Bad Movies You Got To Love

I love my movies. All 400 or 500 of ‘em (well, almost of ‘em). There’s nothing like finding an unknown film in the Two For $5.99 bin, pop it in the DVD player – and enjoy an unexpected little gem: “Kitchen Stories”, “10 Items Or Less”, ”King Of The Corner”, “Off The Map”… Just because they stayed out of the Hollywood marketing machine doesn’t make them any less enjoyable.

Sometimes I slip, though, and pick a movie that friends told me I should watch. Like “Evan Almighty”. Of course it turned out to be a paint-by-numbers theology-lite comedy that didn’t live up to the exclamation-marked hyperboles on the cover. Okay, it gave me one or two brief chuckles, but its most redeeming quality was that it was short.

Still, there is one thing about this movie I really enjoy: it was produced with a Zero Carbon Footprint. After the shoot wrapped, the entire set was recycled. Carbon-offsets were calculated and purchased. Even the DVD was environmentally friendly manufactured, with packaging made out of recycled and bio-degradable materials.

Now this is not the first movie that was produced and distributed this way. Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” was probably the first one, and if you check the end credits for the Cohn Brother’s “No Country For Old Men” you’ll see it says “This movie was produced with a Zero Carbon Footprint”.

“Evan Almighty” moved this practice beyond the “eco geek” label that came with Al Gore, or the “art house” label you’d associate with a Cohn Brothers film. To my knowledge “Evan” is the first big-budget crowd-pleasing blockbuster to adopt this production model.

That’s something to be happy about; it gives hope more movies will follow suit.

I’m now almost grateful for this dud.