In a show of absolute vulnerability and bravery, I recently allowed my close friends to watch my favorite movie from my teen years, About Time. In my excitement to share this part of myself with them, however, I forgot to preface that this film came out in a different era: 2014. Things were different in 2014! And watching the film at that time blinded me to aspects that might seem a bit strange when viewed through a modern lens. Imagine my surprise, then, when my friends spent the entire two-hour run-time pointing out all the ways my favorite movie is problematic.
What the hell? We were all supposed to just accept those things and move on without addressing them!
Within the first 20 minutes, things were already dicey. As the main characters explained the central premise of the film – that all the men in this one family can travel through time – the peanut gallery made their anger known.
“All the men in the family, for no reason at all?” my friend Madison chimed in. “Sure, guess that means we’re allowed to ground the entire film in the male perspective. Awesome.”
With my amazing ear for sarcasm, I sensed she might not mean this genuinely. Things only got worse when it became clear the main character would be regularly traveling back in time to try to get girls to make out with him.
“If someone doesn’t like him and he uses manipulation of time to lie to her and pretend to be the type of person she might like, how is that not…kind of fucked up?” my other friend Trevor added, as if he wasn’t a bit of a dud himself. “This just feels really messed up.”
I couldn’t believe my friends had turned on my perfect movie like this. Didn’t they know it meant a lot to me when I was 19? And sure, perhaps it informed my worldview in a few fucked up ways, but that’s for other people to know and me to find out via therapy!
About an hour in, I decided to leave my friends alone with the movie, lest their negative opinions of it affect me. Instead, I went to watch my other favorite movie – Annie Hall – away from prying, judgmental eyes.
