By Ray Jacobs, Part-Time Tutor
October 11, 2022

Over the course of the lockdown, I found myself in search of new ways to occupy my time. There was the usual stuff of course, like crocheting, listening to music, watching Twitch streams and YouTube videos; When I had cycled through them all, there were still gaps that I needed to fill.

One such Twitch streamer I spent a lot of time watching was Doctor Sung, the frontman of my favorite band. (If you decide to look him up, yes he is the guy who wears the traffic-cone shaped helmet. There’s a lot of quirks there. But that’s a story for another day.) He would often express his fondness for different movies, most of which I had never heard of. But being a massive fan of him and the music he made, I trusted his taste.

Little did I know that I’d soon be locked into a cage from which I could never escape.

It started when a group of friends and I decided to watch Cats (2019). I’m sure some of you already know where this is going. To put it lightly, the movie was a train-wreck. The animation was horribly uncanny, the direction was terrible, and since I’d never seen the original musical at that point I also had absolutely no idea what was going on. But Sung loves this movie. To the extent that he and his friends saw it in theaters multiple times and played music from it in their pre-show playlists. And though the images of Judi Dench’s weird flesh coat and cat Rebel Wilson dancing with animated cockroaches will haunt my memories forever, I can’t say I genuinely hated the experience when I look back. Although it’s by far the closest to a genuinely awful movie I’ve seen since I fell into this never-ending abyss. What is this chasmic hobby to which I refer, you ask. A natural question…

I have fallen in love with watching movies that are so bad that they’re good.

Slate.com

I didn’t expect this pastime to stick around after the world started to come back together, but it’s been a little over 2.5 years now and I can safely say that nothing gets me laughing like these films. They’re a great topic of conversation. Most of them are cult classics in some form or another, too, so you know you’ve got an in with someone if they know those titles.

I think part of the reason I enjoy these so much is because there’s so little pressure to absorb them. Sure, I understand the plot of Buckaroo Banzai after my 12th time watching it, but those times are just as much fun as the very first watch where I nearly gave myself a hernia laughing when Jeff Goldblum showed up onscreen dressed as a cowboy for no apparent reason. It’s a completely different vibe than sitting down to watch something like a superhero movie. I love that the concepts are ridiculous. I adore that I can point and laugh at things without feeling bad about it. Yet when people ask what someone’s favorite movie is, there’s often pressure to immediately reach for the thing that’s as close to perfection as we can imagine. But in my mind, that doesn’t feel like as good a way to get a view of the inside of somebody’s head. “This is good” just doesn’t hold as much weight as “there are things that suck about this, but I like it anyway.” Plus, who doesn’t love an indicator of critical thinking skills?

Another great rationale in favor of these movies is that, simply put, we live in a golden era of absurdist, positively nihilistic, neo-Dadaist humor. Things people find funny nowadays don’t have to mean anything. The SBIG (so bad it’s good) genre perfectly fits this sense of humor, especially given the context that you don’t need to understand what’s going on to enjoy it. From Vines to TikToks to standard image memes, there’s nothing more perplexing to our parents than the weird stuff we laugh at. For example, here’s one that made me wheeze like a tea kettle:

So next time you see an absolutely ridiculous-looking movie title like Sharknado, Birdemic, or Big Trouble in Little China, give it a chance! Of course, there aren’t as many of them being made these days, but a quick Google search will get you plenty of results.

TL;DR – Life’s too short and tough to live it filled with hate. Watching dumb movies can be a lot of fun. No need for pride.