Gotta Admit You Love to Hate Them

I've had different phases with movies and movie appreciation over the years. At one point I just accepted that I would fall asleep in the middle of any movie. On more than one occasion, I've definitely slept through entire movies (one that I regret was the Secret Life of Walter Mitty because I ended up watching it later and thought it was fantastic)... Other times, I can get in the movie-watching mood and stay awake and attentive through 3 or 4 in a row. Thinking back on movies that were bad, we come upon the question of movies I hated. The thing is that usually if I finished the movie, it was a conscious choice (unless it was for school). Therefore, I think the more appropriate title for them would be movies I love to hate. I probably could sense early on they wouldn't be something to care for much but I kept watching because I knew I'd have stuff to gripe about later.

One movie that my family was talking about earlier was the Avatar: the Last Airbender movie. This one is notoriously bad for those who've seen the cartoon. I can't remember all that much about it, so I won't say too much. But some common complaints involve the unapologetic whitewashing and the pronunciation of Aang. I mean I guess they made Zuko a POC but it was like all the fire nation people were Indian. Which is interesting because although the world is imaginary, obviously nations draw cultural real-life cultural influences (I think it's something like Earth Kingdom is China, Fire Nation is Japan, Water Tribe is Inuit, and Air is somewhere I can't remember..). All around mistakes made with this movie and the acting was no saving grace.

A movie I saw more recently and definitely love to hate is The Kissing Booth. This movie ground my gears for how completely stupid it was.

just to set the scene a bit, the movie opens by this girl having her first day of school and her pants ripping so obv her only choice is to wear this skirt that she outgrew not like she won't immediately get dress coded and have to find another alternative already.

• I won't spoil anything (and honestly the details are fuzzy) but I just remember thinking they were antagonizing a character I thought was just in being angry at the main character.

• The concept of the kissing booth was disturbing. I mean, in the olden days sure. But how could that be approved nowadays with everything we know about diseases!!

• Towards the end was OF COURSE a prom which is the absolute high point of any normal person's high school career, and their prom was like a yearbook come to life just to emphasize even more the importance of popular kids.

• At the end the brother obviously went to an Ivy League even though I'm pretty sure he was depicted as lazy. But they were all super rich. Which is fine I guess in a movie but they didn't even speak at all about it. It wasn't even a normal Hollywood movie house. I felt like it was pretty extravagant, but somehow we're supposed to accept they're "normal" high school kids.

• The romance was so disgustingly heterosexual -- like I mean everyone played into their expected gender roles so much so (read sexist). I know this is normal for Hollywood, but I guess I expected more from Netflix... Wrong.

I think if I watched it again I'd have a lot more to say, but that's all the stuff I can remember at the moment :)

UPDATE: I was looking for photos and I found to my disgust that they're making the Kissing Booth 2 😫. Ngl, I might watch it.. Also yes, I confirmed that the white boy jock brother got into Harvard. I cringe rereading the plot of the first.