This will be an on-going series on how you can make up your film school education just by watching DVD’s. I’m going to randomly declare 1967 as the cut-off point between the “classic” age of the studio system and the beginning of the “modern” age of film-making. Of course, the studio system was already pretty much dead by the early 1960’s but it didn’t officially end until about 1972. The studio system was of course an era where up & coming actors & directors were signed to long term contracts and the studios simply slotted you into films depending on your talent, looks and ultimately – their whim. They could loan you out to other studios or place you in some state of exile if they thought you were not being obedient enough. The upside is actors got a steady paycheck and if you had talent, your roles would get bigger and bigger like any other 9 to 5 job … and of course, you could always blame the powers to be of not recognizing your talents. The downside is you were really an indentured servant and if they thought you didn’t look like a star, you had very few opportunities to prove it.

As the system started to close down, of course, actors were free to do anything but as with total freedom, that meant no steady paycheck and you had to go out and sell yourself at every audition. Same with directors and cinematography and nearly all the craft’s people like makeup, costume, art direction, etc … (other than studios with a working studio lot and sound-stages that also had TV projects).

So, why start with the worst? It’s as good of a place to start as any.

LESSON #1

THE WORST OF THE WORST

Of course, there are literally 50-100 bad films a year but that’s not saying enough.

It’s easy to say POLICE ACADEMY 6 without having to see much of the film but sheer laziness does not make it the 10 worst of the worst. After all, the actors in “6” seem to be trying to make the best of a horrible, horrible script and recognizing the general ennui attitude of the studio and their expectations.

Inane remakes by itself are usually bad ideas to begin with such as THE HONEYMOONERS but again, most of the actors are trying their best to overcome insurmountable odds.

Keep in mind many films are just intended as “product.” Or based on stunt casting just to get on the DVD shelf so you can hardly compare that to a “real” film like the bad FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY or CAN’T STOP THE MUSIC.

Or saddled from the start with low, low budgets that general ineptitude is expected like TREMORS 2 – idiotic and poorly directed but after paying Kevin Bacon, clearly they had $82 to spend on the film so what do you expect?

Or genre pipeline fillers such as “horror snuff” films like SAW or that one where they lock people in a room, or the one where they lock people in a basement or the ones where they lock people in an insane asylum, or the ones where they lock them in a house … did I miss any of them? I’m not sure why people find it compelling to see the modern day equivalent of throwing a cat at the screen to get your attention (only now the ante has been upped to rotting body parts). Big whoop. It’s crying, grungy actors, smeared in red Karo syrup, missing limbs via digital effects and thousand-edit cuts because otherwise we could see that it’s just actors locked in a tiny sound stage … do these count? Not really – Because they’re cheap to make and if people want to pay $10 bucks to see the same movie 75 times – hey whatever – they know it’s not art, it’s just commerce – their intention is just to sell you a Jumbo Coke & Junior Mints and to have a gig on their résumé so hey, whatever.

No, a truly horrible, horrible film – the worst of all the worst has to fulfill these 10 criterias:

It Must …

• Feature Known Talent Who Have Done Good Work Before.
• Bad Concept to Begin With.
• Fair Sized (to Huge) Budget.
• They Actually Wanted to Make a “Statement.”
• Inept Directing.
• Inept Editing.
• Inept Writing.
• Bad Acting.
• Repellent/Stupid Characters.
• Technical Ineptitude.

DETAILS EXPLANATIONS:

Feature Known Talent:

If you see a movie starring Vanilla Ice, Jon Claude Van Damme & Dennis Rodman – then clearly, you have too much free time on your hands …

If we counted randomly casted bad movies with no-talent actors & celebs, the list would top 1,000 (and that’s just Stallone movies) – no, rather, we have to have some expectation that the movie is going to be decent. It must feature a cast of relatively know actors and not just random “celebs.”

Bad Concept to Begin With

Of course, pointless remakes have a leg up in their category like PSYCHO. You have to ask yourself one question, “Who the HELL … the HELL, thought this was remotely even a good idea?” Or pointless sequels like CADDYSHACK 2? Or when your mob movie involves a kangaroo (KANGAROO JACK) or when the “scary monster” of the movie (SPEED 2) is the Love Boat cruise ship moving at what, 12 knots an hour?.

Fair Sized (to Huge) Budget

Yes, it must have a large budget to begin with. As we will clearly see and already know, there is absolutely no correlation between cost & quality but rather, it’s expectation – a huge budget means they believed in the concept so strongly, they were will to pay a huge sum for it in done – getting big name actors and a willingness to spend to build elaborate sets and/or special effects. In Hollywood, you put your money where your mouth is and nothing says ‘we believe’ more than a giant freakin’ check. So while DEUCE BIGELOW 2 is wretched, the money also cost about $155 to make so we can excuse it as merely bad and not wretched.

