I’m starting to hate you, Netflix.

Are you sick of reading my weekly bitching about the political fuckery going on in this country? Yeah? Well I’m sick of writing about it. So today, I want to talk about the REAL problem facing America: Netflix.

Netflix pisses me off.

I’ve been a member of Netflix almost from the beginning. I remember when I first heard about Netflix seven years ago. I was over the moon about it. “WHA!? You mean I won’t have to buy some stupid ass movie for 50 bucks from Blockbuster because I forgot to return it, or my dog chewed it up, or because I returned my homemade porn movie and left Ernest Goes to to the Mall languishing in my DVD player??!!”

JEANIUS.

But here’s the thing: I rented 300 and Big Fish in February 2009 and I STILL HAVE THEM SITTING ON MY COFFEE TABLE. I don’t know why I can’t just take them to the post office. I just haven’t. I don’t even care at this point. It’s like my gym membership. I pay 60 bucks every month (it’s automatically deducted from my credit card) and I never go. I’ve been a member of the gym for 3 years and I’ve gone maybe 6 times.

So yeah. I’ve been a member of Netflix for about 7 years, and I’ve probably watched a total of 6 movies. ( Don’t judge me! You don’t know what my life is like!)

So this past weekend, I started thinking about how ridiculous my Netflix situation is–paying for a service I never use–and I decided to cancel my account. That’s right. I did that shit. No more Netflices.

But apparently when you cancel your account, you have to locate and return the movies you have. Can you believe that? So now I have to locate Police Academy 7: Who Let the Dogs Out, and return it to them, PRONTO. Whatever, Netflix. I can’t find the movie. Suck it up.

That’s not my primary beef with Netflix, however. My primary beef is the rating system.

Let me explain.

I have two friends who are crazy about Netflix; one of them is Squeer! justinsloe aka Sloejams. The other? Let’s call him DJ Hammertoes. (He hates that.)

Both Sloejams and DJ Hammertoes are avid movie watchers. Each has rated over 2200 movies on Netflix. Can you imagine? Twenty-two-hundred effing movies. Just thinking about it makes me want to take a dirt nap.

The other night I went to dinner with DJ Hammertoes, and we got to talking about Netflix. He was telling me all about how he’s rated 2200 movies, and saying that because of all his crazy movie ratin’, Netflix knows him inside and out and recommends the perfect movies for him.

“Really?” I thought. Last time I checked my Netflix recommendations, it told me I should rent Beverly Hills Chihuahua: Pig in the City. That’s some bullshit. It’s like that episode of Mind of the Married Man where the main character is complaining because his TiVo thinks he’s gay.

Well, Netflix is a smarty pants, and will suggest the perfect movie to DJ Hammertoes: “It’s an action Japanese anime movie set in 18th century Scotland with a strong female character who is a zombie assassin; the movie stars a man named Bob, is 99 minutes long, and will give you a hand job when you’re done watching it.”

Sign me up.

So DJ Hammertoes is telling me all about how Netflix is stalking him, and being the competitive person that I am, I was having a hard time just sitting there, listening to him talk about how he’s rated so many movies (2200 to my measly 50 or so) without feeling like I needed to run screaming into the night straight to the nearest computer so I could start ratin’ my ass off.

But here’s the thing.

I CAN’T STAND RATING MOVIES ON NETFLIX.

Why? Because the whole system is DEEPLY FLAWED.

5 stars = Loved It

4 stars = Really Liked It

3 stars = Liked It

2 stars = Didn’t Like It

1 star = Hated It

What? That’s it!!??? How in the name of all that is Cruise-y can I be expected to rate movies on a scale of 1 star to 5 stars without the ability to rate in half star increments?

Take The Princess Bride for example. That’s a 5 star flick. Hands down. Don’t even argue. It’s incon-thievable that anyone would rate The Princess Bride anything less than 5 stars.

Then take The Godfather. Henry V. Apocalypse Now. Psycho. 5 stars. 5 stars. 5 stars. 5 stars. Yet somehow putting The Godfather and The Princess Bride in the same category feels WRONG to me. So then I feel like I should go against my instinct and give The Princess Bride 4 stars, even though I really want to give it 5 stars.

They’re both awesome movies. But whatever. 4 stars. 5 stars. They both mean EXCELLENT.

