a tribute. We love Stephen King, and we love It. So we each had huge expectations as we took our seats in the respective cinemas where we spent our money to see how close a motion picture could come to matching the images long embedded into our minds from our childhood imaginations.

We did not watch the film together. We watched it in different cities a couple of hours apart, but with enough crossover that my friend instructed me to message him my thoughts as I left the screen. They would arrive on the phone in his pocket as he was just beginning his own It journey, and could be replied to after he finished to see if we thought the same things.

My message was simple: “I loved it”.

His, later than night, was simple too: “Well I’m glad someone did.”

So what went wrong? Two mega-fans, watching the exact same movie, and one loves it and the other hates it.

As the two of us, both philosophers, dissected our thoughts later on in the week, we realised that, although we did watch the same movie on the screen, in our heads, we perceived two very different things. The cause of these alternative experiences being the mental environment into which the sense-data was ultimately processed, our mental experiences of the movie being more than merely passive acceptance of the sights and sounds projected inside the cinema.

Whereas I arrived at the cinema straight from work, exhausted after a long week of teaching - the first back after the summer break - and looking for something escapist to start the new weekend with, some big dumb fun to enjoy as I sipped on my first pumpkin spice latte of the season and gobbled down a tub of movie theatre ice cream, my friend had ritualised his cinema experience by first watching It: Chapter One in preparation. Furthermore, he did not watch it alone - either the second movie or the first - watching both films with his brothers and bringing to bear their shared family lore regarding It, its importance, and their collective expectations of what the new movie might bring. I merely watched it with my wife, with whom I do not share long-seated childhood notions of the role and meaning of Pennywise the dancing clown. My wife is a fan of Stephen King, and of It, and liked the original TV miniseries as much as anyone (she okayed her husband getting a tattoo of the thing on his arm forever, after all), but she was not obsessed with It. While we, too, had watched the original beforehand, we did so a week before, on a small iPad screen while on holiday. Not much reverence. We enjoyed it, but spotted a few problems. Problems we already knew were there and didn’t really mind. We enjoyed it overall and there was always the book, and the old TV series, if we didn’t.

So my wife and I entered the cinema just looking to be entertained, knowing that this movie would never be perfect, and not expecting anything more from it, whereas my friend entered the cinema seeking something beyond a mere movie; something important; something specific.

I also entered the movie a huge fan of comic actor, Bill Haider, pre-disposed to enjoy his comedic asides and the many funny moments he provided in the movie despite their often being quite jarring and tonally strange in the context of what was supposed to be a horror movie. Likewise, James Ransone, who played Eddie Kaspbrak, who my wife and I had just enjoyed in Amazon’s Bosch. I’m not sure my friend is a similar fan of these two actors, and therefore did not necessarily have the same acceptance of some of their scene-chewing.

So we were already very differently pre-disposed to receive the film when we saw it, but we also received it differently. For when my friend listed his many problems with the plot of the film, I couldn’t disagree with him about any of them. And yet for him, these things had ruined the movie, whereas for me they had merely been part of what made the movie so enjoyable. Of course that scene was stupid. The whole film was stupid. But once you accepted the stupid there was nothing left to do but enjoy it.

We have had this argument before, with the Fast and Furious franchise. Surprised that I was such a fan, my friend had blurted, exasperated, “but they’re so stupid”, and I had agreed with him without hesitation. “Stupid is the whole point!”

I don’t watch Fast and Furious films to learn deep new thoughts about the human experience, I watch them to see Vin Diesel and The Rock do stupid things with cars and explosions. Just as, I don’t watch It: Chapter Two to feel scared in the same way I did when I read the Stephen King novel or watched the original TV miniseries (because I’ve already had those experiences, and expect they are one-time deals. The book didn’t scare me nearly as much the second two times I read it as it had that first time, in my childhood bedroom, reading about little Georgie Denbrough losing a boat and finding a clown as a summer storm flashed lighting at my window and thunder made my bed shake. And let’s be honest, even the TV miniseries was only scary for a few brilliant moments. It was a pretty bad adaptation for all its great bits, with one of the worst endings to something I can ever remember!). I went to It to see a cover version of a much loved song. To hear the familiar chorus, nod in approval and the cool new notes they’d added and shake my head at the bits that weren’t as good as the original. Some cover versions are spectacular. Others a terrible misfire. And most are unnecessary, changing too little to make it worth the recording costs. But if you like the original song, all cover versions, even the bad ones, are usually worth a listen.

