I have seen “Old School” four times and “The Big Lebowski” three. I’ve watched “Zoolander” once in the theaters and twice on DVD, and I’ve seen every Will Farell movie that has been made.

I get it when a friend misses a turn, has to circle around one-way streets to get back on track and says, “I’m not an ambi-turner.” I smile knowingly when Over McShare warns Goody McTwo-Shoes that she might want to put on her earmuffs. My familiarity with the realm of college comedies, however, does not actually reflect my taste in movies (although admittedly, I did really like Will’s “Stranger Than Fiction”...and “Elf”). I have seen all of these films too many a-time because of social arm-twisting and brutish peer-pressuring: once I get together with friends, as a collective group we are never, and I mean ever, in the mood for a serious film.

Now I agree that movies, like ice cream and earrings, should be selected depending on the specific mood of the aforementioned chooser’s (or choosers’) present disposition. Some days, you wake up and are ready for the beaded, peacock-feather earrings your bestie just got you from her semester abroad, and some days you just need a double waffle cone with a scoop of Very Berry Strawberry and Gold Medal Ribbon. You aren’t going to be keen on watching “Requiem for a Dream” every day, either.

But it seems that it is never the right setting for watching any movie where boy does not meet girl, boy does not get girl and sex/fart/tranquilizer gun jokes are not involved. Is it because friends mean a party, a party means fun and fun means frivolity? Granted, company by and large creates a light-hearted mood, and to keep that casual and congenial atmosphere afloat there is no crime in calling upon Stiller, or perhaps Sandler, to provide a respectable-hour-and-a half of entertainment. But, if when I am with friends I never see a serious film, and I am always with friends when I see films, then by applying the transitive property, carrying the two and dividing by pi, it would appear that I haven’t seen a real movie since the time I watched “Princess Bride” twice after I broke up with my freshman year boyfriend (I wanted to believe there was still magic and true love in the world). Or the one time I was sick in college and watched “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” by myself on a lonely Friday night. Excluding these two notable exceptions, however, for the past four years, Blue has been my boy, her tattoo might as well have been a bull’s-eye and it turns out she is not his special lady but his lady friend.

Why don’t we want to watch serious films with friends? Is it because a good film demands too close a focus? Would be too much of a mood-kill? Because it’s too awkward to watch Kevin Spacey’s conservative and voyeuristic neighbor misinterpret his marijuana-dealing son’s kneeling and rocking movements as a homosexual advance?

God knows my friends and I don’t read the same books, if we read anything outside of class at all, or in class, really, for that matter. Music tastes vary wildly, and even if you can discuss an artist with a fellow listener, I’ll bet you more often than not the lyrics are too jumbled or bizarre to understand. Which leaves us, once again, with the feature film, an expansive art form which, in fact, encompasses many different types of movies, some of which don’t star old SNL cast-members.

In fact, sometimes other nations make movies. Sometimes movies don’t end up with a not so good-looking male comedian getting a very good-looking girlfriend. Sometimes, movies are poignant, thought-provoking and even sad.

Assuredly, I have laughed at Borat and his unimaginably uncomfortable neon Speedo, and I have cheered for Frank the Tank right along with the best of them. But I have also been baffled by and ultimately triumphant over the backwards timeline of “Memento,” just as I have been wowed by the dreamlike Paris of “Amelie” and the stunning cinematography in “Lawrence of Arabia.”

I am not saying comedy has no place in film — after all, Princess Bride is my all-time favorite movie. But making us laugh and providing college students with memorable quotables is just one of the many things that films can do. And every once in a blue moon, I’d like to see a movie without a punch line, a trusty and farcical sidekick, or topless women wrestling in a kiddie pool of KY jelly. I’d like to see a real movie with my friends. And maybe even have some real conversation about it afterwards.

If you too think that Wesley and Princess Buttercup are the greatest onscreen couple the world has ever known, e-mail Katie at kttaylor@stanford.edu