The 'Let's Decide On A Movie' Rules, Version de Squish!

How many times have you been in this situation?

You and your friends decide to rent a movie. Bob likes Asian Drama, Billy's into Documentaries, Jenny likes fluffy funny Romances, and Jane's all about the bloody Horror Gore.

You're all yelling titles at each other from your respective sections pissing off the other customers, and you take an hour deciding what you should see, and it ends up being whatever Jenny chose 'cause she's got the membership...

That sucks.

Well here's Squish's tried and true method of quickly figuring out what you're seeing with everyone walking away with relatively little bloodshed:

1.) Split up and find three movies that you want to see. If there's too many people in your group, you may want to reduce the number to two, but I'd recommend against reducing it to just one, since choice is what this exercise is all about. Remember to automatically eliminate the "Seen it"s from the pre-selection.

2.) Regroup and give your selection to the others. They decide which one of yours they would prefer to see, and you decide which one of each of theirs you would most like to see. Eventually you will have as many movies to chose from as there are people, and you'll all have an easier time choosing the final selection, without all the convincing, reasoning and the "but I heard it was good!" drivel.

For the especially difficult, you may decide to include the Lowest Common Denominator Factor in your pre-selection, or simply do the following:

3.) If there's an impasse, a split vote or just plain old friction, have someone hold the films in contention behind their back, shuffling them around, and picks one at random.

Here's a great way of picking out a title to watch when it's just two of you, (it's great for couples!):

Have you and your mate chose 3 to 5 films - eliminating the "Seen It"s automatically - and give them to each other. They choose one from your pile that they most would want to see while you do the same with their selections. If you still can't decide which is best from the two that are left, shuffle them behind your back and pick one randomly.

And kids, if someone just will NOT see a movie because it'll give them Vietnam flashbacks or bad memories of their 'bathing suit area', do them a favour and pick another. I mean come on, you're all friends here!

Hopefully you'll be spending more time enjoying the film than hanging around talking about why yours is the one that should be chosen.

I'd like to hear your stories for this one. How do YOU decide what to take home when there's more than one of you?