GUILTY PLEASURES
There are a select few guilty pleasure movies that I can’t help but watch. And Affleck isn’t in any of them.
Although I forced myself to sit through Gigli and Jersey Girl, I geared up and tackled them both like high school math homework (algebra and Affleck, equally painful). I digress. Films like Showgirls and Striptease fall directly into the ‘so bad they’re good’ category. Similarly, if you appreciate campy dialogue and sub-par acting, you might want to check out Denise Richards in the one-two punch of Starship Troopers and Wild Things.
And then there are those incredibly captivating and over-the-top performances which suck you in every time you happen upon them while channel surfing; Al Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate and Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest are just two that come to mind. You’ll roll your eyes in delight watching Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly in the aesthetically pleasing Bound, which the Wachowski Brothers made solely to prove to the studios that they were capable of making the ambitious Matrix trilogy. I await the Basic Instinct sequel with guarded enthusiasm, as I believe Sharon Stone to be among the best at camp & vamp. In 1996, a relatively unknown Reese Witherspoon played a white trash teenager with a potty mouth in the dark comedy Freeway, which also features the scene-stealing Brooke Shields and Kiefer Sutherland. Before she became hugely successful, Witherspoon co-starred in the last great guilty pleasure film of the ’90s: Cruel Intentions. Besides being the movie where Witherspoon and future husband Ryan Phillippe fell in young love (and subsequently started producing babies with perfect blonde hair & unusually blessed DNA), this film contains many of the guilty pleasure requirements: a same-sex kiss, a step-brother/sister flirtation (recently revitalized by Boone & Shannon on Lost), and a hot young cast of up & comers like Buffy the Vampire Slayer Sarah Michelle Gellar, Dawson’s Creek pal Joshua Jackson and Selma Blair (Legally Blonde).