They Actually Wanted to Make a “Statement”

Or in other words, “EXPECTATION.” Of course, every film is made intending to make money – clearly films such as KAZAAM or FROM JUSTINE TO KELLY are made in hopes of a quick buck. These are clearly bad movies but they didn’t really want anything more than to play for a couple weeks in a theater as advertising to sell a couple hundred thousand rental DVD’s to Netflix or Blockbuster so we can excuse them because everyone from the get go realized it was crap.

What’s more painful are the films intended as “statement” art such as ALL THE KING’S MEN (2006) or worse, attempts to win an Oscar such as PEARL HARBOR or PAY IT FORWARD. Again, all terrible movies in many aspects but still not quite the worst of the worst.

Inept Directing

Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes ineptitude is not so obvious until you see the final project. Does it make any sense? Did you use the actors to tell your story? Did you okay the camera shots to tell your story? Ultimately is it a mess?

In the 1970’s and 1980’s we had many pompous films that defined normal logic and made no real sense because the director was literally trying to film his consciousness (Altman’s QUINTET) – or the director was literally out of it (Dennis Hooper’s LAST MOVIE). However, the late 1990’s also introduced a new painful concept where the director is a moron so in turn, we get idiot characters and concepts because he can’t grasp anything more complicated than a Big Mac box. There are many candidates but I think McG wins only because he had to shorten his name to three letters so he could spell it correctly.

Inept Editing

For casual film goers, this is not so obvious but in a truly horrible, horrible film, it jumps all over the place, it’s mis-paced, it’s confusing, it follows no technical order – basically if you notice editing – that’s bad – like every movie Uwe Boll has directed. After every cut, it takes you 2 minutes to to sort out how you just arrived here. Sometimes it’s the directors fault because if he/she shoots nothing for the editor to work with or sometimes it’s the studio deciding to re-edit it but whatever the reason – it’s bad.

Inept Writing

A truly bad script requires all four elements to stink: bad dialogue, poor characters, bad concept, characters are morons, and/or bad storytelling (ie: too much exposition). Of course, bad casting sometimes makes for bad dialogue so it’s important to note who to blame – it’s not really the fault of the screenwriter of THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH when they casted Denise Richards to play a nuclear scientist or Keanu Reeves as a nuclear scientist in CHAIN REACTION. Whoa.

Bad Acting

Of course, the easy one to spot. You all know who they are – sometimes it’s the director’s fault especially when it’s younger actors – they are not given enough direction but bad acting is bad acting. You can name your favorite but it’s hard to beat MADONNA or MELANIE GRIFFITH in any period movie.

Repellent/Stupid/Wrong Characters

Of course, sometimes the characters are supposed to annoying, repellent or idiotic but a good performance makes you understand or empathize with them – such as Anthony Hopkins in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS but conversely when you make characters so unlikeable, who wants to watch? (MY BABY’s DADDY or DETROIT ROCK CITY), or starring roles such as Jim Carrey in the MAJESTIC, Tom Cruise in EYES WIDE SHUT, or Robin Williams in PATCH ADAMS – you just want to tell them to shut up and punch them in the mouth so the damn movie can be over.

And lastly,
Technical Incompetence

The rest of the crafts – makeup, lighting, costumes but usually special effects like Disney’s THE BLACK HOLE or in the case of GODZILLA – why would you (re)make a Godzilla with a giant reptile that is not the Godzilla we know? Who here is going to a Gozilla movie to see a more anatomically correct Godzilla?

But don’t get more wrong, If you’re a film buff and a film fanatic, you still must see these. You might say these are SPOILER reviews but this way you are warned going in … I think it’s important to see all of these films to learn from them – to learn not to do what others have wrought upon this Earth …

So …

Ultimately, the final straw is that they ultimately insult your intelligence – not just as a movie goer but as a human beings, as a sentient entities on this planet – that somewhere along the line through sheer idiocy or sheer malice towards us – they thought “Good enough, it’s ready!”

It is the difference between randomly emailing us a letter from Nigeria asking us to Western Union wire $25,000 to them and what they have done to our movie-going senses – to assault us viciously – to not just break into our house, not just to steal everything, but to then fill the house with 3 feet of chili and locking 200 live pigs inside the house … for two weeks … in the middle of summer …

For those on this list, in the words uttered by Charleston Heston, “Damn You All to Hell!”

ALEXANDER
How do you cram the life of one of the world’s greatest conquerors into a 2-3 hours? Well, we certainly don’t know after watching this movie. Pretty much nothing works. Does it feel authentic? Do you feel transport to thousands of years ago and to literally a foreign time and place – nope. Feels like a bunch of modern day actors walking around a tiny soundstage – nothing feels cavernous or palatial. What’s Alexander’s motivation to conquer the world? At least in the not-so-good but not terrible TROY just had Julie Christie tell Achilles exactly why he should go – here, not so much. Battle scenes? There are literally better digital re-creations on The History Channel. When they march into Baghdad, then one of the most opulent cities on Earth – what do we get here – a few shadows and a couple dozen scantily clad extras holding fruit – was most of budget devoted to Colin Ferrell hairpiece? It’s so God awful you can’t help but state at it – and then you wonder why was it so important for his to wear that hairpiece – it’s not like he was playing Julius Caesar so you have to have a Caesar haircut … but of course, the bigger problem is that Colin is simply unconvincing as a leader of men – he seems more like a bread merchant. So, to recap – looks cheap, bad lighting, bad costuming, bad script, poor directing and an unconvincing lead actor … and it’s really long … and now apparently it’s been recut twice with this latest version the longest and with the least amount of homosexual undercurrent – as if that was the problem holding the movie back.

