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Quick, what do the following movies have in common? The cheesy middle-aged rom-com \u201cTicket to Paradise,\u201d the curmudgeon-finds-his-heart-of-gold drama \u201cA Man Called Otto,\u201d and \u201c80 for Brady,\u201d a road comedy about four octogenarians girl-tripping their way to the 2017 Super Bowl. All three are built around those once larger-than-life entities known as movie stars (Julia Roberts and George Clooney in \u201cParadise\u201d; Tom Hanks in \u201cOtto\u201d; Jane Fonda, Sally Field, Lily Tomlin and Rita Moreno in \u201cBrady\u201d). All three are solid mid-level hits at the domestic box office (\u201cTicket to Paradise\u201d made $68 million, \u201cA Man Called Otto\u201d has grossed $60 million and \u201c80 for Brady\u201d is chugging its way to the $50 million yard line). That\u2019s a fact that many have taken note of at a time when the most savory offerings of the awards season (\u201cT\u00e1r,\u201d \u201cThe Fabelmans,\u201d \u201cThe Banshees of Inisherin\u201d) starkly underperformed at the box office.<\/p>\n
Yet there\u2019s a larger lesson to be gleaned from the success of these three films, one that has largely gone unremarked upon. I\u2019d say it relates to the most essential thing about them: All three are defiantly mediocre. That, in fact, is the secret of their success.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sorry, I really am, for how totally patronizing that sounded. But maybe I can take the sting out of it by admitting that, like many moviegoers, I\u2019m not some automatic hater of mediocrity. I am even, at times, a defender of it. Mediocrity has its place in the multiverse of movies and always has. I would argue that it\u2019s been a sizable chunk of the movie pie \u2014 and that movies, as an industry, depend on mediocrity more than we might like to think.<\/p>\n
Not all mediocrity is created equal, of course. I thought \u201cTicket to Paradise\u201d was the purest candy-corn rom-com kitsch, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It\u2019s a picture that has no illusions about itself. One reason it was such an effective vehicle for Julia Roberts and George Clooney is that these two old pros could relax into the tropical formulaic shenanigans of it \u2014 they turned hitting their marks into a pleasurable form of slumming-as-showmanship. \u201cA Man Called Otto,\u201d on the other hand, takes off from a potentially good premise \u2014 Tom Hanks as a man warped by cynicism \u2014 and fills it in with a contrived backstory, \u201chealing\u201d situations too prefab to believe and enough feel-good tropes to make you feel force-fed. It was not my cup of mediocrity. As for \u201c80 for Brady,\u201d it has its funny moments, but mostly it\u2019s star-driven sitcom comfort food for a too-often ignored demo. I\u2019m glad they got a movie attuned to their feisty antennae.<\/p>\n
But here\u2019s why all of this is the magic key, a path to the future of movie theaters that has not been duly recognized. When it comes to analyzing the box office tea leaves and what they say about where moviegoing is headed, the excitement that got pinned to the phenomenon of \u201cTop Gun: Maverick\u201d is fully justified, but it\u2019s far from the whole story. For \u201cMaverick\u201d was a fantastic anomaly. It\u2019s a movie whose very essence hinged on 40 years of pent-up 1980s nostalgia, now uncorked like some ironic blockbuster equivalent of fine wine. (In 1986, if you\u2019d suggested that \u201cTop Gun\u201d should have won the Oscar, or even been nominated, you\u2019d have been looked at like someone who\u2019d lost his marbles.)<\/p>\n
\u201cElvis,\u201d too, as much as it was a must-see biopic-on-Baz-Luhrmann-overdrive that earned its success ($150 million at the domestic box office), is not a film to generalize from. Neither is \u201cEverything Everywhere All at Once.\u201d These were movies that adults turned out for. They proved, and can stand as symbols of, the viability and transcendence of the theatrical experience. But how easy would it now be to come up with another \u201cMaverick,\u201d another \u201cElvis,\u201d another \u201cEEAAO\u201d?<\/p>\n
I, too, am desperate to see more movies like that, but what we also need are the movies that grease the wheels of the theatrical experience: the friendly bread-and-butter formula films for adults that audiences can depend on, that can keep them hooked on the act of moviegoing. To me, the most painful aspect of the fall movie season \u2014 I\u2019m tempted to call it tragic \u2014 is seeing the extraordinary films that underperformed, like \u201cT\u00e1r\u201d and \u201cThe Fabelmans,\u201d treated as if they were subtly alien, as if there was something not inviting enough about them. \u201cT\u00e1r,\u201d we kept being told, was \u201ccold\u201d and enigmatic. (In truth, it has the heat of a thriller and is eminently accessible.) \u201cThe Fabelmans\u201d was about Steven Spielberg\u2019s parents\u2019 divorce and his teenage adventures in filmmaking. A prevalent attitude out there was: Come on, is that something the mass audience would give a damn about?<\/p>\n
