Before watching the movie:

This movie took my school by storm. I saw nothing that appealed to me, but even as someone whose reaction to hype is to become more determined to avoid it until it goes away, the power and longevity of the hype was starting to wear me down, until a peer whose opinion I respected told me “watching it will take 20 points off your IQ”. So I decided it had nothing for me, and eventually the hype went away. The cult stayed, but they got quieter.

By now, the main evidence this movie was popular is the occasional Vote for Pedro reference drifting by like a tumbleweed. Perhaps that means it wasn’t as formative as some other movies I could have included this month, but when I think of movies my generation loved, this is at the top, even if it never sold me.

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