The terrible movie that got stolen the most from Blockbuster shops
These days, the excitement of going to pick out a movie at Blockbuster after school has been replaced with endlessly scrolling Netflix, discussing recommendations with workers and other customers, and perhaps even grabbing movie-night snacks while you are at it.
It was an experience, and whether you remember the days of going to Blockbuster for VHS tapes or DVDs, it’s certainly something that just doesn’t happen anymore. It’s a shame, because you really could immerse yourself in a whole cinematic education via a video rental store. Just look at Quentin Tarantino, who might not have worked at Blockbuster, but his long-time job at the similar Video Archives in California practically prepared him for a career as a director.
With its royal blue logo and rows upon rows of movies, I can still remember first encountering the 2005 kids’ film Hoodwinked! in a Blockbuster, intrigued by its god-awful animation style shown on a poster. Meanwhile, my obsession with 2010’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid came from a DVD copy my parents picked up for me at our local branch. I couldn’t believe we had to return it.
That’s the thing, Blockbuster was designed to be a rental service, charging you if you didn’t return your film in time, but that didn’t stop people from trying to get away with it, so while I didn’t keep my copy of Diary of a Wimpy Kid as much as I wanted to, thousands of patrons did try their hand at stealing copies of their favourite movies, often succeeding.
The rented movie that got stolen the most from Blockbuster
But what movie was stolen the most? Before the rental shut down and we were forced to retreat to online streaming or buying our own copies of movies, people wanted a way to watch movies over and over as conveniently as possible. Stealing a Blockbuster tape or DVD was sneaky, but people tried it all the time, resulting in one movie emerging as the most stolen title, and spoiler alert: it wasn’t even a good film.
It was the mid-2000s, and a certain Adam Sandler-produced movie was released to overwhelmingly negative reviews (shocker). Grandma’s Boy, a stoner comedy courtesy of director Nicholaus Goossen, might not have won over critics, but people were keen to own it in its physical form, resulting in over $35million in DVD revenue. That’s not bad at all when you consider that it only made $6.6m at the box office.
So, alongside these impressive DVD statistics, people also couldn’t stop stealing it from Blockbuster; perhaps people wanted a physical copy of the stoner film so that they could enjoy it at home, while high. Nick Swordson, one of the film’s co-writers, claimed that he and Sandler met the CEO of Blockbuster, telling Stiff Socks that they were made aware of the fact that Grandma’s Boy was “one of their most stolen movies of all time”.
Allen Covert starred as a video game developer who ends up moving into his grandma’s house, despite being in his 30s, only for him to fall for Linda Cardellini’s character, who oversees the production of his game. It’s a movie full of stupid gags, with characters getting evicted after spending rent money on Filipino prostitutes, a drug dealer moving in with a lion, and the main character ejaculating on his co-worker’s mother by accident, of course.
Clearly, in the mid-2000s, people couldn’t stop stealing DVDs of Grandma’s Boy, and now, I’m sure you can find a copy in your local charity shop bargain bin.