LESSON: If you cannot explain the motivation behind your character in 10 seconds, don’t start shooting just yet.

NOTHING BUT TROUBLE

The comedy is not only unfunny, it’s filled with unpleasant characters but makes no sense at all AND it was one of the most expensive movies made at the time. Basically, the premise is a couple get caught in a New Jersey speedtrap and cannot escape the clutches of a corrupt mayor of this small town. Are you laughing yet? They are stuck in the judge’s house in the middle of a junkyard – laughing yet? The judge is a cross between Jabba the Hut and Spaceball’s Pizza the Hutt though not in a funny way. The house is like a giant bobby trap that throws you into garbage at times – how appropriate – yet, let you ask you again, are you laughing? So to recap – an unfunny Chevy Chase movie filled with other unpleasant, unfunny characters – Demi Moore looks confused throughout as do we all, and the plot makes no sense at all – nor is it funny. The really bizarre thing is this movie is on nearly on EVERY month on HBO or Cinemax (all Warner properties as is this film) and has even been transferred to HD as it’s appeared on HBO HD. Holy, holy crap.

LESSON: A crap & pus spewing rubber suit is not funny without funny lines & funny situations.

HOWARD THE DUCK

If this movie were directed by me and cost me $2k to make, you might find it amusing but it would still stupid and cheap but when it’s from George Lucas and ILM – you have to ask what happened? How did this “thing” even see the light of day? Is it because after Starwars like Peter Jackson on KING KONG, everyone was afraid to tell the emperor he had no clothes but this movie is like you know what through a duck or or a goose?

It’s a movie about a profane duck – amusing in its comic book origins but really – how far can you go with that? How funny would it be for Daffy Duck or Donald Duck to really swear and making passes at human women? Yea, at best – an amusing short but a full blown full budget movie? SHOOT THE DAMN THING!

Of course the problem is that it looks like a midget wearing a duck costume but honestly, even if they go back and CGI the duck so it has expressions and can run or do anything besides walk slowly … you still have a pointless and crappy movie. There’s also some subplot he wants to be a rock ‘n roll start so of course, we get a soundtrack full of fake corporate movie rock.

LESSON: Ducks – good eating – funny in cartoons but not in real life.

TOWN & COUNTRY

This is a movie that cost slightly more to make than LORD OF THE RINGS (yes, really!). It features a bunch of old guys and much younger women walking & talking in Beverly Hills. Of course, they’re all rich and have nothing better to do all day than obsess over their COMPLETELY UN-INTERESTING and PEDANTIC lives – like we care?! Maybe if it was a saucy French-like comedy where the clothes fall off – okay, that’s a good tradeoff but Garry Shandling is the sex symbol in this movie – WTF? So, for a sex comedy, it’s not really sexy and for a comedy, it’s not really funny. It’s dull and it looks no worse or better than a typical Lifetime Channel movie so the money is not in the sets or on screen. This movie also seems to have been edited by randomly hitting stop on the editing machine and plugging that scene in.

LESSON: Know exactly why you are starting a movie and pick an end date (preferably one not 2 years from the start date unless you have a blank check but even then, wouldn’t you rather at least make 4 mediocre movies than just one bad one? See Mike Binder’s career).

REGARDING HENRY

Here’s the premise – guy is an a**hole in real life until he gets shot in the head and learns how life is precious, and how he should treat his wife & kids better – WTF? And if that’s not bad enough, the dialogue seems to be written by a moron who’s been shot in the head – a moron who’s life experiences seem to be maxed out at Richie Rich comics, Kit Kat bar wrappers and the Brady Bunch. The dialogue is stilted, witless and unconvincing. Again if this didn’t involve Mike Nichols, Harrison Ford & Annette Benning, it would just be dismissed as a TV movie but with everyone in here, they were thinking Oscar noms for an “important” topic – how upper middle classers should learn to stop and smell the roses – and if need be, we’ll put a cap in your head.

LESSON: Do not ask a 14-year old raised on the BRADY BUNCH to write your drama about learning a valuable life lesson after being shot in the head.

SLIVER

Sliver is a sliver of a lot of concepts but 99% of it was based on the fact they wanted to strike while the Sharon’s Stone iron was still hot … basically they figured anything remotely resembling a movie where she might take off her clothes would drive us to the theater. The basic concept of SLIVER makes very little sense – sure, it was supposed to be murder mystery but the big arching statement they wanted to make was that are “we” are the perverts for wanting to watch a woman undress ..

