Leaving My Brain At The Door

"Head them off at the pass? I HATE that cliche!" -- Blazing Saddles

It's cliche to say so, hence the epigram, but the phrase "leave your brain at the door" needs to be stricken from the record, and fast. This phrase has permeated popular culture, most specifically films and television shows, to the point of ruining most of the work that comes out of Hollywood. It used to be that the phrase would be used when describing movies--mostly genre films, like horror, science fiction, or action--that are fun, but if you think about them for too long, they fall apart. Because of that, it's best for you not to think about all the implausibilities, so just...well, you know the rest.

I don't know when this realization came to me, but I know this much: not only do I hate that phrase, I'm just about done with movies and TV shows that choose to operate under the principle of leaving one's brain at the door. What I mean by the latter is that some movies and TV shows are not made with any intelligence. The people behind this stuff essentially throw up their hands and say, "Who cares if this makes any sense? People should just leave their brains at the door!" What is more annoying, then: that a lot of successful movies are made without anything remotely close to intelligence, or that people eat them up? It's been proven this summer that audiences do very much enjoy movies that aren't a) stupid and b) think the people watching them are stupid.

Once a year, of course, Pixar releases a movie with more brains, wit, and emotion than most movies in the past decade. (Quick side-rant: anyone bitching about Toy Story 3 getting a Best Picture nomination at the expense of live-action fare should think about how many other live-action movies this year, or any year, are nearly as good as what Pixar makes. Blame the people who make live-action movies, not Pixar.) But we also had Inception this summer, and it's one of the brainiest blockbusters of recent memory--oh, and it's just finished up its ninth weekend and hasn't yet left the top ten at the box office. You and I can get into a long argument about whether or not the movie lives up to the hype (the answer from my end is an affirmative one), but the movie's not dumb.

And don't get me wrong: I like action movies, and sci-fi, and some of the movies in the genre don't have to be for Rhodes scholars to get the job done. The new Star Trek is one of the slickest blockbusters I've ever seen, so perfectly set up in the script and direction that it never fails to be anything less than a great bit of fun. As with anything J.J. Abrams touches, the timeline's a bit convoluted--OK, in this case, very convoluted--but it's not hard to get. The movie was a big success and managed to not feel condescending or purposely stupid.

This is the problem. Movies and TV shows--obviously, I find it happens more with movies, but TV writers, producers, and executives aren't innocent--just choose to be dumb. There have, of course, been stories told second- and thirdhand about how executives think audiences are stupid. Are audiences getting off here? No, of course not. Until Toy Story 3 mercifully passed it on the worldwide records, the new Alice in Wonderland was not only a big success, it had made more than a billion dollars across the globe. If you have lived through that movie, try not to pass out in shock. Alice in Wonderland was, at least in my opinion, an embarrassment and a blight on the careers of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp--and I'm a Burton apologist, for the most part. This was a movie that was made to make money, and shamelessly. This was a movie made with no thought or ounce of cleverness, and when you're adapting something by Lewis Carroll, those are necessary elements. But it's cool, kids! Johnny Depp's doing a silly dance! Isn't that amazing! Of course it is, now give me your money and put on these glasses.

Movies didn't used to pander so obviously, so meanly. Even back in the studio system, the movies that are considered classics (and those that aren't) did not condescend. The phrase "Leave your brain at the door" used to be a way to mock certain movies and those who made them, offhandedly. Now, it's a warning: this movie or TV show has been made with only the assumption that you are stupid enough to pay for it. Try your very best not to give in, no matter how good the ads are or how famous the people are (the last goes for movies like Salt, of which the positive reviews could be summed up as the following: "This movie is stupid, but isn't it fun to watch Angelina Jolie kick ass?"). If you leave your brain at the door, leave your whole body there.