Welcome to FTS’ brand new feature Word Around the Campfire where all of the FTS’ contributors take turns answering the question or topic of the month. This month we’re looking at all of those bad movies we can’t help but love.

How do you expect me to narrow this down to one film? The obvious penultimate answer is The Room, but there are so many bad movies I love. This is like trying to make me pick a favorite Tom Waits album or favorite beer or favorite actor. Right now it’s The Room, but ask me in a few weeks when I’m in a different mood and it could be Wizards or Phonebooth or Alien Resurrection.

Weirdly enough, as someone who doesn’t really like most rom-coms, some of my favorite ones happen to be considered “bad,” and yet I can’t help but love them: Leap Year (mostly due to my love for its leads individually, fully admitting they don’t have the greatest chemistry together in this It Happened One Night knock-off set in Ireland), License to Wed (saw it and love it only for John Krasinski, fully admitting it’s kind of a disaster of a film on the whole), Just Friends (I think this is considered bad and I guess I understand why, but everyone in it makes me laugh no matter how many times I see it, and the gags and lines have remained quotable and hilarious to me throughout my formative years). I’m not proud of these choices, but the heart wants what it wants!

I’ve got a fair few guilty pleasure movies, but the one I enjoy the most, and the one with the most ridiculous plot, is The Core, starring Hilary Swank and Aaron Eckhart as a pilot and a geologist who must journey into the Earth to reignite the core, which has stopped spinning and is causing havoc up on the surface. Birds are falling from the sky, people with pace makers are suffering heart attacks and rolling gaps in the ozone layer are causing sporadic, instantaneous sunburns and melting of the Golden Gate Bridge. There’s s great supporting cast including Delroy Lindo, Stanley Tucci, Bruce Greenwood, Alfre Woodard, Richard Jenkins and D.J. Qualls, and if you can ignore just how ludicrous the plot is, there’s a lot of fun to be had. It’s worth noting that some science teachers will show their students The Core as an example of why you shouldn’t believe anything you see in movies.

I love a lot of bad Indian movies, but since no one knows them I will tell you about another bad movie I love: Grown Ups. Both parts. For some reason, my mom, my sister and me went to see part 1 the summer and came out and had a grand time at the movies. When part 2 came out, we invited all our friends and had an even better time, if that’s possible. I like all the jokes, good and bad, love all the characters and stereotypes and that’s basically it. I’d like to say what’s not to like but I do understand that this humor doesn’t work for everyone. What can I say, I enjoy it.

Oh, there are so many. There’s the dumb rom-coms, the 90’s flicks that aged horribly, the bad children’s movies that still evoke nostalgia, the Twilight. Then there’s Troll 2. As much as I’d like to think of something further into the depths of my sometimes poor taste, there’s no worse movie that I love more. Troll 2 is a failure on every single level unless you consider unintentional hilarity as a success, in which case this is firing on all cylinders. It’s unspeakably bizarre, poorly performed and written even worse, confusingly plotted and ridiculous. There are magical popcorn orgasms and a deeper theme pondering the evils of vegetarians. Troll 2 truly has it all.

There are plenty of movies I could populate this topic with but I’m going with my standby choice for guilty pleasure flicks: Antitrust. It’s about a computer programmer (Ryan Phillipe) that gets tapped to join a huge Microsoft-esque company NURV run by megalomaniac Gary Winston (Tim Robbins) only to get wrapped up in some dangerous foul play. It’s a terribly generic, run of the mill thriller that I will watch start to finish whenever it’s on TV. I can’t explain it – it’s just one of the many wonders of the universe.

The worst movie that I like the most is Killer Klowns from Outer Space. It’s an old B-movie about aliens that look like clowns and kidnap people to use as food. I would often catch it when it was on tv when I was young and I watched it every time. As a kid, I didn’t realize it was as bad as it was, but as an adult I can recognize that it is not that great. I watched part of it recently and was taken back by how bad it was, but it was still fun to see this film I had seen so often as a kid.

Depending on who you ask all the movies that I love are bad movies, and you know what, I’m ok with that. The movie that I love and get the most flack for is Grease 2. Dear God, I love this movie! First thing Grease 2 going for it is Michelle mutha-f%^kin’ Pfeiffer, she is drop dead gorgeous as the leading Pink Lady. Secondly, and I may be committing musical blasphemy, but the songs in Grease 2 are so much better than the original. I actually remember more words to Who’s That Guy and Score Tonight than to Summer Lovin’ and Grease Lightning.