Scenes I Loved In So-So Movies.

I am of the opinion that no movie should be called great until it is at least 10 to 15 years old, if not 20. I think of movies like Titanic, Forrest Gump, and a few others that were declared classics while they were still in the theaters. Now granted they were good movies but do they cultural impact of Casablanca, The African Queen, Ben Hur, or even The Wizard of Oz? I don't think they really do. On the other hand the Star Wars trilogy has endured I would consider them true classics worthy of the name.

Of course different people expect different things from movies. There are those so-called art theaters where limited viewing movies are released and most people wouldn't like them. Those that do consider it proof that they are superior to the unwashed masses but I'll take over Star Wars over Hedwig and The Angry Inch any day (trust me, you don't want to know.) I think that the only reason that some viewers actually pretend to like those movies is because they offend ordinary people and thus prove how unenlightened the masses are and how sophisticated they themselves are.

The majority of movies are mediocre at best but a lot of them have scenes in them that make the movie almost worthwhile. A Very Brady Sequel was probably one of the dumbest movies ever made, yet I laughed hard at Alice making spaghetti and unwittingly using hallucinogenic mushrooms or Greg and Marcia suddenly becoming sexually aware of each other. Of course it didn't make a stupid movie a good movie but it did provide a few laughs.

Here scenes I love from mediocre movies.

The 10th Kingdom is a very long (@7 hr) movie of an unlikely fantasy crossing between the real world and fairy tale kingdoms. It's not a bad movie but it's much too long (primarily because it was Hallmark mini-series). One of the main characters was a fairy tale wolf in human form who starts out as a villain but winds up one of the heroes. (How a wolf wound up in human form is never adequately explained.) This scene is while he is a villain and he has his first encounter with the girl who will ultimately be the chief heroine of the movie and what he is up to when they meet for the first time.



I have spoken before of my love for the movie They Call Me Trinity, being the first of a short series of western comedies staring Terrence Hill and Bud Spencer as two brothers who are goodhearted outlaws of unbelievable (and unlikely) strength and skill. Again the movie is good but hardly what I'd call great. The plot involves a villain trying to remove a settlement of extremely pacifistic Mormons from their land. This scene involves a secondary villain, a Mexican bandito (admittedly stereotyped) who just likes to bully the settlers. Sadly this video is in Italian but it is the action that is comical. The bandit and his gang are slapping up the settlers while laughing and yelling "Please forgive me!" and "Turn the other cheek!" What they do not know is that the settlers have two visitors who are not so pacifistic with them.



Of course there is the great Poker game scene from Trinity is Still My Name which was just as memorable.

Those who saw the movie Superman starring Christopher Reeve were largely disappointed with Supergirl starring Helen Slater. It was not a well written movie and it was also a poorly thought out plot, but nonetheless it had its redeeming features, the most obvious was that as a young man in his twenties I appreciated the fact that Helen Slater looked great in a miniskirt. There were also some highly enjoyable scenes including one where two amoral truckers come across an obviously lost teenage girl in a weird costume and decide she would be an easy target. It was a big mistake on their part.



I guess most movies have enjoyable and memorable scenes even if they were dumb and pointless.