There are, if you’ll indulge us, three certainties in this life: death, taxes, and the romance of dinner and a movie. The date formula is tried and tested, except for the times during which it definitely is not—those times that a movie theater, for a whole host of reasons, can become home to some of the worst experiences in your romantic life.
Crushed at the Movies: ten of our worst dates at the pictures
For Valentine’s Day, the Letterboxd crew reminisce on ten of our worst dates at the movies, from foot lotion mishaps to foot-long sandwich calamities, and wonder what kind of film could survive an awkward debut outing.
Just look at some proven disasters in the movies: Bella Swan’s unfortunate New Moon almost-throuple with Mike and Jacob while they watch the sadly not-quite-real Face Punch, or Travis Bickle not quite reading the room in Taxi driver with his, uh, daring choice of movie theater. At least in Fallen Leaves Ansa and Holappa enjoyed each other’s company, if not quite Jarmusch’s 2.7-averaging The Dead Don’t Die.
Blame the chosen screening, your partner for the occasion, your own circumstances affecting mind, body and soul: we’ve all been there. You think that the silver screen is setting you up for success, and then… abject, in-the-moment terror, confusion, disappointment. All that remains, with hindsight, is a good story.
It’s rarely the movie’s fault, let’s be clear. Although trailers and other marketing tricks can lead us tonally astray, we all have plenty of information at hand with which to make our choices. Including helpful Letterboxd lists, such as filmmaker Mike Flanagan’s Favorite First Date Movies (Possession, The Fly…). Actually, scratch that. Most Letterboxd “first date” lists seem designed to test the stomachs and sensibilities of potential paramours (or, helpfully, to raise the red flags and assert dominance). Our queendom for some decent, neutral, quality recommendations! (One. There is only one perfect first date movie according to Lupe.)
Bravely, we looked our pasts straight in the eye, coming forward with movie dates gone wrong around the world thanks to our globe-trotting, cinema-loving Letterboxd crew. Read on for horrible and hilarious stories of peppermint-scented foot lotion, digital situationships, spying parents, accidental hand-holding and sensitive tummies. We hope our embarrassments soothe even the most weary hearts this Valentine’s Day! See you at the pictures—if you dare.
Beautiful Thing
Back in the internet-less 1990s, when I still believed in romance, I went on a movie date with a sexy geology student named Tony. Queer love stories were few and far between in those days, unless the protagonists were serial killers or dying from AIDS. Tony and I lucked out with Beautiful Thing, Hettie Macdonald’s lovely, urban fairytale about two working-class London boys falling in love, based on Jonathan Harvey’s play.
In one scene, straight-acting Ste (Scott Neal) flees his abusive father and spends the night with shy, The Sound of Music-loving Jamie (Glen Berry). The besotted Jamie offers to soothe Ste’s bruises with some Body Shop Peppermint Foot Lotion. As we watched in the darkness, Tony squeezed my hand and whispered, “I’ve got some of that at my place.” Cut to the after-movie make-out session at Tony’s place, where he produced the foot lotion and offered to massage my (extremely ticklish) feet. In my excitement, I accidentally kicked Tony in the face. Blood started pouring out of his nose and we both leapt up, overturning his night table, knocking over his favorite pot plant and terrifying Tony’s sleeping cat. Tony’s sheets were smeared with blood and lime-green streaks of foot lotion, as if someone had slaughtered Kermit the Frog. Ever the gentleman, Tony waved away my apologies, cleaned himself up and even walked me home. I spent the next week penitentially scrubbing my feet, too embarrassed to return Tony’s calls. We never saw each other again.
Confessions of a Brazilian Call Girl
The year is 2011, my Tumblr is on fire, Rihanna’s ‘We Found Love’ plays on the radio day and night, and I am about to go on my first ever official date. I’m meeting this cute boy from school at the cinema. He’s bringing a friend; he asks me to bring a friend. All good. We get there and find the girlfriend I invited has brought her girlfriend, so now there are five of us—including one very grumpy, pimpled teen who was promised a date—queuing for tickets. Our first choice is sold out. So is our second. And then our third. We book whatever we can get, and boy, whatever we could get was the raciest blockbuster in modern Brazilian history.
Confessions of a Brazilian Call Girl is the biopic of Bruna Surfistinha, an upper-class girl turned infamous sex worker whose online blog chronicling her meetups with Johns took the country by storm. So there we are, the five of us, my best friend smooching her beautiful girlfriend, the grumpy boy I met a few minutes ago and the boy I fancied, all trapped in the middle of a row as Bruna Surfistinha takes one client after another, baring… it… all. Though it certainly made for one of the most awkward first dates ever recorded in the history of teenagehood, the boy and I went on to date for two precious years, much because he rarely wasted a chance to joke about that first outing.
