How Long Does it Take You to Decide if a Film is BAD?

Same. My mind will usually have been made up by the halfway point and it would have to take something really good to change it.

Right around the time Arnold Schwarzenegger asks "What killed the dinosaurs ?" and then shoots Batman with the freeze ray only to answer his own question.

"THE ICE AGE !"



That's when I suspected it might be bad.

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Major POS movies begin to smell within 5 minutes or so - the kind of stuff anyone can spot. But if it's not drop-dead obvious, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt. And I consider that a weakness. My wife can spot a stinker within 10-15 minutes, but I'll hang in there, hoping beyond hope, that the action will settle down and become watchable. I usually have to admit I'm wrong about the 30-minute mark.

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Scarecrow: I haven't got a brain ... only straw. Dorothy: How can you talk if you haven't got a brain? Scarecrow: I don't know. But some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they? Dorothy: Yes, I guess you're right.

I went for the whole movie but it was a toss up between that and 10 minutes. I think there are obviously poor movies that after 10 minutes you just know you're not going to like. They're easy to spot and aren't really a big problem. I think I'd actually have a hard time coming up with many of these movies not because I haven't seen a lot of them, but because I've forgotten them so easily.

I think I put a lot of emphasis on the ending of the movie, and to decide if I liked it, it needs to have given me a good feeling of catharsis. It doesn't even have to be that the end is a big Deus Ex Machina, but just that it doesn't tie up the movie in a satisfying way really detracts from the rest. I think Cabin in the Woods in a good example. I was quite into it, but the ending didn't match the suspense of the movie. The guys behind the camera were killed off far to easily and it was all just wrapped up in a nice little bow. I didn't think it was well thought out enough and soured my opinion of the rest of the movie.

Sometimes I think you can tell with the trailers, in the case of comedies or rom-coms.

For me, it depends on the movie. For example, I recently watched The taking of Pelham 123 and disliked it with all the "snazzy" direction that Tony Scott put in the first 10-15 minutes of the film. All the ludicrous slow motion and terrible music choice, he was trying too hard to make it cool. Add to that a poor story and sub par acting from John Travolta. I still watched it till the end but didn't enjoy it at all.

Other times, when a movie is truly terrible, I stop watching it after about 30 minutes or so. Examples include Legally Blonde, Marley and Me etc.

Usually within the first 30 minutes. I cant see wasting my time on something I wont like. I started to watch some stupid turkey the other night called Your Highness. After 5 minutes into it I knew it would go into my DVD pile for Xmas tree ornaments. Complete crap.

really depends on the movie and how it is positioned. each has their own taste as to what is bad. For me, I like some movies that most would consider bad, but for the vast majority I can usually tell about 1/4 into the movie.

I like to wait until the first third is done. If we're not getting anywhere by then, it doesn't seem worth watching. There are some rare exceptions, but generally 40 minutes is plenty to make that determination.

Exactly!!! With in the first 30 mins. of me watching if I grab my laptop and start surfing this movie is probably ******.

If I'm either the one choosing the movie or at least part of choosing it, then it's extremely rare for me to not like a movie so I'll reserve judgment until I've finished it.

But if someone else is choosing the movie then it usually takes from 10 to 30 minutes to figure out if I'll like it or not but I'll almost always tough it out.

Depends on the film. Sometimes, you don't need more than a trailer or the first couple of minutes to tell a film is generally "bad." I try not to rate films on Criticker if I haven't finished them, though.

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~ I am tired of ze same old faces! Ze same old things!

10 minutes, you can get the impression of the rest of the dialogue, acting and story within 10 minutes.

Sometimes it's at the end, because some films end their films appallingly and completely break the rest of the film.

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-J. Hussain

I was also thinking of this last night when I watch The Extra Man. I can usually tell if I'll really like a movie within the first 10 minutes, but the point I declare it a bad movie is when I don't even care to watch the rest of the movie, usually anywhere between 20-60 minutes into the film. For the films I don't like immediately, about 20 minutes in I wonder if it's going to be this way the whole way through, then in another 10 or 20 minutes I'll wonder if I should even continue watching, then, usually, in another 10 or 20 minutes I'll turn it off because it hasn't improved. And that's giving the time reference some leeway.

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"so i turned away, because i didn't want to see. just like everybody else."

"If dreams are like movies then memories are films about ghosts"

I usually get a pretty feeling 10-20 minutes in, but I save my final judgement until after the movie is over so I can point out what went wrong in full.

It totally depends on the movie (so I'll forego the poll).

In the last two nights I watched one movie (Happy Gilmore) that I cut off after 15 minutes because I felt that completing the film would be an exercise in masochism; and another (Children of Men) that I watched all the way through because the first half was strong - but I ended up highly disappointed.

Luckily, I watched a third (The Hours) that started off extremely strong and maintained that momentum for the duration of the movie.

The exact amount of minutes before Jennifer Lopez appears

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Under-the-radar Movie Awesomeness.
http://earlsmoviepicks.blogspot.com/

Out of Sight is a pretty good movie, though.

Did you finish watching it? I agree its not a good movie, but it does get better after the first 10 minutes. Still not good, but not as horrible as it seems. That was one I gave a shot and continued to watch, and I ended up being able to finish it. For me, I had to get used to the bad accents and corny storyline.

I used to know a movie was bad when Roger Ebert told me it was bad. Just kidding. I'll give a movie about an hour and if I don't like it, I have no qualms about shutting it off.