How Much Do You Have to Watch Before Distaste is Legit?

After months of enduring praises from all my friends in regards to The Boondock Saints, I couldn't take it anymore. So my friend and I (both kindred hearts when it comes to movie judgments) agreed to suffer through the entire film, just so we could argue otherwise. The entire experience scarred us deeply. My every sense was offended on a scale I don't, even now, fully understand. I regret every minute of it. It's like saying I want to go through cancer, just so I can be a more effective advocate for treatment. I know cancer is bad without having to deal with it, just like I knew The Boondock Saints was bad before I ever watched it. But now, I honestly feel a serious divide between myself and all of my friends who enjoyed the film. How can I have anything in common with anyone who enjoys a film that goes against every fiber of my being?

For that reason, if I don't want to watch a film, I will not. I have too many tools at my disposal (a la Rottentomatoes and a small group of friends with reasonable taste) that I can pretty much pin down a stinker without having to waste two or more hours of my life. However, I will do it if I can get something out of it. I recently traded watching Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, to get my brother to watch the first episode of Firefly. He fell in love with the show, and I only suffered a little while (and got to write a scathing review and argue against my friends for hours). That's how I play it now. I will see one of their movies, if they will see something of mine.

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I would have said you need to be an hour into a movie before you turn it off. An hour is about enough time to decide if you want to invest another hour of your life. You often spend an hour watching a new drama on TV or a new reality show before you truly understand whether the season will turn out good or not.

That was all before I watched the 1st 20 minutes of Dragon Wars.

I'm a scifi buff. I even watch some of the awful horribleness that is the most dangerous night of television on SyFy.

Still, about 20 minutes in, after they started to show dinosaurs with cannons on their backs during a war in ancient japan that included heat seeking missiles. I was done. I wanted my 20 minutes of life back.

So everything changed for me that day. 20 minutes is my new limit, until something worse comes along.

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I will however argue that it also works in reversal...in a positive way. I hated the first half of "Gran Torino" but by the time the film ended I was glad I stuck through the crappy ridiculously bad acting and forced dialogue of the beginning of the film because as a whole I think it is not on lt a really powerful movie, but possibly Clint's best work to date!!

Cant judge a book by its cover nor can you rely on other peoples opinion.s If that was the case, I would never go to movies because somebody will always find fault with any movie!

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I wrote a review once for the Oprah Winfrey movie BELOVED, which I only managed to get 50 minutes into before shutting it off forever. And even though I prefaced my review with that disclaimer, people still shouted from their high horses that I had no right saying a single word about a movie that I hadn't finished watching, even though my entire review was an explanation as to why I couldn't stomach another second of it.

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"Doesn't watching a film with all the strikes against it become, at some point, nothing more than masochism?"

Well, I guess you could say that, but I think you should stick it out. Sometimes rarely but sometimes a film can really surprise you with how it ends. My brother told me hated Watchmen until the very end, now he says its one of his favorite films of the year. So I think its imperative, especially for a movie reviewer to stay till the closing credits. Either that or leave and tell us, sorry can't review I could bear to watch anymore.

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Yes, you have to at least sit through a part of the movie before you are qualified or really even have a right to make an opinion on a film.

People told me that Changling and Catch Me if You Can were good movies. I had zero interest in seeing these movies. My girlfriend made me watch them with her and I have to admit that they were fairly decent movies. I'm not sure if I'll watch them again, but at least I tried.

Realistically, how can you even have an opinion on a movie without watching it. If you took word of mouth, it still wouldn't be your opinion, it would be someone else's.

How many bad trailers have you seen that actually revealed a pretty good movie, or the other way around?

Lots and lots of people enjoyed Transformers: RotF. My buddy about exploded with joy when he watched it. Other people say it wasn't worth their time. Personally, I can let a lot go and enjoy even the worst movies. Exception: Dragon Wars, that was just awful. Compared to Dragon Wars, was the Transformers a bad movie? People are claiming that it was the worst movie they've ever seen. Really? Maybe you need to watch Dragon Wars or Kung Pow... you know, to get a little perspective on what a bad movie is.

