A Handful of My Movie Guilty Pleasures
Honestly, if I had to list all of them, we would be here a long, long time!
When G.B. Rogut posted this prompt last month, my heart did a little leap of joy! This was partly down to the fact that I have been thinking about this very topic for some time myself.
The notion that we should feel guilty over what we like is something I would usually feel inclined to dismiss. This idea, though, is about cult popularity, how certain artistic output can find its audience outside of the mainstream, sometimes long after its release. It is also about preference and subjective opinion. The simple joy of finding art that resonates with you but almost no one else. All of which is to say that I actually find the idea of a guilty pleasure fun, and frankly, I have far too many to mention!
I have picked a few off the top of my head, movies that would be considered naff for the chin-stroking cineaste in me. Being as the schizoid prism of personalities that resides in my brain has time and taste for all manner of popular culture, though, I feel that for all the love I have for the cerebral and deep, I also have for the escapist and frivolous. I could easily list a number of action movies I lapped up as a young lad (basically anything with Arnie, Van Damme, or Stallone in it, even the odd Michael Bay or John Woo flick), but instead, I have tried to select a few that, although plucked at relative random, are a bit less obvious. So here are just a few of my cinematic guilty pleasures.
Wayne’s World (Penelope Spheeris, 1992)
Does this one qualify? Given that the guilty pleasure thing is fairly subjective, I guess so. Wayne’s World introduced us all to Mike Myers, some years before his success with Austin Powers (absolutely another guilty pleasure of mine, as is So I Married an Axe Murderer), and it was a successful enough spin-off from the original sketch characters to translate in movie form and spawn a sequel (also good, also a guilty pleasure). It would not be considered high art by any means, hardly making marks on the roadmap of film history, nor defining the genre or breaking new cinematic ground. It was a solid comedy with well-observed characters that captured the zeitgeist of the ‘burn-out’ metalhead scene, though. It parodied this but with love and warmth, making Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar (Dana Carvey) charming and beloved as well as hilarious.
Its popularity at the time was pretty massive, it was a smash at the box office and generated a reprisal number one for Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody along with a slew of catchphrases. These pervaded popular culture, from ‘Party on’ to ‘Schwing!’ and ‘We’re not worthy.’ The movie was very silly and very funny but also smartly written, and an attractive project for the likes of Rob Lowe (playing Wayne’s nemesis Benjamin Kane) and some notable cameos from Meatloaf and Alice Cooper. This year is its 30th anniversary and to my mind, it has lost none of its appeal, still makes me laugh, and is a very personally potent artifact of nostalgia. It is one of a few films I could probably recite in its entirety, along with Monty Python’s Life of Brian. I may have done this once or twice, to the chagrin of those viewing with me! In my defence, I was drunk, m’lord!
The Wedding Singer (Frank Coraci. 1998)
Adam Sandler is quite well known for making high-profile flops, a litany of unfunny comedies and poorly judged, uneven movies that fail to hit the mark. This is down to the fact that he essentially does what he wants and knows that he has a pretty loyal fan base out there who will often leap to his defence. In general, I am not one of those, though he has turned in some really excellent performances in films where he is not the major creative force, such as Punch Drunk Love and, more recently, Uncut Gems. As well as highlighting those genuinely great performances and films, there are some earlier more typical Sandler movies that I would include as guilty pleasures. One is Happy Gilmore, the other is his venture into romantic comedy territory, The Wedding Singer.
The Wedding Singer was one of his early commercial successes, and at the time, it was seen as fairly run-of-the-mill rom-com fare that, despite its generic nature, had a genuine sweetness to it that worked. For me, this is one that I do still love, and I think that is down to a combination of actually funny gags and some comical and touching original songs nestled amongst its well-selected 80s soundtrack. Largely though, it is because of the chemistry between Sandler and co-star Drew Barrymore. I guess this means I am a soppy old romantic at heart, but the familiar set-up of boy-meets-girl-who-is-with-crappy-guy has been done to death and therefore has to hit home somehow. The Wedding Singer does that very well, in my opinion, and is one that I will periodically return to for the fuzzy feelgoods. It is not the best romantic comedy out there, but it is still one of my favourites.
