There’s a dangerous time to have friends who are as pop-culturally obsessed as you are, and that’s when you decide to see a movie en masse. I was reminded of this fact yesterday when, after reading my post on the movie title Hot Tub Time Machine, my friend Robb IM’d me, "Seriously. Hot Tub Time Machine? I’m TOTALLY seeing that in the theater with you." I realized he was right: It’s exactly the kind of movie we’d end up seeing for someone’s birthday because it was the only film no one in the group had already bought a ticket to. The most notorious Default Movie excursion I’ve been party to involved Deliver Us From Eva (pictured), which, happily, everyone celebrating my friend Sheila’s 30th birthday in 2003 quite enjoyed.
Your turn. I’m guessing you have a Default Movie story (rental-variety also accepted) — does it have a happy ending, too? If you’ve never experienced a Default Movie situation, how do you and your friends negotiate?
Wild Hogs. Last summer we were reading aloud the list of available movies and every movie triggered at least one reply of “seen it”. Then someone said “Wild Hogs”. Silence. Even as we were in line to buy the tickets all anyone could say was “I can’t believe we’re doing this”. But we did.
You Don’t Mess with the Zohan is the best example of this phenomenon for me and my family. We went to see a sold out screening of Iron Man and stepped into Zohan expecting the worst. We’re still laughing 6 months later.
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life. It remains the worst movie I’ve ever seen in the theater. If only a certain other member of my group hadn’t raised an objection to seeing Pirates of the Caribbean again…
I still have nightmares of seeing Saving Silverman. My friends and I were under 17 so we were trying to get into Hannibal (We didn’t know at the time…we didn’t know). Only one of my friends looked old enough to get a ticket and instead of simply sneaking into Hannibal we bought tickets for Saving Silverman because it was the only movie none of us had seen. Big mistake. We should have just given up and gone home.
The Dukes of Hazzard
I’m so ashamed…
Ugh. “Constantine.” It would have been better to stare at a blank wall for 2 hours.
let’s see. there are two times i can distinctly remember this occurring with my friends. the first was back in the day when we endured “13 ghosts” (that horrible movie with matthew lillard and the exchange student from “”american pie”). the second was “fantastic four: rise of the silver surfer” (which is by far the only movie i’ve ever walked out on, too).
I had to see The English Patient because no one else in my group wanted to see Jerry Maguire. And that, my friends, is how I became Elaine from Sienfeld about the movie The English Patient.
Twilight – my friends were dying to see it having read the book and I was holding out not only from watching the film but from reading the book too because I thought it was a random over-hyped tween love story of which I’ve never been of fan even when I was a teen there typically extremely unrealistic love stories in my opinion, so you can imagine what my opinion was when I heard one half of the couple was a vampire. They tricked me by saying we were seeing Four Christmases and instead dragged me into Twilight and as much as I hate to admit I was wrong it was awesome and I’m now reading the book entirely embracing the 12 year old girl inside me
This has happened to me a few times, but the worst case ever was when we ended up seeing Jackass: The Movie. I was with five or six people, and a couple of them really enjoyed it, but the rest of us were miserable. I couldn’t even eat my pocorn!
The Terminal with Tom Hanks and Troy with Brad Pitt. The Terminal was one of the most unbearable experiences of my entire life. Troy at least had eye candy, plus as a life long Classics geek I was able to spend the whole time critiquing.
In High School I wanted to see Deloris claiborne so bad (I know). The rest of my group wanted to see Tommy Boy instead. I threw a fit but went anyways and had to hide my laughter the whole way threw. I will never admit they were right and I was wrong.
My bad I meant through. I am bored at work.
I had to sit through The Musketeer. UGH! It was horrible. And then there was a “let’s be crazy and see something we know will be stupid” moment with a group of friends and we saw, I’m sorry to admit this, From Justin To Kelly. It’s good to get that off my chest actually.
Ugh. I saw that horrible Samuel Jackson movie…I think it was called Changing Lanes w/ a coworker when we were on a business trip. He wanted to see the latest horror movie at the time & I wanted to see The Sweetest Thing. We compromised & went to see that one instead. We’d have been better to just split up & see separate movies, as we both wound up hating that one.
Now I’ve got a group of friends & we just make it a point to go see any movies we are all interested in, together. I don’t know how we manage to make our schedules work, but somehow we usually pull it off.