The room is dark. The lights of the television screen flicker. The flashes illuminate the ear-to-ear smile that occupies your face. However, you're nervous. Your finger is hovering above the pause button on the remote, should someone walk in and interrupt your private happiness. After all, it's not a groundbreaking documentary you're watching - it's "The Lizzie McGuire Movie."
Let's face it - we all like to exclaim over the latest Oscar-nominated film we saw, speaking of its nuances and political undertones like we've just gotten our Master's in film, but our personal DVD collections may reflect a different perspective.
Right next to our award-winning discs of "No Country for Old Men" and "Amélie" lay "High School Musical 2: Encore Edition" and the tenth anniversary disc of "Clueless." These DVDs may be hidden behind our more universally acceptable choices, but they occupy our shelves just the same. Some call them guilty pleasures - some call them favorites.
There's a time and a place for every kind of movie. We put in comedies when we want to laugh, dramas when we want to cry, and horrors when we want to be scared out of our minds, terrified that the branch scraping against the window is actually an ax murderer wearing a cloak made of human skin.
However, critics make us feel stupid for making these choices. At every turn we see a percentage or a letter grade telling us how dismal these selections are and how dense we have to be to actually pay money to see such films. Well, excuse me, Entertainment Weekly, but some of us happen to enjoy "Teen Witch" and "The Babysitter's Club Movie."
We've had the idea ingrained in our minds that everything we do has to show some dignified outlook in life. Who doesn't remember times when they've said they were in the mood to watch a specific movie and noticed the eye rolls among their friends as they scoffed. Part of the beauty of life is having the opportunity to put aside highbrow expectations and just get completely lost in the stupidity and happiness of a mindless movie.
Of course movies like "Fight Club," "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints" and "Memento" are fantastic, but for every "Godfather" disc, there's a copy of "Center Stage" or "The Even Stevens Movie" on VHS sitting on the shelf to counteract it. Hilary Duff has yet to star in a film that is award-worthy, but she's also never been in a movie our generation didn't secretly like. Admit it, "A Cinderella Story" is terrible, but God help us, we watch it from start to finish on ABC Family every time it's on.
Okay, maybe we're in college and should be broadening our tastes to more widely palatable selections. Everyone should see a foreign film like "Breathless" at some point in their lives and we should all see movies that we know will be remembered if only for their poignant historical context like "Brokeback Mountain." However, at this point in our lives, we should also be able to feel comfortable enough in ourselves to openly admit to loving the movies that fall out of the realm of popular opinion.
Even actors generally have that one movie on their filmography that doesn't quite fit in with the rest. Kate Winslet currently stars in "The Reader," but she's also been in "The Holiday." Meryl Streep was in "Doubt," but she was in "The Devil Wears Prada," too. Philip Seymour Hoffman won an Oscar for "Capote," but was the bumbling best friend in "Along Came Polly."
Among the slew of the serious, we all need a little break to enjoy the happy - the romantic comedies, the B-horror movies, and the Zac Efron-filled teen musicals whose soundtracks continue to climb the play count on our iTunes. Let's take the "guilty" out of our "guilty pleasures" and just enjoy these films for what they are - terribly wonderful.
You can reach this staff writer at cmoore@theeagleonline.com.
