On&Offline Cinephile Diaries (No. 3 ) - Watching Movies with the Sound of Critics Off
Lately, I came across a fascinating phenomenon: watching “critically” low-quality movies with friends boosts their quality. I have two recent experiences that support this statement. First, I watched the new “Super Mario” movie in the cinema with my friend Batu, who is a huge and devoted Nintendo fan and knows every character in that universe. While it was obviously not the most profound nor most complicated animation ever, I had a decent time laughing at how stupid everything was and getting commentary from Batu after every random cameo. Then, I watched “Eurotrip” with Noa, Ari, and Friederike, who are, funny enough, from the exact countries that were mentioned in the movie. In case you aren’t familiar with the film, it's the story of a group of friends traveling to Europe so one of them can meet his pen pal, who came to be a hot German girl. I think it's not that difficult to guess how intellectually rich the movie is, but watching it with that group of people made it 1000 times better and funnier. I enjoyed it a lot, and while the film is from the early 2000s, the jokes aged well enough to laugh at them in 2026, even if some of them are so wrong that they can get you canceled by the powerful Twitter/X users.
Finally, the most compelling aspect of both movies was that if I had watched them by myself, I would have given them half a star and never looked back, but now they are attached to two good memories with my beloved friends. That raises another question: Do we have something as a "bad movie" if you can enjoy every movie in a certain environment, age, or group? I think the answer to that is related to how one perceives the quality of movies based on their social identity. I had this discussion with Batu after “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” as well. I do appreciate comments from professional movie critics who are in their 60s when it comes to the newest Lev Diaz, but do I think their opinion on “Sonic 3” holds the same value? Absolutely not. For a 7-year-old iPad kid with a 3-second attention span, “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” is equivalent to “The Turin Horse” for a middle-aged alcoholic Hungarian who hates Viktor Orban, and it is essential to cherish both audiences in their respective ways, and that was the cinephile lesson for today: Jim Carry in Sonic is PEAK.