A pretty backhanded award

Organizations will do year-end awards for almost anything.

Sometimes, this will make them look silly.

Exhibit A: Redbox's 2011 Movie Awards.

As a regular Redbox customer, I received a link to this five-minute "awards show" (made with flash animation) in my inbox on January 1st. A number of smaller awards were handed out first, followed by the grand prize: the movie most rented from Redbox kiosks in 2011.

If you want to know who won, well, my poster art has already ruined that surprise for you. (As well as possibly giving you a special feeling in your special area.)

That's right: Just Go With It, the Adam Sandler-Jennifer Aniston vehicle that most critics (including this one) did not like, was rented more than any other movie in 2011.

If you're being generous, there's a temptation to take that honor at face value. It's got to say something about the movie's popularity if it was rented more times than any other movie, right?

Right -- it says something. But maybe not what a casual observer would think it says.

If we unpack this a little bit, you'll see what I'm talking about.

Okay, for starters, in order for a movie to be a popular rental, that likely means it was not a popular movie to see in the theater. Unless you think there were a legion of Just Go With It fans who loved it so much on the big screen that they re-watched it as a rental, you're talking about rentals by people who wanted to see it, sort of, but not enough to pay theater prices.

Then you've got to consider how long a movie was eligible to be rented. A movie that came out early in the year, like Just Go With It (February 11th theater, June 7th DVD), had much longer to possibly be rented within the calendar year than a movie that came out in the summer. It stands to reason that there are a number of summer movies that might have overtaken Just Go With It if they'd been released a month or two earlier, or if the window were extended past the end of December.

And then you've also got to consider Redbox's internal considerations about how long to actually carry the movie in kiosks. While this calculation is likely a function of whether it's still earning them money, we can't really be sure what factors were involved in how long they made it available. It's possible that other popular movies were pulled sooner for reasons we wouldn't even know about.

Not to mention, finally, that Just Go With It was only competing with other movies that Redbox chose to carry in the first place -- though I'm sure that anything obscure enough not to be carried by Redbox would never be a serious competitor for this award, if it had been carried.

Those are only the empirical factors. I'd say there are things you can assume that detract further from this supposed "honor." Me, I'd guess that Just Go With It was primarily being rented because of the woman above, Brooklyn Decker, whose jiggling boobs were a focal point of the advertising campaign. Perhaps the jiggling boobs were not enough of a factor to get people out to the theater, but they definitely held enough sway (pun intended) to get people to plunk down the cash money for a dollar rental. (Plus, some people who rented it might have wanted to "be alone" when they watched it, if you know what I mean.) Who knows how much the rentals of Just Go With It would drop without those two double Ds.

At least the most rented movie was actually from the year 2011, giving the award a slightly greater sense of legitimacy. I suppose if you want to submit an argument on behalf of Just Go With It, you could say it beat out all the holiday movies from 2010, which should have made plenty of hay in the first half of 2011, when Just Go With It was still in limbo between theater and video.

The real problem with any "awards show" in which the big winner is Just Go With It is that it has pretty much zero prestige. (Not that "prestige" is what they were going for, of course -- any time an award is given out simply for popularity, you have no control over the results.) A lack of prestige is pretty consistent with an unmanned kiosk where you rent videos -- it's as "common" as things get.

The rest of the award winners bear out that idea. Here, take a gander at them:

Most rented action movie: The Green Hornet. See previous discussion of movies with early release dates (January 14th) having a distinct advantage.

Most rented action star: Angelina Jolie, Salt. Really? Does anyone even remember that movie? And who decided to rank a star independently of the movie in which she appeared, unless they were going to mention other movies in which she also appeared?

Most rented family movie: Rango. Which came out in March.

Most rented horror movie: Insidious. Which came out in April.

Most rented comedy and funniest couple: Just Go With It, Adam Sandler/Jennifer Aniston. I am starting to wonder how they even chose which awards to give out. The funniest couple award came from survey responses, as did the random tidbit (included in connection with the most rented family movie) that Redbox customers had the most fun with the minions of Despicable Me. Damn, I'm starting to like Redbox customers less and less all the time.

Most rented drama: The Tourist. Okay, so Redbox customers really like Angelina Jolie.

Most rented actress: Natalie Portman. Sheer quantity of movies is obviously a factor, as they mentioned Black Swan, No Strings Attached, The Other Woman, Your Highness and Thor -- all of which were in theaters by May. But at least you've got the reigning best actress here, which adds a little prestige.

Most rented actor: Owen Wilson. Again, quantity is a factor, with How Do You Know, Little Fockers, Hall Pass and Cars 2, though I think it's cheating a bit to include Little Fockers, since it's a supporting role.

The most puzzling award, however, was the Lifetime Achievement Award. I guess they're speaking only of Redbox's lifetime, because it didn't go to some big name who's been in the movies for decades. It went to Kevin James, who has been starring in movies for about five years. And the reason it went to him was because Paul Blart: Mall Cop was the fastest movie to reach one million rentals.

Again I say: People can only rent a movie if you are stocking it in the kiosk.

And if Redbox customers held Paul Blart: Mall Cop in such high esteem that it was stocked long enough to be rented one million times, well ... I want to distance myself from them even further.

But I'm the one who has just spent the better part of an hour writing about this.

