In honor of Friday night, as I sit comfortably at home listening to Englishmen with drug problems doing wondrous things to guitars, the topic of date movies presents itself. The boilerplate for this murkily defined genre—stories about people in love that make girls cry and squeeze their boyfriend’s hand—is not my main area of expertise. Most of the women I hang around with want to go see the same kind of movies I do: the kind with explosions and people killing shit. This goes for the gay men I know too—my closest friend of whom is a fellow Tony Scott disciple and makes fun of me for knowing more about Joan Crawford and Bette Davis than he does.
So why am I—uniquely unqualified to discuss a normal date not only due to the above-mentioned circumstances but also my emotionally remote, self-conscious nature—talking about date movies? Because I’m talking about the worst ones. I’m talking about movies that couldn’t get you laid in a thousand years. I’m talking about movies that if you watch them at home on DVD while fucking will inspire your partner to ceasefire immediately and leave. That will cause fights. That will just make you feel ooky.
Before getting to the list proper, a couple surprise omissions:
Schindler’s List (dir. Steven Spielberg)—1993
Would be number one, but Jerry Seinfeld hooked up to it once. Sure, he and the chick he hooked up with weren’t watching it, but still. Disqualification’s a disqualification.
Total Recall (dir. Paul Verhoeven)—1990
I hooked up to this movie once. I am, of course, a god.
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So now, the list proper:
(5) Chasing Amy (dir. Kevin Smith)—1997
This came out (ba dump bump) the middle of my freshman year at Bard College, a place where the fine tradition of collegiate lesbianism was (and, I presume, still is) devoutly observed. In spite of writer-director Kevin Smith’s best efforts, the sisters were not amused. Two of same, a couple with whom I was friendly, asked me whether I thought Chasing Amy was worth seeing. I thought about it for a second—I knew it was a really bad idea, but I’ve got troll blood pumping through my veins—and told them sure, all the controversy was just Harvey Weinstein publicity. Fast-forward to a few hours later: I’ve turned in early (in retrospect, a sign something was seriously wrong) and just fallen asleep when BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM “DANNY, I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE!” Apparently, the movie disturbed the two of them so much that they almost broke up three times in the car on the way home (once when one of them blamed the other for “her friend”—me—playing such a horrible prank on them, the second when the other blamed the first for being friends with me, and the third just because they were being emotional) and wanted to lecture me about how horrible and homophobic the movie was, and how men may not understand this but lesbians do not have any interest in men! Harrumph! (Postscript: one of them is now married to a man). So yeah.
Lest we assume from that anecdote that only lesbian couples will react this badly to Chasing Amy, an apparently straight woman I watched it with later told me as she rolled her eyes “you only like this because it’s about lesbians . . . god, men are all alike.” Steer clear. It also hasn't aged very well.
(4) The Hunt For Red October (dir. John McTiernan)—1990
This one’s strictly speculative, and it’s admittedly standing in for a litany of—for the purposes under discussion—interchangeable military-themed pictures, and this one wins the prize for being one of my favorites. But I can’t imagine being sober and/or remotely giving a shit and suggesting to a date that we watch this. Unless there’s some girl out there who gets all squirmy at the sound of James Earl Jones saying, “Now understand, the torpedo did not detonate, you heard it hit the hull. And I . . . was never here.” (If you do, e-mail me). The exquisite pleasures of watching fiercely intelligent men match wits, maverick Soviet sub captains evading capture and certain death from all sides, callow young CIA analysts struggling to earn the trust of veteran military men, and ultimately basking quietly in a shared victory are in completely separate categories from the exquisite pleasures of taking women to bed. Do not mix.
(3) Sid and Nancy (dir. Alex Cox)—1986
As with (4), this one is standing in for any number of movies with a similar problem, but this goes one higher on the list because while gay military nerds might get simultaneous boners to all the talk about Crazy Ivans and so forth, watching a couple get so fucked up on drugs that the guy fatally stabs the girl is not getting anyone hot. Not to mention, Pistols purists occasionally gripe about the liberties Alex Cox took with the historical record in favor of hallucinatory visuals and general narrative drive, so try and seduce them some other way. Still, that caveat aside, it’s a great movie, and endlessly quotable, but when one of the best quotes is “None of us fuck, see? Sex is ugly,” it’s maybe kind of sort just slightly advisable to not try and get someone turned on with this one. Try, I don’t know, Trainspotting, that at least has Ewan McGregor’s dick in it.