And to that I say, DUH.

That’s like accusing of us wanting to eat food at certain times during the day or that we like to take a deep breath after we’ve been underwater for a while – is it really that weird for someone to admit that they’ll watch a car accident or a woman undressing? They seem to think they’e uncovered some unknown psyche about mankind when all they’ve done is uncover their idiocy.

But look at BASIC INSTINCT – it too made very little sense but it had one thing going for it – it featured animal-like sex and nudity so hey, we’re willing to forgive a lot of transgressions but SLIVER? For a movie about peeping tom’s – hardly any peeping (also, if they guy could afford a Manhattan penthouse, 35 monitors and 100 cameras, think he might’ve upgraded to color monitors & color cameras) but I guess only monochrome is “art.” For a movie about sex – it’s not very sexy. The characters are cold and unlikeable and nothing they do makes any sense. The only real tension in the movie is fake – like a hand reaching in frame and touching her shoulder as she whip-turns in panic – only it’s just a guy asking her something – yea, we’ve never seen that before. This would be a dumb episode of POLICE WOMAN let alone a full length feature film.

LESSON: If you’re going to make a statement about revealing some deep hidden underbelly of our psyche or our society – try to pick something we don’t already know the answer to … and a sexy thriller should contain nudity, sex & thrills.

WILD, WILD WEST

Of course, the original TV series was a half comedy/farce western that hardly made any sense but it was an amusing diversion when there were like 15 westerns on TV but now, standing alone by itself, it signifies tumbleweeds and horse manure.

First, Wil Smith is great and he’s entitled to do a role just to get a 8-figure check, he deserves it but there seem to be no crying need to an updating of the TV series. The TV series really was a parody of James Bond and Westerns – again, amusing in it day but now? Pointless. After BLAZING SADDLES and GET SMART, what’s the point? The movie is saddled with a script that makes no sense and because it’s set 125 years ago, they have two major problems – they are limited to the real technology at hand but also the stupid crying need to generate what might pass for an exciting replica action figure playset – basically you end up with Wil Smith throwing a saddle into the Death Star because while the Death Star has been invented, photon laser bombs have not … WTF? So not only are the props, digital effects fake looking – they all feel fake and out of time & place.

LESSON: Just because you liked a TV show when you were growing up does not mean it would make a good movie … because times change – whether it’s a pop culture references or a cultural sea change (SGT. BILKO not that funny since 90% of men don’t go to basic training automatically when they turn 18 anymore).

HUDSON HAWK

An improv film works when you find the right cast and a Captain to keep it on track such as SPINAL TAP or one of Christopher Guest’s movies … but when you just turn a camera on and actors move around spouting lines they make up, it works not. Of course, I have no idea if HUDSON HAWK is an improv movie – it just seems that way. You will never see another movie where actors just randomly appear and say things – sometimes mumbling but usually over-acting. Plot? Of very little consequence. Continuity so you can follow the story – bwahhahaha … it’s as if they just turned some cameras and people just wander about. Now, if this film was shot in 2 weeks and some art school project, it’s still deadly dull and pointless but you can ponder the philosophical implications of making a movie as you go along without a director or script – but when you simply hand Bruce Willis a huge sum of money (one of the most at the time), you end up with a camcorder project costing over a hundred million dollars adjusted for inflation – it does however answer the question that if you make a movie without any preconceived thought or script, it does make a sound – a giant freakin’ THUD.

LESSON: Do not give anyone a giant sum of movie and let them run wild.

GIGLI

It’s pretty damn easy to pick on this film because it’s just bizarre on many levels. Ben Affleck seems to go out of his way to show his contempt for the paying audience – he seems to relish making his character as obnoxious and annoying as possible. Like STEALTH, it’s not easy to antagonize and “lose” your audience empathy in mere moments but damn if he doesn’t pull it off. The storyline is pointless and stupid. The people he meets along the way are annoying and idiots. The film is choppy with bizarre camera positioning and actors hamming up small parts. Of course the famous sex scene dialogue is so surreally bad it’s scary to think that this is what made the cut (gobble, gobble) and you feel bad for the woman dating this screenwriter. JLo actually seems to be the only person giving a real performance but the dialogue and setting sabotages that pretty quickly.

LESSON: Read the script before you decide to start a movie. Casting is not a concept.

CHARLIE’S ANGELS 2: FULL THROTTLE

To say this movie is stupid would be to insult stupid. Remember this movie is directed by a guy who shortened his name to three letter long – why? Because he couldn’t spell anything longer than 3 letters long? Not that the first CHARLIE’S ANGELS was any kind of brilliant but at least gathering the girls and introducing the characters was going to take 30 minutes so there was at least a plot you could describe – here, this movie should just be called, CHARLIE’S ANGELS OUT-TAKES SET TO MUSIC. I’s really just a random series of music videos shots & edits – whatever film was out at the time, that technique was borrowed and stuffed into this film – like the MATRIX effect. It works when you purport to tell a scifi story involving dimensions and visual perception. It does not work so much when people fire bullets at bikini girls. This movie is directed by a guy who didn’t have the attention span to watch all of a Spike Jonze music video before shutting off the TV and ejecting the disc and handing it to his cinematographer and saying, “I have a great idea.”

