There are great movies, and then there are movies you love. The two categories overlap, obviously. The Godfather is both. So is Jaws. But there are also great movies that you are “supposed” to like even though they bore the hell out of you. Or movies that you endure because they are the favorite of your wife or girlfriend.
But another class of movie may be even more important to our everyday entertainment: the guilty pleasure movie. You know the type. You’re flipping channels—or scrolling through whatever has replaced channel surfing—and suddenly discover that The Rock started 45 minutes ago. It doesn’t matter. You know what happened during those 45 minutes. You know what happens next. You know half the dialog.
And yet you’re staying.
For me, the golden age of the guilty pleasure guy movie was the 1990s. These movies tended to have enormous action sequences, terrific musical scores, characters who actually liked one another, and dialogue specifically engineered to be repeated by guys for the next 30 years. Were they always sophisticated? Absolutely not. Some were ridiculous even by the standards of movies about asteroids, tornadoes, and surfing bank robbers.
That’s part of the fun.
Tombstone
Of all the movies on this list, Tombstone probably comes closest to escaping the guilty-pleasure category entirely. It’s a genuinely good Western with a ridiculously good cast, but it also contains enough swagger for three movies. Kurt Russell makes a terrific Wyatt Earp, but Val Kilmer steals the picture as Doc Holliday. His relationship with Earp gives the movie its heart. Holliday is sick, sarcastic, and frequently drunk, but when his friend needs him, there is never much doubt about what he is going to do. And the villains are colorful and malevolent. They are genuinely threatening and far more than paper targets for the good guys. The score by Bruce Broughton gives everything a suitably mythic quality, while the dialogue is almost absurdly quotable.
“I’m your huckleberry” is the line that everyone knows, but there are a lot more. When Wyatt finally decides he has had enough, he stands in a lightning storm and yells: “I’m coming, and hell’s coming with me.”
Thirty-plus years later, guys are still finding excuses to work those lines into conversations.
Armageddon
Scientifically, Armageddon is nonsense. NASA apparently once used it as an exercise in identifying scientific inaccuracies, which seems unfair. Complaining about the science in Armageddon is like complaining about the nutritional value of a cheeseburger. You’re missing the point. And yet somehow it works.
The point is Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Steve Buscemi, and a collection of oil drillers being launched into space to save the planet. Director Michael Bay throws absolutely everything onto the screen, while Trevor Rabin’s score works overtime telling you that saving Earth is extremely important. The conflict between the neatly scrubbed real astronauts and the rowdy, scruffy roustabout oil drillers is electric.
What really makes the movie rewatchable is the group dynamic. These guys insult each other constantly, but you believe they would also die for each other. The tension is broken by a loony Russian cosmonaut who “fixes” the broken spaceship by banging on it with a wrench while complaining about cheap garbage made by the Chinese. By the time Willis shoves Affleck into the port and tells him to “Take care of my little girl”, Armageddon has somehow transformed itself from a ridiculous disaster movie into something surprisingly affecting. Corny? Of course, but I get choked up every time.
Twister
Twister has one of the great premises in action-movie history: People who should obviously run away from tornadoes instead spend the entire movie chasing them. Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt lead a group of storm chasers who feel less like coworkers than an eccentric extended family. That camaraderie matters enormously. We want to climb into their beat-up trucks, blast music, and join them. Jami Gertz, as Bill’s new fianceé, is our portal into the lunacy. A sane, nice person who can’t quite figure out why these lunatics rush into harm’s way.
Mark Mancina’s score gives the storms both scale and menace, while the movie cleverly alternates between spectacular tornado sequences and scenes of the team simply hanging out. And then there are the cows. In the middle of a tornado funnel, cows fly by. “We got cows”. “More cows.” “No, same cows.” It may be one of the simplest great lines in movie history. My wife and I regularly use it on stormy days.
Another character describes the center of a tornado as “the suck zone,” which is scientifically questionable but linguistically perfect.
Independence Day
If you were building the ultimate 1990s blockbuster in a laboratory, you would probably end up with Independence Day.
Aliens attack Earth. Cities explode. Jeff Goldblum figures out how to defeat the extraterrestrials using a computer virus. Will Smith punches an alien. “Welcome to Earth, asshole”
What else do you need?
David Arnold’s magnificent score treats the entire thing like Lawrence of Arabia with spaceships, and that seriousness is important. Nobody making Independence Day seems embarrassed about making Independence Day.
The movie also works because of the relationships: Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum, Goldblum and Judd Hirsch, Smith and Vivica A. Fox. The characters give us a reason to care between explosions. Judd Hirsch has a lot of great bits from exposing the secret lab: “You didn’t really think they spent $10,000 on a wrench, did you?” To inviting the weasely secretary of defense to join him in Jewish prayers. When the secretary says “but I’m not Jewish,” Hirsch looks at him and dryly says “eh, nobody’s perfect.” And Bill Pullman gets perhaps the decade’s definitive blockbuster speech, ending with: “Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!”
Completely over the top. Completely irresistible.
Point Break
On paper, Point Break sounds like someone lost a bet. Keanu Reeves plays an FBI agent named Johnny Utah who infiltrates a gang of surfing bank robbers led by Patrick Swayze. But director Kathryn Bigelow somehow turns that premise into a surprisingly compelling movie about friendship, adrenaline, masculinity and the desire to live outside conventional rules. Mark Isham’s score helps create the dreamy, almost mystical atmosphere surrounding Swayze’s Bodhi.
The relationship between Bodhi and Utah elevates the movie far beyond its cops-and-robbers plot. Utah is supposed to arrest Bodhi but is increasingly fascinated by him. Even when they are on the edge of killing one another, there is a clear bond. The ending on the beach in Australia is perfectly done.
And the supporting characters deliver one of the great random movie quotes of the decade: “Utah, get me two!”
Two what? If you know, you know.
The Rock
Sometimes you want nuance. Sometimes you want Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage breaking into Alcatraz to stop Ed Harris from launching chemical weapons at San Francisco.
The Rock understands this. It might be the most polished pure action movie Michael Bay ever made. The Hans Zimmer-led music team supplies an enormous score that practically demands to be played through speakers the size of refrigerators. Connery and Cage are also a fantastic odd couple. Connery is cool, experienced, and apparently capable of escaping from anywhere. Cage is a neurotic chemical-weapons expert who would much rather be discussing Beatles records.
The dialogue is unapologetically macho.
“Losers always whine about their best.” And, inevitably: “Welcome to the Rock.”
Corny? Sure. Also perfect.
And a Couple More…
Limiting this list to six movies is tough. Speed deserves recognition for turning a city bus into one of the decade’s best action settings and for the chemistry between Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. And then there is Con Air, which may be the purest guilty pleasure of them all. Nicolas Cage, John Malkovich, Steve Buscemi, convicts taking over an airplane, explosions in Las Vegas—and a hero named Cameron Poe.
Nobody involved was aiming for subtlety. That’s ultimately what makes these movies so rewatchable. They weren’t afraid of being entertaining. They had heroes and villains. They had friendships that mattered. They had big music telling you exactly when something heroic was happening. And they had lines you could quote decades later.
Maybe calling them “guilty pleasures” is the wrong description.
After all these years, I’m not sure I feel guilty at all.
