A Cheesy precursor to Camp

In a brief moment of freedom from our child (via babysitting), my wife and I went to the movies. Both being quite tired from our occupations and our offspring, we decided to go for an "easier" movie and saw RED. It's an action comedy that fit the bill as far as our mental states were concerned. I recommend it if you're in mood for playful thinking (Bear in mind, I enjoyed Hudson Hawk and A Knight's Tale; if you want a sense of what action comedy means to me).

After the end credits rolled up and the two of us had congratulated ourselves on our excellent movie selection we returned home to our sleeping child and our babysitter (our god-daughter). She asked us how was the movie. We said it was good and began to describe it in broad strokes. This was where we met difficulty as our god-daughter (who is 15) didn't know what "Cheesy", "Camp" or "Precursor" meant. Other than the third one, we struggled to define the words for her. I found it odd that she didn't know these words and worried that I had finally jumped the generational gap fence when I realized that I didn't really know where the words came from either.

As is my nature, I looked up the words afterwards:

Cheesy -  Cheap, unpleasant, or blatantly inauthentic (In the sense that cheese is all the same colour and is full of holes...like the plot of your movie.. oh Snap!). I assume that exotic cheese is not part of this metaphor.

Camp -  To contain artifice, frivolity, naïve middle-class pretentiousness, and ‘shocking’ excess; in short to take your subject matter lightly . I found out there is actually a famous essay explaining camp which proves that I don't take movie reviewing seriously enough. I did like the line that the whole point of camp is to "dethrone the serious". Although I have never seen serious holding such a high seat in our culture as long as I have been alive.

Pre-cursor - To run before/in front of., which proves my point that everything sounds cooler in another language until you realize they are just using their version of "thingie" or "what?"

At the end of the day, the lesson I guess is to know the words you are using as there are teenagers everywhere to call you on.

S