6 Annoyingly Repetitive Movie Trends Ruining Modern Hollywood

5. The €˜Grey Pound€™

With more and more young rapscallions distracted by gaming, social media, and mobile phones, their position as one of cinema€™s optimum growth markets has diminished somewhat in the past decade. Step forward the over-50s, the forgotten generation thought lost to the encompassing glow of television, now clambering into weekday matinee shows of the latest senior-friendly cinematic romp. And boy, is there a lot of them. Much like with biopics, there is nothing wrong with producing films with an older clientele in mind per se (there is certainly a lot of overlap between the two categories). Again though, there lies an issue with the production-line factory aura of the genre, both in terms of regularity and bland conventionalism. All too often films such as The Love Punch and Last Vegas fall victim to being overly saccharine, twee, harmless, and unchallenging, relying on €˜safe€™ humour and the appeal of aging stars to placate their similarly aging target market. Perhaps more a criticism of the deliberately segmented marketing than of the films themselves (the list below does feature several very decent pictures), the constant pigeon-holing of the over-50s, nonetheless, has lead to a spate of dull, uninspiring, grey pound grabbing cash-ins; an abundance of cheap matinee seat-fillers that draw focus and talent away from producing real, all-adult friendly cinema. Recent Examples: The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014), What We Did On Our Holiday (2014), Last Vegas (2013), The Love Punch (2013), Le Week-end (2013), The Guilt Trip (2012), Quartet (2012), Song for Marion (2012), Hope Springs (2012), The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Franchise (2012-)