Let me tell you about my most recent favorite movie. It is The Family Stone. It is a sweet and funny little movie about a family gathering together at Christmas. The children are all adults now, at least age-wise. One is married and pregnant with her second child, one is deaf and gay and married (or some legal equivalent) and in the process adopting a child with his partner, and two are apparently unattached, and one has just brought home the woman he intends to marry. This last is the main initiator of dramatic tension, because the lady-love is uptight and formal, in great contrast to the warm and fuzzy and slightly overbearing rest of the family. It's quite wonderful.
Just before that, I was somewhat obsessed with Love Actually. I can't remember exactly what was before that, but I'm sure it was something in the same neighborhood as far as mushiness goes.
Ok, I remember. Before that it was Bend It Like Beckham.
During my first year of college, I watched several movies over and over. (We didn't have cable in our rooms, or really anywhere on campus at the time, I think.) One of the ones I watched the most was My Best Friend's Wedding. I didn't really think I watched it that much, but several years later I heard that someone once asked my first-year roommate about me, and he replied that he had been a little weirded-out sometimes, because I watched that movie so often.
So it seems to be both my choice of movies and my willingness to watch them over and over and over.
I think part of it might be genetic. My mom isn't too much of a movie person, but my dad sure is. He loves escapist movies of all kinds, and he is definitely not shy about watching movies again and again. I recently brought a longtime campaign to a successful finish, regarding my dad. I'd been trying to get him to watch Love Actually. He was hesitant, primarily because he really doesn't like Hugh Grant. (My dad doesn't easily separate actors skills from their private lives, and he really hated certain parts of Grant's private life. My best friend in high school and I had similar issues regarding talking about girls, and specifically which ones were hot, etc. He would have trouble admitting that a girl was attractive if she also happened to be a jerk, whereas I was readily willing to separate these qualities -- for purposes of discussion only, of course.) (I may have made up some of that. That was more than ten years ago.) So, it took many visits for me to get my dad to watch the movie, but I finally succeeded last weekend. And of course, he loved it. He downloaded it onto his iPod and watched it several more times while commuting to work. (He commutes by bus. He wasn't driving and watching the movie.)
I feel it's important to point out that not all movies I watch, and not even all movies I love, are mushy. I have like and love all sorts of movies. That's actually another quality regarding me and movie-watching that some people find unnerving, or at least a little strange. I like almost every movie I see.
I don't love every movie I see, but I probably love a lot more of them than most people, and I certainly like a lot more. It's difficult to find movies I've seen that I didn't like. Part of this is that I don't go to see movies I don't think I'll like (usually), but still, I watch a hell of a lot of movies. So when my close friends ask me if a movie was good, they know to take my answer with a grain of salt. And I have learned to separate my judgments into two parts:
(1) Did I like it?
(2) Was it good? (Would anyone else like it?)
There are two notable exceptions that spring to mind. I hated Black Hawk Down. To be fair, this was a predictable outcome, and I probably shouldn't have seen it in the first place. It was not my kind of movie. I also disliked Sideways. It wasn't awful, but I definitely didn't think it was that great, and I seemed to be stupendously in the minority. Still, I would watch Sideways again, but not Black Hawk Down.
Two more things, on similar notes.
My ex-girlfriend used to change the Lifetime Channel's motto from "Lifetime - television for women", to "Lifetime - television for Tim". (There was a time when I was really into Golden Girls.)
Also, it's not just certain mushy movies that I've become obsessed with and watched repeatedly. Sometimes it's dumb kids movies, like Snow Day. And sometimes it's dumb comedies, like Road Trip and Boat Trip (and others that don't have "trip" in the title).
I am a man of strange tastes and strange habits.
But aren't most of us?
(At least, those of us who are men. The rest are women of strange tastes and habits. And I guess there are other categories, but I'll stop here.)
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