Almost Famous

A Gateway A&E blog for reviews, rants, and other entertainment tidbits.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Why are dumb movies so damn captivating?


I'm just going to come out and say it: I watched The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants the other day. And when I say "watched," I mean, "I was so fucking immersed in this stupid movie that I blanked out on the world around me and let my dinner burn." I plopped myself down on the couch, and after flipping through numerous other retarded shows, I thought I would pause on the said movie and see what it was all about. However, little did I know that this momentary halt would become a two-hour hiatus. The plot was dumb, the characters were dumb, everything was dumb, but I still couldn't keep myself from watching.

The story revolves around four best friends who find themselves scattered across the globe for a summer. Before they leave on their individual journeys, they come to discover a pair of jeans that "mysteriously and magically fits all four of them," despite their, uh, wide range in pant sizes. They promise to write to each other and send the magic pair of jeans to the next person after their week is up (without washing them, either. Gross). Anyway, they all go through these crises: one girl falls in love with a boy in Greece, but she's not allowed to love him because their grandparents fought about fish back in the day or something; another girl's father is getting remarried; another girl is stuck working at a Wal-Mart wannabe store and somehow becomes friends with a ten-year-old girl with Leukemia; and another girl flirts incessantly and sluttily with this boy at a soccer camp in Mexico, finally gets to sleep with him but then feels "empty inside." These are some pretty malignant life problems, I know, but thanks to the magical pants, everything works out in the end for all four of the girls.

Now, aside from the biting sarcasm that stabs you in the eye when you read my synopsis, this movie sounds really quite dull. But why, oh WHY, do stupid movies drag us in? This is a question I pose to you all, and I hope someone can explain this to me. It's like how Dan wanted to watch 2 Fast 2 Furious with P-Walk looking all thuggish. It's just so fucking captivating, and all I can ask is WHY!

I now open this post to discussion.