LESSON: A Music Video Director to a real director is the difference between a brown M&M and a chocolate souffle.

THE POSTMAN

Kevin Costner is convinced the world will confront some apocalyptic scenario where he will survive to be one of the smartest people on Earth. Please make up your won joke here. You would think after WATERWORLD, he would have learned his lesson (WATERWORLD is explained below but yes, not actually on the list of the worst of the worst). Okay, the Earth is devastated though it pretty much looks okay except that people ride horses – apparently if he can start up mail delivery, the world will return back to normal … yea, that’s the message of a three hour movie. Somebody somewhere heard that pitch and decide, I want to commit 9-figures to bringing this to fruition. We’ll spend a lot of money making this movie but we’ll have just a handful of actors, we’ll ride the wild west in real time. We’ll have no special effects to speak of and we’ll just randomly shoot scenes with no action or a lot of over-acting. We’ll call it THE POSTMAN because that’s the kind of field-test word that just connotes action, adventure that the kids of today are hankerin’ for – they’ll stampede the theater to see Kevin Costner mumble for 3 hours and the big close? He delivers some mail with a letter from a mailbag. Yes, you’ll want to go postal.

LESSON: Do not name your movie after a job description of the United States civil service. Do not let Kevin Costner talk you into anything.

SAHARA

Yes, there are some dumb over-the-top big budget movies but really, SAHARA manages to out dumb them all since they want to say so much. WATERWORLD is not a good movie but it’s plot is straightforward and same with the deadly dull ISHTAR. Yes both featured plots that had no real point and those movies take forever to say nothing but SAHARA actually wants to be everything.

It wants a little of DAVINCI’S CODE “intellectual” mysteries, it wants to Americanize it so we can relate, it wants to be preachy about saving Africa for the Africans (and also, it wants to be INDIANA JONES so we’ll return for the sequel).

Perhaps that’s all interesting but let me throw these tidbits at you – Confederate Gold (yes, that Confederate) on a Confederate ship – middle of the Africa desert and I mean middle and some plot about stealing the natural resources of Africa – still with me?

Yea, make that all into one movie. Apparently the movie cost $200 million to make – the opening scene is a Civil War battle where the ship sails away from the Carolina’s (presumably)- first, why bother with the expense of that long sequence? We could never believe a ship with gold unless we see it fight and steam away? WTH? Apparently the metal ship then makes it to Africa – and no the Africa coastline isn’t good enough, they continually steam sail this ship up a river – that conveniently dries up into a desert. Really, there are no other plots left in this world, only a hugely implausible story piled on top of another one would hold our interest?

But that’s just the old storyline for the older audience – we need something for the younger audience – how about a chemical plant and poisoning a river – yea, that’s a good ecology angle – does it make any sense? Does a Confederate metal steamship make any sense 5,000 miles away from America make any sense – what did the first steamships move at .2 knots an hour? How did they stoke the fire across the Atlantic – maybe a giant wave carried them? Okay, after they land, wouldn’t that gold be useful in barter to get back or at least settle as some plantation king? No, better just keep it all in the ship – maybe the ghost of General Lee will tell what to do.

LESSON: If you say it out loud and it sounds dumb, it is dumb.

STEALTH

In STEALTH, we live in a world where Jessica Biel is the one of the best pilots on Earth – but perhaps it’s not so bad because this “Earth” that they fly around in looks like the leftover rendering time from SOUTH PARK, THE VIDEO GAME. You have to go back several generations of video games to find these matching sub par graphics – ATARI JAGUAR? COMMODORE VIC 20? The movie also opens with the three pilots as walking cliches that they might as well go by the call letters HOT HEAD WHO CAN’T FOLLOW ORDER, PILOT WITH HISTORY OF FLASHBACKS OF SOME SERIOUS INCIDENT and LONER … within 5 seconds, you hate all three leads and hope they crash into the fake pixelated mountain range that is a weird un-natural shade of purple. That’s actually pretty impressive, it’s not easy to immediately annoy the audience with three a**holes who spout gibberish, cliché’s, horrible dialogue and bad acting all within a few blinks at the start of a movie. Everything about this movie is a derivative of something else – clearly the writer grew up watching TOP GUN, STARSHIP TROOPERS and some war movies – and then ran the script through a English to Turkish to Japanese and back to English translator bot on the web to disguise its true origins. “You Dangerous, Ice, Iceman, Punk.” (okay, slight exaggeration but not by much 🙂

LESSON: A guy who lives in his parents basement should not try and write scripts after watching 22 movies and nothing older than 1982 because he believes that’s when they switched over from b&w to color. Also, if the special effects are shabbier than the effects on the cell phone screensaver, do not transfer that to the big screen.

