Movies I Shouldn't Like, Part 1

Way back, when mastodons still roamed the Earth and I was still in college, I had a conductor who stood in front of the chorus and told us that we needed to know whether a piece of music that we liked was "bad", if it was universally seen among the classical music elite as lacking in some way.

She went on to say that we all like a few of these pieces, something that everyone else sees as not worth the time of our well-honed ears. This was fine, she said, but if we knew what was good for us, we'd like them in secret.

I rolled my eyes about it at the time, believing with all the fierce integrity of one's early twenties that a piece of music is only really great if you, yourself, love it. Even if everyone else on the planet hates it, it can still be great to you, so why be afraid to trumpet that from the rooftops? (How else would you explain Phillip Glass, for example?)

Along with my pragmatic thirties, I have acknowledged a certain inevitability that what she said long ago holds some truth. There are some things that shouldn't be discussed with the sort of vigor that this sort of thing brings, this love of something you know full well everyone else thinks is mediocre. Certainly not in polite company.

This brings us, this evening, to You've Got Mail. (Spoiler alert, but geez, if you haven't seen it in the last ten years, that's not really my problem, is it?) I mean, it's a remake of a Jimmy Stewart movie. Have you ever seen a Jimmy Stewart movie and thought, "This would be so much better without him?" I just did a quick scan of a couple of websites with movie ratings and it gets a pretty solid 6/10. Not horrible, but not great.

I have seen this damn movie about a hundred times. It's like a bloody magnet. The cursor on my cable guide is inevitably drawn to it whenever it appears. For heaven's sake, it's not even the best movie that Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan have made together, but I'm watching it again right this very second.

Maybe it's the shrug Tom Hanks gives her at the end, that "sorry it's me, but I guess there's nothing I can do about that now," all rolled into one little movement. Maybe it's him bringing her daises and desperately trying to give away that he's NY152 (yes, I know the screen names they used, off the top of my head) but not quite having the guts to say it yet, when he visits her while she's sick. Maybe it's the way they both fake typing about 700 words per minute, or the totally unrealistic way that their "internet" works, especially for 1998. Maybe it was Tom Hanks and the speech about the "goddamn piazza" when he's on the treadmill.

Heck, I don't have an explanation for it. I'm embarrassed to even post this. But dammit, I like this movie, and I don't care who knows it.

What's worse, though, is that this isn't even close to being the "worst" movie that I secretly love. That's what the "Part 1" in the post title is all about. As I get my courage up, I plan to reveal all five or so of them. And oh, boy, some of them are bad.

(Now, if you could conveniently forget this whole thing and go back to thinking of me as a culture snob, I'd appreciate it.)