Sunday, September 14, 2003

Would you like that Eastwood with Guilt, or without?

Greg Harris lists a few guilty pleasures. I often have trouble with listing guilty pleasures, because I view the definition of "guilty pleasure" as "something you like, when you know you shouldn't". My problem is that, even when I like something most people hate, I rarely view it as a guilty pleasure and more as a case of me seeing something in it that no one else does. In other words, I'm right and they're wrong. Like with the Star Wars prequels. They're good movies, and if you don't like them, then you're a pinhead. So there.

But I suppose I can come up with a few that fill the bill. Most are movies.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Yeah, Costner's accent is nonexistent; but the movie's grasp of history is so unbelievably bad that even now I can't believe that Costner's accent is the most often-cited problem with this movie. I don't know, maybe it's Alan Rickman spitting out lines like "No more merciful beheadings, and call off Christmas!". But I can't dislike the movie.

Independence Day. This movie's opening act is one of the best ever, even if the science is absolutely laughable (do you have any idea how much energy it would take to slow down an object that is one-fourth the size of the Moon>). And there are other staggering plot holes in the movie: "Wow, Will Smith is such a good pilot that he managed to spot a top-secret government facility that no one's known about for fifty years from the air, all while being chased by an alien spaceship!" "Wow, somehow the government managed to keep that facility secret for fifty years despite the fact that it's visible enough for Will Smith to spot while executing evasive maneuvers overhead!" Poor Mary McDonnell has what might be the most pointless death scene in all of cinema, and I wonder if a sequel would have a scene in which Jeff Goldblum, learning that the aliens are coming back, says, "Don't worry. I beat 'em with a 1995 Powerbook last time, and now I've got a 2003 Powerbook. They're toast." But crap, the movie's got such a sense of over-the-top goofy fun that I can't hate it.

Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can. I'm stretching, here, because I honestly love these two movies. Clint Eastwood, Geoffrey Lewis (an underused actor if ever there was one), bareknuckle fighting, an inept motorcycle gang, barroom brawls, country music from before the "Rockabilly" types took over, and an orangutan named Clyde. What's not to love? (Well, I could do without the old guy in the second movie who actually has a sexual fantasy about Ruth Gordon.)

Flash Gordon. Another movie that plants its feet firmly on the dividing line between "Whiz bang fun!" and "Friggin' laughable!", and stays there for the whole running time.

And finally, for the record, Buffalo-style chicken wings are not a guilty pleasure. Yes, I love them. Yes, they're incredibly bad for you. No, I do not feel the slightest bit of guilt when I eat them, although that's rare these days.

(It occurs to me that the contents of this post may be repeating a post or two I have written in the past. Oh well.)

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