WHITE CHICKS

This is the movie the word APPALLING was invented for. Sure, it’s a dumb idea but it gets dumber than that. First, at no point for nary a nano second do you believe they are white. Eddie Murphy believable in all his multiple roles – the Wayans Brothers – uh, no. They’re supposed to reasonably attractive – they look like albino Amazonian lesbians. I’m sure that appeals to certain segment of the population but then the other aspects of it not being funny, not insightful and just plain stupid pretty eliminates most people from every wanting to see this film. You’re thinking – okay, sure the undercover thing is hokey and dumb but they’ll be some payoff that offers insight into the black-white relationship state in society or young women … no. Part of the problem is just when you think there might be some insight coming, they stop it with a fart joke or a we-get-to-into-a-shower … What is this movie? Scary version? This is a ripoff of MISS CONGENIALITY 2 … instead of Sandra Bullock, how about two black guys – isn’t that a hoot – and there’s a scene where they try out dresses but it’s so small, buttons fly across the room and break glass – and their shoes break apart … are you laughing yet? If you took every cross dressing misunderstanding and dress-in-a-hurry sequence and crammed them all into a movie and made it completely inept and unfunny – that is WHITE CHICKS.

LESSONS: When you read a script like this, just step away. No, it will not be funnier on the set and no, you cannot fix it in post.

BATMAN & ROBIN

Nothing fails like excess. And this is the most overblown bag of hot air of methane. From the big things (giant set for a fight on ice skates) to the littlest things (nipples on the batsuits), everything is pretty much wrong. Everything rings false & hollow and is offensive to our eyes, our senses and the utter disbelief anyone would spend a million dollars on a set seen for 4 seconds. It is travesty of film-making in every sense and makes you sad for the rest of us. Shed a tear when you see this movie, a tear for common sense, a tear for art – we are the fake Indian by the side of the road crying because it’s all just trash.

LESSON: If someone asks if you want a rubber suit with nipples, stab thee (unless you are in an underground club in Munich, then you are okay – well, not okay but …)

DUNE

If you ever want to see the absolute WORST 15 minute-opening of a movie – rent DUNE. As Woody Allen once said (though sadly not of this film), “This is a travesty of a mockery of a sham. If you are ever handed a script that requires you to put up a still graphic illustration and have the narrator connect the dots and spout the names of 8 planets, and the names of the 14 guilds of a spice federation – stop, put down the script and START AGAIN. Would you start a movie about your family tree by showing a chart and then in a monotone voice over start spouting names and names of kids and who they married and the grandparents for 15 FREAKIN’ MINUTES? Of course not – who actually thought people would want to see a STILL image on a giant motion picture screen – not animated, not video and a guy talking for 15 freakin’ minutes? In other words, who ordered the PowerPoint?

Conversely, watch the first 10 minutes of LORD OF THE RINGS. In 10 minutes, Peter Jackson managed to get you COMPLETELY up to speed for 500 years of the history of the Tolkien tale and not only that, you are actually interested and care immediately who and where we will be taken next.

Even if you have the patience to not fall stone asleep after 15 minutes, DUNE then manages to be both empty headed and overly intellectual at the same time – not to mention the wall to wall exposition narration – yes, we get it that we don’t understand any of it and will not understand anymore of it but for the love of God, please stop talking! You look around the floor for a giant sandworm to eat you – anything to relieve the tedium.

LESSON: Watch the first 10 minutes of LORD OF THE RINGS. If your opening of a mass thread epic does not match that, START AGAIN.

8MM

Wow, Joel Schumacher has a 2nd movie on this list. This movie is way sicker than any of the SAW films since it’s supposed to shine a light on the snuff film industry but we spend most of the film wallowing in the entrails of humanity. It’s cynical and exploitative with no real resolution and no real point – other than we are nasty sick bastards – great, thanks for telling us we’re the sick ones. Everyone is grungy, dirty and you definitely need a shower after seeing this film. No one is remotely human or like-able – there’s hardly any lighting in this film and it jumps from place to place – it’s only message is obvious. There is more than one victim in the making of a snuff film, really Joel? How did you come to that conclusion? In theory, he’s supposed to be shining a light on the subject matter but he seems to take glee in showing us …

LESSON: Life is too short to waste on cynicism and filming bile.

BATTLEFIELD EARTH

This movie manages to be big budgeted and yet feel very small and hollow at the same time. There is a lot of screaming and not much lighting. Everyone is ugly, unattractive and oozing something. It’s unpleasant, the characters are obnoxious and repellent. The story makes very little sense though as you go along – you understand why the actors are screaming in agony. It insults your intelligence on many levels with many obvious statements and its final messages mostly pointless and obvious. It’s a mess on every level. You actually only need to watch about 5 minutes and then just fast forward through the rest and just watch the ending – and laugh and shake your head – wondering why it took $100+ million to say what we could tell after the first 3 minutes.

