This summer has seen its share of fizzles and outright flops, with films like "Green Lantern," "Cowboys & Aliens," and "Conan the Barbarian" failing to strike a chord with audiences. But it takes a special kind of movie to make you so bored, irritated or offended that you just can't stand watching it anymore.
As the owner of the Heights Theater in Minneapolis, Tom Letness has seen his share of walkouts. "They don't like it, they're bored, they're offended. Those are the big three." Letness thinks that most bad experiences could be avoided if moviegoers did a little due diligence beforehand.
"I'd say the bulk of the people know what they're getting into, but there's a number of people that just don't," he says. "It surprises me sometimes that people come into a film cold, and know nothing about it. I remember I showed [2008 Holocaust drama] 'The Reader,' and there was a guy who walked out mainly because he was offended by the male frontal nudity. He said, 'That's unacceptable.' I was just like, 'Well, whatever, I guess you've never looked in a mirror then.'"
We asked a variety of movie goers to tell us about the films so bad that they just couldn't stay till the end.
Gnome place like 'Amelie'
Quirky French romantic comedy "Amelie" couldn't win the heart of Amy Roark, a writer in Minneapolis. "I know that doesn't make me popular among my lady friends, but it was so trite!" Roark says. "I understood that this was a love story about two quirky people who had found each other. I got that. But as soon as we got to the part where they're taking garden gnomes everywhere, I just couldn't stomach it."
'Penguins' was for the birds
"I marched out of 'March of the Penguins' before it was over," says writer Brian Beatty, who thought the Antarctic documentary was particularly dopey. "I've watched talking cartoon characters that weren't as anthropomorphized as much as those poor birds. I wish one of the penguins would've gone berserk, biting a cameraman in [a sensitive part of the anatomy]."
'Slumdog Moron'?
"Slumdog Millionaire" may have won the best picture Oscar in 2009, but it wasn't a favorite for New York journalist Michaelangelo Matos. "The lead character's just such a moron, I couldn't stand it," he said. "After a while I started to get irritated by everything he did. I was like, 'I'm not going to care about anything that happens from here on out."
Twin birds for 'Twin Peaks'
Though TV series "Twin Peaks" was a cult hit, the 1992 movie sequel "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me" was a lot harder for fans to swallow. "I watched a guy get up, gather up his things, walk up the aisle with his girlfriend, and right before they walked out of the theater he turned around and flipped off the screen with both hands," says Dan Grothe, an architect. "Of course, he just said what we were all thinking."
Yabba-dabba-yuck
For college administrator Chuck Tomlinson, walking out of the 1994 bomb "The Flintstones" was a decision that the universe made for him. "It was packed, and hot, and not fun," he said. "And there was John Goodman with the fake five-o'clock shadow and the Fred costume, and I thought, 'we've made a horrible mistake.' But what's embarrassing is, we didn't leave. I had this sort of ethic of 'we've paid for this stinker and I'm going to sit through it.' We made it about 20 minutes in, and we were on the verge of leaving. Suddenly, boom! The place goes black. ... Finally they came out and said, 'It's not just the theater. Somebody's car took out a pole someplace and the power's out for the whole mall.' We're like, 'Hooray!' Fate played a hand, and saved us from seeing 'The Flintstones.'"
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