My friend wasn’t wrong to have the expectations of the new It film that he did. But he was looking for something very different from that movie than I was. And it is our expectations, our experiences, our ideas, which inform our viewing of a movie as much as the movie itself.

Consider my experience the following week, another Friday after work, another pumpkin spice latte and tub of Baskin Robbins, another film with my wife to celebrate the weekend. Only this time the film was Downton Abbey, and it was clear to us both about five minutes in that Downton Abbey was not the sort of thing designed to be enjoyed inside a cinema. While the movie was about as good as any long Christmas special episode of the show ever had been, and we had always enjoyed those, what was all wrong was the setting. Because it turned out that part of what we both like about Downton Abbey is hating Downton Abbey. In the shared environment and polite silence of a public cinema we realised we were unable to watch the show archly, laughing openly at the terrible dialogue and the way that minor social faux-pas count as plot-points in this privileged world of antiquated manners. We were watching the same characters we enjoyed watching in the privacy of our own home, but could not cheer the weird idiosyncrasies we had turned into in-jokes at home, or mock their ridiculousness on the big screen. Part of what lets us enjoy Downton Abbey is that the Downton Abbey we watch in private, is a Downton Abbey specific to us, to be derided and adored according to our tastes. Whereas up on the big screen, it was just this tiresome thing about the king and queen coming to dinner.

Of course, this didn’t stop us from enjoying it. Instead, we both adjusted our inner expectations and adapted to the circumstances. This was an unnecessary film which had no business being shown in a cinema and became all the better for it. The ridiculousness now heightened by the undeserved pomp and circumstance of such throwaway TV being shown in a cinema, we laughed giddily every time Tom gave off-the-cuff genius wisdom to passing strangers with a knowing twinkle in his eye, every time Carson harrumphed and raised an eyebrow at the most minor of indecencies, every time Bates and Anna almost had a storyline worth their being there, and every time the film tried, and failed, to make us feel patriotic about the king and queen. The result, aided by whispered comments to each other in the dark, was a perfectly fine evening with a perfectly decent piece of entertainment.

Meanwhile the woman behind us actually cheered the King’s parade and could be heard weeping as the Dowager Countess spoke to Lady Mary towards the film’s end. To her, a non-ironic fan of the show, this movie event was perfect and well deserved. A reunion with old friends. A very special moment.

If you have ever wondered why your favourite comedy film somehow never gets the respect it deserves from film critics, this is your reason. The critic, seeking greatness, and defining greatness a certain way, sees even the best comedy film as something lesser than their expectation of what is great. Great is weighty, great is important, great is moving…great can’t be 97 minutes of madcap hilarity. And because of this mental baggage as the critic watches the comedy film, they can only bring themselves to enjoy it a little (three stars) while the rest of us, there only for a laugh, think the film to be nothing less than genius.

Likewise, the film you’ve started twice before and never got to the end of, only to one night catch it on TV as you flick through the channels and find yourself captivated. A different mindset, different expectations, and last month’s disappointment can be this month’s fantastic discovery. Hence why some terrible films become cult hits, just because audiences decide to embrace the awful and make a choice to celebrate it, and why other perfectly good films become box office flops - the audience, for whatever reason, unable to get on board and see what was intended because of some mental obstacle that can’t be overcome (a bad review, an ill-chosen piece of dialogue, a weak acting performance) and which distorts the whole.

Because all a film is, at the end of the day, is a projected assault of colours, shapes and sounds attempting to tell you a story. A film is dependent on a mind to make sense of it. Sometimes that mind is up to the task, and sometimes that mind has other ideas which take priority. The meaning of the story a film is trying to tell us, and its success at communicating to you the intentions of the filmmakers, the actors, the director, and the writer is always going to be dependent on the mindset of the receiver of those colours, shapes and sounds.

So next time you see a movie you don’t like, or find yourself disagreeing with a movie review, either in the press or in person, ask yourself if it’s the movie, or if it’s actually you. And if it is you, see if you can watch it a second time and have a completely different experience simply by changing your expectations and your working definition of “good”.

AUTHOR: D.McKee