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On more than one occasion I’ve been in a conversation about movies and a person will ask, “Hey, what is the worst movie ever made?” Immediately I wonder, how does he mean exactly? Is he talking about a movie that’s so poorly made that it’s not even entertaining in any way? That the only people who would give it any merit are perhaps a few of the filmmakers who gave birth to it? Or is he talking about something in the laughably bad or cringe-worthy variety. Either in the “so bad it’s good” category, where the badness is laugh-out loud funny, or the bad car accident type. You want to look away and just drive on...but there’s something about a movie like Batman and Robin that just draws you in, to gaze upon the horrendous spectacle of it all. What I’m getting at is that bad is a subjective judgement, especially in an entertainment medium as diverse as movies.
It is difficult to talk about the ways that bad is subjective without first discussing how noticing the good qualities in film also varies from person to person. The more movies a person sees, the more they are able to recognize the value that achievements in different criteria give a film. I watch a lot of movies, and I’ll admit that even I miss things from time to time, both bad and good, that would figure into my evaluation of a film. It is as one develops better taste that they are able to notice these things, and use them to be able to make good arguments supporting their opinion.
