As an avid movie-goer, I often wonder whether my passion for objectively “bad” movies has any inherent value or whether it just makes me seem less cultured. Although I consider myself to be well-versed in movies that tick all the right boxes for film critics, I can’t help but feel that proclaiming my love for the Twilight (2008) franchise on the r/movies subreddit would be met with severe condemnation. But does my love for kitschy costumes, over-acted scenes, and awkward dialogue really make me the cultural anti-Christ of cinephiles? Is there any value to my incessant re-watching of a 3-minute-long baseball scene of four vampires swinging their bats to loud cracks of thunder and the sweet voice of Matthew Bellamy?
To analyze the intricacies of what makes a movie so-bad-it’s-good, it may be helpful to look into a recent movie that, at the risk of sounding too dramatic, was so horrendous it instilled in me a sense of deep existential dread. On the 20th of December 2019, Universal Studios released a live-action remake of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Cats. The internet has not recovered since. After its theatrical release, countless reviews surfaced, ranging from comparisons of Jennifer Hudson’s character to a bad Snapchat filter to articles on the sheer terror evoked by Rebel Wilson’s character devouring cockroaches with human faces. Scoring a measly 20% on Rotten Tomatoes, it is fair to say that Cats was utter garbage. But is it the enjoyable kind? What distinguishes entertaining movies like Sharknado and The Room from movies that are not much better than a coughed-up fur ball? As the good philosophy student I am, I feel obliged to bring the voice of David Hume into the “so-bad-it’s-good” conversation.
What Makes a Movie So Bad It’s Good: A Humean Perspective
In determining what makes a movie good or bad, we have not moved far from Hume’s essay, Of the Standards of Taste, which two-and-a-half centuries ago told us that “good” art was what a consensus of educated and experienced people said it was. Hume argues that with practice, we can develop an ability to discern, for example, a good movie from a bad one, by thoughtfully comparing one work with another. So, let’s say you’ve watched a lot of B-range movies. After some time, you’ll have some opinions about who makes the best ones and what exactly you mean by “best.” Once you discuss those opinions with other fellow “trash enjoyers” you’ll hear certain names again and again – i.e. Tommy Wiseau, James Nguyen, etc. We participate, we compare, we start to notice our favourites, and we articulate what makes them so “good”.
It’s All About Honesty
Just like the Academy’s Board of Governors and other movie critics, us bad-movie watchers have our own criteria for the sort of badness we prefer; let’s call this the anti-criteria. A pattern in bad (but good) movies is often the director’s blindness to the absurdity of their film. At their core, bad movies are inherently and unforgivably honest. It is the unironic insanity of the performances and dialogue which leaves us in absolute disbelief. How did a person get away with creating this object?! As rock critic Lester Bangs articulates while writing about Ray Dennis Steckler’s delirious 1963 horror film The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, the film’s apparent innocence of good taste is exactly what gives it a kind of “lunar purity.” To be worthwhile to the viewer, the movie requires a sense that someone is actually trying and failing miserably. Making a purposefully lousy movie is like wearing a McGill Dad T-shirt: you might get a cheap laugh from a fellow classmate, but at the end of the day, you’re still just a broke student who spent $40 on a shirt. Based on these criteria, Cats seems to be meeting our anti-criteria. With Jason Derulo avidly defending his performance and director Tom Hooper proudly proclaiming he worked on the movie for “seven days a week since August,” it is not hard to see that Cats was a genuine attempt at honouring Weber’s Broadway musical. However, it seems that Cats was unable to capture the charm that we see in movies like Teenagers from Outer Space, Pink Flamingos, and other cult classics. Despite Hooper’s honest attempt, the high-budget film spliced with A-list celebrities did not capture the gritty qualities we often see in the movies we love.
Anti-Hollywood
This leads us to the last element of our “anti-criteria” – a bad movie needs to be somewhat “anti-Hollywood.” We want a movie featuring unknown actors, poor CGI, and general grittiness: this is true garbage. Let’s compare two movies that both received poor reviews: James Nguyen’s Birdemic and Michael Bay’s Transformers 2 (2017). In terms of so-bad-it’s-good, Birdemic wins every time. Transformers makes use of expensive CGI and A-list celebrities, but it is a snooze-fest at best. On the other hand, Birdemic’s use of horrible CGI and unknown actors makes it incredibly entertaining, as characters gawk at birds that look like they were taken straight out of Minecraft. Its distance from the Hollywood establishment endears us to it.
Why We Love Trash – Embracing the Theatrical
We seem to be drawn to the spectacle of bad films. I argue that people who like bad films are appreciating film in its purest form and honour what it was originally meant to be: theatrics and entertainment. In fact, the techniques of so-bad-its-good are often used in critically acclaimed movies. The use of excessive movie tropes, poor over-the-top acting and shotty camera work is employed by critically acclaimed directors, ranging from John Waters to Wes Anderson. From impossibly symmetrical set pieces to outdated cartoonish special effects, Anderson hits all the right spots when it comes to kitsch. He breaks many principles of film-making with unrealistic acting, cheesy dialogue and extreme filming techniques and people can’t seem to get enough of him. Trash, or kitsch, allows movies to be what they are meant to be – entertaining - and could there be any purer form than that?
Featured image source: Entertainment Weekly
