Cru Jones Society

When I talk to my guy friends, more than we discuss any other topic – sports, beer, video games, lying about sexual experiences – we discuss movies. Entire discussions happen in a circuitous, seemingly disjointed, endless series of quotes and references from films we all know leading into whatever point it was you were trying to make in the first place. If you’re not up on your references, this is like jumping into the middle of a fucking Henry James novel and trying to figure out what the hell is going on (which is why I think Lady E mentally checked out during more conversations in Tucson than President Obama likely did while getting advice from Bush as he left the White House). To most women, speaking this language is like trying to learn Esperanto – extremely difficult and at least equally as pointless.

When you’re with the right group of guys, 95 times out of 100 the conversation flows smooth as a Sunday drive on an empty highway. But every so often everything comes to a screeching halt as one guy’s not on the same page as everyone else. And not just in a “What the hell is that from? Beverly Hills Cop 2. Thank you!” sort of way, but in a, “Wait, how the fuck have you never seen this? I might punch you for being such a retard” or “Waitaminute… how do you hate that movie? That’s like my favorite movie. What are you, gay?” sort of way.

The moments can be heart-stopping, but they’re inevitable. There are some movies that for whatever reason just miss a substantial portion of the guy population. And when you’re one of the guys this is happening to, no matter how much you try, you can’t get yourself to care about these movies. Every guy has movies he either didn’t “get” or can’t get motivated to sit all the way through. Senor Limon and I have had this discussion a number of times – no matter how many times he’s tried to sit through Tombstone, he can’t finish it – and it’s time to share it with the rest of the world. Here are 5 great guy movies I don’t give a shit about.

5. Braveheart

Have I seen this movie all the way through? Yes, sort of.

Standard dude argument in favor of this movie:

C’mon man, it’s fuckin’ Braveheart! William Wallace! He was like 7 feet tall and a badass warrior! “They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom!” It’s got brutal fight scenes, it’s a fuckin’ war movie, and it ends with Wallace screaming while on the rack “FREEDOM!” and never giving in to the shitass Scottish royalty. Plus, the unintentional comedy of “I love ya’. Always have. Want to marry yooooo.” is off the charts (as remembered from BASEketball and E-Dogg the Spicy Bitch’s bachelor party in Vegas).

Why I don’t give a shit:

First and most important reason, it’s just so…fucking…long. I remember when this came out, King Soopers had a shitload of copies of this and it was on two tapes. Considering this was 1995 and we’re talking about VHS here, that means you had to like this movie enough to watch half of it, get up off the couch in the middle, switc tapes, and then go back to whatever sweet spot you just tried to carve out to continue watching it. That’s dedication, right there. I listen to punk rock and have almost no attention span, which means dedicating myself to a movie derived from Scottish folklore wasn’t a task I was particularly keen on undertaking, especially if it meant I had to exert extra effort to do so, which brings me to my second reason for apathy.

My ancestors aren’t from the United Kingdom, no part of me is from any part of the Great Empire, and I’m not especially interested in learning more about any of them. Plus I find people of British descent (meaning not only British, but Scottish, Irish, or Welsh) a tad overzealous to celebrate their ancestry. I was in an Irish Pub (one of approximately 8,000 in the greater Denver area) close to St. Patrick’s Day, and the dorks from Guinness were lobbying to make the holiday an official one in the eyes of the U.S. Government. I realize this is basically a marketing ploy, but aside from Cindo de Drinko, what other country has its own holiday we celebrate in the US? For the record, I hate St. Patrick’s Day. It’s amateur night as creepy, crawly suburban dwellers descend on the city to choke the bars and get offensively drunk while the rest of us just attempt to safely navigate the streets and get home in one piece.

Braveheart strikes me as a fine movie. But I’ve seen plenty of battle scenes, I have no interest in celebrating a rebel resistance in a country I mostly couldn’t care less about, and I have even less interest in dedicating 3+ hours to the task. I’ve seen this entire movie in disjointed pieces and reconstituted basically the entire thing out of order, but to sit down and watch the entire thing start to finish seems laborious at best. In three and a half hours, I could watch Rad, Ski Patrol, and an episode of “30 Rock.” That’s how I’d much rather spend my time, thank you. Braveheart will continue to sit there.

