Sturgeon’s Law states that 90% of everything is crap. While there’s no scientific proof, I have enough anecdotal evidence to confirm this — especially from anyone whose Bumble bio says, “I watch movies in my free time.”
We’ve all suffered through a bad movie. If it was in college with friends, it was a bonding exercise where you could steal validation by roasting bad actors. But as an adult, when you’ve sacrificed sleep plus GST for a film, the movie owes you a good time. Because at this point, you have no other source of serotonin in life.
Yesterday, a friend asked, “Want to watch a movie?” I said yes — without checking the trailer or IMDb rating. Because it’s a new year, and reckless decision-making fits my ‘New Year, New Me’ theme.
We booked tickets on BookMyShow, which first charged us a convenience fee (convenient only for them). Before we could complain, they made us donate Rs 1 to ‘make a child smile’. It did feel good to help BookMyShow fulfill their government-mandated CSR programme.
Only after getting the ticket did I realise — it was a nepo-kid movie. But hating on star kids is outdated. Now we empathise with them because some of them take Rapido and also struggle to explain their location to the driver just like us.
So, I flushed my judgmental 2018 jokes and entered the theatre with a clean slate. The national anthem played, and I transformed into an ideal citizen, excited for three hours of entertainment.
Five minutes in, I realised the only thing that changed since 2018 is the colour of my beard.
The movie was so bad that even the music director seemed to have lost faith in the actor:
Extra violins when he was sad.
100 extra drums when he was angry.
A laugh track of a million people forcing us to believe it was a comedy.
At this point, I checked IMDb. It had an 8.5 rating.
I immediately deleted IMDb, educated myself that it’s owned by Amazon, and unfollowed Jeff Bezos. Since the movie was moving at a snail’s speed, I had enough time to discover that Bezos had been replaced by Andy Jassy.
With my phone already open, I checked some reels on silent mode, solved my Wordle puzzle, and looked up — only to see that the hero was still delivering the same dialogue.
Since hating nepo kids was out of fashion, I decided this was just karma punishing me for that one terrible comedy show I did last week. But my friend was innocent in all this, so I asked if we should leave.
He said, “Yeah, it sucks... but tickets were expensive. So sit and suffer.”
After another 90 seconds of suffering, I checked on him — only to find him fast asleep. He later told me the AC at his house was under repair. Genius.
At that point, I decided to meditate and later came up with my own idea for a movie. Maybe this was one of those terrible movies that inspire people to become filmmakers — who then go on to make more terrible movies and add to the 90% of crap movies.
As I walked out, I held on to one single positive thought: somewhere, a kid smiled because of my Rs 1 donation. I used that little amount of serotonin to put myself to sleep.
Sandesh Johnny
@johnnykasandesh
(This comedian is here to tell funny stories about Hyderabad)
(The writer’s views are his own)