Her
I was bright-eyed and naïve when my college crush asked me to get sushi and see a movie with him one fateful day. I immediately accepted, convinced he finally realized we belonged together. We decided on checking out Her, a movie we were both excited about. I was buzzing with the kind of energy that can only come from blind, loyal infatuation. We had texted on and off for months, discussing A.V. Club articles and the latest film news, and even though he never acknowledged me in public (the reddest of flags I willfully overlooked), I hoped that this invitation was a sign that our flirtationship had made it out of text messages and into the world.
Leaving the theater, it felt like the possibilities were now endless. Sure, Spike Jonze’s divorce movie was not ideal date fare, but I didn’t care. The rose-colored glasses were locked on, and all I was focused on was my crush finally realizing our connection. White-knuckling it through the brief but intense sex scene between Joaquin Phoenix’s Theodore and Scarlett Johansson’s incorporeal AI assistant, Samantha, in the quiet darkness of a theater seemed a small price to pay. As we ate tempura veggies and talked about movies, I pictured what the next day would look like. We could get coffee maybe, discuss our next Criterion buys—our future unfurling. In reality, he continued to ignore me in public, and I realized I deserved more than what he could give me. Thanks, Spike!
Fantastic Four (2005)
Everything was coming up Mitchell. I was fifteen years old in the summer of 2005, and after three years of crushing on this girl, we were finally having our first date. My dad dropped us off at the Dover Mall, where a crummy little AMC sat nestled inside a food court, and we purchased our tickets for Tim Story’s Fantastic Four. When we arrived, my paramour suggested we grab some lunch to sneak into the movie. Upon her recommendation of Subway as our illegal excursion, my still-growing brain decided a footlong tuna sub would be the ideal choice for my nervous tummy. That’s right. A giant tuna sandwich. In a movie theater. On a blisteringly hot summer day. With the love of my life (more or less) next to me, and everything on the line.
I got about halfway through the movie before a burning sensation erupted in my stomach that would make the Human Torch wince. Suffering in sweaty-palmed agony, no longer was my brain trying to determine whether I should try and hold her hand. Instead, it was counting the minutes, praying that I could make it through the end of this superheroic adventure before calamity struck. I survived the feature, but somehow discovered an even more grueling fate. The second we hit the lobby, I was forced to make a hasty run to the bathroom. I proceeded to spend upwards of an hour having my life flash before my eyes as my betrothed waited in the hallway, alone, knowing surely what monstrosity I was unleashing. There was no second date.
Midsommar
When my SoundCloud rapper, film bro then-boyfriend suggested we see Midsommar for Valentine’s Day, I thought it was a curious choice. Watching Florence Pugh unravel in the Swedish countryside after the double-homicide-suicide that dissolves her nuclear family doesn’t exactly sing the body electric. But I figured nothing could be more romantic than watching a well-made film with someone I loved.
After all, most of what I learned about sex and romance first started with the movies. An early watch of the pizza date between Chris and Selena in Selena taught me that playful laughter, mutual curiosity, and hot sauce were what dreamboats were made of. And the lonely child-to-artful lovers arc in Amélie communicated to me that loving and being loved demanded participation and self-permission, not fantasy.
So there I was in real life, in my sensible shoes, stepping into love, watching a bereaved Florence Pugh reach through grief for her thesis-stealing boyfriend’s support—while so many white cult members threw ritualistic ass, swan dove off cliff edges, and metabolized hallucinogens. “Is this Valentine’s Day?” I thought to myself as we crinkle-crinkled our way to the bottom of candy wrappers. “Is this the finish line of romance?”
Once the credits rolled, I turned to my date, mentioning what a shame it was that the boyfriend was so love poor and unequipped to support her. He responded casually: “I don’t think he was so bad.”
Pokémon: The First Movie - Mewtwo Strikes Back
The first time I ever spent ALONE with a BOY was, unsurprisingly, at the movies: our Midwestern moms collectively agreed to let Mike McMartin (not his real name) and I see Pokémon: The First Movie together on a school night (!) four days before my tenth birthday—the most major of thrills in my young life up to that point.
Aside from the promise of a special mystery trading card (which I still have), there was of course the promise of some little fat girl from Ohio getting to spend time outside of school with one of the cutest boys in her class, all thanks to the miracle of Mewtwo’s creation. At some point during Pikachu’s Vacation, Mike started playing footsie with me, which continued throughout the feature, to my absolute delight. I had only the vaguest idea of what actually happened in the movie until an adult rewatch a few years ago—that’s the power of pre-teen trysts, baby!
I breathlessly told one of my besties about it the next day, and within minutes, it seemed like my whole fourth-grade class knew about our very G-rated adventure in Kanto. Mike, unable to risk being associated with the fattest girl in fourth grade, DENIED the truth about our movie “date” and never really spent time with me again. But that’s okay, Mike, we both know what actually happened at Showcase Cinemas Springdale—and I still have the Ancient Mew card to prove it!
Puberty Blues
I grew up in a small, rural town, but the one thing we did have was a movie theater. It was the ’80s, and on this particular Sunday night they programmed a teen-movie double feature of Puberty Blues and The Blue Lagoon. I’d got the gumption to ask my girlfriend Rena (name changed for purposes of avoidance of lifelong embarrassment), and my parents caught wind that I was going, so the taunts started. ‘Puberty Blues’ my Dad would sing, the song having appeared on the TV, the tune stuck in my head. Anyhow, I somehow made it to the movies with Rena and we settled in.
It turns out that Puberty Blues is more trauma than raunch; we got through that and on to the romantic bits and classic lagoon moments, and I started sidling up to Rena. Then there’s a comedic moment, and I hear a familiar laugh—I turn around and at the very back row of the theater my Mom and Dad had snuck out to the movies on teen night! I groan and Rena goes, “What’s that?” and I go, “Never mind,” but the moment was lost. My eyes were fixed firmly forward to the screen in total embarrassment. Needless to say, Rena now lives in Wales with her girlfriend and I still get post-traumatic hormonal stress if I hear the song to Puberty Blues.
Puss in Boots
I lived in a rural town in southern France until the age of eighteen—cinema culture wasn’t really a thing for me growing up, least of all cinema culture that could have possibly come from anywhere but France. We’d go to our tiny local theater and hope that the dub that day wouldn’t be too horrifically offensive, and switch off our phones. To be honest, I don’t remember a thing about the French dub of 2011’s Puss in Boots because I don’t remember a thing about what happened after the moment that I slowly realized that the person I was there with was trying to seduce me.
We had been friends at school for years—not best friends but more than acquaintances—so imagine my horror when, at age fifteen, I felt a hand gently find its way into mine (consent, woohoo!) with no prior warning and in the middle of whatever this little ginger cat in a big hat or whatever is doing on screen. My not-really-a-date then shot a sweet little smile my way. Apparently, we were on the same page and this was clearly the ideal moment for it. Again, I couldn’t tell you if the film is romantic (surely not) because I was so shocked to have been, in fact, hoodwinked into the date with this hand hold. I think I didn’t let go, maybe not wanting to disturb Chris Miller’s vision? I think I was a bit too British to disagree with anything? But surely the worst movie dates are the ones that should have never been dates at all, right?
When I moved from Aotearoa (New Zealand) to London, I was primarily excited about two things: movies and boys. Aotearoa—and I say this with love—is small, and many independent releases don’t get theatrical distribution. Additionally, as much as I loved the queer community back home, there weren’t many of us. To the 24-year-old me, London offered new horizons in more ways than one. Only a few weeks after arriving, I spotted that Camille Vidal-Naquet’s Sauvage was playing at the Barbican Cinema in East London. At the same time, a mutual friend had put me in touch with a beautiful Australian man—piercing blue eyes, immaculate beard, six-pack. I saw an immediate opportunity to impress him with my cultural literacy and brilliant taste in film.
It was a mistake. Although I could sense my companion was trying his best to enjoy it, watching Sauvage together made for a deeply uncomfortable 97 minutes. It’s good, but it also contains some of the most graphic, violent sex I’ve ever seen depicted on screen—painful to watch, let alone next to someone, let alone next to a supremely handsome man you’ve just met.
When the lights came on, I could sense his relief that it was over. I vaguely remember apologizing, as though I was Vidal-Naquet. I don’t think we mentioned it again, instead transferring to a pub, where we bonded over our antipodean upbringings and conservative high schools before making out under the streetlights. I never saw him again, but via Instagram, he seems to be doing really well.
Damage
There are better Louis Malle films for a first date than Damage. Perhaps My Dinner with Andre: more intellectual, less dangerous. Or Zazie dans le Métro: a silly, delightful trip abroad via the big screen. But Damage is what was playing at the Capitol, our local art house cinema, when I impulsively asked the lovely local bartender if he’d fancy a date the next night. I didn’t want to wait a week lest he changed his mind, or I lost my nerve, so we committed to the screening. Plus, Rupert Graves, my beloved Freddy Honeychurch from A Room with a View, was in it! And Miranda Richardson, so brilliantly funny as Queenie in Rowan Atkinson’s Blackadder series.
On the day, I could feel a head-cold welling up, which I decided to ignore at my peril—by the time politician Stephen (Jeremy Irons) had fallen into his torrid affair with his son’s new girlfriend, the enigmatic Anna Barton (Juliette Binoche), my head was pounding. And even if we, two relative strangers, were at all turned on by the saucy scenes, I was still living under my parents’ roof thanks to being a poor student. When the damage was done, we had a polite hug and I scuttled off home, whereupon my cold turned into influenza and two weeks in hospital. That was the end of that, but Miranda Richardson picked up the BAFTA for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, so at least somebody was a winner. And the gorgeous man I married decades later turned out to be a Capitol frequent-flyer, so it’s a victory for cinema, and for being patient.