4. Transformers

Have I seen this movie all the way through? No.

Standard dude argument in favor of this movie:

Oh man, I played with Transformers as a kid! Fuckin’ Optimus Prime, dude! The effects are amazing, they stayed true to the characters – even though they turned Bumblebee into a Camaro – and tons of shit blows up. What’s not to like?

Why I don’t give a shit:

Well, I didn’t play with Transformers as a kid, so I have no attachment whatsoever to any of these characters. I know Optimus Prime because of “When You Wish Upon a Weinstein” from Family Guy where we find out he’s Jewish, and I only know the leader of the Decepticons is Megatron because a friend drunkenly called me at 3 a.m. in college to look it up on the Internet to settle a bar bet with some douche hose. I was way more into He-Man (I know how gay He-Man is in retrospect, but gimme a break, I was 4) and the WWF. Robots had no appeal for me because they weren’t human. Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat could always come back from a defeat, but when something blows up like what seemed to happen a lot in Transformers, it never came back. I didn’t like that sense of finality.

In a more present-day sense, Transformers is directed by Michael Bay who’s cooked up his fair share of cinematic dog vomit in the form of Pearl Harbor, Armageddon, and about six other movies that are fucking terrible. I get the distinct sense without ever seeing the movie, I know how it goes because all Michael Bay movies are essentially the same. If you watch how Bay constructs a story (or even any individual shot), it’s visually beautiful but ultimately empty of any meaning because it’s focused entirely on the bravado and visual grandeur of any given moment, not how it pertains to an overarching story. He’s the Maxim Magazine of movie directors.

And in one final petty point of contention with liking this movie – do you want to avow to loving something that prominently features Shia LeBeouf? Not accusing anyone of anything here, just asking…

3. Lethal Weapon (series)

Have I seen any of these movies? No.

Standard dude argument in favor of this movie:

Dude, it’s a buddy cop movie! C’mon Riggs and Murtaugh! “I’m too old for this shit!” Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci and in the last one, Chris Rock and Jet Li… They’re cops! They’re funny! Action! What’s with you?

Why I don’t give a shit:

And yet again Mel Gibson shows up on the list. I don’t have anything against this drunken, anti-Semitic clown per se, but I have a hard time getting motivated for his performances. I still haven’t sat through The Patriot all the way because it strikes me as Braveheart 2: America, Fuck Yeah! And yet I have a soft spot in my heart for the generally ridiculous movie Bird on a Wire starring him and Goldie Hawn. Go figure.

Anyway, I chalk up my ambivalence toward these movies to my parents who never introduced me to them. My dad was way more amused by Beverly Hills Cop, so that’s what I gravitated toward. And considering my love of Coming To America, I was already predisposed toward Eddie Murphy in the buddy movie genre in both the Beverly Hills Cop movies as well as 48 Hrs. By the time Lethal Weapon rolled around all over cable, I was already maxed out on buddy comedies. Plus I tried to get into the first one, but it’s really fucking dark. Gibson’s character spends a good chunk of the movie contemplating suicide which is way less fun than the “banana in the tailpipe” guy from Beverly Hills Cop, and Nick Nolte’s casual overt racism in 48 Hrs. And since I hadn’t allowed these characters into my life from the get go, the endless parade of sequels didn’t interest me in the least. If you’re not on the ground floor, why would you want to start on the 3^rd?

I missed the boat on this movie as a youth, and had no desire to swim to it as a young adult. An opportunity lost? Perhaps. Have I seen enough movies to take the space this would have likely occupied? Definitely. Don’t try to get me to watch Lethal Weapon. I wasn’t there in the beginning and I don’t have time to care now. I’m sure it’s great, just shut the hell up.

2. Gladiator

Have I seen this movie all the way through? Yes.

Standard dude argument in favor of this movie:

Roman times! Gladiators! Russell Crowe! Revenge! Christians and lions! Sword fights!  Vengeance! Death! Yeeeeaaaaahhhh!

Why I don’t give a shit:

Something about Russell Crowe is inherently unwatchable to me. I found him riveting in A Beautiful Mind but only because he toned down all his typical Russell Crowe-isms. This movie is like a tribute to them all. He’s got neckbeard in full force. We’re supposed to believe he’s the best warrior in all of the Roman Empire, yet he still looks like a complete douche. He mumbles every last one of his lines. And Crowe puts out an inherently unlikable vibe because he’s such a loner in every scene in every movie. Remember what a dick he was in L.A. Confidential or that turdarific Proof of Life? Was that a guy you wanted to hang with? Was Maximus?

He was an insufferable prick who wouldn’t shut the hell up about the kingdom killing his wife and kid and selling him into slavery, but still. He’s got every right to be moody and pissed off about it, but so did O.J. watching his wife live in the mansion he paid for and could no longer enter, fuck some white waiter at will, and spend his money without ever earning a dime of it. Does that make O.J. sympathetic? Of course not. I’m not saying Maximus was anything like O.J. in terms of disposition, but he was just as unlikable by the end.

What’s even more distracting during Gladiator is Joaquin Phoenix’s hairlip. Tell me you weren’t looking at his fucked up grill the entire time, and I’ll tell you you’re a filthy liar. Gladiator spends an interminable amount of time getting to its resolution transporting Maximus all over hell’s half acre fighting a bunch of no-neck jagoffs until the inevitable anti-climactic showdown between Captain Neckbeard and Hairlip Magee. I knew exactly where this movie was going from the word go, but still had to ride the stupid tilt-a-whirl plot until I ended up exactly where I expected. And don’t tell me he fought a lion and how that’s cool. The lion was CGI and looked just a couple shades better than the one in Jumanji.

1. 300

Have I seen this movie all the way through? Yes, sort of.

Standard dude argument in favor of this movie:

From Scott’s Blog of Doom which sums up standard male rhetoric better than I ever could: “This may be the manliest movie ever made, and I’ve seen Braveheart like 17 times and all the James Bond movies at least once.  This is the kind of movie where a guy loses an eye and is disappointed that he can’t continue fighting, because gosh darnit, he just loves doing it so damn much.  The fight scenes are wonderfully violent, so completely over-the-top in a way that I’ve been waiting for a movie to do for a long time but no one had the guts to go for until now.  The narration and dialogue is almost as ludicrous as the fighting, but by god, I was nearly inspired to go out and slaughter me some Persians, or at least Dennis Rodman, so it worked.”

Why I don’t give a shit:

In other words, this is a complete orgy of excess the likes of which have never been captured on celluloid until this film’s makers decided to dramatize the Battle of Thermopylae to hyperbolic proportions. When you make everything over the top from the word go: from the stylized sex scenes at the beginning to the comic book-style superimposition on every scene, to the King kicking that black dude down a bottomless pit in defiance, where do you go from here? With more violence, by joe!

This movie reminds me of an Ultimate Warrior match where it starts with a bang and gasses out less than a quarter of the way in. I fell asleep while Leonidas seeks permission from the Gods who look like Skeletor from the live-action Masters of the Universe movie and woke up during one of the seemingly endless battle scenes. The violence was so brutal and filmed so graphically, I felt like I was watching Faces of Death as imagined by a demented college student seeking his M.F.A. After several be-headings, swords to the stomach, eye removals and endless hand-to-hand combat, I became numb to the entire film, got bored and probably went to look up internet porn instead. This is definitely the most overrated movie of the last five years. Abstractly it’s cool that 300 Spartans fended off, I don’t know, a billion Persians, but how is that basic plot construction any different than the infinitely superior The Warriors, or even the last 30 minutes of the bizarrely entertaining From Dusk Till Dawn?

It’s not, and here’s why. 300 is so overtly homosexual, I’m amazed I haven’t seen it on Logo. Think about it: 300 really buff manly men with perfectly toned abs fend off the masses of religious minorities trying to impose their will and value structure on a smaller population and destroy their way of life. If that isn’t a parable demonstrating the struggle to legalize gay marriage from the GLBT community, I don’t know what is. I can’t handle the ab-alicious man candy wearing nothing but loin cloths, capes, and furry boots in this movie, and don’t want to try.

If you like these movies, bully for you. Enjoy the shit out of them. Just don’t ask me to sit down and watch them with you as I apparently have better things to watch.

edagger@crujonessociety.com