Enjoying the Imperfect
I’m fond of saying that things don’t have to be perfect to be enjoyable, but we tend not to think that way about movies and TV and books. There are so many fantastic things you could be watching, that it can feel like a waste of time to watch something that isn’t the best thing ever. Besides, considering how hard it is make it in this business we call show, you can’t be blamed for coming in with high expectations.
Which at least partially explains all the 1/10 star reviews on IMDB for I Care A Lot, the dark comedy thriller starring Rosamund Pike and Peter Dinklage that you’ve been hearing so much about. To be fair, it’s not the funniest dark comedy around and it’s not even the funniest dark comedy with Peter Dinklage in it, but still.
I enjoyed it thoroughly, and not just because for once I managed to convince my husband to watch something when it first hit Netflix and the interwebs were still buzzing about it. I mean, come on. They had me at Peter Dinklage as, “a deeply vindictive crime lord.” This is most likely the world’s only chance to watch him eat an eclair menacingly, which is reason enough to tune in.
(I really hope this becomes A Thing, where actors try to top each other by eating in character while conveying different emotions.)
All those one star reviews are coming from a place of getting something that’s not what they expected. The film has 81% on Rotten Tomatoes so I’m clearly not the only one laughing incredulously at those bad reviews. (Seriously, I usually find IMDB user reviews annoying, but the ones for this movie achieve a level of hilarity that I may never reach in my own writing career.)
Anyway, the point I’m sneaking up on is that we tend not to expect perfection or even excellence from others, but sometimes we do. Maybe it’s that your own perfectionism demands that you only consume the highest quality entertainment. And yet, Dumb and Dumber has got to have something in its favor. It wouldn’t be a classic otherwise.
Not everyone enjoys a dark comedy, but those one star reviews are a perfect example of All or Nothing Thinking. Either something is fantastic, or it sucks. Either we’re perfect, or awful.
It’s easy to identify this thinking pattern as bullshit, but hard to stop thinking this way. So how do we start?
Retraining our brains takes practice and repetition. Since watching TV and movies is easy, it makes for a good exercise. Work your way through a show that’s not the greatest, but also far from the worst. And focus on the good while disregarding the bad.
I just finished watching every episode of Golden Girls, which is an excellent show with no regard for continuity or consistency. It manages to be about the love of chosen family while also showing these women being incredibly mean to each other. With 7 seasons of 22+ episodes each, it’ll give you plenty of chances to embrace the show’s imperfections.
If that’s not your thing, maybe you can work your way through the cinematic oeuvre of Jim Carrey or Adam Sandler. There’s a lot of great stuff to watch, but with the pandemic you may have worked through all the really good stuff, so there may be a point to checking out “lesser” shows that you’ve skipped.
Leave your suggestions of imperfect yet enjoyable entertainment in the comments.
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