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I missed out on a rather good movie today.

My wife was watching, and I was doing some housekeeping on one of the non-work-related projects. I could have joined her on the couch, but I chose to turn my back on the TV, so I didn’t watch. I listened through the whole story, and I turned around to watch several scenes, but I didn’t watch the movie. I think I would have enjoyed it if I watched.

It was “The World’s Fastest Indian”, a decent movie about good people helping a nice and devoted man to make his dream come true. Anthony Hopkins’ performance is great, the character he plays is immediately loveable and relatable, and that’s exactly why, after watching for several minutes, I decided to turn my back on the screen.

I hated to see a nice man suffer.

You see, I expected a run-of-the-mill story arc, with something really bad happening and all the hopes being crushed before the story turns to a happy ending. I expected the screenplay authors torture this loveable and relatable character, and I didn’t want to see that. I felt the world came with enough evil already, and I didn’t feel like being exposed to more of it. I didn’t want to see the nice man hurt by the careless fate or cold-hearted people.

The movie turned out to have none of that. The people the main character met turned out to be caring and compassionate, the blows of the fate not all that ominous, the unfortunate series of events not overly tragic and rather recoverable. The road to the happy end wasn’t a walk in the park, of course, but it wasn’t a painful crawl through the hell itself, either. And the screenplay writers didn’t make the nice aging man suffer too much, just enough for me to keep worrying for him right through the end of the movie.

I expected people to be cruel, and they were not; and because of that expectation I missed on a warm, light-hearted, and enjoyable movie. I guess there’s a lesson for me here.