In my newish Friday column, the question is – is there anything good on Netflix?
Unfortunately, when we first got Netflix, there were so many movies I wanted to see that Netflix didn't have. So I started watching movies I hadn't heard of that looked like they might be fun. I found a few that were so bad, even I, lover of most movies, couldn't finish them. Since tomorrow is the 1st, I figured today is a good time to give you my list of 1 star Netflix movies (Hated It, per their ratings system).
The first one was The Ramen Girl with Brittany Murphy. I really like Brittany and I really wanted to like this movie. It was set in Tokyo and had almost all Japanese characters. At first, I thought I just didn't understand the movie and that's why I wasn't liking it. But by the halfway point, I couldn't take the scummy English-speaking creeps Brittany's character was hanging around, even though I was intrigued by the Japanese characters. Mostly. In the end, I fast-forwarded to try to figure out where the good part was. Netflix doesn't fast-forward that great, so who knows, maybe I missed the good part. 1 star
Another one that I tried was Love and Other Disasters. Yes, again I thought I'd found a fun and funny Brittany Murphy movie. Again, I was so wrong. Or not. Was I just in a bad mood? Or was it because it seemed the entire movie was based on one little misunderstanding? (Boring plots are based on simple misunderstandings. Bleh.) Or maybe because it was set in the European glamour magazine world. (Yawn.) The trailer looks funny! I just watched it again to remember what this movie was about. I remembered that this is one of the movies I didn't finish because I so disliked it. I might try it again when I know for sure I'm in a perfectly great mood. But all I can tell you is that I disliked it enough at the first viewing to not finish it and to give it only 1 star.
Finally, I tried Serious Moonlight with Meg Ryan and Timothy Hutton. I used to say I love Meg Ryan because Sleepless in Seattle is my favorite movie and I loved her in light, good-hearted romantic comedies. But so many Meg Ryan movies have hard-hearted characters who are mean and self-absorbed. I'm guessing the characters are supposed to find redemption and become better people in the end – at least, that's the only reason I would write a bitter or mean main character. I don't know what the filmmakers meant to do, but I had to stop watching this movie about midway through. It was so bitter and angry, and obviously I was supposed to think it was funny, but I thought it was a real downer. I fast-forwarded to try to see what happened, but again, Netflix doesn't do fast-forward all that great. So I moved on with my life and gave this one 1 star.
Just because I didn't like these movies, doesn't mean you won't. On IMDB (the Internet Movie Database site that I'm linking to), the average rating for the first two is 6.2 stars out of 10, which isn't too bad. The last movie averages 5.2 stars there. Who knows, maybe you'll like these better than I did. But you might want to save two hours of your life for a better movie.
