The Perfect Afternoon Cable Movie Is There For Us, Even If We're Not Always There For It
Twice a weekend, around Second Cereal (2 p.m.), a choice is presented to all lazy homebodies. This is the last remaining time to get up and make anything productive of your day. The world is saying to be strong! Finish a project! Rise and grind! But let’s do some math. Most people work at least five days a week. That’s roughly 71 percent of days. So the move here, during the Hour of Second Cereal no less, is to stay put on that couch. What are you going to start at 2 p.m. that you can’t shrug off for later? This timing is perfect, you see—this is the sweet time of the day when the Perfect Afternoon Cable Movie is on.
The Perfect Afternoon Cable Movie (PACM) is a waning art form that can only be found in shadowy corners of cable television: an obscure film that you'd never think to watch on your own, but it found you anyway. You could watch the movie on a streaming service, but instead, it’s strangely more enjoyable watching it regularly interrupted with commercial breaks. The PACM is the dial up internet of cinema—slow and steady and rife with opportunities to step away to make, say, a cold cut sandwich.
But like the era that produced these films, the reign of PACMs is coming to an end. For every Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon account, the PACM becomes endangered. Will future generations understand the strange pleasure of watching the last (arguably best) 45 minutes of a movie, spliced over the course of 75 minutes? Streaming may be killing cable, but let us all remember the true hero of a dying era: the Perfect Afternoon Cable Movie.
The thing about the PACM that makes it so damn good is that it’s like finding a dollar in your pocket. You weren’t depending on that dollar, but wow does it feel good to find it. The concept of the PACM hit me a couple weeks ago, hungover on my couch when I came across the last 45 minutes of The Perfect Storm, a textbook PACM. Movies like these shouldn’t require work. They are less about prestige and more about a vibe. Typically released between 1992 and 2000, the best kind of PACMs probably star Helen Hunt or Pierce Brosnan. These are films where someone did a half-assed edit to remove offensive language for TV ("You dumbshorts"). But, most enjoyably, you can tune in and out at your own leisure. Because you've seen it 1000 times, you'll see it 1000 more. And you'll love every viewing.
When a movie falls within those parameters, you know you’ve hit the jackpot. Catching Twister after Aunt Meg’s house gets demolished? Great. Who needed that first part with the cow flying through the air? Starting Stepmom moments after Susan Sarandon reveals her cancer diagnosis? Thank God. Less Jena Malone for everyone. You see, these TNT and TBS and FX special features (AMC, if the film was nominated for an Oscar) are the gems of channel surfing: the rare find that draws you in without any of the pressure of having to invest emotional energy into a movie. I’ve seen Forrest Gump eight times in the past three years, but somehow never chronologically, and it doesn’t matter because the PACM doesn’t offer cinematic integrity as much as it offers cinematic comfort.
Another key ingredient to the PACM is its stars. And the PACM has its mainstays. I can't remember the last movie Tommy Lee Jones was in, but I can firmly tell you about his classic PACMs: Double Jeopardy, Men in Black. The list goes on. There's also a particular kind of actress who defines the genre: Helen Hunt, Diane Lane, Robin Wright. The thing about these actors—Kevin Costner, Bruce Willis, Ed Harris—is that they were in their most prolific era as leading movie stars. The PACM is what defines them. When you picture Ed Harris is it not as the director pulling the strings of Jim Carrey's life in Truman Show? The PACM might not be their defining role, but it's the one seared into our brains from repeated weekend viewings.
You know what you’re getting when you stumble upon one of these films—no, literally. They fall into three main categories. The first is a film that invokes some sense of tragedy or peril. That’s where The Perfect Storm falls. The Fugitive and Lake Placid also reside in this grouping. The second is a story about love, but with a lesson. Love & Basketball or Armageddon, perhaps. And then the last, oft-underrated category is a film about a woman who just really gets the shit end of the stick. If you see Enough or Double Jeopardy on TV, you’re going to watch it. Naturally, the true greats encompass a bit of all three. That’s where you find your Forrest Gumps, your Twisters, your Deep Impacts, your Dante's Peakses.
It's exactly these familiar characteristics that caused most of these movies to end up with Rotten Tomatoes scores that range from about 40 to 65 percent, and yet, here we are devouring them in our quiet time. The networks that house them know that, too. That's why they are ingrained in cable culture. These films, particularly those about 15 years or older, are cheaper and easier to license. And they only get more popular as they become engrained into our lazy weekend culture—gluing to the back of our minds until someone asks you to name Bruce Willis's best movie and you can only think of The Fifth Element. The PACMs offer something oddly familiar and inconsequential. The narrative integrity of Runaway Bride and Vertical Limit is simultaneously enough to keep you interested, yet not enough to keep your dad awake while watching it next to you when you're home for the holidays. These films evoke a sense of comfort that you're just not going to get in a theater, nor are you going to find by watching it with intention.
That's why the most magical part of the PACM is that ultimately, it chooses you. It finds you in this time of absolute lazy weakness, just after you nearly settled on watching a random episode of Guy’s Grocery Games, and it hits you with all the right feelings: a bit of nostalgia, a touch of comfort, and the strange relief that you can feel like you watch a feature length movie by only taking in the last third of it. So when the weekend calls and you feel the urge to get up and make something of yourself, take a minute and consider that taking care of yourself might be staying where you are and finding a C-list Nicolas Cage movie. Do it for cable. Do it for you. We all have so little time, so treat yourself.
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