Ask DadCentric - Movies We Like That Our Wives Hate...

...which may or may not be porn. Ahem.

So how many of you married or previously married or co-habitating or otherwise long-term-relationship-having peoples out there, when you were first a’courtin’, went out and saw a movie together? Show of hands? Most of you, I see. And tell me, as time passed and your relationships continued to grow in depth and profundity, as you continued to learn more about each other and discovered each other’s adorable little quirks and annoying little habits, and as you explored new realms of intimacy and tried out various new positions and locations and consented to each other’s deepest darkest never-before-revealed desires and fantasies, how many of you ever rented a movie and watched it together? Perhaps you wandered hand in hand through Blockbuster, occasionally stealing a kiss as you perused titles? Or maybe one of you went alone while you consulted with the other on your cell phone? Were you one of those people in the video store on the phone with your significant other? You were, weren’t you? You disgust me.

The point here is that movies are a significant component of the modern relationship experience. You go out to watch them, you stay in and end up making out during Taxi Driver and it doesn’t seem weird until much later. “Holy shit, we made out through Taxi Driver. That’s just fucking perverse!” It should come as no surprise, then, that as the relationship continues and the people involved reveal more and more of their true selves to one another, that certain movie tastes that both parties don’t share would fall under the heading of Shit You Just Accept Because You Love This Person. Myself, I have a whole host of titles set aside that I know there’s no way in hell my wife will ever have any interest in watching, and so I’m just waiting for those ever so rare times when I have 90 - 120 minutes alone where I have absolutely nothing else pressing to do. The funny thing is, you would think she would trust my judgment in this arena. You see, a few years ago, when the good people at Netflix delivered unto me, via our socialist postal service, the pilot of Battlestar Galactica, my wife read the title and said, and I’m quoting here, “You can watch that by yourself.” And I started to. Except that about twenty minutes into it, she walked into the room. She stood watching the screen for a minute. Then she sat down beside me and whispered, “What’s happened so far?” From that day forward, BSG was one of our shared favorites. Just think she almost missed out on the joy of that incredible series (we won’t talk about the finale), and yet our Netflix queue is peppered with films that I may never see. Mostly, it’s horror, which she pretty much refuses to watch. Something about nightmares or can’t sleep or...but wait, how can you have nightmares if you can’t sleep?!?! AHA!

Anyway, I was just gonna write a post about this all by myself, but then I started to wonder if perhaps any of my fellow DadCentrists might have anything to say on the matter from their own experiences, so I tossed out the question at our weekly meeting. And of course, we’d love to hear what you the readers have to say. That’s what them there comments are for.

Croutonboy: My wife deserves credit for sitting through hobbits, zombies, car chases and kung fu with me...on occasion.  But each time it's with a grudging annoyance that manifests itself in needling comments throughout (her first comment when we finally watched Star Wars together was, "What's with their hair?") She doesn't see the genius I do in Schwarzenegger's 80's filmography, or virtually anything starring SCTV alumni.We agree more than we disagree, but the intensity of the disagreements are infuriating and tragic.  And they are perfectly, starkly on display in one film in particular.

So let me present you with a test. I'm going to list a handful of movie themes and attributes, and I want you to write down whether you think each one is "stupid/annoying" or "totally fucking awesome."

1) Japanese anime

2) Set in a decaying society in the not so distant future

3) Children with psionic powers they can't control

4) Graphic violence and bloodshed

5) Apocalyptic overtones

6) A hallucinogenic teddy bear which breaks through the walls of a playroom

7) A major character that goes crazy and eventually transforms into a tortured, veiny, amorphous blob

What did you score? If you considered all seven "stupid/annoying" than you're my wife, and you should go in the other room and watch reruns ofER to your hearts content. If you, by contrast, you consider any (or, if you're truly wise, all) of those totally fucking awesome" than let's you and I kick our feet up and watch Akira, the yardstick by which all animated action films are measured. It's like the bastard love child of Hayao Miyazaki, James Cameron, and Terry Gilliam. There are motorcycle chases, amoral government scientists, cyberpunk aesthetics, and moments of grand, elegiac destruction. It drips awesome from every frame and is just as good sober as it is stoned.

