...Sure to Come Plummetting Down!

I took it to mean people felt it wasn't that bad of a movie.  Sorry for misunderstanding you.

Not when we go over to the ratings thread, or when you read the eight negative reviews by top critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

It's interesting that, since being out on DVD for awhile and on sale at nearly every store I visit in my area, there are still only 24 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and it's still rated rotten at 8% positive. 

Besides, a "consensus" means everybody came to a general agreement.  I don't think you have a general agreement when one of us (me) says without equivocation that, to borrow an idea from a different thread, yes, this was torture, of an unintentional cruel variety, being dressed as if to be charming, having good performances, but actually being like a tasty cherry with a worm growing around its pit. 

My experience still is that this was one of the worst cinematic experiences I have ever had.

So much for your consensus.

Well, I don't know if having seen it first had anything to do with it.  For me, when I saw the first fifteen minutes with Campbell Babbitt going through his conundrum about fictionalizing the continuing life of Angela well after her death, I was thinking that this movie isn't all so bad.  And then, from the moment his red Gremlin broke down outside of Concord (what Gremlin was even working by 1986?!) on, it was a constant back and forth between being lulled by the good acting and being yanked out of it by the awful script that kept breeding way too many storylines.  By the end of the movie when the hero masturbator utters "Good!" at the sight of Babbitt and his everlasting Gremlin leaving town, I wanted to say "Good!" that the movie finally ended.

And then for the next week, the ridiculous plot twists and convoluted storytelling, not to mention the theme about illegal sex between adults and minors seeming to be okay (and what about the McMartin School fiasco which happened during this time?), not to mention an utter failure capturing the time period beyond mentioning the upcoming Challenger disaster, just kept churning inside my head.  That's a bad feeling that not even Uwe Boll left in my craw.  It was a different kind of low in bad movie watching for me, which is why I'm hard against it.

I've been wondering if it was because I saw it on the large screen, while you saw it on your home theatre?

It seems we agree the worst scene was Babbitt on the ladder outside of Lucy's window.

I guess that's the problem.  For me, it was a complete mess, a "what-the-hell?" from the moment the reporter comes into town.  However, as you mentioned with I Know Who Killed Me or The Happening, it lacks unintentionally funny scenes.  I don't know if there's a one in the movie.  I feel we're still looking for that kind of film among this year's releases.

The "pedophilia is cool" theme had to compete with the "peeping masturbators make good neighbors" theme, but I feel the "pedophilia is cool" theme won out, especially when Campbell puts the ladder on Lucy's balcony.  That whole Romeo and Juliet thing got really creepy.

Well, based on the little dipitlow has said about why he feels it isn't really all that bad, he's basing it on the acting, particularly Hillary Duff's, but he doesn't say anything about the plot or how it all hangs together.  I've said the acting in this movie is very good a number of times.

However, if you take a crappy script, and all the actors turn in excellent performances, don't you still have a crappy movie?  And doesn't the excellent performances make the movie all the more crappier?  That's my point, and that's why I'd like dipitlow to comment on what he felt about all these crazy, convoluted, contrived and often incomprehensible plotlines in this very bad movie, despite the good performances.

Okay, I want to hear dipitlow.  What did you like about this movie?

Wasn't everything I said was in the movie in the movie?  I know I left a whole bunch out.

And I did say the acting was good.  But the plotline. . . . what line?  There was no line.  It was a plot fracture, into little tiny pieces, held together by a flimsy piece of celluloid.  Maybe that's why they orignally were going to call this Safety Glass?