5 Mediocre Movies Made Awesome by Real Events

Ugh.

Nowhere is the rivalry more apparent than in the context of film versus reality. Audiences demand that the two feel the same but look completely different. Consequently, it's a nice change of pace when you catch Life and Art accidentally working together in cinema. I've collected five movies that, alone, are mediocre at best, but coupled with the real life circumstances surrounding each film they are catapulted into greatness. It's like seeing a child stand on the shoulders of his handicapped brother in order to reach new heights, or two siblings working together in a brilliant column to beat a dead horse of a metaphor across two paragraphs.

"Stop it, please!"

The film stars John Wayne as a downed American pilot in occupied France who stays hidden from Nazis with the help of Joan Crawford. Also, they start to fall in love. The movie was made in 1942 and apparently by that point in the war, our country was so used to building weapons they forgot how to make anything that didn't inflict pain.

How Reality Intervened:

John Wayne seemed like a perfect fit for the role of a WWII soldier, fighting alongside the French Resistance behind enemy lines. He was cast partially because he embodied the patriotism and masculinity America yearned for in a hero, and partially because all the other actors were busy

Why would a democracy need a Duke anyway?

So, watching Reunion in France , knowing that it was made during the Second World War and seeing one of the only actors without any context for the role stumble and sweat his way through it makes it a little more enjoyable to sit through.

How Reality Intervened:

Over 30 years later, it turns out the movie is better at predicting the future than the Mayan calendar. The ludicrous ideas of what the world could become are eerily true today even though the predictions were written with implausibility in mind. Americathon opens on a United States that's depleted of oil and falling into bankruptcy to foreign lenders; apparently in 1979 there was nothing funnier than the prospect of a devalued U.S. dollar. Also in the movie, one of the biggest corporations in America is NIKE which doesn't seem like much of a prediction except that in '79,

Hang on a second, that Chinese girl is freakishly tall.

It's certainly more interesting to watch today if for no other reason than its bizarre accuracy. Still for a movie that's designed to be hilarious, it feels like a cruel mockery of the most significant events of the last few decades. It's like watching a romantic comedy that takes place entirely on a 9/11 flight.

"Hey! It's me, Joe! Hey! Where're you going?"

And that's where the similarities end. The film adopts a weirdly insistent anti-drug message that didn't exist in the book and as movie ends with the three main characters learning lessons and saving one another from the depravity of Los Angeles, you can't help but scan the credits for a DARE logo. The movie certainly has good moments, specifically any scene with Robert Downey, Jr. as he plays a self-destructive addict who's slowly killing himself.

Robert Downey, Jr. became a self-destructive addict who was slowly killing himself. In fact, he credits Less Than Zero as the inciting moment leading to all of the heroin using and passing out in children's beds he would do for the next decade. "Until that movie, I took my drugs after work and on the weekends. That changed on Less Than Zero, the role was like the ghost of Christmas future. The character was an exaggeration of myself. Then things changed and, in some ways, I became an exaggeration of the character." Knowing that as you watch Less Than Zero

Steel towns throughout the Midwest and Northeast tend to have insanely loyal sports fans, presumably because the collapse of the steel industry in the 1970s means there's literally nothing else to be proud of in the area. Slap Shot was a movie designed to inspire and touch the heart of the working class man in the rust belt, but Mother Nature stepped in and said, "No, fuck that. He gets nothing." The film, released in February of 1977 was a thinly veiled homage to the Johnstown Jets who were a phenomenally good team despite their economic circumstances. Then, in July of 1977

In 1988, Johnstown founded a new hockey team which they affectionately named the Chiefs based on the 1977 movie. Despite the enthusiasm of fans, the team has never been a strong contender in any league and doesn't draw enough money to support itself.

The name is just cursed.

The solution? As of March 2010, the team is actually moving south , and Johnstown gets kicked in the ribs one more time by circumstance. Watching this movie with all the current context makes the story that much more heartbreaking and even people indifferent to hockey can't help but root for the success of Paul Newman and his Chiefs.

Fortune shined in 2007 when the female lead, Chyler Leigh joined the cast of Grey's Anatomy and the Internet started to wonder where the hell it had seen her before. TheAtrox.com made the connection to Kickboxing Academy and then discovered an outstanding fact that had somehow gone unnoticed for 10 years.

Chyler Leigh is the costar and love interest to Christopher Khayman Lee and throughout the movie they share a handful of intimate make-out scenes culminating in one awkwardly long kiss at the end. The beauty of these otherwise forgettable moments is that Christopher and Chyler are actually

Oh, nooooo.

Yes, the romantic leads are siblings. Why they would cast a brother and sister in these roles makes about as much sense as someone green-lighting a project called Kickboxing Academy without any real fight sequences. Still, the movie instantly becomes tolerable and even fun to watch given the knowledge that no matter how much you're suffering, the leads are suffering infinitely more. I can't think of a better or more literal way for the Art and Life siblings to join forces than a brother and sister making out in a kid's movie... unless maybe one of them was crippled.