Bad Movies
by Tim Wick
We here at MISFITS labs feel that we have an obligation to you, the
Minnesota Film lover. We feel that from time to time, we must gather in a
darkened room to watch some of the worst dreck to come out of Hollywood.
Why do we do this? So you don't have to. We emerge from the room
frustrated that we have wasted eight hours of our lives but happy knowing
that we can save someone else from such a horrifying fate. Recently, we
rented four stink bombs just so we could warn you. Starting with the best
of the four, we'd like to tell you exactly why you should avoid them.
Had this movie lived up to the promise it made in it's title and lasted only
Sixty Seconds, I would have been eternally grateful. Jerry Bruckheimer is
well known for producing GUY films that star GUYS and are really great if
you are a GUY with no self respect. The problem is that his plots are so
thin, he has to come up with endless road blocks to make the movie last
longer than 30 minutes. Gone in Sixty Seconds could never strive to be a
great movie, but if the film had clocked in at 90 minutes, it had an outside
chance of being good.
Among the useless plot contrivances was a young car heisting "stud" (yes,
that is as stupid as it sounds) lifting a drug dealers car just as the cops
are about to check up on our hero. Oh no! Now the cops are in the garage
and there is cocaine lying on the floor where our heroes (the car thieves)
dropped it while they were arguing about what to do with the car. Does the
drug dealer ever show up to ice the guy who stole his car and his product?
Of course not. Ten minutes wasted.
To be fair, I don't know how you can get excited given the plot. We are
supposed to route for a character who is a reformed car thief as he tries to
steal fifty cars in one night to save his brothers life. What did his
brother do, you ask? He stole a Porche and then drag raced with it, causing
the cops to find his hideout. What a freakin' moron! This is supposed to
make me pull for the guys who are out stealing cars??
The movie is not helped by Angelina
are-those-your-lips-or-are-two-garter-snakes-doing-something-sexually-devian
t-on-your-face Jolie. Thankfully she is not in much of the film, but every
moment she is there is a painful one. Billy Bob Thornton can keep her.
Does it bother anyone but me that at least one of the worst films in any
year is a big budget sci-fi epic? Being a science fiction fan, I can't help
but notice that Hollywood thinks we'll watch ANYTHING. Somehow, we managed
to prove them wrong with this piece of self indulgent garbage. Although not
a huge success, Pitch Black managed to squeeze more money out of the box
office than John Travolta's latest attempt to sabotage his career.
What is wrong with this movie, you ask? Let me sum it up for you. In one
particularly overacted scene, Barry Pepper (who has come a long way down
from his fine turns in Saving Private Ryan and The Green Mile) is being
taught all sorts of stuff by a machine that pumps CGI into his head.
Humans, you see, have pretty much lost all knowledge beyond proper English.
Well he starts to teach his friends who do not have the benefit of having
CGI pumped into their skulls all about what he has learned. He starts with
triangles and tells them how important triangles are to Euclidian geometry.
So you are telling me that aliens conquered Earth 1000 years ago, subjugated
the human race, but they still decided to name geometry after an ancient
Greek? Sure they are.
I was especially proud to see that we humans are still pretty darn clever,
even after 1000 years. Believe it or not, we can get 1000 year old
unserviced Harrier jets battle ready AND learn how to fly them in less than
two weeks. Does that kick ass or what?
Oh, one more thing. Explain to me how the aliens have been mining our
planet dry for the last 1000 years, but they haven't managed to find fort
Knox yet. Just explain that to me. Don't even bother explaining how it
takes an advanced species 1000 years to mine our planet dry when we have
almost managed to finish doing it in 200, it'll give you a headache.
Speaking of headaches, let's talk about Coyote Ugly.
This film pushed women's liberation back twenty years simply by existing.
What it is supposed to be about is an empowered young woman moving to New
York to become a song writer and making it on her own by becoming a scantily
clad bartender at a rowdy bar filled with scantily clad bartenders. Well,
OK, that's what the movie is actually about, but can you see how the entire
premise is stupid?
Our little songstress wants to sell her songs, but she has stage fright,
meaning that she can't actually sing them in front of an audience. Pretty
stupid to move to New York when you don't even have the guts to get up in
front of a crowd, isn't it?
It turns out that all she needs to get a much needed dose of self confidence
is to do a Karaoke version of One Way or Another that so enthralls a bar
full of drunken, brawling patrons that they all stop to watch her. Despite
this performance, when the time comes to perform her own songs, she doesn't
show up. Of course her hunky Australian boyfriend is upset because he gave
up something valuable to give her this "break."
The movie says that the way an earnest young woman can get ahead is to
expose her midriff and wear hot pants. I suppose that depends on your
definition of "getting ahead."
DON'T WATCH THIS MOVIE!
I'm very serious about this. We have watched this movie and now you don't
have to. Every joke in this film was done better in a different movie. The
jokes are offensive, but that is not what makes them suck. What makes them
suck is that the movie practically holds up a big neon sign pointing to the
joke that says JOKE on it.
I know someone will say I'm biased because I don't particularly like horror
movies and that is the kind of movie this film was parodying. First of all,
let me point out that I got all the horror movie references because all you
needed to do was watch the trailer for the films being parodied. However, I
was watching the movie with people who are fans of these films and THEY
thought it sucked. We all hated it. Imagine a room full of people staring
at a screen with a stunned look on their face because they can't believe the
movie just went there.
There is nothing on this planet worse than a comedy that isn't funny. That
is why this horrifically unfunny comedy gets a smoking tape of death.
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