I once took my grandfather, a retired commander of the Land Army, to watch a leftist comedy. While I liked it, he was somewhat uncomfortable, but we watched it till the end.
A couple months later, he wanted to take me to watch a documentary on the life on a wooden ship over months, maintained for historical conservation. I’m not going to say it was the biggest turd I had ever seen in my entire life, but it was a serious contender, but nonetheless I had committed myself to watch it till the end because my grandpa did the same effort for me. In the end, it was him who asked me to leave early because he was bored.
Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd.
Hear me out. I love Sweeney Todd but these people didn’t know it was a musical. About 15 minutes in one guy said “Are they going to sing the whole time?!”. More than a few people got up and left and I honestly had never seen that before.
I guess the marketing for it at the time just completely left out that it was a musical.
I saw Young Einstein on opening weekend…for some reason. No one left the theater but there were only about 4 of us in there to begin with.
My ex GF made us leave in the middle of LOTR: Return of the King.
She is my ex for unrelated reasons.
She is my ex for unrelated reasons.
Oh, I should also mention the last live action Tarzan that had a Skarsgard in it: It was a train wreck lol
Didn’t walk out, but wish I had: the first Wonder Woman movie with Gal Gadot. They managed to make a Wonder Woman movie that was more about her boyfriend than Wonder Woman. Wtf.
Not a bad movie at all, but it was so fun watching people with kids leaving the Sausage Party: what were they expecting?
Something similar happened when I saw the Final Fantasy movie. This blue-haired old lady walked in with her 7-8 year old granddaughter. They left shortly after a demon tore a soul from a living human.
No idea why she thought it would be appropriate for a kid that age.
An older lady and a kid were at South Park in the row in front of me. They didn’t make it 10 minutes.
I think that a lot of people in the Boomer and older age ranges never really understood the idea of adult animation, so they just assume that animated shows and films are made for kids.
(But my favorite Parker/Stone walk-out was the obviously Mormon couple who sat in front of us for the first 30 minutes of The Book of Mormon. The guy had the word “Mormon” embossed on his belt. They didn’t do their homework before they bought those tickets.)
10 minutes mean they made it through “Hello” and maybe “Two by two”
They didn’t even get to the good stuff. Hasa diga Eebowai, I believe, Turn it off, All-American Prophet.
Man that show was so good. One of the few shows I’ve seen twice (that and Hamilton). The first time my wife was sick so I went with my BIL, but my wife was able to come the second time around.
For the record, im not rich. Solidly middle class. Our local theatre that does Broadway tours sells season tickets every spring and the payment plans make it very reasonable. It’s become a tradition that this what I get my wife for Mother’s Day. We get like a bunch of date nights planned out months out in advance so we can be sure to arrange sitters.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Mormon above was a season ticket holder.
(But my favorite Parker/Stone walk-out was the obviously Mormon couple who sat in front of us for the first 30 minutes of The Book of Mormon. The guy had the word “Mormon” embossed on his belt. They didn’t do their homework before they bought those tickets.)
Was it released as a movie? Or do you mean the musical? If so, that’s the absolute best thing I’ve ever seen on stage. Also the only one that was so good I went to watch it a second time :-D
It was the musical, so it was not a cheap ticket. I don’t know how they didn’t know it was not going to be supportive of their worldview.
That’s actually a perfect analogy for what I know about their worldview.
I saw Epic Movie in theaters and it’s the worst movie I’ve ever seen. Nobody walked out but they should have.
I didn’t see this in the theater, but if I had…
Showgirls. It was kind of a big deal when it was new because there was so much nudity and one of the stars had been in a very wholesome sitcom as a young actor. I was young enough that even though I’d heard it was awful I kinda wanted to see all that nudity, I thought how bad could it be? It was so terrible. So very terrible. The nudity couldn’t begin to make up for how terrible it was.
God I love that movie postor. Behold, the sexy one-legged worm!
