Ironincally enjoying bad movies

oxygen

I don't get this new fad for ironically enjoying movies. Its led to SyFy chucking money at efforts such as Sharknado, or Sharktopus etc. Friends of mine, who are not movie junkies, or sci-fi fans in general are watching these movies. It kindof frustrates me, because there are such better movies they could be watching, I know that sounds conceited.

Don't get me wrong, I understand how to enjoy good B-Movie. Even though the quality and frequency of B-Movies has dipped in the last few years, since Paul Van Der Hoven stopped making them IMO. Lock Up and Death Proof are two examples of recent B-Movie’s I enjoyed.

I tried to watch Sharknado recently; it was a real effort to watch it to the end. It just dragged it was so bad, and at the end I felt like I wasted an hour or so of my life. It looked like they made it purposely bad. Maybe I should be watching it with a load of college friends in a dorm room a la Troy and Abed from Community.

mike65

Last refuge of the desperate/late night beers and crisps brigade.

Bad films are of course subjective, but a film that is quite deliberately designed to be "bad" fails immediately to succeed in its aim.

Genuinely lousy films are are result of genuine people not being as talented as they think they are.

krudler

Bad movies that set out to be bad movies is kinda missing the point

pixelburp

Yeah, the obsession with Sharknado was baffling and irritating in equal measure. Desperately aiming to be a 'bad movie' is a pretty pathetic goal, no matter how hilariously ironic you might think you are, and its a shame Asylum films are probably laughing all the way to the bank, thanks to all the free publicity their nonsense received. It all reminds me a lot of Snakes on a Plane; another film that became viral on the back of its intentional attempt to be schlocky and ironic

krudler

pixelburp wrote: »

Yeah, the obsession with Sharknado was baffling and irritating in equal measure. Desperately aiming to be a 'bad movie' is a pretty pathetic goal, no matter how hilariously ironic you might think you are, and its a shame Asylum films are probably laughing all the way to the bank, thanks to all the free publicity their nonsense received. It all reminds me a lot of Snakes on a Plane; another film that became viral on the back of its intentional attempt to be schlocky and ironic

SOAP was enjoyable nonsense though, something that sets out to be just that is fine, but when something is purposefully going "ahhaa, its about a two headed shark! this movie sucks! but we made it that way!" is when it's annoying.

Technocentral

Life's too short to watch crap, I find it hard enough to find decent films so concentrate on that.

Boom_Bap

I watched the one about the killer Piraha recently, and loved it. I loved how sh*tty it was and the brutal effects and awful story.
My missus couldn't understand why I was so giddy.

Greyjoy

A genuinely enjoyable 'bad' movie will have an honesty or passion behind it. You can at least admire the filmmakers for setting their ambition way beyond their ability or budget. But movies like Sharknado are just lazy boring films that wink at the audience at how bad they are. This tweet sums up my reaction to it..

You guys realize that Sharknado knows it's ridiculous right? That's SyFy's whole business model.
You may as well be making fun of "Airplane".

https://twitter.com/dankmccoy/status/355510989304766464

krudler

yeah but the difference between Sharknado and Airplane! is Airlplane! is actually good, and funny, and considered a comedy classic, Sharknado will be none of those things.

Greyjoy

krudler wrote: »

yeah but the difference between Sharknado and Airplane! is Airlplane! is actually good, and funny, and considered a comedy classic, Sharknado will be none of those things.

The point wasn't that the two films are of comparable quality but that hyping how bad a film Sharknado is is pointless when that's the entire point of the film. It would be like someone treating Airplane! as a serious film and raving over how wooden the acting is or how ridiculous the plot was.

Hande hoche!

krudler wrote: »

Bad movies that set out to be bad movies is kinda missing the point

Yep, which is why the Room is so enjoyable.

johnny_ultimate

The whol SyFy schlock business is desperate and confusing in equal measure. They're films that are cynically designed to be rubbish, with little wit to back up that most suspect of goals. Best just to ignore them and don't feed the hype train.

Making a purposefully bad film is a borderline deluded aim. Certainly haven't gotten much pleasure out of the Grindhouse revival, especially when the likes of Tarantino and Rodriquez could surely make more interesting movies if they got past their fondness for rubbish. There are certainly the handful that manage the feat of brave, brazen badness and manage to entertain and amuse in the process, but they're few and far between.

Life is indeed too short to be consumed by 'bad movies' - it's probably not too much of a stretch to imagine many people out there actually ignore the good films in favour of a constant stream of empty ironic thrills. That said, from time to time, on a particularly lazy eve, there are pleasures to be found sitting down and watching an accidentally or merely incompetently bad film. In fact, a bad film or two a year is a pretty important part of a healthy cinematic diet. I'd maintain I learned more about film-making from my forty-five minutes with A Talking Cat?! or sitting through The Room then I did from a vast majority of more generally competent movies out there...

pixelburp

It's also worth pointing out that all this money (that I presume is) being shovelled into the garbage-factory that is Asylum Studios is funding that could have otherwise been pushed into more original programming at ScyFy. The channel is a bit of a joke by now and considering all the decent shows it has axed over the last few years, seeing material like Sharknado get such insane publicity and support is utterly depressing; it's just going to justify ScyFy's policy that audiences want irony-laden nonsense instead of interesting, new SciFi shows. Remember, this is the channel that once brought us BSG, Farscape (albeit not as a producer), Stargate, Warehouse 13 etc. etc.

