Truth be told, I don't believe in the term "guilty pleasure" because I don't feel any guilt getting pleasure out of watching Last Action Hero once a month or listening to the Bee Gees without irony. Whether you're a brother, or whether you're a mother, you can't deny the power the Gibb brothers, a good disco beat or the adventures of Jack Slater and Danny Madigan in the mists of cinema legend.
But Last Action Hero is one of my guiltiest pleasures. I'm not supposed to like it, and according to critics in 1993, no one should like it; even still, I spend hours watching it and, in fact, I just now talked myself out of buying a set of all the action figures from the film on Amazon. The movie poster still looks tantalizing, though.
One of the biggest tip-offs that a movie is a true guilty pleasure is this important test: Will you waste three hours of your weekend afternoon watching an edited version of this "bad" movie, forgoing social and personal engagements you had previously planned? Is the movie Hackers, starring Angelina Jolie, Jonny Lee Miller and Matthew Lillard? Congratulations on losing two hours of your life, and remember to HACK THE PLANET.
The best thing about these guilty pleasure flicks from the '90s is that you know that at least a thousand other people are also wasting their lives on it, be it Drop Dead Fred or Major Payne. Some are so bad and dopey that you can't help but love them, even find yourself getting emotionally involved each and every time.
Like, what if I died on the Metro Rail and I had to save my girlfriend from a lecherous murderer bent on seducing and killing her with the help of a sassy black psychic? Shit keeps me up at night, as do shadows on my wall.
I pulled a few of the biggest guilty pleasure films from the '90s for your perusal. Don't act like you wouldn't rather watch Son-In-Law over bullshit new-Millennium fodder Garden State.