If you are on your own and watching movies for pleasure and decide not to watch something, that's fine. It's your money and your loss if it was actually good.

If you are a reviewer and you won't watch a movie because of it's trailers or word of mouth, you come off as elitist. Worse yet, if you offer an opinion on it in your professional environment. Don't watch the movie, write an opinion, and lose your credibility.

Or, on the other hand, you can't just state that you have rights too and let the cards fall where they may.

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I think that it's perfectly legit to make a judgment based on trailers, reviews, etc.

Personal recommendation is a strong "pro" for me, but, if my friend tells me that Aquamarine is a good movie, and that I should see it, the onus is definitely on -her- to explain to me why what I've seen from the trailers is not exactly what it appears to be, or how the reviews are misrepresenting it. Beyond that caveat, I don't think you have any need to see that movie to know that I will not enjoy it.

That said, I have *never* walked out of a movie. Part of it is that I paid my money, another part is that I always have hope that it will start getting better, and yet another part is just plain closure. Watching a movie at home, I will rarely walk out, but sometimes I might. At the theater, never.

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I'm notorious among my friends for being the guy who judges movies after the first 15 minutes. I've never watched a movie for 15 minutes, disliked it (usually due to its predictability), then loved the ending. It simply doesn't happen for me. If it doesn't show promise in the first quarter-hour, it will stink throughout.
I WILL give some movies a try even if I hated the previews, but that's mostly because my wife forces me to watch chick flicks with her and not ALL of them have been terrible. I used to be a bigger snob than I am now. I feel like 15 minutes is being gracious to a potentially awful film.

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I think that you *have* to watch at least 20 or more minutes of a movie in order to hate it. You can't hate a movie you haven't seen. And I don't mean that it is wrong for you to hate a movie you haven't seen. I mean that I actually don't think one can truly hate a movie without seeing it (or at least some of it). You can hate a director after seeing maybe one or two of his movies and then swear off any other work he/she puts out. But I don't that you can say that you hate one of his/her movies.

Hate requires a real passionate feeling to it. It's more than just disliking. It's when you think about something and the thought alone only annoys you. For instance, if anyone here has heard of the play Eat the Runt, I saw it and absolutely hated it. I honestly cannot think about a single redeeming quality that it has. Just thinking about it can annoy me to no end. 30 minutes in, I knew I hated it and I didn't think it was going to change and it didn't.

I think this is the type of mindset you have to have to hate a movie. I saw the trailers for 27 Dresses and Bride Wars and they annoyed me a lot and I could tell that they were the types of movies I wouldn't like or maybe even hate. But because I never saw them, now, I don't hate them. So I think that no matter how many reviews you read or trailers you see or research you do on imdb, until you have seen a decent amount of the movie itself, you can't hate it. And yet again, I don't mean you can't have a right to hate it. I don't think one can truly feel hatred towards a movie without watching a decent amount of it.

