This article examines the relationship between informal knowledge of popular film and its study in higher education. Through interviews, it explores the significance people give to their encounters with films and with critical discourses upon them. The interviewees’ class and gender positions variously constrain or motivate their educational aspirations and thus complicate the hope that film and media studies can successfully address ‘non-traditional’ students. How students watch films and how their knowledge of them is negotiated within families, among friends and at work should be a more central concern. In higher education, students may be more effectively supported and encouraged where some effort is made to engage with the cultures of reception in which they are located. To enable students to ‘translate’ between common sense and academic modes of discourse on film requires explicit reflection on the differences between fans and casual viewers on the one hand, and academically motivated viewers on the other.