LESSON: When in doubt, ask around. Ask people if they’d like a movie where people are dressed in rags and yell at the screen for 135 minutes … until then …

TOM RAIDER 2

There is more intellectual content in an electronic version of PONG as there is in this movie. This movie feels like the first anime movie made by robots – it is completely devoid of any human characteristics and feeling – they have a concept and example of a human in their database so they drew up something resembling human – though the head, breasts and lips are too big to actually be real 🙂 There is more humanity in any frame of 90% of video games than in this movie. You don’t buy anything for even a second because it’s not real – and unlike a video game where you can actually control the characters and if you get bored, they can sit and fire at a crate of bananas for 10 minutes, here we traverse the globe that might as well be the moon Titan. The characters say and do un-human like activities and every aspect is ridiculously fake and digital effects like – Angeline’s acting seems to be they simply glued motion balls to her body and then CGIed her into this movie. This movie really shows you what happens if robots created humanoid form and replaced us on Earth. We are ALL a little less human after watching this movie.

LESSON: When robots take over, let them make movies but until then – people are not robots, repeat after me.

K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER

I suppose they thought after TITANIC, we’d want to see a doomed ship and after HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, we loved to see another submarine movie. Well, here are some differences – in TITANIC, we actually liked most of the characters – here, nearly everyone is some vague “foreign” guy or the lead is a true peck**head and a**hole – nope, not just gruff to teach the sailors discipline, we learn early on he’s sadistic, a jerk and quite possible unstable in the head … hey, who wouldn’t wanted to see a character like that for 2 hours trapped in a tiny underwater ship? In TITANIC, it’s an unforeseen accident and other poor circumstances that doom them … here, crazy Captain mostly through his actions sends them to their pointless doom and during the crisis while he literally orders sacrifices, he’s just a bigger peck**head – yea, that’s the way to win us over plus with TITANIC, there was action, the crash, the ship sinking, the plunge, etc … – here – we have some equipment malfunction and it slowly starts to sink … oh, can you feel the excitement? So, basically through his crazy actions, the ship malfunctions, he orders people to their deaths to try and fix it and is still a true peck**head during the crisis … AND have Harrison Ford mumble his way through it with the most cartoon Russian accent since Boris of Bullwinkle.

LESSON: If your lead cannot do an accent, tell him early on. And ask yourself – does an audience want to spend 2 hours watching a peck**head who is crazier than Queeg without any of the coherent adult dialogue?

PLANET OF THE APES

In some senses, it sounded like a good idea – man, with the new special effects, we could really spiff up PoTA, it wouldn’t just seem like humans dressed in rubber suits as apes riding horses.

BIG PROBLEM – when they dressed up everyone and started to shoot – it STILL LOOKS EXACTLY like humans dressed up as apes riding horses – slightly better but $150 million dollars better? No. More like adding fog lamps to a Ford Explorer – it’s still no Range Rover.

In the original, the humans couldn’t talk so it was clear who the advanced race was and arrival of Charleston Heston turns their world upside down – here – all the humans could talk so who cares if another who could talk drops down from the sky? Why? Were they afraid we’d miss all the deep dialogue they wrote for the caged humans? “You can talk?” “Yes.”

Sure, the original featured the kiss between Heston & the woman wearing an ape face mask – surely after 30 years, a rubber prosthetic would make it seem so much more real? Nope – still a guy kissing a rubber mask – so much for any “hotness” we were suppose to feel for the she ape … you have Estella Warren in a skimpy costume versus a rubber ape wearing a long gown – uh, who would you choose to make out with?

Wahlberg – solid actor but can he carry a movie? Nope. He’s a solid supporting guy but as a lead here, he’s not only not Heston – you don’t buy him as an astronaut – he just seems like a vice cop from Philly, “Ey, how you doing?”

Original – interesting metaphor movie about the race issue – here, not so much but there is a lot more running round, shooting and general motion – though ultimately, what is going on – it’s hard to tell.

And of course, the original finale had the great line as Heston stands on the beach and sees the giant bronze object in the sand … so, how do you remake THE STING? It is a no win scenario since we know how the original ended and we’re disappointed not to see it updated yet disappointed you gave us the same ending so instead, Tim Burton choose the lamest choice of all – to give us a couple time travel endings so he can say the line but it makes no sense – Walhberg might as well have gone back in time to have sex with his great grandmother and shoot his grand-dad later on for all the sense this new ending makes.

So, pretty much pointless all around – hell, even the action figures were lame.

LESSON: Don’t remake a movie in which you cannot top the original surprise ending. No matter how much money you have, apes in movies look exactly like a human dressed in an ape rubber suit.

And the Number Worst, Worst Film of All Time …

ESCAPE FROM L.A.

It’s hard to know here to begin – probably at the beginning – show of hands of people who said, “I really, really want to see a sequel to Escape from N.Y>?”

That might require another script – let’s just remake it since it was “so great.”