Beware, it’s less sexy after you see the movie. They managed to take nudity and destroy all the sexiness. Maybe that was the point and I was too young to “get it” but I don’t think I’m alone in that assessment. 😬
highlander 2. people threw stuff at the screen (university town)…I don’t condone it, but i understood it.
I love how they kept doing sequels and this one is entirely ignored in canon.
I love Highlander 2 for this! Nightmare on Elm Street 2 had the same problem, just ignored the canon completely. 10/10 bad movie, will watch again.
Nightmare 2 was in the mental institution where Freddy grabs some girl and pushes her head into the TV and shit, right? Probably the only good part of the whole move.
Barnyard. My daughter and I used to go see EVERY kids movie when she was between 5 and 12 yrs. Let me tell you, I have learned to enjoy some shitastic movies. Then came Barnyard. 30 minutes in, it was so bad, I leaned over to my (then 6 years old) daughter and said “Sweetie, do you like this movie?” She looked at me with the most serious face and just said “No”.
Weirdly enough the barnyard TV show was weirdly good. Like it was bad but also kinda ok in that weird way that after awhile you stop caring that its vaguely bad and it actually ends up ok.
Relevant Dick Tits story.
I bet she looks back on those memories with you very fondly and realizes how much you love her.
I was escorted out of a movie once.
The movie was called Quarantine. I don’t remember if there were, but I don’t remember any warnings before going to see the movie or when the movie started. So anyways there’s a lot of flashing in the movie and I had multiple seizures.
That movie series was awesome. I’m sorry that it aggravated your medical condition. That sucks.
Thanks. On a plus side I can share this silver lining (because I think we should all look for the silver lining). So the people I was with said me having a seizure made that movie far scarier 😂. None of them were expecting that (to be fair, neither was I).
I had one seizure as a kid (febrile) and one very brief one as an adult. I had been awake for like 26-27 hours at this point. I went to work really early the night before and worked all the way through the day and finally went home around 10. My friends wanted to midnight release the second transformers movie so I went too. There was a trailer for one of the Harry Potter movies with a dementor flying over a city. I remember my eyes rolling back and convulsing for about 6-7 seconds. My buddy next to me looked at me and said, “dude what the fuck was that?” I responded with, “I don’t know, I think I just had a seizure.” We watched the movie I fell asleep, didn’t like it that much.
I was at one too. but it wasnt cause the movie was terrible, it was cause the projectionist was… Movie was horribly out of focus, and about 7 feet too far to the left, and down too low that you could only see the top half of the film.
Tiny little shithole theatre refused refunds for it, too. It comes as no shock that it was bulldozed a few years later.
Dr. Doolittle. The Eddie Murphy travesty. Bonus: it was a first date, too. We ended up staying together for almost four years. Shared trauma I guess.
I watched several people leave during Team America. Yeah, it was the sex scenes.
I saw Ecks vs Sever in theatre, and I wish I had walked out.
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It wasn’t me, but Pan’s Labyrinth had quite the exodus of parents with their younger kids when someone was beaten with a bottle and shot to death very early on.
Definitly was marketed as a familly movie in Canada. I do remember kids crying in the theatre and parents leaving. It’s Del Torro’s best movie IMO.
Was that the one with or without David Bowie?
You’re thinking of “Labyrinth”. Which is still a masterpiece of eccentric fantasy.
Without!
Yeah. That was interesting that time I watched it high waiting for Bowie to show up…
Good Idea… But… Why the holy hell would you even think for a moment that it’s a child friendly movie? Ugh.
To be fair, Pan’s Labrynth was an marketing disaster. It was advertised as not only being in English (It’s in spanish), but a family friendly fantasy movie (lol no)
It got so bad that video rental stores at the time had to put up warnings telling people “No we didn’t accidentally stock the Spanish version, the movie is not in English”
I probably would’ve thought the same if a friend didn’t regale us with the descriptive introduction to the torture scene.
