I’m going to continue repurposing @Navaronegun’s thread for my own uses and mention the most infuriating moviegoing experience I’ve ever had - that would be Batman Begins in IMAX. The movie itself was great, but I was seated next to this couple, some guy and his girlfriend, maybe? Young couple anyway, and from the start she’s just peppering him with questions - “who is that? What is he doing? When does Batman show up?” And I’m sitting there for at least half the movie stewing silently, calculating words I can use to shut this stuff down. Finally, I arrived at what I believed were the most efficient choice possible, and hissed, “Lady, please.” And it worked! Got to enjoy half the movie anyway.
Never walked out on a movie. The closest I’ve come to doing so was on July 3, 1996.
Independence Day.
The nearest theater playing the movie was not a well run operation. You could count on things going wrong about 50% of the time. Nevertheless, some college friends and I were pretty stoked about this one, so we took the chance, and got in line early (a wise move as it turned out, the movie sold out).
Things were going well. Nothing had broken, and the movie, while cheesy, wasn’t terrible up to this point. That point being where President/pilot Bill Pullman was giving his “we ain’t going down without a fight” speech.
“And should we win the…”. The screen does dark. We wait. And. Wait. And. Wait. It eventually circulates that the projector has blown out a bulb, and there are no replacements. They solution was to move us to an adjacent room, which was smaller by about 50 seats. My friends were scattered to the winds. I ended sitting in an aisle.
All of this to watch aliens get defeated by a Mac.
Anything goes along bad film-dom universe lines.
EXCEPT Star Wars films.
Growing up in Bristol, TN, before moving to the Smokies during middle school, I experienced enough ridiculous redneck racing culture that this one actually hits home for me… HARD. I mean it’s essential 90 minutes of very on-the-nose mockery of a very specific part of America, and at points you can only assume it’s mockery rather than revelry due to the people involved, because it sinks into it hard at points, but even so, it’s my second favorite racing movie to this day.
The first, of course, is the Wachowski siblings’ Speed Racer, which is easily one of my top ten favorite movies, and which I bring up specifically here because I’m confident that I’ll be called batshit crazy for this (objectively correct) assessment within minutes.
Where? I like the Smokies. I spent 1/2 my youth in a tiny speck in WNC and the other half in Miami. No wonder I am all f**** up.
You need to send a team to shoot yourself in the face!
I lived in Sevierville, the gateway to the Smokies (from the other side, of course) from about 12-18. Lived up the highway in the “big city” in Knoxville for a couple of years in my early 20s after college before finally making my way over to NC.
I like Speed Racer! I don’t remember a single moment of it, but I know I liked it at the time!
Yep, I know it. I was in Hayesville, NC. Or near thereabouts, to be precise.
For all I know Episode 2 could be a fantastic movie! I can’t remember a thing about it and have been trusting my instincts.
This reinforced the lesson of “never try and watch a movie at a party”. The 15 minutes or so that I watched seemed awesome, even the third time we restarted it. Of course, then the TV got taken over by that guy who absolutely had to show everyone the funniest thing he’d ever seen on YouTube.
The most important thing to remember about Speed Racer is that about 60% of the way through it, John Motherfucking Goodman full-body spin-chucks a goddamned ninja out a window in his pajamas.
Pretty sure I mentioned this before, but the only film I ever walked out of was:
Friend wanted to see it , said it would be funny. It was not funny, it was not even mildly good.
Now, just to balance out the record, I want to tell you about some of my best moviegoing experiences. The first wasn’t in a theater but rather a bar in Portland. I forget which, it was somewhere in the Alphabet district (yeah I know that helps a lot) but they put on The Chronicles of Riddick with no sound and I’ve got to tell you, in the middle of a crowded bar with no sound is the perfect way to watch that movie. It was a blast.
Another movie I had lots of fun with was The Phantom Menace. No, that’s not a typo. I went to a late showing a few weeks after opening and had the theater almost to myself. But there were these three older black women sitting a few rows up from me and let me tell you, they were having the time of their lives. Just hooting and hollering and getting into it. Now you may be thinking, wait a minute, a woman whispering during Batman Begins fills you with rage, but three women going nuts was fun? Yes it was, mainly because their enthusiasm was absolutely infectious and the movie on its own was, well you know.
All right, I’ll take my Star Wars penalty now.
[Groucho] How a ninja got into my pajamas, I’ll never know. [\Groucho]
Like all of Wes Anderson’s oeuvre, I literally cannot understand what people get out of TLA(wSZ). They’re ostensibly comedies, but mostly seem to feature unpleasant people mumbling rude things at each other in front of slightly too real to be real cinematic backdrops that call way too much attention to the cinematographer, who is clearly desperate for attention, perhaps like the inevitable character with a bad relationship with a parent.
I walked out of the theater seeing Driven. We had hoped it would be a stupidly fun summer action flick.
It was just stupid. Painfully stupid. About the time they were racing Formula One cars on the Chicago freeways, we’d had all we could take.
Now I’ll tell you a worse movie-going experience.
Some friends and I were at work back in July of 2007 when someone mentioned that a local large theater was going to be showing Harry Potter and the Order Of The Phoenix at midnight. Sure, why not? I think I was off work the next day, so I was in.
We got there and the movie itself was fine. But about 45 minutes in, I realized I was kind of sweating. And then a half hour later, I realized I was sweating like crazy, and really uncomfortably hot. I’m there after work, so I’m in dress slacks, a dress shirt, and a tie. Tie comes off. Sleeves rolled up. Then dress shirt comes off (wearing a Beefy-T underneath). By the last 20 minutes of the movie, we’re all looking at each other, just drenched, every one of us. I’ve rolled up my slacks to my knees. We’re miserable.
Turns out, the theater scheduled the midnight movie, but didn’t change their temp settings in that auditorium, and the AC clicked off. It was about 85 degrees outside that night in the middle of summer, and in an enclosed, packed auditorium, it was about 90 degrees by the time the movie ended. Awful.
My take: Any movie with Marky Mark. Also, some Star Wars movies.
[edit]
Also, the Ewok movie seriously did not live up to nostalgia from when I saw it as a 4 yo. Apparently, when I originally saw it in the theater, I thought it was Oscar-worthy material.
I sat through the last half of Blair Witch with my eyes closed in a cold sweat trying not to throw up I was so motion sick. 1st date and the girl was enjoying it.
Should have walked out of the Naked Lunch
- Sleepers.
My college had an annual tradition called “Screw Your Roommate,” a weekend when everyone sets up their roommate (the single ones, at least) on a blind date. My date was someone that I had zero interest in, romantic or otherwise, and we went to see Sleepers.
It’s the first time that I can recall being actively angry with a movie. I don’t remember any details, just the general sense that the characters’ decisions didn’t make sense, and that it was pretending at a seriousness and depth that it hadn’t earned at all. Up until this point in the life I had more-or-less enjoyed every movie I’d seen in the theater. But I hated Sleepers.
Making it worse, I was trapped in the theater with a “date” that I hadn’t asked for, so I couldn’t walk out or even quietly mock the movie. It was an utterly miserable experience.