He gets dropped into L.A. (now an island) in a “green-screened” submarine that offers the special effects of a Happy Meal toy. I’m surprised a giant pixelated mushroom didn’t drop on his head as he exited.

Then comes a slew of big name bad acting (Kurt, Peter Fonda, Stacey Keach, Cliff Robertson, and Steve Bucemi).

Once again, he has like 48 hours to find something (think it was some weapon?). Most scenes follow each other with no rhyme or reason. Of course, the “prisoners” on the island entertain themselves by killing each other – since the island seems sparse, you would think they’d finished each other off with the “deadly” games they play but nope. They still look left over THE WARRIORS. And of course, they do moronic things like firing at a helicopter clearly impervious to their bullets but is firing back – so would you run away – nope, just stand and fire away.

Most of the fight scenes seem staged or a whole 45-seconds was spent choreographing them. At some point, I think Kurt manages to surf somewhere by riding literally an 80-foot wave but a few minutes later is captured by slow footed guys wearing giant shrouds.

Technically, – all inept. $5 Special effects, there are several other clearly green screen action sequences with matte backgrounds done on a Commodore 64 seemingly along with 4-bit music as the soundtrack. The film stock is bad as scene colors change.

Of course, the dialogue is idiotic and pointless – with the main final action showdown … you might want to sit down – a one-on-one game of horse.

Yea, that’s what I said. This final showdown would be stupid for SPACE JAM (Bugs Bunny/Michael Jordan) but an action movie? Wait – it gets better. Kurt clearly is a stiff playing basketball. He dribbles and moves like a 7-year old girl … who’s never touched a basketball before in her life … yet Kurt manages to sink 5 shots with 10 seconds remaining.

Cheap, dumb, inept and stupid. You have to see it to believe it.

Now, I actually read somewhere where someone actually thought this was a parody of an action movie – I think that’s just wishful thinking on the part of one of the producer’s. How can anything be this bad unless he was purposely trying to mock the genre? John Carpenter did mock the genre – by doing the most inanely dumb movie ever.

So, there you have it – the absolute worst of the worst. Watch them – take notes and avoid their mistakes. The audience is your friend – please do not crap on us.

BONUS

Sure, there are several other nominees for the crap-fest list but here’s why these did not make the worst of the worst – now, mind you, none are really good movies – they are all bad – they’re not not atrocious enough – they all offered some redeeming feature …

THE-WE-SPENT WHAT?! List

HEAVEN’S GATE, WATERWORLD, ISHTAR and ADVENTURES OF PLUTO NASH
are not good movies but they’re not horrible movies – mostly, they’re dull small movies with out-of-scale budgetary spending and for pointless reasons because you don’t see any of the spending on the screen. HEAVEN’S GATE essentially takes place in this small town, WATERWORLD has one rusting tanker and maybe 100 actors. ISHTAR is two guys, some camels and nomads. While there’s more going on in PLUTO NASH – other than the crime of overspending, their crime is light on this list – it’s mostly just boring so you can hate the excess but the reality is they are more boring than bad.

BURIED AWAY List

INCHON & LOST HORIZON – heard they are horrible but since it’s rarely on – can’t call it bad – not on the list by default.

STUPID, YES-BUT-FORTUNATELY-THERE-ARE-BIGGER-MORONS List

Yes, these are all moronic and quite often listed with the worst of the worst. These are close and you could certainly make an argument they are not much better than ALEXANDER but again, I think it’s intent and expectation … but we should note that each of these films insults our intelligence in several ways and are really pretty bad bordering on atrocious but not quite there only because most were just intended as product.

CALIGULA, SWEPT AWAY, THE CORE, AVENGERS, CAT IN THE HAT, CONCORDE ’79, HARLEM NIGHTS, ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU, LOST IN SPACE, POPEYE, ROLLERBALL, BLUE THUNDER, FIREBIRDS, DOOM, CUTTHROAT ISLAND, FREDDY GOT FINGERED.

I-DID-NOT-FORGET List …

Yes, many people loathe SHOWGIRLS – it is insanely stupid but there’s lots of nudity and it is hilarious in spots and you do feel sorry for Elizabeth Berkeley, she’s so earnest and willing to do anything – she literally enters each scene bright eyed and bushy in some aspect – ready to be the star she believes she is. She is shaking her things while the sets are collapsing around her – she’s a trooper. Yes, ultimately a bad movie but the nudity is redeeming enough.

GLITTER is an interesting case. Mariah could not act her way out of a phone booth without any doors but her acting performance is completely different. Lots of people can just give a bad performance but she is literally in her own world – she enters frame with a startled look like she was expecting her trailer but wait, there are actors and lights and I’ve got lines to say – this would be strange at the beginning of the movie but damn if she does not do this in EVERY scene from beginning to end. You have to see it – it the weirdest performance – maybe ever.

So let these all be a lesson to you – painful yes, stab your eye bad, yes but worthy to see so you never, never, never, never repeat their mistakes.