Terry Gilliam
2018
133 minutes
This is one of those "troubled production" films that you've heard about that was in production hell for years for various reasons before finally getting made, which is often a sign to stay well away from the poor, cursed movie. It stars the guy who played Darth Snape in the new Star Wars films and it was directed by Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame. You're certainly willing to give a Terry Gilliam film a try, since Brazil is a classic and Time Bandits was a wild ride.
As with Star Trek, you have very mixed feelings about Monty Python, particularly Monty Python and the Holy Grail. You enjoyed the MP movies and TV shows when you were younger, but engineering school slowly drained this enthusiasm from your body as you were surrounded by people who enjoyed these in a much different and more intense way than you did.
Nerd culture sometimes has a way of turning people into obsessives, and for four years you were surrounded by people who made it a significant part of their socialization to memorize long snatches of dialogue from the shows and that particular film and joylessly chant the lines at each other at any opportunity. They even sold books (Monty Python's Flying Circus - Just the Words) to facilitate this for people who weren't quite able to make out their wacky accents. Speaking of which, when these dialogue snippets were mechanically chanted by Monty Python enjoyers, they would usually employ horrifically poor British accents to go along with their performances.
You would cringe when you sensed any of this nonsense was coming. You would hesitate before asking one of your classmates the mass of something in a lab setting for fear of hearing the inevitable proof that they had rote-memorized the entire speech about laden and unladen swallows. You didn't dare share any of your secret enthusiasm of this intellectual property with your fellow students for fear of getting joyless proof of their memorization skills inflicted upon you, with an expectation that you were supposed to acknowledge this shibboleth and revel in your shared interests and knowledge.
In retrospect, you found this especially frustrating (considering your avoidance of the original run of Star Trek and its spawn) upon later finding out that these nerds were actually capable of being moved by a thoughtful piece of fiction if it happened to involve their favorite space bros.
You missed out on years of bonding and having intelligent discussions about Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra because of your revulsion of being subjected to a firehose of contextless raw data about Star Trek minutiae. And meanwhile one of the beloved treasures of humor from your youth was all but ruined by otherwise intelligent people who had reduced its beautiful absurdism to HAW HAW BRITISH MAN MAKE FUNNY MOUTH NOISES as if it were Jeff Foxworthy hooting one of catchphrases into a microphone in front of a crowd at Branson.
Time to choose something different: