The Top Ten Guilty Pleasure Movies, According to Caitlin

10. My Girl 2 (1994)

Dets: Sequels are often good candidates for guilty pleasures. As it turns out, the original My Girl is also a guilty pleasure, but I like the sequel a bit more. In the preferred installment, Vada Sultenfuss heads to L.A. in search of information about her dead mother, which her doting but still-grieving father (none other than Dan Akroyd) is unable to provide. The narrative of her adventures is augmented by a fabulous classic rock soundtrack, but that's just one of the pleasures of this film - don't overlook the jejune flirtations, gratuitous name-checking, cliche Hollywood/hippie scenes, and lack of verisimilitude.

9. Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead (1991)

Dets: Many hours of my childhood were spent watching this moving and fantasizing about what I would do if left unattended with plenty of cash for an entire summer. This movie doesn't boast quality cinematography but it's quite imaginative and undeniably fun (and sometimes disturbing, as in a creepy David Duchovny hitting on high-school Christina Applegate) to watch.

8. Dirty Dancing (1987)

Dets: One of those ubiquitous coming-of-age films, Baby is a sheltered teenager who learns a few life lessons along with some new dance steps while on vacation with her family in the Catskills. I never thought I would like this movie and so hate to think of how many times I have sat through the most repetitive and asinine television commercials just to see Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze dancing and romancing to such eighties classics as "Hungry Eyes" and "I've Had the Time of My Life."

7. Cool Runnings (1993)

Dets: "Sanka, you dead, mon?" "Ya, mon." This movie is based (loosely) on the saga of the Jamaican Bobsled Team's try for gold at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. John Candy and Doug E. Doug play on stereotypes and add hilarity to the absurdity of this endeavor. That sentence explains why the movie is both guilty and a pleasure for me.

6. Little Women (1994)

Dets: This adaptation of the novel by Louisa May Alcott features an all-star cast (Susan Sarandon, Wynona Ryder, Christian Bale, Kirsten Dunst, Claire Danes, Gabriel Byrne) trying to affect convincing nineteenth-century American accents while highlighting the intense pathos and simple joys of New England during the Civil War. It's a maudlin and over-simplified adaptation of a wonderful book, but I'm a sucker for sweet romances and period costumes and thus can never resist the temptation to pop in my VHS copy and smile through my tears as I watch Jo and Teddy lust for and lose each other, Papa return from war, and Amy finally live the life she dreamed of.

5. Ever After: A Cinderella Story (1998)

Dets: Another period film adapted from a literary work. This time, it's Renaissance France, with Drew Barrymore, Anjelica Houston, and Dougray Scott in wonderful costumes. But it's a fairy tale, so it's a guilty pleasure.


4. My Best Friend's Wedding (1997)

Dets: First of all, this film boasts an excellent guilty pleasure soundtrack. Second, the run-of-the-mill love triangle is made more interesting by the incorporation of strong and well-developed female characters.

3. Center Stage (2000)

Dets: An unseasoned dancer finds cutthroat competition, romance, and plenty of drama at a prestigious ballet company in NYC. Mandy Moore soundtrack. Everything works out exactly as you'd expect - scoring with the hot principle dancer, getting heartbroken, and then getting over it. The drama and romance for those not in the thick of it is pure delight.


2. Clueless (1995)

Dets: Alicia Silverstone, Paul Rudd, Jeremy Sisto crash cars, pass out, and fail tests but still manage to preserve their integrity - only in Hollywood (or politics?). This movie is decadent but I'd watch it again right now.

1. Bring it On (2000)

Dets:
Kirsten Dunst and some of-the-moment teen stars use their spirit fingers to triumph over backstabbing and ego trips. Upbeat and fast-paced. Spawn of numerous sequels that are presumably all guilt and no pleasure.

In Sum:
I wasn't sure which should rank higher - the unequivocally bad movies that I enjoy the most, or the ones that I feel guiltiest about enjoying, which are necessarily the least critically acclaimed. I decided to put the guilty pleasure movie that I like to most first, but the one I feel guiltiest about enjoying is Center Stage, with Cool Runnings a close second. In general, I consider guilty pleasure movies to be those that indulge fantasies about life without making any profound commentary about reality. I thought about including Mr. Holland's Opus, The Breakfast Club, and That Thing You Do!, but decided that they actually have some substance and I don't feel guilty watching or enjoying them in spite of the fact that they have not made it into the canon.