Then let’s look at your 2 vs. 3 star movies. Crank, for example. That’s a 2 star movie; even though I liked it and 2 stars, according to Netflix, means I didn’t like it. But you know what? Crank was an awesome movie in its sheer ridiculousness. But am I seriously expected to rate it 3 stars? Bitch, please.

Then let’s look at your screwball comedies. Your So I Married an Axe Murderers. Your Cluelesses, and your My Cousin Vinnies, and your Meet the Parentses. Three stars doesn’t seem to be the right rating. Three stars means “It’s ok. It’s average.” But So I Married An Axe Murder is GENIUS, TMIMO. “A piper is down! I repeat! A piper is down!” It’s 4 stars! Not 3; and definitely not 2.

But 4 stars? Really? 1 star away from like, Gandhi and his loincloth of peace, love, and nonviolence? It just doesn’t seem right.

Or what about your 1 star vs. 2 star movies. I sat through Georgia Rule. I rated it 1 star. But that piece of cinematic ass candy doesn’t deserve a star. It deserves a hot steaming cup of fuck you. I also sat through Paul Blart: Mall Cop. It was a piece of asscake drizzled in bullshit. But I laughed once. So that’s 1/2 star.

Or what about movies that you saw only once? You knew they were amazing at the time, but by the hand of Thor, there’s no way you’re watching that shit again. We’re talking your Schindler’s Lists, Saving Private Ryanses, Citizens Kane (which I’ve never seen but fuck it, AFI and everybody in the world says it’s a 5 star flick, so who am I to argue? I mean, “Rosebud.” Yeah. Right on. Do I really need to watch it? The answer is “No. I do not.”)

I didn’t LOVE Schindler’s List. I mean who really LOVES a movie about the Holocaust? I do recognize, however, that it’s a 5 star movie. So fine. 5 stars. Even though you couldn’t pay me to sit through it again.

What about movies you can only watch up to a point before you get squeamish? Deliverance? 5 stars… at least right up until the banjo part. No one really wants to talk about what happened after that scene. (oink oink reeeeeeeek!!!)

Or what about A Cry in the Dark? I give it 5 stars just because of Meryl Streep’s bowl cut. Besides, that dingo totally ate her baby!

Am I painting a clear picture here? Shall I continue? OK, fine, I will.

What do you do with the movies that defined your childhood-slash-teenage years? Your Dirty Dancings, Breakfast Clubs, Say Anythings. 5 stars, 5 stars, 5 stars. (Don’t judge me for my Dirty Dancing rating….don’t you dare judge me!) Less Than Zero? 4 stars. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? 5 fucking stars. Some Kind of Wonderful? You bet your ass, it’s 5 stars.

What about the movies that had AWESOME soundtracks but otherwise kind of sucked? Purple Rain, for fuck’s sake. 1 star movie, 5 star soundtrack. WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO!?!?!!

PANIC.

That’s what I do. I fucking panic. Then I start cheating. I’ll rate a movie, look at what DJ Hammertoes rated it, think I’m a numbskull for having rated it lower/ higher than he did. And then the panic turns to terror. I start changing my own ratings based on other people’s. Then I change them back.

And then I look at Sloejams’s queue. I can’t even handle the shit he’s watching. He’s sittin’ around watching silent movies, for fuck’s sake. Silent movies. Do you know what that means? NO SOUND. Hell, he’s sittin’ around watching Buster Keaton movies and I’m over here thinking, WHO THE FUCK IS BUSTER KEATON? Wasn’t she banging Neo in that movie about cougars and twenty year olds? Something’s Gotta Give: Reloaded?

I can’t take it, y’all. It’s too much fucking pressure. The pressure to watch movies. The pressure to return movies. The pressure to rate movies. The pressure of knowing that everyfuckingbody can see your ratings and make you feel like Johnny Hammersticks for thinking that, generally, John Hughes movies and Werner Herzog movies both deserve 4 stars.

I can’t take it.

Until Netflix institutes a half star system, and stops making me feel like a noob for not watching the original 11 hour long Solaris and rating it 5 stars, I’m flipping Netflix the bird.

Now excuse me, I’m going to go watch something I can understand and something that I know how to rate:

Diary of a Mad Black Woman.

1 star.

Tags: Best of Thundersquee!

This entry was posted on Friday, November 27th, 2009 at 8:30 AM and is filed under Best of Thundersquee!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.