Elliot Kessler

Every story needs to be good in some way, shape, or form, but that form is not always what people expect it to be. Looking through the top 250 movies list on IMDb shows that most people are looking for serious, emotional, and thoughtful movies, and I often find myself looking for that too. Those stories are interesting and I really enjoy them. But what we forget to look for are the fun, campy stories that are there purely for entertainment.

Take Napolean Dynamite, for instance. Did you come away from that movie thinking about how moving it was? Were you in tears because it was so beautiful? Did you think about some deep, philosophical idea that the film presented? If you did any of those things, then I’m sorry, but you read way too much into that movie. It’s silly. It’s funny. It’s there because it’s fun, not because it’s interesting or deep or emotional.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park, took everything that made the original movie so special, and said, “Forget it, we’re making a monster movie. If it has Jurassic Park in the title, it’ll make money.” Well, they didn’t quite make as much money as they wanted to, but the worldwide gross wasn’t bad. While the first movie was fantastic because of its thrilling scenes, its revolutionary special effects, its fantastic screenplay, and its interesting moral questions about science and nature, The Lost World was simply a dumb monster movie where characters die because they wander off too far into the jungle to pee (no, seriously, that happened). It wasn’t interesting, it didn’t explore any ideas that the first one hadn’t explored already, and it was an awful story that should have ended about twenty minutes earlier than it did. But, as awful as it was, I found myself really enjoying it and having a good time. Granted, I was not enjoying it for the same reasons that I love Jurassic Park, but I had fun and I would watch it again in a heartbeat.

While we will always have our Dark Knights and our Blade Runners, I always enjoy watching movies that are just stupid and dumb, especially the ones that know they are dumb and use it to their advantage such as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It is always nice to take a break from the darker, more serious stories and sit back and watch a pointless action movie that’s so dumb it’s funny. While serious stories that explore moral questions and interesting ideas are necessary, I believe that stupid, fun movies are just as necessary.