Movies are an evolving art form developing through the ever-changing lenses of growing generations and often historically framed by the decade and time they are filmed in. For viewers, watching movies can sometimes be like experiencing a showcase of art all at once as music, acting, animation and storytelling are just the various tools films can utilize to get across a particular message or idea. To me, this makes film a very powerful medium. It can be such a powerful way to communicate ideas to each other as human beings, so I become disappointed when I see how movies can be misused or wasted as an art form specifically in the form of “passable movies.”
Let me be clear. I understand that with any art form, there is going to be unavoidable bad qualities in the product. Yes, I know there are just straight up bad movies, which may be due to bad acting, poor pacing, lack of character development or just overall awful quality. I also realize that different films serve to fulfill different functions, but sometimes we just want a film that is purely entertaining. Though, I will say even though some movies serve to make us laugh or scare us, all good movies have one underlying component. They use these functions to serve the overall purpose of teaching us something about ourselves as human beings. Therefore, as a movie lover, I know bad movies are inevitable but passable movies frustrate me.
Simply put, a passable movie is one that falls in the middle of good and bad quality. A three-out-of-five-stars kind of film. It’s usually the kind of movie you walk out of kind of shrugging your shoulders acceptingly saying “Well, that was pretty good, but I dunno if I want to see it again.”
Passable movies are more disappointing to me than bad ones because they often manipulate the audience into wasting our time watching a movie and leaving with nothing in return. It’s frustrating witnessing an art form being wasted, not just by wasting my own time and money, but in watching something that had the potential to be powerful or life-changing and being reduced down to just being “passable.” What makes it passable is that it usually does have a relatable message or idea about life that’s just real enough that we can relate, but as viewers, we’ve usually seen this idea before. Sure, we were entertained for a little while, but have I as a viewer really learned anything new about myself, my culture or the world?
To understand a passable movie better, we have to understand what makes a movie better than “pretty good.” In a video done by Nerdwriter1 on YouTube discussing what he calls the “Epidemic of Passable Movies” he defines good storytelling, the fuel of all films, saying “great stories are always the ones that observe people truthfully, the ones that capture human experience with nuance and insights. The best stories make such acute observations about ourselves that we didn’t even know.” In my own life, I love how movies can teach me things about myself, society or the world around me. I love how movies have the ability to move me emotionally or even get me to change my way of thinking about life.
After watching a movie, I want to sit down and wonder, “What did I take away? Did I laugh harder than expected? Did I catch myself crying? Perhaps, how did this movie change the way I view the world around me or even myself?”