What is the most boring movie ever made?

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What the **** is a boring movie?


The only time a movie has bored me was when I was a kid and had cotton candy for a brain and didn't think I was having fun unless I was jumping out windows onto my head.


Then when I actually got old enough to engage with what I was watching I realized there is always something interesting happening in film. Always. Even if it's simply wondering why the movie is so ****ing bad, that doesn't make it boring. Movies can be bad in an infinite number of ways. It's fun just figuring out what kind of bad it is.


Sure, it's easy to dismiss lots of films where we can quickly say 'nothing happened', but thats never actually true. Maybe if all we get out of something like My Dinner with Andre is 'nothing but two people talking', we are conveniently overlooking what they are actually talking about. And if we engage with Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, and what they have to talk about in regards to their attitudes on art and comfort and money and spirituality and the meaning of life and religion, there is actually as much happening in that film than any supposed action packed blockbuster film. No, we never leave the restaurant....but does that really matter. We never personally leave the theater when we watch the Avengers, but we seem to think a lot has happened in the case of that kind of movie.


Films are as interesting as you make them. Just like what you do with your day, or the conversations you have, or the things that you look at or think about. And the idea of finding any of these things boring is frankly weird to me.



What the **** is a boring movie?


The only time a movie has bored me was when I was a kid and had cotton candy for a brain and didn't think I was having fun unless I was jumping out windows onto my head.


Then when I actually got old enough to engage with what I was watching I realized there is always something interesting happening in film. Always. Even if it's simply wondering why the movie is so ****ing bad, that doesn't make it boring. Movies can be bad in an infinite number of ways. It's fun just figuring out what kind of bad it is.


Sure, it's easy to dismiss lots of films where we can quickly say 'nothing happened', but thats never actually true. Maybe if all we get out of something like My Dinner with Andre is 'nothing but two people talking', we are conveniently overlooking what they are actually talking about. And if we engage with Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, and what they have to talk about in regards to their attitudes on art and comfort and money and spirituality and the meaning of life and religion, there is actually as much happening in that film than any supposed action packed blockbuster film. No, we never leave the restaurant....but does that really matter. We never personally leave the theater when we watch the Avengers, but we seem to think a lot has happened in the case of that kind of movie.


Films are as interesting as you make them. Just like what you do with your day, or the conversations you have, or the things that you look at or think about. And the idea of finding any of these things boring is frankly weird to me.

None of the greatest films of all time are mysteries that require the audience to think and deduce solutions. The best movies ask nothing of their audience and do all the thinking for them. Thats entertainment.
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Ghouls, vampires, werewolves... let's party.
I find most fast paced action movies boring because they seem to lack any real drama or suspense. If a movie isn't suspenseful enough and/or full of good drama, I get bored.



I find most fast paced action movies boring because they seem to lack any real drama or suspense. If a movie isn't suspenseful enough and/or full of good drama, I get bored.
I'm the same way, probably why I prefer older movies.



Mindwalk (1990)

Don't get me wrong, I actually like this film. But the plot is: 3 people (a politician, a poet and a scientist) walk around an island and discuss philosophy... and that's the extent of the action.

If you're looking for action, excitement, drama, romance, angst, intrigue, tension, thrills, sex, violence, fast-pacing, surprises, satire, comedy, laughs, chills, hair-raising, edge-of-your-seat suspense, plot turns, plot twists or even just a plot... you won't find any of that here!



Mindwalk (1990)

Don't get me wrong, I actually like this film. But the plot is: 3 people (a politician, a poet and a scientist) walk around an island and discuss philosophy... and that's the extent of the action.
Corax have you seen this



Don't know about ever made, but I recently watched The Outwaters and that was a real, genuine, 100%, resolute, sincere, legitimate, unquestionable snoozefest. I hated myself afterward.



None of the greatest films of all time are mysteries that require the audience to think and deduce solutions. The best movies ask nothing of their audience and do all the thinking for them. Thats entertainment.

It's depressing to think some people equate thinking with boredom. Or think entertainment is about having what they are supposed to feel dictated to them.


But you do you.



The Most Boring Movie That I Have Watched Recently Is A 2009 Film That I Watched Yesterday Called The Road It Was So Boring That I Fell Asleep During It.



The trick is not minding
I’ve been bored with several movies at certain points, even among my some films I actually enjoyed. Slow cinema sometimes meanders, which can sometimes be construed with boring, which isn’t always true, but some times a scene doesn’t land right with me or engages me the way or should or is meant to. And that’s ok if I don’t “get” a scene or a film. Tarr and Tarkovsky still entertain me when I just let go and immerse myself.

Spoilers: there’s nothing wrong with being bored with a movie or a scene. Sometimes it feels like it’s verboten to be bored because some believe art is never capable of such things, but on the other side of the coin, some refuse to engage art on its terms or at least meet it half way.



So you don't like talky pictures. Fair enough.
I'm OK with talky movies, but not THAT talky, especially when I'm not interested in what they are talking about.

One of these days, I will possibly watch it again, just to see if I still react that way, but yeah, it's iconic for me.



I find most fast paced action movies boring because they seem to lack any real drama or suspense. If a movie isn't suspenseful enough and/or full of good drama, I get bored.
So, boredom is a subjective concept depending on who you ask because any movie can easily be boring when all you need is to watch. It isn't like you are a participant, everyone that watches performs the same physical action of sitting and staring, no matter what movie it is.