(2) Caddyshack (dir. Harold Ramis)—1980*
Now, I know what you’re thinking—Rodney does cap the proceedings by announcing: “Hey, everybody. We’re all gonna get laid!” And yes, that is the greatest last line in a movie ever. But, reasonable as it may seem to turn to your girl after Rodney says the line and say to her, “So . . . is he right?” I would advise against. Also, this is the one movie I can think of that I have absolutely never met a woman who liked it. At all. I speak as a guy who has made out with a girl while watching Slap Shot and even—put the bullshit detector away, please—once met a girl who liked Bloodsport. So as an expert on such matters, do not, gentlemen, ask your girl to sit through Caddyshack. You will not be pleased with the results.
(2a) Fried Green Tomatoes (dir. Jon Avnet)—1991
Since the above paragraph was directed solely to men, a word for the ladies: making a guy watch this movie is like taking him shopping. Now, I’m a progressive guy, and as sophisticated a cineaste as you’re going to find anywhere (the ten “fucks” per sentence and wide-eyed fascination with explosions and car chases notwithstanding). This is a well-made movie. It’s got a terrific cast. I am not in any way shape or form knocking it as a movie. But as an experience, if you’re not a woman, this movie is not interested in you. Never mind that a guy directed it. A woman directed Point Break, after all. I had an ex put Fried Green Tomatoes on once, and she woke me up to complain that she’d wanted to watch a movie as a romantic evening together. Let the record reflect that it did not work.
(2) and (2a) are part of the same point—any movie that caters entirely to the interests of one gender fails as a date movie. Apologies for any slight to gay couples, but the same principle would apply to any movie with an aggressively and exclusively heteronormative viewpoint, or, worse, an openly homophobic one. I’d come up with a specific example, but as I said before, the only gay guy I watch a lot of movies with spends all his time trying to figure out whether Dario Argento or Takashi Miike is the greatest director of all time and I'm still persona non grata with the lesbians over shit like the Chasing Amy trolling, so I don’t really have a normal demographic sample to work with here.
(1) Knocked Up (dir. Judd Apatow)—2007
The absolute worst date movie imaginable. Forget for a second that Judd Apatow movies are all too long, and his process—building the movie around improvised scenes—inexorably leads to a loose, digressive narrative structure. Hell, John Cassavetes movies are all too long, what are you gonna do, call the cops? Forget also that in spite of at least one hilarious scene per movie (i.e. “You know how I know you’re gay?” or “Munich is going to get us laid!”) there are just as invariably excruciatingly long stretches of maudlin sentimentality or leaden moodiness in each one. That could happen to anybody, and as the man said, dying is easy, comedy’s hard. No, that’s not the worst. Hell, 40 Year Old Virgin is actually not a bad date movie, all things considered. But Knocked Up has a number of jaw-droppers in store for a couple going to see it on their first or second date:
--The whole story revolves around a fun, drunken hookup wherein the guy gets the girl pregnant. In and of itself that would make it the worst date movie ever, but it doesn’t stop there.
--All the guys are emotionally retarded pussies.
--The women don’t fare much better. Katherine Heigl’s ok, and you gotta cut her some slack for being pissed off about getting pregnant, which sucks, but holy shit Leslie Mann got stuck with a thankless part. All she does the whole movie is either scream at people or cry. She’s such a fascistic wife that Paul Rudd has to sneak off to his fantasy baseball draft like it was an adulterous affair.
--The ultimate conclusion seems to be that men are emotionally stunted boy-pupae who with the help of a woman telling them what do to, can blossom into husband-butterflies.
Now, it can be argued—probably pretty easily—that I’m overreacting, that that’s not what Judd Apatow is saying. That’s not the point (and it’s not just not the point because it’s flimsy bullshit). The clincher is: there was a lot of talk in the media when Knocked Up came out about it provoking serious conversations between couples who went to see it on dates. This is why it’s the worst date movie ever. Serious conversations???? Serious conversations are for when you’re already in a relationship. Dates are supposed to be about going out, having a good time—drinking, dancing, eating good food, having a laugh, getting in adventures, etc.—not sitting around debating the nature of gender roles in modern society.
Not only that, but the biggest problem with all the men in Knocked Up being pussies/retards/both and all the women being angry/dictatorial/pathologically vague about their wants is that, unlike (2) and (2a) where at least one person is being entertained, both of you are being insulted.
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In the end, the solution is to either date someone who likes the same kind of movies you do, trade off who gets to pick the movie, or just avoid the minefield altogether and think of something else to do. Don’t ask me what that is; if I knew I wouldn’t be writing a movie blog.
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*(EDIT (1/11/10): The other night my friends Hope Cartelli and Jessi Gotta brought it to my attention that this is bullshit: they're both women and they both love Caddyshack. Moreover, Jessi tells me it was her mother who got her into it. So, a revision: only really cool girls like Caddyshack.)
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