So I ask you:

Who's the fool? Who looks silly?

"Hey, I know that place!"

I usually wouldn't go four days after adding a movie like Paul Blart: Mall Cop to my Most Recently Seen list without hurriedly writing an explanation of why I watched it.

Then again, I'm the only one who knows I'm not scheduled to review it. And besides, I once mentioned that I might have to see it eventually, simply because it had made a staggering $146 million at the box office, so there would be a certain currency for a film critic in having it as a reference point.

Well, I moved up that eventual viewing for a different reason: It was filmed at the local mall where I grew up.

As it turned out, that wasn't nearly enough reason to endure this utter waste of 93 minutes of my life. I guess I haven't been to the Burlington Mall in Massachusetts for quite some time, because it was barely recognizable to me, though the end credits did confirm the location. Part of the reason it seemed foreign is that they must have used two different malls. Some exterior and interior shots were definitely familiar, but some shots were decidedly unfamiliar, leading me to believe they simply couldn't be the Burlington Mall. Like I said, it's been awhile, but I feel pretty sure they don't have a video arcade at the Burlington Mall. For some reason, I feel like I would have learned this had happened -- I always wanted there to be one when I was a kid. I'd be tempted to say that mall schizophrenia was the cause of the film's exceedingly poor quality, but I don't want to let Paul Blart off the hook that easily.

But it got me thinking about other movies I had seen simply because I knew the location where they were shot. And some of them were time-wasters indeed.

The Man Without a Face (1993, Mel Gibson). This is probably my fondest example. A number of scenes in Gibson's directorial debut were filmed at Bowdoin College in Maine, where I was an undergrad. In fact, not only that, but I was actually "in" the movie. I'll explain. My film class was invited to help out on the shoot in very menial ways -- for example, after a graduation scene shot on the outdoor track, I vacuumed up a bunch of confetti. I remember it taking quite a long time. But there was one instance that felt a bit more important, where I was keeping people out of the shot, which meant I was standing behind an arched brick entrance to the track. When I saw the movie later on, I saw that brick wall and started telling people -- not many people, but some -- that I was "in the movie, but you just can't see me." Don't worry, I was only trying to be funny. That same day, I also summoned the courage to approach Gibson and shake his hand, after which he made a funny gesture to the other people around, like my grip was either too strong, or my hand too sweaty. They laughed -- in fact, he had people laughing pretty regularly. Remember, this was long before he was unveiled as a drunken anti-Semite. But, the movie is actually good.

Live Free or Die Hard (2007, Louis Letterier). I probably would have seen the fourth Die Hard regardless, but I was slightly more jazzed because some of it was filmed outside my office. In fact, it was filming on the thoroughfare that leads to my parking lot during my first week on the job. While I never saw Bruce Willis or anything, it was quite inconvenient to get to work. In the movie, they made the road seem about fifty times longer than it actually is -- it's that ridiculous climactic sequence where Willis ends up on the wing of a harrier jet. Terrible True Lies flashbacks. As you know, the movie was sub par.

Breakin' All the Rules (2004, Daniel Taplitz). This highly forgettable Jamie Foxx vehicle was another film shot outside my office -- but it was my old office, and the scenes were shot in the courtyard of the outdoor mall where the office was located. (Malls and offices are a theme here.) I actually did see Foxx and Peter MacNicol, which is the only way I knew what film it was when it came out the following year. Fortunately, I got to review this one, otherwise it would have been an even bigger waste of time than it already was.

The Weight of Water (2000, Kathryn Bigelow). Slightly different circumstance here. The movie was based on a novel about some famous murders that occurred in the 18th century on Smuttynose Island, which is across the harbor from Star Island, where I worked for five summers during and after college. Both islands are part of the Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire. I was hoping for a glimpse of Star Island, but all I got was a quick look at it on a map the characters are holding in one scene. I should have known better -- the movie was shot off of Baja California. And again it was not very memorable.

Ghost Rider (2007, Mark Steven Johnson). Our stated motivation for seeing this movie was that we had friends visiting from out of town, and it would be fun to see whatever was playing in the Dome at the Arclight in Hollywood. But my wife and I secretly wanted to see it anyway, since it was filmed in Melbourne, where my wife grew up, and where I would be visiting for the first time several weeks later. (It's also Nicolas Cage's preferred place to shoot, as he later shot Knowing there.) This is a bit of a stretch, since I actually hadn't seen the Yarra River and other famous Melbourne landmarks in person, but I had sort of an "aha!" moment when I actually did see them later on. Common theme: Not a very good movie.

Amistad (1997, Steven Spielberg). As I start to stretch further, I wrote a number of articles about Amistad when I worked for a weekly newspaper in Rhode Island, since it was shooting in nearby Newport, Providence and Pawtucket. More importantly to my readership, citizens from Barrington, Rhode Island seemed to be getting all sorts of minor roles in the film. I don't remember the locations per se, though I was definitely looking for familiar faces. I don't think Amistad is all that great, but it's the second best I've mentioned so far.

Matchstick Men (2003, Ridley Scott). They shut down my ex-girlfriend's office for an afternoon to shoot there. I'd been to the office, so I was curious. Verdict: Meh.

I'm sure there are many more, but I'm running out of steam here.

So now it's your turn, my readers. Audience participation time. What films have you seen because of the familiar surroundings?