I agree about the Tarantino & Rodriguez remarks; two fine, talented directors who are happy to wallow in schlocky irony rather than push themselves creatively. I watched the 'Machete Kills' trailer and to be honest, I see no difference between it and Sharknado: differently sized budgets and cast-list of course, but both films desperately trying to be ironic and intentionally bad.

I should point out that I do love my B-Movies, I consider them an important part of any balanced, cinematic diet and will support any low to mid-tier production that earnestly tries its hardest to entertain. And yes, sometimes those that spectacularly fail can be highly enjoyable in their own way. But Sharknado and their ilk can f*ck right off.

oxygen

The Grindhouse double bill has been mentioned a good bit above. Would people included these along with the likes of Sharktopus or similar? Personally I really liked both of them. I enjoyed Planet Terror's intentional excesses and actually just thought Death Proof was an enjoyable, exciting, funny movie with some of the most authentic stunt work I have ever seen. I remember watching those movies back to back, badly hungover, in the middle of the day, at the back of a fairly empty NYC cinema. The best hangover I have ever had suffer through

And as mentioned above, I love B-Movie's and absolutely think they are a requirement of modern cinema. Alot of the classic movies from when I was younger were B-Movies, Robocop, Predator, Mad Max etc etc. I actually think its a genre that has seriously declined as of late, I cant remember the last time I enjoyed a decent B-Movie in the cinema.

Crap like Sharktopus is not helping. Those movies are a serious waste of resources (resources being money, not talent, there is clearly no talent involved in making them).

Sad Professor

Yeah, as said, b-movies of the past tended to be sincere efforts hampered by inexperience, lack of talent and insufficient funds. A lot of modern films try to replicate the entertainment value of these films but fail pretty miserably IMO. Films like Iron Sky have their moments but are too self-conciously bad to be enjoyably bad.

A truly bad film is one in which nobody involved cared about the film, which I definitely think some blockbusters can be accused of. A film like Transformers 2, for example, in which everyone seems to more or less admit that they were just collecting a paycheque.

krudler

Sad Professor wrote: »

Yeah, as said, b-movies of the past tended to be sincere efforts hampered by inexperience, lack of talent and insufficient funds. A lot of modern films try to replicate the entertainment value of these films but fail pretty miserably IMO. Films like Iron Sky have their moments but are too self-conciously bad to be enjoyably bad.

A truly bad film is one in which nobody involved cared about the film, which I definitely think some blockbusters can be accused of. A film like Transformers 2, for example, in which everyone seems to more or less admit that they were just collecting a paycheque.

Charm has a lot to do with it as well, if you set out to purposefully make a crap film it just comes across as cynical. something like say Tremors or Lake Placid aren't great films but they're fun to watch.

Greyjoy

oxygen_temp wrote: »

The Grindhouse double bill has been mentioned a good bit above. Would people included these along with the likes of Sharktopus or similar?

I definitely wouldn't lump the grindhouse style stuff that Rodriguez & Tarantino make in with the cynical garbage from Asylum. You can tell that there's a genuine affection & knowledge that R&T have for those B-movies. But part of that affection involves appreciating their flaws as well.

Duggy747

A film that was genuinely made with no intentions of being bad are always the funniest films. You can laugh hardest with your mates at scenes that were made and are played out in dead seriousness.

This SyFy phase with intentionally bad films misses the joke but still gets a business out of that "So bad it's good" market. The grindhouse revival with movies like Machete Kills are lost on me.

It just all feels so cynical, at least older (before this new phase) bad films had good intentions or charm to them.

Would The Room have been as popular if Tommy intentionally went out of his way to make it that bad?

nyarlothothep

Duggy747 wrote: »

A film that was genuinely made with no intentions of being bad are always the funniest films. You can laugh hardest with your mates at scenes that were made and are played out in dead seriousness.

This SyFy phase with intentionally bad films misses the joke but still gets a business out of that "So bad it's good" market. The grindhouse revival with movies like Machete Kills are lost on me.

It just all feels so cynical, at least older (before this new phase) bad films had good intentions or charm to them.

Would The Room have been as popular if Tommy intentionally went out of his way to make it that bad?

I agree with this, films like Fatal Deviation and Troll 2 are hilarious. However I dont think purposefully making a bad film makes it bad by necessity without any redeeming qualities. I'd be interested if anyone can provide any examples where the director intentionally makes a bad film that is also good. The kind of purposefully bad films being mentioned here are insincere or cynical, I hate this kind of film making, but at the same time I think it's possible to make a film that's sincere in its appreciation of the bad films it's trying to emulate and its own vision. Additionally in bad films you get idiosyncratic characters/performances that are entertaining, which can also be yielded by intentionally bad films.