E!, giphyThere's crying, and then there's movie crying. For whatever reason, there's truly no environment better situated for blubbering than being seated in front of a screen. Whether it's a dark theater, your own living room or, best of all, on a brightly-lit plane as you are squeezed in like a sausage among 200 strangers.
There's no cry like the movie cry. Nothing is more therapeutic, nothing is more freeing, nothing does more to make you question every life decision you've ever made. It's those times you think to yourself, here I am, watching Fifty Shades of Grey in 27E, bawling like a baby because Christian will never love Ana the way she needs to be loved, that really prompt self-evaluation.
But that doesn't mean that all movie cries are created equal. Viewers can expect wholly different sob sessions in Beauty and the Beast than they can in Furious 7. Come with us on this mournful journey as we categorize them all.
The Disney Cry
The way one's body heaves when watching a Disney movie is so specific to that genre that it really can't go by any other name. It really doesn't matter the film's subject matter—the cry will be the same. This weekend, audiences will relive the experience on the big screen thanks to the adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, wherein cries can be expected pretty much anytime Belle's father shows up onscreen. (No? Just us?). Animated movies have a particularly strong influence on the amount of one's tears, but it seems logical that the nostalgia factor would step in to ensure that there are no less this time around.
Of course, it would be pure blasphemy to discuss Disney tears without mentioning ultimate cartoon cry-a-thon: The Lion King. That bastard Mufasa gets us every. Damn. Time. It is physically and physiologically and psychologically—and whatever other type of science you want to throw in there—impossible not to have a sad reaction to what can only be described as the greatest family tragedy to ever grace the silver screen.
The Teen Tragedy Cry
Curse those teens and their melodramatic lives! Their plot lines are almost as out of control as their hormones, and yet it feels just as devastating no matter how over-the-top it is. Why is it that teenagers in YA movies always have to fall in love and die? One of those stories is cry-worthy enough, but both at the same time is simply unfair. We're looking at you, The Fault In Our Stars.
Sure, it was a cancer movie, so audiences should have seen it coming. But that didn't stop (probably) millions of grown adults from heaving as they listened to Gus' eulogy for Hazel. For the millennials out there, one of the earliest examples of this was My Girl, followed in life stages by Here on Earth. Do you remember Here on Earth? LeeLee Sobieski only has a few months to live and yet falls in love with Chris Klein anyway, and then someone reads something really sweet at her funeral. It's absurd, yet somehow, not so.
The Dead Pet Cry
The first question any discerning movie viewer should ask, the second a pet appears onscreen, is "Does it die?" There's even a website for that, so that concerned citizens can check to make sure they aren't entering down a one-way street to Crysville. The worst offender, obviously, is Marley and Me, but anyone who says they didn't get a little sad in Fear when Mark Wahlberg cuts off the head of Reese Witherspoon's dog would be totally kidding themselves.
The Unhappy Ending Cry
We don't go to the movie theater to get a shot of realism, we go to the movie theaters to escape our horrible lives with something that's way, way better. So when we're watching a romantic comedy or a love story and the plot doesn't wrap itself up in a neat little bow, we get very sad.
So sad, in fact, that we cry a lot. In the moment, nothing feels more tragic than watching two people whom we know are meant to be together, live out their lives separately without ever getting back into what we all assumed was a perfect onscreen relationship. If there's one reason that La La Land was doomed from the start of the Best Picture race, it's because Damien Chazelle and his evil cronies insisted on delivering a dismal ending to the story.
The Happy Cry
When movies are sad, viewers cry. When movies are stressful, viewers cry. When movies are happy, viewers cry...a lot. Perhaps it's because everyone is so conditioned for something bad to happen, be it a sudden twist ending or the death of a pet, that when things go perfectly there are nowhere for those bottled-up emotions to go but out of our eyeballs. The happy cry is one of the more therapeutic of the genre—certainly much more so than the aforementioned dead pet. Dog deaths aren't good for anybody.
The happy cry is what you turn to after a hard week at work, or when you realize you are in your thirties and still overdrafting your checking account to pay for Trader Joe's wine. It's what you turn to when you need a break from your own dismal reality that lifts your spirits, but also allows you that sweet, sweet release. In a nutshell, the happy cry is Love Actually.
Nothing that truly tragic happens in Love Actually (accept for the death of Daniel's wife, but the writers mercilessly frontloaded the movie with that story line); in fact, it's all very much good news. There are marriages, writers falling in love with their housekeepers, men finding sex in America, Prime Ministers finding love with their employees they mildly sexually harassed. Everyone is #blessed, and yet we are #sobbing. But seriously, who has the willpower to keep it together when Sam is chasing Joanna down the jet bridge?
The This-Is-Actually-Devastating Cry
So much of our movie tears are caused by events that, on their face, are wholly unrealistic or ridiculous. It's the beauty of the cinema, to bring these occasions to life in such a way that we suddenly believe two terminally ill children would be allowed to fly to Amsterdam in order to chase down a famous person. But then there are the films that are so deeply rooted in reality that they shake us to our very core.
These are the movies that stick with us for days, if not weeks or months, after the credits roll. The movies that cause us to shake uncontrollably while watching, but also on the subway on the way home. And the next morning at the office coffeemaker. And five days later when somebody asks us how we like whatever movie it was.
These are the movies like I Am Sam, the plot points of which we truly cannot type out here today, 16 years later, without feeling a crater-sized hole in the pit of our stomachs. These are the movies like Still Alice, with its gritty depiction of early onset Alzheimer's. These are the movies like Rabbit Hole, which we somehow allowed ourselves to watch despite knowing from the get-go that it centered around a teenager accidentally running over a little boy. These are the movies like Manchester by the Sea, which, well...f--k you, Manchester by the Sea.
The Laugh-Until-You-Cry Cry
After a viewing of Manchester by the Sea, it is absolutely essential for a human being's mental well-being to transition immediately to something far more lighthearted. We turn to these comedies to give us more than a chuckle: To actually make us crack up so hard that tears stream out of our eyes as if completely independent from our bodies. We thank thee Judd Apatow for so many of these, from Knocked Up to Bridesmaids, but especially for that part in Bridesmaids when Kristen Wiig is high on the plane. What kind of a name is Stove, anyway?
The Nicholas Sparks Cry
The man has created his very own genre of tears. Think of this like Disney cries, except you feel way, way worse about yourself. It's perfectly acceptable to let out some sobs during The Lion King, but it's a little bit harder to feel good about doing the same during The Last Song.
The Cheap Shot Cry
We're cheating a bit here, because our chief offender is not a movie but rather a television show. Yes, we're looking at you This Is Us. We know everyone watches this program simply to cry. There's really no audience member out there who's turning on This Is Us and expecting to feel uplifted or, really, any emotion beyond devastation. That's the show's M.O.
But sometimes, and we hate to say it, the cries are a cheap shot. The writers know that its viewers are vulnerable. The writers know that its viewers had a really long day at work that may or may not have involved being publicly humiliated in an elevator. The writers know that its viewers are elbow-deep in a pint of low-calorie ice cream that tastes like crap. They've got us right where they want us, and they're going to take a low blow. They're going to kill someone off, they're going to ruin a character's day, they're going to do anything that they know will elicit those much sought-after sobs.
We're as much to blame for indulging as they are for taking the shot, but that doesn't mean we're happy about it.