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Well, what is the difference between a casual film goer, a movie blogger, and a film critic? I guess if a person is aiming for some kind of journalistic integrity, and he has the means to 'witness' his story first hand, he would want to do that and get all the facts.
As a casual movie goer, I can pretty much tell I would not like Aliens in the Attic and can choose not to see it pretty secure in my choice. I can walk out on Judge Dredd (and I did) and no one will hold it against me and I will congratulate myself because I'm pretty sure (based on the first thirty minutes) that I will be happier for the next ninety minutes of my life.
IF I leave the theater and go online to rant about the film, I would want to be honest and only give my assessment of the thirty minutes that I saw. To do otherwise is to misrepresent myself and the facts and is just a smear campaign to make myself feel better.
But If I were a critic assigned to review the film, I would go watch it in it's entirety so I could give my honest assessment.
For film critics it's simple: If you're paid to sit and watch movies, do that. It's your job. Other people have to work assembly lines and do stuff they would rather not do. So film critics should have to watch Judge Dredd or Aliens in the Attic.
If you're just a blogger and you have no worries about being held accountable for journalistic integrity, you can probably do whatever you want. But then why would someone do that? To get attention or create a sense of superiority. That they can influence opinion simply because they decided not to like something and rave about it. I'm not saying that film critics are necessarily above that, but at least by sitting through the movies they are paid to they can maintain that appearance of integrity.
Does Faces of Death or pornography need to be assessed by either critics or bloggers? Well, if you are a critic and that is your job, then I guess you might want to rethink your career. If you are a blogger, it depends on if what you are writing is even being read by anyone and if it is, what your audience thinks of you for that. If you think Saw is torture porn, I think you should have sat through the first Saw to come to the conclusion that is what your honest assessment of the film is. In that case, you can probably bypass Saw 2 through 45 safely.

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Your opinion on a film is not legitimate until you've seen the whole film, period.

You can see part of it and say, "I don't want to see anymore." But if you then go around saying what a terrible movie it is, you are a giant tool. No, the only opinion someone should have on a film they've only watched part of and don't want to see any more of is: I don't want to see any more of. No judgment on quality, no rating, no being a film critic that only watches part of the movie then gives a rating.

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Abyone remember this: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/10/dont_read_me_first.html

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There is a sort of double standard when it comes to bloggers/professional critics/journalists. John and Jane Movieviewer make snap judgements all the time. That's the point of movie previews. And be honest, who hasn't turned to their parent/friend/date/spouse after a preview and said, "Ooh, that looks good!" or "Meh... Maybe a rental," or "Wow... That looks really dumb."? When you critique movies just as a general movie fan, in the comfort of your own circle of friends and family, it's par for the course. But when you critique movies for a living, or on some sort of professional basis, there's a little more responsibility involved. Nobody likes to read reviews of movies where the reviewer has obvious prejudices going into the movie, either because they don't like the actor, the director, the genre, or because they're obviously not the target audience. As fans, we can almost immediately pick up on the prejudice, and it destroys any and all integrity of the reviewer. Likewise, we don't like when the reviewer loves everything ever made, because that's just not realistic. There has to be a balance. On a professional basis, it has to be more news than opinion. I think that's why so many people have reacted poorly to the new column; because it's kind of a snap judgement, from a professional critic, on something they've never seen and know little about. All due respect, but that's sloppy journalism...

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As a critic. I think its irresponsible to review something professionally if your haven't seen it all the way through. But I think that if you're just mentioning something in a blog or an article then you can work from the information you have that made you hate it. I think going off previews (which get movies wrong 50% of the time IMO) is a bad idea, but 15 minutes or so (longer than one scene and one performance) is generally good enough. I wish I had walked out of Eyes Wide Shut after 20 minutes, because it didn't get any better and I don't feel bad about writing an angry column on An American Carol, because I watched a the first ten minutes and I'm pretty confident that I wouldn't find the rest any less biased, poorly made and offensive.

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The older I get the less likely I am to sit through any sort of entertainment which I am not enjoying on any level, be it a movie, book, play, concert, etc. Just move on to the next thing. If I were a critic, I would definitely feel obligated to disclose that the review was based on an incomplete viewing.

Having recently made my own first feature film under extremely difficult circumstances, I have become somewhat more forgiving, as all of the major problems with the shoot and the script occur in the first 15-20 minutes, after which it really kicks in and delivers something of genuine value to the audience (or so I'm told). So while I tend to think that any movie worth it's salt will grab me in the first 15 minutes, I now know for a fact that there may be a worthwhile payoff by the end.

Case in point: I can't say that I was particularly involved with the much maligned Blair Witch Project throughout most of it's running time. However, for me, the information that was planted in my brain gave me quite an unusual and specific thrill as the meaning was detonated in the final moments of the movie, so no regrets there.

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