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What On Earth is My Favorite Movie?

Feel free to make suggestions that might jog my memory (or win me over) - better yet turn the disjointed mess that is the Extended Entry into something vaguely resembling structure and order!

On at least one social network my favorite movie is listed as Major League because that's what popped into my head.

Nearly every plausible choice that comes to mind leaves me feeling a bit let-down: "That's THE #1 MOVIE on your all-time favorites??!" And then I start wondering what total gems I just couldn't think of at the time.

For many years I claimed that my favorite movie was The Gods Must Be Crazy. That's got two opposite problems at once: It was a very pretentious claim to make, AND YET when I re-watched the movie a couple years ago I was bitterly disappointed. Maybe the slapstick parts are a lot funnier to a precocious 10-year-old.

Given my genre tastes my "favorite movie" is more likely to be a comedy than anything else. There's also a fighting chance it would be a baseball movie. Major League is the best baseball comedy out there (Bull Durham is good, but have I ever told you how overrated it is? - I've watched it a few times yet always felt a bit disappointed by the difference between remembered quality and actual quality).

Some random possibilities that occur to me:
Better Off Dead? Grosse Point Blank? Both are surely in my top 10.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off? This just feels like the sort of movie one outgrows, and honestly I'd rank Major League above it.

Midnight Madness? I really need to watch soon to see how well it's held up over time.

Is it one of the Pixar blockbusters? But how does one rank those? Monsters, Inc. and The Incredibles would both contend (I think Toy Story got massively overplayed). Finding Nemo was also run into the ground but might be so good that it withstands the hype. When I finally get a chance to see WALL*E will I ask "where have you been all my life?"

My favorite Kevin Smith movie is Dogma, for what it's worth (I'm weird that way).

My favorite Will Ferrell movie is Stranger Than Fiction. (Sort of along those lines: I loved Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, hated Fight Club, loved both of the M. Night Shyamalan movies I've seen.)

I wonder how well the Airplane! franchise has aged. (Surprisingly I've never seen any of the "[Adjective] Movie" hybrid spoofs.)

Romantic comedies with Adam Sandler are all far better than they have any business being (sort of the opposite of romantic comedies with Tom Hanks).

I love Christopher Guest across the board but it's impossible to privilege any one mockumentary over another, except maybe Spinal Tap as the ur-example.

Steve Martin's best movies (in my opinion) were HouseSitter and My Blue Heaven, both of which have quite a lower profile than (say) Roxanne or Father of the Bride.

Is Bill Murray's best movie really Lost in Translation? (Or for that matter The Royal Tenenbaums?) I wonder how Meatballs has held up over time. If it hasn't then my favorite 20th century Bill Murray movie might be Groundhog Day, which really really doesn't feel like anybody's all-time #1. (I should love Caddyshack but emphatically... it's not that I dislike it, but that Caddyshack is arguably THE MOST OVERRATED movie of all-time.)

So I already mentioned loving Eternal Sunshine, and the same goes for Bruce Almighty. The Ace Ventura movies are underrated (but still nothing special); I've still never seen Dumb & Dumber because I never forgave the Farrelly brothers for There's Something About Mary (which might give Caddyshack a run for its "Most Overrated" money!).

Oh hey, I just remembered One Night At McCool's! I inordinately enjoyed that movie! But it faded so far into my memory that for a split second I mistakenly thought the title was Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrells. (Sort of but not really along those lines: Julia rented Memento for me while under the mistaken impression that "Memento" was the name of the movie that turned out to be "Unbreakable." But once I finally completely solved Memento it was less than met the eye.)

High Fidelity won't come close to my #1 but I wonder where it ranks. Little Miss Sunshine of all movies might have a fighting chance.

Posted by Matt Bruce at September 12, 2008 03:44 PM