jcdenton
250+ Posts
I often hear people say this to describe movies which didn't necessarily suck but weren't very good either. But it seems to me that there's a fatal flaw in the logic of this statement. When you’re picking a movie to rent, there will virtually always be movies which weren’t worth watching in the theater AND movies which were worth watching in the theater. Thus the above statement presupposes that you’ve already completely exhausted the supply of movies which are available for rent AND were good enough to be worth seeing in the theater, thereby forcing you to resort to watching movies which were NOT good enough to watch in the theater. Obviously, with the vast number of good movies currently available on DVD and the widespread availability of such DVD’s, such a scenario is extremely unlikely.
Really, you could even take this a step further and say that, in order for the statement to be applicable, you would not only need to have watched ALL the movies in the former category, but you would need to have watched them a sufficient number of times that the marginal entertainment value of watching them an additional time is less than the projected entertainment value of watching a movie in the latter category for the first time (really, would someone be better off watching The Usual Suspects for the 10th time, or a Knight’s Tale for the first time?). Which makes the number of people that this applies to even more miniscule.
The only other exceptions I can think of where the statement might make sense are:
1) Movies which are extremely slow and long, but still good--provided that you can fast forward through the slow and long parts (and read the subtitles while doing so). For example The Majestic. When I watched it on DVD and fast forwarded through at least 25-30% of the movie at 4x speed, thus cutting it down from 3+ hours to 2+, it was actually quite good. But if I had to sit through the entire movie in realtime there's no way I would have made it through to the end.
2) Movies which have certain scenes that suck so completely and are so devoid of value that by skipping over them it improves the film dramatically. Examples include Being John Malkovich (every scene with Cameron Diaz), Lord of the Rings (every scene with Liv Tyler) and Episode 1.
3) Movies which are in English, but you can’t tell what the hell the actors are saying, thus making DVD subtitles necessary (Snatch, Gosford Park, Oklahoma).
Really, you could even take this a step further and say that, in order for the statement to be applicable, you would not only need to have watched ALL the movies in the former category, but you would need to have watched them a sufficient number of times that the marginal entertainment value of watching them an additional time is less than the projected entertainment value of watching a movie in the latter category for the first time (really, would someone be better off watching The Usual Suspects for the 10th time, or a Knight’s Tale for the first time?). Which makes the number of people that this applies to even more miniscule.
The only other exceptions I can think of where the statement might make sense are:
1) Movies which are extremely slow and long, but still good--provided that you can fast forward through the slow and long parts (and read the subtitles while doing so). For example The Majestic. When I watched it on DVD and fast forwarded through at least 25-30% of the movie at 4x speed, thus cutting it down from 3+ hours to 2+, it was actually quite good. But if I had to sit through the entire movie in realtime there's no way I would have made it through to the end.
2) Movies which have certain scenes that suck so completely and are so devoid of value that by skipping over them it improves the film dramatically. Examples include Being John Malkovich (every scene with Cameron Diaz), Lord of the Rings (every scene with Liv Tyler) and Episode 1.
3) Movies which are in English, but you can’t tell what the hell the actors are saying, thus making DVD subtitles necessary (Snatch, Gosford Park, Oklahoma).
