Robyn’s Blog

When Bad is Good

Posted by robyngiannini on March 13th, 2007

At the risk of sounding annoyingly philosophical, how do we decide what is a “good” movie?  Dr. Campbell commented that he now reads movie reviews before going to the movies so that he doesn’t have to watch a “bad”  film.  But personally, I rarely agree with movie critics.  A movie can have the best acting, the best scenery, and an amazing plot, and fail to interest me, while sometimes a horrible, overly-cliche movie is exactly what you are looking for.  Now, I don’t credit myself with knowing enough about movies to fully understand whether or not the 1933 version of Little Women is “better” than the 1949 version.  But I can tell you, I enjoyed the 1949 version a hell of a lot more, and that’s all the standard I need for a good movie.

Things that Rocked about 1949 Little Women:

*the actors looked like children and not middle-aged adults

*their voices were less annoying

*I was always wondering what inappropriate thing Amy would say next

*they didn’t make me gag because they were too nice

*Beth’s death was less drawn out and boring

*Laurie didn’t look/act as homosexual

*the colors were pretty

*when Jo jumped over the fence the music jumped with her

* the girls acted more like people and less like stage actors

*Amy made up more really funny sounding words

And I could continue.  Okay, maybe none of those things are characteristics of a “good” movie.  If that is the case, I can only conclude that I like “bad” movies, after all.