The bad stuff can work for you.

If you're planning on watching the movie Match Point don't continue!  This post contains spoilers, lots of them.

Rebecca over at Diary of A Virgin Novelist recently did a post posing the question is life too short to read bad books?  I've been thinking about that quite a bit since reading the post.  I know Stephen King says in On Writing that reading bad books can be more helpful for your writing than good ones.  I'm sorry to all you Stephenie Meyers fans out there, but that bit of advice was the only reason I slogged my way through The Host.  And guess what, I learned a lot.  I even made changes to SEEDS based on what, in my opinion, Stephenie Meyer did wrong in The Host. I think things can also be learned from watching bad movies. 

Case in point: Match Point with Jonathan Rhys Meyers (yummy!) and Scarlett Johansson, two big name actors who I think have actually earned their reknown with their talent. 

Based on the actors and the premise I really thought this was going to be a great film.  It wasn't, for several reasons, which I will now pontificate about here.

In my opinion there was a lot of belaboring the point also known to us writers as beating the reader over the head.  I don't know if it was because the director delighted in seeing two hot young stars groping each other or what but I felt like the viewer was subjected to so many gratuitous sex scenes when one, perhaps two was sufficient to show the audience that these two had incredible sexual chemistry and couldn't get enough of each other. 

Then, there was the problem of motivation.  The director/writer/whomever spent the first half of the movie establishing how much JoRhyMys's (came up with that one all by myself) character Chris wanted ScarJo's character Nola.  After getting the girl and with hardly any indication that money was significant to him at all, Chris turned into a money grubber who came to the conclusion that he had to murder Nola in order to ensure he got to roll in the dough (rather than the hay) for the rest of his life.  What? He spent the majority of the film trying to get Nola into bed and once he had her he up and decided money was more important than her continued existence.  Not buying it!

I also didn't believe that Nola wanted Chris enough.  The scenes where she was trying to get him to leave his wife and marry her instead came across like a petulant, spoiled child who was being denied a toy. I didn't believe for a moment that this man was central to her existence. 

This brings me to the third and I think biggest problem of the entire movie.  I didn't like Nola at all.  She was nutty and whiny and needy.  When Chris killed her, I was like 'meh, good riddance.'  I didn't like Chris much either.  He was a cheating schmuck who put his own comfort above the life of another human being (albeit a nutty, whiny, needy one) and there was nothing, absolutely nothing to redeem him throughout the entire movie. 

I can't say I learned anything new from this, but I did have some very important lessons reiterated:  1)Make your point and move on.  This is where editing comes in.  You don't need three scenes establishing your antagonist is a psycho killer.  You just need one really great one.  2)Motivation is everything.  If you don't show that what your character is trying to obtain is central to their existence or at least that the character is totally convinced it is your readers won't believe it is and the story will fail.  3)Finally and most important give your characters, especially your protagonist and even your antagonist, some quality that makes the reader care about what is happening to them.  If your reader doesn't invest themselves in the characters no way are they going to stick with them through 1 or 2 hours or 200 or 300 some odd pages. 

Roland at Writing in the Crosshairs did this post post about Hollywood's deficiencies.  While I agree there are many in today's movies I challenge you next time you're faced with a bad movie or bad book, keep plugging and see what you can learn and apply to your own writing.