The movies that I just couldn't finish watching

There are some movies that people just can’t finish, that they walk out of, run out of time for, or just can’t be bothered finishing. I try to minimise this not-finishing as much as possible – I’ve seen the entirety of some of the worst films ever made, such as The Last Airbender, Inchon and The New Mutants. But some films evade this rule, and I want to introduce you to them, as a reminder to myself that maybe one day I can conquer this aversion and finish them for good.

He’s All That

Okay, scratch that vow to finish all these. I will never return to this movie ever. I would re-watch the damn Smurf movies, the Barbie films my sister made me watch, and that Paddlepop film that no-one knows exists before I finish this.

A gender-swapped remake of the classic 90’s teen romcom She’s All That, He’s All That is determined to alienate its audience from the get-go. Led by mean-spirited protagonists, photographed astonishingly poorly, terribly acted and full of dialogue that would make M. Night Shyamalan cringe, He’s All That is abominable. I’m certainly glad that I skipped out with 40 minutes left, as it meant I could go play cards with my family in peace.

Netflix swings low on some occasions, but this swung reeaal low. On Letterboxd, it has an average rating of 1.4/5, and a 5% approval rating. That’s loooooow. I hope you understand my apprehension at re-visiting this abomination, then.

Wish Dragon

Wish Dragon is not an ungodly terrible film, by any means. It’s definitely lazy, derivative, unfunny and cheap-looking, but at least it’s nowhere near as unbearable as He’s All That.

So why did I stop watching it? I was about 35 minutes in, and every single plot point and joke I had predicted the movie would make had been made. I just sat there in front of my laptop and wondered “what’s the point of finishing this movie if I’ve already arrived at the end point?”, so I closed the film and went to do something more productive. I don’t exactly know what I did, but it was probably less predictable than the entirety of Wish Dragon.

Frankly, I could finish this movie easily. It was just so hollow and predictable that watching it was a nothing, uninvolving experience.

Roma

I have always swum against the fierce critical opinion that Roma is a phenomenal movie, because I really don’t like it at all. I find it emotionally unengaging, boring and staccato, led by a nothing protagonist and ultimately uninteresting.

I managed to get 90 minutes into Roma (but still a lot to go – it’s a LOOOOOOOOOONNNGG movie). At that point, it felt like nothing had happened at all. Thanks to a lack of music or interesting sound design, Roma consisted of a bunch of practically motionless images, none of which could conjure up any feelings from me, and eventually I just turned it off. I had better things to do, and I wouldn’t waste any more of my time with this film.

One day, I’ll come back to this movie, with more filmmaking knowledge and wisdom, and I’ll watch it the way it was probably intended – in a cinema, not on Netflix where the view is obscured by the screen size. Maybe then, I’ll like or at least appreciate it. Until then…NO.

A Classic Horror Story

Simple story here – I got 2 minutes in, decided from the scenes of bloody torture that I wasn’t feeling it, and turned it off. I don’t know if the rest of the movie was any good, but one day when I’ve come home from my serial killer alias, I’ll probably give it a go.

(Almost) every single French/Indonesian language movie we saw in class

L’Avion. Mr Bean Goes on Holiday. Ada apa dengan Cinta. That French movie about a snow dog. Little Nicholas, Joyeux Noel (both of which we actually finished) and Le Diner de Cons (which I wished we hadn’t, but did).

Simply put, an hour isn’t enough for watching a single movie. Often we’d just watch the first half, then stop and put the movie on hold indefinitely, confining them to the deepest crypts of our memories. Fortunately, we did manage to finish a couple on the rare occasion that we had a double lesson, but otherwise they were lost to the sands of time.

Of those I saw, we only managed to finish 3 – Little Nicholas, Joyeux Noel and Le Diner De Cons, all of which were French. Joyeux Noel is actually a great Oscar-nominated film that I’d recommend you check out, but Little Nicholas and Le Diner de Cons must have lost something in translation, as they came off as mean-spirited, unlikable comedies whose appeal I couldn’t really understand.

Aside from this, we also got to see the introductions to Mr Bean Goes on Holiday (set in France) and the Indonesian language Ada apa dengan Cinta?, a teen romantic comedy which was pulling it off far better than He’s All That would 18 years later.

We even got the endings (but not the first halves, as the other class got to watch them first) of L’Avion and Belle et Sebastien, the former of which had me scratching my head wondering if I’d ingested qualuudes. Maybe I did – that’s why I can’t remember the first half.

Fant4stic and Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse

Post-credits scenes are becoming more and more significant in the age of Marvel movies, sequel teasers and audience attention deficiency. This is a tale of those, because I didn’t stick around to watch the post-credits scenes of both Fant4stic and Without Remorse, because these movies were so uninteresting as to be intolerable to sit through more.

Now, Fant4stic has no post-credits scene, but we assumed from every other Marvel film this decade that there was. Unfortunately, Fant4stic is probably one of the worst superhero films ever made, so the minute the credits hit with that terrible ending, my dad and I scarpered. I profusely apologized for asking to see the movie, and he accepted it. I never looked back.

As for Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse, I didn’t even realise there was a post-credits scene until I saw people discussing it on Letterboxd. The movie had ended on a concrete conclusion, and I saw no reason for there to be a post-credits scene at all. So I clicked off Amazon and went to sleep, helped by Without Remorse’s dry, uncinematic and boring nature. No post-credit closure for me there.

Putuparri and the Rainmakers

Now for the final film on this list, some of you may be wondering what this film is. To answer that, it’s an Australian documentary film about an Indigenous man in Western Australia who seeks to retain his cultural identity. If you’re still wondering why I didn’t finish it, it’s for a rather embarrassing reason.

I fell asleep in the middle of it and missed half-an-hour.

I can definitely place most of the blame here on myself for falling asleep in a movie theatre with my grandparents, but…I was 12 at the time and full of energy! How did this movie manage to shut me down like a crashing Windows XP?

Let’s hope that in the future, I manage to finish the vast majority of films I watch and not get cut off by poor quality, nothingness, intolerance, disgust or by falling asleep. That is all.

What movies have you not finished, and why? Leave your answers in the comments below.