Or, how I learned to stop being pissed at Netflix

ILLUSTRATION by JULIO SALGADO

March of the Penguins was one of the first movies I ordered off of Netflix. I ordered it not because I actually wanted to see it but because I am a weak man and could not fight the demands of friends and media that I allow my heart to be warmed and spirit to be soared. So I queued March and, a day later, it came. When I picked up the envelope there was a rattling noise that I should have taken as an omen, but my anticipation curbed any leeriness. Sure enough, the DVD was broken in half. I told Netflix and sent it back.

Another couple days passed and a new March came, this time in one piece but with an enormous, gaping crack, so I returned it. The next copy that came was crack-free but scratched. So scratched it looked like it had been sitting on the floor of somebody’s car, or used in a game of Frisbee golf. Hoping my roommate’s poor DVD player could see beyond the disc’s flaws and somehow manage to throw together a comprehensible movie, I put it in and pressed play. Instead of a movie, all I saw was the passive blue DVD player startup screen and heard this strange foreign groan coming from somewhere inside the player. It would take two more exchanges before I could watch the movie in full.

Hated it!

I Googled “broken Netflix DVD” and discovered that I wasn’t alone. Dozens of websites and blogs complained of multiple damaged, scratched or shattered Netflix discs. It was in that tomb of unanswered grievances I noticed a pattern: almost all of them were popular films or TV series. It was then that I decided to stop renting good movies. I took all classics, blockbusters, critically acclaimed indie and foreign films out of my queue and replaced them entirely with garbage.

Since then, every DVD I’ve received from Netflix has been in perfect playable condition. With demand so low on such movies as Dangerous Minds, Daylight and Cellular, there was less opportunity for another Netflix user to use and return a DVD he had allowed his dog to chew on. Which is another comfort bad movies offer me: I know, more or less, exactly where they’ve been—waiting in a sterile Netflix distribution center, not a stranger’s house.

Another, unexpected plus: I actually like these movies. A lot. Have you ever seen Overboard? Goldie Hawn plays a rich, snobby yacht-brat unhappy with her life until she falls off her boat, suffers amnesia and is taken into the arms of her former archenemy, a grumpy carpenter/widower played by Kurt Russell. In the end she falls in love with Kurt despite the fact that he exploited her amnesia so he could use her. As a slave.

So I will say it again, I love renting bad movies. Not in the “oh it’s so hilariously bad it’s good” kind of way, either. Loving a movie simply because it’s bad is stupid; either you like it or you don’t. In fact, I’m not going to call them bad movies, because they aren’t. I saw John Waters speak once and he said that there was no such thing as a bad movie, you can always find something good in any film. Yeah, dammit, these movies are good.

The best by far has been Mysterious Island, a 2005 TV movie, based on the Jules Verne novel, starring Patrick Stewart, Kyle MacLachlan (Coop!) and Omar Gooding (younger brother to Cuba). MacLachlan, Gooding and company end up on a balloon that crash lands on a strange island somewhere in the South Pacific. Soon they realize that all of the fauna on the island is man-eating and the only safety they can find is with Patrick Stewart, who lives on the island and plays Captain Nemo, of all people.

I won’t go into details but the best part of the movie is the strange and muddled semi-happy ending that is at least as ambiguous as Lost in Translation but nowhere near as boring. Also, had I rented Lost in Translation I would have had to wait a week to get an unscratched copy. Mysterious Island was pristine.

That being said, I don’t know why I’m writing this article: if you use Netflix I urge you to either totally disregard what I’ve written or cancel your membership immediately and switch to Blockbuster or something. Don’t do as I do because you’ll probably maim the copy of Armageddon that’s in my queue.

Tags: bad movies, lost in translation, mysterious island, netflix, patrick stewart