Sometimes you watch a movie to learn something, sometimes you watch one to cry, and sometimes you watch movies that just make you smile. My favorite types of movies are the ones that really don’t have a meaningful plot but always make me smile; I can watch them any time and they always put me in a good mood.
Dazed and Confused
This Richard Linklater movie is a modern classic and I’m absolutely obsessed with it. It’s the last day of school in 1976 and the movie follows seniors and freshman navigating a new part of their life that’s about to begin. It’s funny, simple, has great style, and brings you to a time of happiness and freedom.
Everybody wants some!!
The lesser known Richard Linklater creation, Everybody wants some!! Is like taking Dazed and Confused and mixing it with Animal house. These characters; however, are 1980’s college baseball players whose main activities are partying, playing baseball, and meeting women. The characters are loveable and stupid, the costumes are once again incredible, and it clearly depicts college jocks in their natural habitat.
Empire Records
This movie gets a 10/10 for its soundtrack alone, every song makes you want to dance and scream along to each scene with the characters. This 90’s film follows a group of co-workers and friends who all work in an independently owned record store. The movie spans over one day at the incredible store and we see all the relationships between the characters, their little battles within themselves, and mostly, how everyone comes together to support music and a business they all love.
Any of the Step up movies
So, this franchise is most definitely an acquired taste, but if you don’t watch it for the plot (or lack thereof), watch it for the dancing. Each couple in the movie follows the same sort of path of overcoming a personal battle through dance and finding a friend/group of friends/love interest in the meantime. What the directors DO do well, is the dance scenes. Throughout the movies, the dancing gets increasingly more dramatic, and the actual dancers are incredible individually and in groups. Personal favorite dance scenes include: the rooftop dance in the first movie, rain dance in the second, NYC park dance in the third, final dance in the fourth, and carousel dance in the last one.
Angus, thongs, and perfect snogging
There is nothing more middle-school than this movie and yet I still watch it at least 3 times a year. Everything in this movie takes you back to the awful times of middle-school at your peak of insecurity, boy craziness, and style mishaps. But it’s so so fun, and it really makes me smile because it’s so cheesy and completely accurate to how I was feeling when I first watched it. I definitely cringed more when I watched this movie more recently but the opening scene of her in an olive costume still gets me every time.
She’s out of my league
I actually was not expecting much of this movie when I recently watched it for the first time but was completely surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It has the most basic plot that is literally explained in the title of the movie, yet somehow, it’s better than all the other movies like it. There is way more realness to this story and they make the situations so awkward you can’t help but laugh and fall in love with the characters. All the clichés are played out so perfectly and the cast is a great mix of funny actors.