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What movies have you walked out on?

By Ann Althouse

This is a topic that came up in the comments thread here. Rather than add my own contribution to what was ? let's be honest ? a thread hijack, I'm starting a new thread.

For reasons I can no longer recall, I walked out on the 1968 movie "Petulia." Trailer:

The walk-out took place circa 1970, and I just wasn't in the mood for that sort of thing. I can't remember why. Oddly, I stopped walking out on movies, so for many years, this was the only movie I'd ever walked out on. I was giving everything a chance, or maybe I felt like I was wasting money if I didn't consume the whole bad/boring/pointless thing. And I must have averaged a movie a week for the next 30 years.

Then in 1998, I went to see "Antz" ? a computer-animated movie voiced by Woody Allen, Sharon Stone, and others. The giant closeups of the ant faces were literally making me ill ? even angry. I walked out, and I have never viewed another computer-animated movie, even on TV. Channel-surfing, I've occasionally glanced at a few minutes of some highly praised thing like "Finding Nemo" or "Shrek," but it has only reconfirmed my visceral hatred of the medium (which extends to live-actor movies with a lot of CGI).

The other movie I walked out on was Spike Lee's "Summer of Sam." This was 1 year after I walked out on "Antz." I was watching an opening sequence with a couple of ordinary people in a car, and I knew the story was that they were going to be murdered. I didn't want to sit there and watch. I'd paid good money to watch a movie I thought was going to be good and to my taste, but I suddenly felt that I didn't want to be subjected to it, and without wasting any time thinking about it ? I had to decide quickly or I'd see the murder ? I got right up and left.

I kept going to movies in 1999, which turned out to be one of my all-time favorite years: "The Matrix," "Being John Malkovich," "Fight Club," "Man on the Moon," "Election." I thought we were entering a golden age. But the next year seemed entirely different to me. Was CGI leaking into everything, making me sick? That was the year of "Gladiator" and "The Perfect Storm" (which I avoided). I saw some things that were praised that I hated, like "Traffic" ? which I didn't walk out on. After that, I became a lot more selective, and I haven't had to walk out on things. In fact, I force myself to go through with the experience once I've selected a movie. For example, this past year, I saw "Into the Wild" and "Across the Universe." (I'm a sucker, apparently, for titles that begin with a preposition and end with "the [something vast].") With both of them, I had to struggle not to give in to my urge to escape, and there were some good things I would have missed if I'd indulged my ever-present desire for flight.

What have you walked out on? When did you conquer a strong urge to flee and did you regret your submission? Oh, I'm only talking about movies, you know. Unless you want to hijack this thread too.

Full post as published by Althouse on April 11, 2008 (boomark / email).