The Movie That Made Me Walk Out in Record Time
Is a film truly worthy of criticism if you haven't finished the film?
When it comes to movies, I consider myself to be a very patient person. I have to be, this is what I do for my job. I’ve sat through some hot garbage in my time and made it to the end, so it takes a truly abysmal opening to have me walk out in the first 15 minutes. I’ve never walked out of a movie before (although I’ve come close), and maybe I was too quick to judge but I don’t think I’ve ever been ground down as quickly as the opening of Babes.
Credit: Neon (2024)
Contrary to popular assumptions, I don’t go into movies if I think I’m going to hate them and they’re smaller releases. It’s the reason why I haven’t seen absolutely every release of the year. I usually find enjoyment in comedies, especially those centring around women. Did I think this would be the best movie in the world? No, but I’d seen some decent reviews and nothing came out last week in the UK (minus Harold and the Purple Crayon) so I gave it a go! I was excited to see something in cinemas for the first time in over a week, and I left never wanting to visit again.
So what was so bad that had me leaving before the first act was even over? Admittedly, I was not the target audience for this film, I’m a 19-year-old woman from Northern England. The kind of humour and writing style in this film is not my thing. I’ve heard a lot of Broad City comparisons, which I’ve also never seen. If one good thing comes from this, I’m happy to see others find enjoyment in something I couldn’t, and I hope for this film’s sake that I’m the problem.
I found the characters to be two of the most insufferable people ever put on screen. You can call me a square all you want, but some kind of retail worker sleeper agent is awoken in me whenever I see characters being a menace to public service workers. In the first five minutes the worst of the two shouts at a poor minimum-wage employee just trying to get through his day because he doesn’t care for their Thanksgiving cinema trip tradition. I think the film was trying to be funny. It just made me feel annoyed by the character’s actions when instead I’m supposed to be laughing with them. These two characters feel like they’re written by people who think they’re better than everybody else, the writer (who also played one of the two leads) thinks everybody will be laughing along but as an audience member, I was just getting annoyed by her actions.
Credit: Neon (2024)
Watching this movie’s opening scenes felt like I was back in school and those people were doing their presentation and just kept laughing with each other the whole time, but nobody found them funny. Instead, everybody just found them annoying. It just kept going. I’d tried my best to give it as much of a chance as possible, but I just kept getting more annoyed as it went on. I thought the dialogue was terrible and the delivery of those lines, even worse. Not to mention the fact that the movie is shot like an SNL sketch.
To answer the question “Is a movie truly worthy of criticism if you haven’t watched the whole thing”, I would say yes. If a movie is so bad that I can’t finish it, I think it’s worthy of being criticised. It speaks to the quality of the film if I cannot find anything to convince me to stay for the next 80 minutes. On the opposite side of the argument, you could say that it might get better, which it might! However, I don’t see why I should waste my time continuing to try something that doesn’t work for me. Maybe, in the future, I might give this another shot and love it! I could’ve been caught on an off-day, you never know! Go and see Babes and form your own opinion.
My Rating: ✨
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