Over the years I have written about guilty pleasure movies (2006 and again in 2010). It’s 2018 – time I should update my list, right? First my definition: my guilty pleasure movies are movies that are awful – poorly made, poorly acted, skewered by critics. Just bad moviemaking. But I love them anyway. Some may be better than others, and may have even had some success, but they are not generally ever near the top of anyone’s list. Except for the guilty pleasure list.
I’ve got my all-time guilty pleasures that will never leave my list – Xanadu, Sgt. Pepper’s, Deep Blue Sea, etc. If I had to re-do the Top 10 that I did in 2006, I might replace Can’t Stop the Music and Over the Edge. But what to replace them with? Do I go with truly terrible movies, or those that I could watch over and over again without getting bored? Those movies might not necessarily be bad at all.
One such movie is “Edge of Tomorrow” (2014) starring Emily Blunt and Tom Cruise. It’s not a bad movie at all – it got excellent reviews and even today, four years after its release, it has a 90% score on Rotten Tomatoes. But it is one that I could watch over and over and over (see what I’m doing there) and never get bored. Did you know it’s full title is “Live. Die. Repeat. Edge of Tomorrow?” Yep. I have been known to ask my daughter, “Want to watch Live Die Repeat?” which makes her just shake her head in disgust.
Another newer movie that I love is “Rat Race” (2001) which is not that great a movie but tickles my funny bone to no end. A huge cast (John Cleese, Whoopi Goldberg, Cuba Gooding, Jr, Rowan Atkinson, Breckin Meyer, Dean Cain, Seth Green, Jon Lovitz, and more), this movie about a group of six Las Vegas tourists being given the chance to win a $2M prize is just frothy fun. Plotholes? WHO CARES?
Going back to new movies, I know that critics did NOT overwhelmingly like the new all-female version of “Ghostbusters” (2016) but you know what? I loved it! My whole family enjoyed it, actually. I love the entire cast (I’m a big fan of all four leading ladies (yes, even Leslie Jones)), and I think they did a great job with the updated story, and Paul Feig directed a fun homage to the original. Similar to “Deep Blue Sea,” when the female version of “Ghostbusters” is on TV, I don’t care how long it’s been on already, I’ll watch until closing credits.
“Summer School” (1987) is older, starring Mark Harmon, but could still be on my list. It was on TV recently so I Tivo’d it. Some plot stuff to be concerned with (female student movies in with male summer school teacher, makes moves on him and no one cares?) but gosh darn it, Mark Harmon is just adorable. And that plot point is minor and not the main plot of the movie (which is that he only gets tenure if he can get his summer school class of misfits to pass their exam).
I have one word for my next movie: Toepick! Imagine my delight at my new job when one of the admins suddenly sang, “Toepick!” soon after I started there. That’s when I knew she and I would be friends. For those not in the know, “The Cutting Edge” (1992) is about a bratty figure skater and a former hockey player who try to becoming a winning figure-skating duo in the Olympics. Bad movie, awful skating scenes (so, so fake), but I love her snarkily saying “Toepick!” when he falls on the ice. What’s even more amazing is that there are SEQUELS to this movie! Apparently “The Cutting Edge: Going for the Gold” in 2006, “The Cutting Edge: Chasing the Dream” in 2008 and yet another one, The Cutting Edge: Fire and Ice” in 2010. Who knew?!
A newer movie that I ended up buying on DVD because I liked it so much more than I expected was “Happy Death Day” (2017) about a woman stuck in a “Groundhog Day” situation wherein she keeps getting killed but wakes up the morning of her murder and has to live it all over again. Creative, surprisingly funny, and relatively benign gore-wise, I like this one because it is not a typical slasher film AT ALL. Ignore plotholes and I think you’ll find yourself warming up to this movie.
Feel free to comment and let me know your own favorite guilty pleasure movies – the good, bad or the ugly! No judgment here!
