The guilty secret weekender

So, the film gang ushered in September with the guilty secret weekender. The objective? For each of the six-strong gang to present their cinematic guilty secret – that film you love that you know you just shouldn’t.
Having decided on a running order, each film was scored for its quality and, more importantly, for its guilt by the gang.

First off was our host, Emsy with Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, the Kevin Costner romp that was the springboard for that Bryan Adams song. Several of the gang were seeing this for the first time – and were genuinely surprised by the cameo appearance in the film’s epilogue. It’s easy to knock the film (the spectacularly ropey accents from the Americans for starters), but Kevin Reynolds directs with verve, and Alan Rickman mercilessly chews the scenery. Indeed, compare it with this year’s Ridley Scott/Russell Crowe effort and there’s no doubt that the 1991 offering is, by some distance, the better film.
Quality score: 40/50 (everyone gave it an eight)
Guilt: 32/50 (the highest score was a seven, while the lowest was a five)

Next up was Rodling’s choice: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. I hadn’t seen this Sergio Leone piece for about 20 years, so it was a wonderful surprise to enjoy it again. It is a minor masterpiece: the combination of casting, story, cinematography, score and direction is a compelling concoction.
Quality score: 43/50
Guilt score: 14/50 (the highest was a five from Emsy, while I awarded it the lowest score: a zero)

Dunkini took us to the halfway point with 80s hit, Big. While it comes from a cheesy genre and its fashions show their age now, the film is a popular classic, and aligns firmly with Dunkini’s love of the Capra-esque. Tom Hanks delivers one of his top five performances as the boy inside a man’s body, ably abetted by a note-perfect script and supporting cast. The relationship between Hanks and his grown-up girlfriend drew gasps of horror (a grown woman seducing a 13-year old boy), but I remain in love with this film.
Quality score: 40/50 (sevens and eights from everybody, except me: I gave it a 10)
Guilt score: 29/50 (mostly eights, while I gave it a big, fat zero)

Jonny took us to midnight with George Hamilton’s late 70s, er, classic, Love At First Bite. Despite the fact that he hadn’t seen it for 20 years, Jonny remembered every line of this Airplane-style comedy in which Dracula and his ever-faithful servant Renfield are forced to decamp to New York on the hunt for the new love of the count’s life. The film is by no means a topline production, with perhaps the biggest laugh generated by the clearly visible wire from which Drac’s bat-form was dangling. The film did not perform well with the judges…
Quality score: 13/50
Guilt score: 48/50 (only two of the gang failed to award tens)

The Classy One kicked off Sunday with 80s people’s favourite, The Karate Kid. The simplicity of the film, with its Rocky-esque overtones, makes it easy to dismiss – but that sheer lack of guile is its secret weapon. The fashions have dated horribly, Ralph Maccio looks terribly young (especially alongside the, er, fully-developed Elisabeth Shue – who was nevertheless younger than Maccio), but it’s a classic tale told with honesty. The ‘villains’ are a bit pantomime, although their violence is anything but, ensuring there’s no doubt who to cheer for come the (somewhat abrupt) finale.
Quality score: 32/50 (all sixes and sevens)
Guilt score: 31/50 (nothing lower than a five; nothing higher than a seven)

And finally, it fell to this blogger to round off the weekend with Clueless… I saw it for the first time five or so years ago on TV and thoroughly enjoyed it. As a hardcore Buffy The Vampire Slayer fanatic, it’s hard to not to view Clueless as one of the paths (along with the X-Men) that led Joss Whedon to his finest creation. Alicia Silverstone is the nominal star in this loosely disguised adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, but it’s the supporting cast that do it for me, especially Dan Hedaya as her tough but doting father. The film breezes past easily – almost too fast in fact: I would have made more screentime out of the will they/won’t they conclusion. And, is if to highlight a change in movie-making style, hardly any part of the film is without soundtrack – unlike Karate Kid, 10 years its senior, which uses music sparingly.
Quality score: 29/50 (varying from a four to a seven)
Guilt score: 45/50 (a ten, plus eights and nines)

Thus, the quality league table looks like this:
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – 43
Big – 40
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves – 40
The Karate Kid – 32
Clueless – 29
Love At First Bite – 13

The guilt league table looks like this:
Love At First Bite – 48
Clueless – 45
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves – 32
The Karate Kid – 31
Big – 29
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – 14

In total, the six films scored 217 out of 300 for quality, and 199 for guilt. However, if you factor out The Good…, those figures become 164 and 185 respectively, with guilt thus outweighing quality as we expected before the first opening credits rolled.

Here are everyone’s total scores (total scores minus The Good… are in brackets; Rodling’s score is unaffected as we were not allowed to vote for our own films):
Emsy: quality – 28 (21); guilt – 39 (34)
Rodling: quality – 32 (32); guilt – 35 (35)
Dunkini: quality – 33 (24); guilt – 37 (34)
Jonny: quality – 35 (26); guilt – 28 (26)
The Classy One: quality – 34 (25); guilt – 35 (31)
Me: quality – 37 (28); guilt – 22 (22)

So, probably not a surprise that I gave the highest quality score and the lowest guilt score!