Defending Trash

I love Mac & Me. No, really. I love it. Yeah, I know. It has been pilloried and ripped to shreds countless times. We covered it on Torture Cinema. Paul Rudd has made a joke about it for years (the Rudd Roll, if you will). And I will even admit that it is a ridiculous film that by most standards would be considered legitimate “trash.” But I love it nonetheless, so much so that I appeared on Fine Beats and Cheeses in April 2025 to talk about it with the fine hosts of the illustrious show. For years, I’ve made fun of so-called “bad movies” on The Skiffy and Fanty Show, from Plan 9 from Outer Space to Birdemic, from Batman & Robin to The Black Hole. The whole point of the Torture Cinema podcast is to give films most people think are terrible a humorous-but-critical look with the understanding that film criticism is often subjective. Sometimes a film doesn’t deserve the hate it receives (and vice versa). Ultimately, I think we ought to give trash movies a bit more love. After all, some of the most enjoyable movies of all time aren’t exactly good. Even the editorial team at Rotten Tomatoes has a list of bad movies they actually love. The Mummy (1999) is one such movie; it has a 62% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes (it was lower when I started writing this), and I’m told that David Annandale despises it with a passion not seen since the Pharaohs actually lived. Yet, audiences rather like that film, and its reputation has spawned amusement park rides, miles of merch, numerous sequels (and a spinoff of sorts), and 1999’s most important eye candy in the form of Brendan Frasier’s Rick O’Connell (seriously, he’s so pretty). Of course, the popularity of a thing doesn’t tell us whether the thing is any good, but I also don’t think the popularity of a thing can be dismissed.