I am a proud member of Team Trondheim, one of 18 teams that competed in the Scandinavian Film Championship last weekend, and well into this week. Despite serious misgivings on my part, we went all the way to the silver medal, though sadly we didn’t get an actual medal, just the well-deserved prize of sleep.

We managed 90 hours of movie-watching, 41 completed movies, with ten minute breaks for the bathroom in between. I didn’t sleep for about 98 hours. I was a zombie by the time I got home.

Despite this, I am so happy I decided to throw all my usual excuses for not doing stuff out the window, and just go for it. I think I can safely say we had the most fun out of all the teams, simply because we kept doing what we do every week on the radio: we talked about movies!

Please note that my choices are heavily dependent on our mood at the time. Basically, these movies are the best in this given situation, which is why I include the time elapsed. I also haven’t given them a dice roll!

The Top Worst Movies of the Scandinavian Film Championship

3. White Chicks (2004) Time elapsed: 35 hours 58 minutes

You might be able to argue that the horrible masks are suppose to be horrible and unconvincing, but it’s still a horrible movie. The only thing even slightly amusing is Terry Crews rocking out to “A Thousand Miles”. It was so bad it almost wasn’t any fun mocking it, though we still had our share of eye-rolling. The ironic thing is that much later we saw Some Like it Hot with Marilyn Monroe, and it can be argued they both use the same concepts for comedic effect: guys dressing up as women for something work related, trying to fit in a women’s social structure, falling in love with a women while she thinks you a women (and she’s not a lesbian), and at the same time wooing her as a man (but not yourself!). Wow, I am going to have to write an in-depth comparative analysis on this later.

2. Jensen & Jensen (2011) Time elapsed: 24 hours 43 minutes

We got to watch this gem right after our first Lord of the Rings movie, and its one saving grace is how short it is. Since it was a Danish animated movie, we thought it might be in the same ballpark as Terkel in Trouble (2004), which I think is hilarious, but being animated is the only link. I honestly have no idea what the movie is actually about. The only thing I registered was a succession of dick and boob jokes. I know it’s Danish, but this was beyond that. It looked like a couple of 14-year-olds had made it on their laptops in their basement. Avoid at all costs.

1. Midgets vs. Mascots (2010) Time elapsed: 57 hours 15 minutes

A mock-documentary about midgets and mascots competing against each other in a series of challengers. It was so awful it made me long for a Sacha Baron Cohen or Jackass marathon. By this point in the evening – or rather the second day – we weren’t paying too much attention to the plot, but it still managed to be boring. You would think by this point we would laugh at anything. This movie proved that theory wrong.

Top Best Movies of the Scandinavian Film Championship

3. Lord of the Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) ex. edition. Time elapsed: 20 hours 45 minutes.

Repeated viewings might have dulled the sense of awe felt at the premiere, but Peter Jackson’s epic is the closest thing I have come to feeling like I am truly seeing a book-world on the big screen. It is also a standard movie-marathon trilogy, so I felt it was very fitting that all three were included. Our goal – which felt impossible at the time – was to finish this marathon-within-the-marathon and see all three. We met this goal and then some, so I could not be more proud of us! Also, the movie is just simply entertaining from start to finish!

2. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010) Time elapsed: 26 hours 10 minutes.

One of my team-mates had been raving about this movie for some time, so I was really looking forward to seeing it. While paying homage and mocking the classic “group of people go off into the woods to have fun, and end up getting brutally murdered”-plot, this film gets everything right. I love the actors – Alan Tudyk is always a favourite – and it’s a comedy that doesn’t try too hard to make you laugh. Or maybe, as I thought then, I was just sleep-deprived and would laugh at anything (this would later be proved wrong during the above mentioned Midgets vs Mascots).

1. The Longest Day (1962) Time elapsed: 73 hours 45 minutes

How the hell could an old black and white movie about D-Day be the best, I hear you ask? Because the title and timing of the movie (“We see what you did there!”) suggested to us it would be the most boring movie of the bunch, but in actuality it was very entertaining. It had so much action, spectacular set pieces with tons of extras, and so many surprises! When Sean Connery showed up as a smart-ass soldier, we jumped up and down like fangirls. It had everything we needed at that moment, and despite hallucinating parts of it in colour, we never lost concentration. I am probably going to re-watch this just to make sure it was good, but I don’t have much doubt. One of the things that illustrated how tired I was at this point was the fact that I didn’t recognise Leo Genn, even though I had spent two years writing my master’s on Plymouth Adventure, which he starred in. 

Despite a few awful films, most of the movies we saw were at least entertaining (we had a blast reenacting Titanic). I am not sure I will ever try something similar again, but I am so thankful I got to join the team! Thank you to my fellow team mates, and all the friends and family support!