Never in a million years will my wife see it. It's as if everything that aggravates or confuses her about my taste in movies was condensed into two hour designed to make her question our marriage. She'd rather watch Paul Giamatti porn, with her eyelids held open with toothpicks.

So I just don't ask. Better to wait until the chloroform has taken affect and she's resting quietly in bed. And when I yell, "KANEDA!!" at random i'll just ignore her confused look and go about my business.

cIII: Rob Zombie. All it took was one concert. A little venue in Cincinnati, about six months before La Sexorsisto dropped. I was hooked.It seems like, after that night, everything that man touched, turned to Gold. Gold with disembodied figures, and creepy, naked women...but gold never the less.

Then. That mad scientist sum-bitch stated making movies. Awesome. I was hooked right away, the way I was hooked when I saw him on stage for the first time - dancing like some Zealot in a trance while the bass pounded and the guitar screamed and the drums, well, drummed.Because, brothers and sisters, I hardly gets any better than a Rob Zombie movie. So ridiculous, so mind-spasming, so fucking wrong all the way around. How could you Not love it?
My wife does not love it. Nor will she tolerate it. Or even stay in the same room. Nope, me Mrs. will catch the faintest glimpse of some bloody scene and head for the hills. And she won't come back until Beaches can be seen playing in a loop.

And...you wanna know something? That's alright by me on a couple of levels.

On the one hand, when you watch, say, The Devil's Rejects, you really don't want to have to do a whole lot of esplainin'.I mean c'mon. It's pretty straight-forward, Stabby-Shooty all the way 'round.  And by that right, it's better to just be alone. Alone, save for the glass of bourbon.  And maybe a plate of ribs. Now that's a Ménage à trois.

On the other hand, it'd be nice to share a movie intrest.Although, one time, long ago, the Mrs. sat through what may well have been my 65th viewing of The Big Lebowski.  And she loved it.  But still no horror. No gore. No guts. No Sid Haig as some psychopathic killer in clown make-up. I don't get it. Ahhh. Maybe it ain't for me to get. Maybe, I'm tryin' too hard to find some cinematic common ground. Is it really that important that we like the same movies? Hell. I don't know.

It could be that I'm still sore because she dragged my ass out and made me sit through a screening of Jerry Maguire. Now that's horror.

TwoBusy: Generally speaking, my wife is exceptionally cool about movies -- she's game for just about anything, from slapstick comedy to subtitled kung fu art flicks to movies where giant bloodthirsty things eat lots and lots of people. Hell, Predator is just about her favorite movie of all time. But for more than 15 years, I've been trying to persuade her to see the joy and magic of Big Trouble in Little China... and she just won't bite.

This baffles me, because in all honesty I don't see anything about Big Trouble in Little China that should engender anything but happy-laughing-getting-all-tingly-inside kind of feelings. You've got Kurt Russell in fine '80s form playing Jack Burton: truck driver, gambler, wiseass extraordinaire, lover of beautiful women, hero. You've got Kim Cattrall in her way-back-before-Sex in the City days, when she first burst onto the scene with beauty and a sense of humor and an underlying sense of toughness that made you say "wow." You've got a great supporting cast, including that guy who gets eaten by a giant worm in his general store in Tremors, that guy who does the voice of Jack Black's noodle-cooking dad in Kung Fu Panda, Richard Burton's daughter as a brainy/scrappy reporter type, and lots of other people who were never heard from again. You've got monsters, ninja shit, and dialogue that repeatedly - and completely on purpose - makes you laugh out loud.

In short, it's everything you want in a movie. But for no reason that she can (or will) specify or articulate, my wife refuses to watch more than 5 minutes of the movie. This has been the case for more than 15 years, and as recently as last week I tried again... and failed. 

