Movies we regret we’ve seen – if there are any?

A whole bunch of Swedish film bloggers are writing posts on the same topic today: “A movie I regret I’ve seen”.

All of them but me.

Believe me: I thought long and hard about it. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve got a bad memory, I’m easy to please or I’m good at avoiding movies that give me regrets. The result is the same: I couldn’t’ come up with a single one.

Pippi’s prickles
For sure it happens that I come across a movie once in a while that turn out to be pretty bad. But even a bad movie experience can turn into a good one. Actually a seriously crappy movie can be superior to an average one, since it makes for better discussion and blogposts. The more poisonous the rant is, the funnier is it to write and read.

I think I look on bad movies the same way as the Swedish icon Pippi Longstocking regards her freckles. One day she passes a beauty shop and sees a sign with the rhetorical question: “Do you suffer from prickles?”. She enters the shop and says loudly and clearly: “No!”. “I don’t suffer from freckles!”. “But dear child, says the shop keeper, you’ve got your entire face full of freckles!” “Yes, but I don’t suffer from them. I like them!”

Of course there have been occasions when I have had reasons to regret my choice of film for a night. There were several candidates and I picked one and afterwards I realized that I might have been happier with another movie. But usually I’ve had the chance to pick up with the other movie another night, so no harm was done in the end.

Sometimes I’ve regretted talking other people into seeing a certain movie. For instance there was this time when I brought my daughter to watch Pan’s Labyrinth in the belief that it was more or less a standard fantasy movie. Seeing how upset she became I felt like a horrible mother. And taking the entire family to watch Martha Marcy May Marlene as a Christmas movie experience probably wasn’t my best idea. However those regrets are recommendations I’ve made to others, not about my own movie watching, so I don’t think it counts.

Reasons for regrets
While I don’t have any regrets, I still tried to come up with some reasons which theoretically could make me regret watching a movie. I came up with three:

1. Too much gore to handle
At heart I’m a bit of a squishy. Until pretty recently I avoided anything that appeared to contain a lot of violence, especially if it was realistic. Chopping off heads of monsters wasn’t an issue. Abuse of children and rape however was more than I could stand to watch. Nowadays I force myself to watch movies even if they’re violent, movies such as Drive, which is too good to miss out. But I’m sure there are movies that I would regret watching if I did. Movies about human centipedes for instance. So I don’t.

2. A badly advised revisit
Some movies are better in your memory than in reality. You need to pick carefully which movies you visit again or you might end up with an unpleasant surprise.

This includes directors as well. Unfortunately not all of them can keep their hands off their work. So they go back and add 3D or temper with them just for the sake of tempering and getting a few more bucks out of it. I try to stay away from that kind of brush-ups. They’re just bound to give me regrets.

3. A heartbreaking failure
I walk into every movie I see with the best intentions. I want them to be good. I want them to be successful. And especially so when they involve an actor or director who I happen to like and admire. I never rejoice at the failure of someone else. I wish that I hadn’t seen it so I could pretend it didn’t exist.

But all of this is on the paper. In reality I chime in with Edit Piaf:

Non, je ne regrette rien.

And here are the regrets of my fellow Swedes. They’ve written in Swedish, but as always Google translate is your friend.

Addepladde – Paradise Lost
Blue Rose Case – The last house on the left
Except Fear – Grease
Fiffis filmtajm – Flying Virus
Filmitch – Varning för Jönssonligan
Filmr  – Highlander 2
Fripps filmrevyer – Raging Bull
Jojjenito – The Haunting
Plox
Rörliga bilder och tryckta ord – Planet of the Apes (2001)
Voldo – Son of the Mask