It’s definitely one of the biggest “Never Trust A Trailer” stories of all time. right up there with Kangaroo Jack and Bridge to Terabithia
For those who aren’t aware… or just weren’t around during those controversies -
Kangaroo Jack - Was meant to be a stoner comedy about two guys chasing a kangaroo when they accidentally leave a jacket containing a mob boss’ drug money, on a Kangaroo and have to track him down to get it back. When it tested poorly with audiences, the film was marketed as being about a talking rapping cgi anthropomorphic kangaroo that gets into shenanigans… In the actual movie: The Kangaroo is a normal non-sapient kangaroo who just hops around with the jacket of illict cash. Footage of the Talking and rapping was from a sequence where the two guys chasing the kangaroo get high and hallucinate that the roo is rapping.
In order to sell this as a kid’s movie and get the proper rating, the theatrical cut removed many of the swears. Including a running joke where characters would call each other “Chicken Shit” (Which was changed to “Chicken Blood”)
Weirdly enough it has an animated Straight-To-TV sequel that aired on Cartoon Network, once again the Kangaroo does not actually talk outside of a dream sequence where he sings “Mama Said Knock You Out!” during a boxing match (Meaning they pulled this shit twice! With the same franchise!)
I remember seeing both and being insanely bored, wondering when the hell the Kangaroo would actually do something.
It is cited as one of the most blatant cases of False Advertising in Cinema History
Bridge to Terabithia - Not as infamous, but just as heinous
It’s based on a Death By Newbury Medal book about an imaginary kingdom where a boy and his female friend work out their day-to-day problems. Getting there via a rope that they swing across, one day he skips out on their usual meet up and comes back only to find that she managed to accidentally hang herself when rope swinging went wrong.
The kid builds a bridge to said imaginary kingdom (the bridge in the title!) in memory to his friend, who he feels guilty about believing (correctly) that if he had been there or if he just had let her in on what he had been doing that day, she’d still be alive. The movie ends, like the book, with the kid sharing the imaginary kingdom with his little sister, taking her across the bridge, in order to keep the memory of his friend alive.
The trailer? Shows the kid and his dead friend walking across the bridge into a magical kingdom, nothing about the kingdom being imaginary is said, and it’s intentionally cut to look as much like the trailer for “Chronicles of Narnia” as possible; a film that had come out not too long ago and was believed to be the start of the “Next Harry Potter Movie Series!”… only for the second movie “Prince Caspian” to not do so good
There are horror stories of kids going to see it, and not only being confused that the kingdom wasn’t real, but being horrified that one of the lead characters (a literal child) dies in a gruesome realistic manner
Personally I like the movie, and was pissed that it was marketed the way it was, as I saw it when a family member rented it expecting to laugh at what a horribad ripoff of Narnia I expected it to be, only for it to be a pretty beautiful film. Said family member loved the book and was confused why I was weirded out by the movie, until I showed them the trailer which rightfully pissed them off.
If it wasn’t advertised as a mockbuster I may have seen it in theaters.
Personally: While I do like the movie, I hate the “Death By Newbury Medal” trope, plenty of boys grow up to be well-adjusted men without a tragic death of a pet or loved one being there to symbolize the end of their innocence.
Oh God, the Kangaroo Jack one was so egregious. I remember us renting that movie as a family and definitely feeling cheated that it’s a fairly mundane comedy movie, no animated talking and singing kangaroos except for that single scene.
Luckily I was quickly warned that Bridge of Terabithia, while being marketed as a Chronicles of Narnia ripoff, was actually kinda sad. I think it helped that it’s based off a book so more people were familiar with the source material.
I didn’t even know it was a book until after I watched the movie and was told by the person who rented it
Bridge to Terabithia
I had to read the book in maybe 5th grade or thereabouts… Main character dying messed me up a bit… I remember this overwhelming feeling of unfairness…