Being bored is a personal state of mind. But I'm sure there's a movie out there that can bore any and all and I intend to find it.



The Most Boring Movie That I Have Watched Recently Is A 2009 Film That I Watched Yesterday Called The Road It Was So Boring That I Fell Asleep During It.
I felt traumatized after watching The Road (so I guess I wasn't bored).



I forgot the opening line.
It's rare for me to get bored, but I did find 1979 film The Dark so lackluster that I had to concentrate with all my might on it - my mind kept on wanting to wander off, and at times preferred sleep. In the end it gave me a headache. The poster makes it look anything but boring - but oh boy, it's flat and meandering anti-entertainment. There's a Rifftrax version out there somewhere, which would be far preferable to the actual film as it is. It had a troubled production. :

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A difficult question indeed. Cause what is boring. It can be many things however you look at it.

Slow can be boring. Uninteresting can be boring. Cliched can be boring. But all of those can also not be boring, so yeah.

The most boring movie ever is probably something I can’t answer right here and now, but overall a boring movie for me is probably also a boring answer… but basically if I’m not interested or engaged in what’s going on, I’ll probably get bored. But that can be in several ways. It can be the characters, the plot, the theme, the visuals, whatever.

To be a little more “edgy” than the above, I haven’t been able to get through all of Gangs of New York even after 4 tries or so… I guess that must mean something on the boring-scale… been a while now though. Maybe 5th time’s the charm?

Yeah, 'boring" is not well-defined, so answers here will be a little too close to telling us "I did not like that one," which isn't saying much.



Some of the most boring films I've seen of late have been "action packed."



I’ve been bored with several movies at certain points, even among my some films I actually enjoyed. Slow cinema sometimes meanders, which can sometimes be construed with boring, which isn’t always true, but some times a scene doesn’t land right with me or engages me the way or should or is meant to. And that’s ok if I don’t “get” a scene or a film. Tarr and Tarkovsky still entertain me when I just let go and immerse myself.

Spoilers: there’s nothing wrong with being bored with a movie or a scene. Sometimes it feels like it’s verboten to be bored because some believe art is never capable of such things, but on the other side of the coin, some refuse to engage art on its terms or at least meet it half way.

It's not about never being disengaged during moments of a film. Anyone can have that. There are some very bad movies out there. Also some very challenging ones. And 'boredom' can be a result of both. Sometimes the challenging ones are even more 'boring' than the bad ones. And I think that's because we don't like to be reminded we don't know everything, or that our tastes are never finished developing. It's much easier to believe that when we are disengaged from a film, it can't possibly be our fault, because we know what we like and what we like is great. So we shut it out. We blame the film (and we shouldn't, because then its us that never grows)



Above someone posted possibly the greatest litmus test for the idea of boredom in film. Empire is probably the most well known provocation towards an audience. It's deliberately meant to alienate. I don't even know if sitting through all eight hours of it is the point. I've never even heard of a single person known to have done it. Even John Waters bailed a few hours in. And I pretty much guarantee Andy Warhol (it's 'creator') never had the slightest intention of ever watching it, certainly not as a whole. Or maybe not even at all.



But what does 'the most boring movie ever made' have to say about how we watch films? Do we even have to watch it all the way through for it to have an effect. Just its simple existence, and wondering over its purpose, who we are in relation to it, why we would subject ourselves to such a thing, what it says about other films when we contrast its completely opaque inertness against movies where 'things happen' etc etc has value on its own. And this is because the movie is always only a part of the equation of what a film means. And so even at the depths of absolute boredom, we can still engage our minds in thinking about things either directly related, tangentially related or not related at all to the film. Films don't stop at our retinas. Or even the very borders of the films we are watching.



So my whole point isn't so much we can't find films in part or maybe occassionally even in whole 'boring' (if we are into lazily rendered adjectives). Sometimes artists even deliberately use moments of boredom that are essential to highlight their moments of action. Or to replicate reality. Or, in the case of Warhol, simply to see how long it can be extended.



So I'm not saying boredom doesn't exist. It does, in a sort of basic way. But it doesn't just happen. It doesn't exist solely inside of some vaccuum that imposes itself on a member of the audience. Boredom doesn't stop us from thinking, from contemplating, from reacting, from feeling. When nothing is happening that grabs our attention, this opens up a space for reflection. And, sometimes, within that moment of reflection, we can start to find different elements of a film that actually do engage. That do have meaning. That we wouldn't have found if we were being entertained in the standard way.



Because of this I would say about 70 percent of the films I now consider the best I have ever seen, and that mean the most to me, and that, yes, entertain me, I initially found what the layman would call 'boring'. But because of this, they offered me new ways of thinking about film. Sort of like how if someone is talking endlessly to me in a language I don't understand, it would probably be fairly dull. Unless I took the time to learn some of the words, and began working to piece together whatever it was they were communicating. Slowly discovering their message, piece by piece. It's really no different with art. Sometimes we just need to work a little harder, or let ourselves be uncomfortable, or challenged, for the magic to happen.


Or we can just want everything to walk directly up to us and do exactly the kind of dance we expect it to do and then walk away with ourselves zero percent changed. Because nothing of any value ever happens when we push thought away. And one thing I can guarantee, the less we develop our ability to think (and art is just about the best exercise we have to do this) the more and more we are going to be bored. Because its the absence of thought where boredom lives. It's not actually in a movie.