You know, I'm an MST3K fan. I can enjoy a bad movie. I can enjoy campy acting and low-budget special effects. (Plus, I'm on a time-travel kick right now; the bit where an actor jumps to the future, sees a bunch of weird stuff, and jumps back, and you spend the next little while seeing it fall into place is fun. You don't even need SFX to enjoy that.) And I even get a particular kind of joy from watching amateur productions.
But, movie-wrights take note: profanity is not spackle that fixes holes in your writing or in the acting! It does not magically make your characters' lines sound more passionate, urgent or in any other way dramatic. "We're going to f***ing die" does not mean "we're going to die and I'm scared." You either write "we've spent our lives hiding from danger / so many people are counting on us to succeed / we finally have the chance to fall in love / whatever ... and suddenly our time has run out," or you say "we're going to die" with real terror in your voice. "We're going to f***ing die" means "we're going to die, so why shouldn't the viewers have a rotten day, too?" If an actor can't act like his character hates another character, lamely spitting out F-bombs every thirty seconds won't help. It just makes me think either the writer or the director hates me.
If it weren't for the R-rated language, I could invite my wife and maybe even my kids to laugh at this film with me. (It's not like the combined sixty seconds of gore is very realistic.) Instead, I'll have to delete it from my viewing history so the kids don't accidentally click on it anytime soon.
But, movie-wrights take note: profanity is not spackle that fixes holes in your writing or in the acting! It does not magically make your characters' lines sound more passionate, urgent or in any other way dramatic. "We're going to f***ing die" does not mean "we're going to die and I'm scared." You either write "we've spent our lives hiding from danger / so many people are counting on us to succeed / we finally have the chance to fall in love / whatever ... and suddenly our time has run out," or you say "we're going to die" with real terror in your voice. "We're going to f***ing die" means "we're going to die, so why shouldn't the viewers have a rotten day, too?" If an actor can't act like his character hates another character, lamely spitting out F-bombs every thirty seconds won't help. It just makes me think either the writer or the director hates me.
If it weren't for the R-rated language, I could invite my wife and maybe even my kids to laugh at this film with me. (It's not like the combined sixty seconds of gore is very realistic.) Instead, I'll have to delete it from my viewing history so the kids don't accidentally click on it anytime soon.