But I think that kind of dismissiveness misses the actual problem. The audience of adults that still yearns to see movies that aren\u2019t fantasy blockbusters (Marvel, \u201cJurassic Park\u201d), or the horror freakout of the week, has been drastically underserved. As a result, they have fallen out of the regularity of moviegoing. The rhythms of staying at home, which the media, during the pandemic, tried to sell as a new normal, almost a new ideology (you won\u2019t have to go into the office anymore! or to a movie theater! just let it all come to you!), are still very much in play. The idea that they\u2019re a new paradigm has not lost its sway. But I think 2022 was the year when people allowed themselves to get used to going to the movies again. What\u2019s going to keep them there is movies they can count on for an experience that reinforces \u2014 in its very aesthetic \u2014 the comfortable and the conventional.<\/p>\n
Because really, it has always been that way. What we imagine as \u201cfilm history\u201d is, in fact, the cr\u00e8me de la cr\u00e8me. During the heyday of classic Hollywood, people went out to the movies and saw the studio programmer of the week \u2014 thousands upon thousands of Westerns and comedies and romances and thrillers that are now long forgotten. And the 1970s, that fabled age of cinematic adventure, had a whole lot of cereal mixed in with the cutting-edge art. Yes, \u201cThe Godfather\u201d and \u201cM*A*S*H\u201d and \u201cDog Day Afternoon\u201d and \u201cLast Tango in Paris\u201d and \u201cThe French Connection\u201d and \u201cShampoo\u201d were box office hits \u2014 but so were \u201cBilly Jack\u201d and \u201cWillard\u201d and \u201cBedknobs and Broomsticks\u201d and \u201cEscape from the Planet of the Apes\u201d and \u201cThe Towering Inferno\u201d and \u201cThe Life and Times of Grizzly Adams\u201d and \u201cRollerball.\u201d<\/p>\n
You could say, and you\u2019d be right, that our era outdoes that one in the sheer profusion of fantasy escapist pulp. But I\u2019m talking about movies for adults that adults still want to see. Those movies run on a separate track from the Marvelization of Hollywood, and we need them \u2014 in a more modest way \u2014 to be commercially successful too. Imagine that there were 30 movies a year like \u201cTicket to Paradise\u201d and \u201cA Man Called Otto\u201d; not so long ago, there were. But the industry, in letting the mid-budget movie for adults slide into oblivion, wound up dichotomizing itself into a choice of insane extremes: CGI rides for kids (or the kid in us all) versus\u2026 those highly select and elite films that the critics cream over during awards season. That is not a healthy choice. It\u2019s like saying that you want to go out to eat and your options are either fast food or a high-end place of dauntingly lauded culinary ambition. Given that choice, who wouldn\u2019t stay home (or go with the fast-food option)?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to mock mediocrity, but actually it\u2019s the great uniter. Just look at all the television that\u2019s mediocre that people relax into for that very reason. (Some of it is even quite acclaimed; but that\u2019s another story.) If there were more movies like \u201cTicket to Paradise\u201d or \u201cA Man Called Otto,\u201d audiences would show up for them, and the whole spirit of going out to a movie theater would shift. I can\u2019t prove it, but I suspect that an audience of people who\u2019d gotten that much more used to going to the movies would be that much more eager, in the flow of things, to show up for \u201cT\u00e1r\u201d and \u201cThe Fabelmans.\u201d At its greatest, moviegoing can be a religious experience, but at its most everyday and sustaining, moviegoing is that reassuringly dowdy thing known as a habit. The industry needs to start making movies that adults want to make a habit of seeing. <\/p>\n
View this article at Variety<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Could Mediocre Movies Save Movie Theaters? \u2018Ticket to Paradise,\u2019 \u2018A Man Called Otto\u2019 and \u201880 for Brady\u2019 Say Yes: Quick, what do the following movies have in common? The cheesy middle-aged rom-com \u201cTicket to Paradise,\u201d the curmudgeon-finds-his-heart-of-gold drama \u201cA Man Called Otto,\u201d and \u201c80 for Brady,\u201d a road comedy about four octogenarians girl-tripping their way
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