Don’t Be a Menace to South Central Whilst Drinking Your Juice in the Hood (Paris Barclay, 1996)
Now we come to a film that much more snugly fits the brief. This film was poorly received by critics at the time, bemoaning its overly broad humour, something the Wayan Bros would be accused of again and again over their careers. I also liked Scary Movie when it came out, though, both films being something of an antidote to the saturation of each genre they parodied, slasher horror revival, and coming-of-age hood flick. They had by the time of Scary Movie opted for brevity in the title mercifully, though the long-winded one we are concerned with here also makes me smile, if I’m honest.
This movie would struggle to get made in today’s overly cautious climate of, at times, ill-informed political correctness. That is not because this film is some sort of cutting satire, but it does contain some irreverent humour that is still utterly hilarious to me. The boys getting arrested for ‘being black on a Friday night is a scene littered with jokes that would make craven studio exec’s wince today. It's one of my favourites! The movie sends up every hood film ever made, including some output of a young Spike Lee but is chiefly based on John Singleton’s definitive picture Boyz N The Hood. It does this with repeated hilarity, but let's be clear, the humour is puerile and asinine, and I still laugh at it today!
From the gurning, ridiculously random nick-nack adorned head of Loc-Dog, to Ashtray’s father being younger than him, to Ashtray even being called Ashtray (a play on Cuba Gooding Jr’s Tre from the aforementioned), to the ‘do we have a problem?’ weapon-off and the joint smoking, foul-mouthed, break dancing grandma, this is a comedy that cares not for its own silliness or poor taste and I love it for that. It pokes fun at a genre of movies that the makers clearly actually respect and love and does so in a way that still makes me laugh today just thinking about it. Many thought then that this film is awful, unfunny, and base and many still think that now. That probably makes me love it even more!
From Dusk Till Dawn (Robert Rodriguez, 1996)
There are so many more movies I could include as guilty pleasures, but I will round it off here with an example of genre-blending that only the creative team of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino could produce. Starting out as a gritty, almost sleazy crime thriller and flipping a switch halfway through into an ode to B-Movie schlock horror, From Dusk Till Dawn divided critics at the time but soon became a cult classic.
I briefly wrote about this movie here, looking back at some of my favourites from 1996. In many ways, this is a movie that strongly indicates its era when viewed today. Who could turn down the opportunity to watch quite such an ensemble cast as this, though? George Clooney, Juliette Lewis, Quentin Tarantino, Harvey Keitel, and some memorable cameos from Cheech Marin, Salma Hayek, and Michael Parks make this the sort of film I can never switch channels on if it appears on the TV schedule.
There is no doubt that the film is sort of brash and certainly silly. Perhaps even a little tacky in its violence and undertones of criminally insane subversions (Richie is a molester, sexual deviant, and brutal killer, but the film could have lived without this). Yet it is also a love letter to the pulp horror that inspired it and does a brilliant genre bait-and-switch that few could pull off. For extra B-Movie points, George Romero’s frequent special effects collaborator Tom Savini plays the brilliantly trashy supporting character ‘Sex Machine’, who is a great standard bearer for the tone of the movie as a whole. Also, it wouldn’t be a Rodriguez movie without at least a cameo from Danny Trejo, here as the gruff bartender of the Titty Twister strip club.
It gained itself a solid cult status that led to less successful sequels and, as is so often the case today, a television series spin-off. The original will always remain my favourite though, and a guilty pleasure I still enjoy now.
That's it, folks! I could include many more, but I shall leave it there. I have enjoyed reading about all the other guilty pleasures people have shared, I hope you enjoy reading about mine.