I just. Don't. Get it.

Jason: In my new book, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From A Bizarre Alternate Universe Where Paul Verhoven's Magnus Opus Starship Troopers Is Not Considered One Of The Greatest Movies Ever Made, I present a case study of my wife, who somehow is immune to the charms of a film featuring bad-ass and Mobile Infantry grunts battling with/being killed in various nasty ways by giant alien Bugs (with special guest appearances by Neil Patrick Harris, Michael Ironside, and Dina Meyer's naked breasts). In the course of my research, I interviewed dozens of experts, conducted numerous surveys and polls, and watched the film dozens of times. My data clearly shows that despite its one glaring flaw (Denise Richards remains clothed throughout the film), Starship Troopers is brilliant. It works on two levels - as a goofy B-movie, and as a prescient satire of militaristic culture.  It is, of course, accepted that within film there exists a sub-genre of movies known as "chick flicks". The opposite must hold true - that there are also "dude flicks" (examples include anything featuring a streetwise cop who plays by his own rules, giant robots, or Sylvester Stallone). So while I'm saddened by the fact that my wife hates it and refuses to watch it, I understand: Starship Troopers may well be the ultimate dude flick. It's like the Steel Magnolias of Dude Flicks, and will likely remain so forever. (Or until my screenplay for Tango and Cash Versus The Transformers is greenlit.)

Warren: I'm sure this is a post that my fellow DadCentricians found easy to write. Some, of course, could have gone on for days and days on this very topic and probably would have if they thought you would read about it. Me? Not so much. I'm not saying that my wife and I agree on every movie we've ever sat down to watch. That's the stuff of fantasy right there, because we certainly haven't. She doesn't understand my fascination with Bourne or National Treasure - I can't really explain the latter either, so moving on. The thing is, my wife's not all that into movies at all. Period. There are a few franchises that she enjoys - Star Wars (the canon - not the last three abominations - curse you George Lucas!), Indiana Jones (not the last, mind you, no one should ever see the last), Harry Potter, Ocean's Whatever, Princess Bride and the like - and we've agreed on some rom-coms of the Hugh Grant variety (and if that is grounds enough to surrender my man card, well so be it - even though I believe I gave that up with my admission that I watch Dancing With the Stars and Gilmore Girls). But when it comes to most movies, well, I'm on my own, regardless of the genre or the plot or the stars. Again, it's not because she doesn't like them, with few exceptions (the 9-day epic that is Gone With the Wind, for example) she just doesn't have the patience to sit through most movies (and, honestly, after some movies I've seen, I have often wished I shared her indifference). Anyway, case in point: when we were first dating I rented Armageddon thinking this is sort of a four-fer: romance, outer space, global destruction and Bruce Willis FTW! - there has to be something that will keep up the interest. Well, about halfway through the movie she fell asleep. During Armageddon. ARMAGEDDON, people! I knew then that we would never be a "movie couple" with stacks of DVDs just waiting to be watched. So, what do I do? Can you say Xbox 360 Netflix Instant Streaming?

Whit: My wife refuses to watch Fight Club.  I even tried the Brad Pitt with abs of titanium angle, but no dice.  She also won't watch Bridget Jones Diary 2, but I'm okay with that. She wouldn't go see a movie made by Quentin Tarentino. Ever.  Generally speaking she's not a fan of blood.  Although she like movies about vampires.  She's also not a fan of awkward situational comedy but she likes Seinfeld and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. However, she won't sit through Borat or any Will Ferrell movie that doesn't involve figure-skating. 

What she is a fan of are those Stomp in the Yard and Get Served movies.  I'll pass.

I can't complain too much, she loves sci-fi and comic book movies and she will play video games until 3am while drinking beers and listening to the Foo Fighters.  So there's that.

Just no violent games.  Except Wolverine.  

Women are complex.