My mom loves these made for TV movies. I'm cynical and picky, but I understand the audience these are made for and the gap they fill. Sometimes people just enjoy a simple, turn off your brain and feel good movie. There's little to no deviation from a cookie cutter plot. You can usually predict the end of the movie after the first 10 minutes. The budget is rarely there, the acting is often over the top or not enough. They often bring in a semi famous celebrity for a cameo token few lines and hype that up.
But this is all standard fare and low hanging fruit that anyone can complain about. It's not worth it because these movies don't masquerade as anything more than just what they are.
This one however caught my attention as particularly bad. I started paying attention when the elderly actor randomly caught on fire at the grill, and everyone just seemed to gloss over it like nothing had really happened.
In a following scene, a coffee shop worker uses the phone book to stalk the female lead and calls her up to an impromptu birthday party. This seemed creepy.
Those scenes aside the movie continued its predictable formula, but now had caught my attention for a different reason. The camerawork is atrocious. Scenes jump from person to person way more frequently than necessary - they are almost shot in a style you'd expect from an action movie. On top of that, rather than let the scene act out in front of us, the camera constantly pans with the most active person. During the still shots, if you notice the edges of the frame they are constantly swimming around. It actually started to make me feel nauseated - once you see it, it's all you can see. It's almost as if it were filmed without a tripod or any kind of stabilization? There's a lot of scenes that slightly zoom in or out without much need too. It's almost like someone knew how to run the camera in a practical sense but had zero training in how to make the finished work look good.
I'm not picky about low budget films, and again, I'm not even rating this based on the bland cookie cutter plot. I could sit here all day picking these movies apart and what would the purpose be? This one however stood out as the worst of the ones I've seen over the years of taking care of my mom for this completely different reason.
It almost made me wonder if the settings of the TV were incorrect. Despite several years and thousands of hours of this TV being on, I fiddled with the settings and checked other channels. I've never noticed this before with another show, and unless it starts happening all the time I think I'm safe assuming it was the terrible job done making this movie.
But this is all standard fare and low hanging fruit that anyone can complain about. It's not worth it because these movies don't masquerade as anything more than just what they are.
This one however caught my attention as particularly bad. I started paying attention when the elderly actor randomly caught on fire at the grill, and everyone just seemed to gloss over it like nothing had really happened.
In a following scene, a coffee shop worker uses the phone book to stalk the female lead and calls her up to an impromptu birthday party. This seemed creepy.
Those scenes aside the movie continued its predictable formula, but now had caught my attention for a different reason. The camerawork is atrocious. Scenes jump from person to person way more frequently than necessary - they are almost shot in a style you'd expect from an action movie. On top of that, rather than let the scene act out in front of us, the camera constantly pans with the most active person. During the still shots, if you notice the edges of the frame they are constantly swimming around. It actually started to make me feel nauseated - once you see it, it's all you can see. It's almost as if it were filmed without a tripod or any kind of stabilization? There's a lot of scenes that slightly zoom in or out without much need too. It's almost like someone knew how to run the camera in a practical sense but had zero training in how to make the finished work look good.
I'm not picky about low budget films, and again, I'm not even rating this based on the bland cookie cutter plot. I could sit here all day picking these movies apart and what would the purpose be? This one however stood out as the worst of the ones I've seen over the years of taking care of my mom for this completely different reason.
It almost made me wonder if the settings of the TV were incorrect. Despite several years and thousands of hours of this TV being on, I fiddled with the settings and checked other channels. I've never noticed this before with another show, and unless it starts happening all the time I think I'm safe assuming it was the terrible job done making this movie.