Thursday, May 27, 2010

Truly bad movies

"Sex and the City 2"?  No, they didn't. They did not.
Consider the film’s painful climax, in which Samantha, now wearing shorts and a low-cut top, spills dozens of condoms from her purse in the middle of a crowded market. Right before the condom explosion, the Islamic call to prayer, the Adhan, is conveniently heard for no discernible reason. The angry, hairy men, overwhelmed by anger and shock, decide to abandon their daily activities and busy life to encircle Samantha and condemn her as a harlot and slut, but not before Samantha proudly holds the condoms up high and dry humps the air telling the men she uses them to have sex. Because they cannot tolerate a sassy, back-talking, condom-using female baring her legs, they decide en masse to spontaneously chase all four women. Appearing like an oasis in the desert, two mysterious women in a burqa silently nod to the four girls, who subsequently follow the women into a secret room revealing the existence of a secret book club attended by a dozen niqabi women, who disrobe to reveal their hidden designer clothes, fashionable shoes and makeup.
There's an interesting discussion in the comments over at LGM over whether "Sex and the City 2" might be the worst film ever.  It's hard to say how to even rank these things.  A few commenters mention "Twister," "The Day After Tomorrow," etc., but I don't think that's fair.  Those movies really don't pretend to be anything other than a few hours of entertainment with just enough science to make you think that they at least hired a meteorologist for a couple of hours.  I don't think they should be held to a particularly high standard.  And I don't know why people are attacking "The Core."  That is a very special film.  I can't recall another film that had such a tight concentration of highly acclaimed, talented indie film actors doing such crappy work.  You have to work to get those kind of results.  And the science?  Well, it starts with people communicating via radio through 2,000 miles of mantle and goes from there.  Awesome.

To me, the worst movie ever is "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band."  If you haven't seen it, just imagine a musical that begins with the assumption that the Beatles are actually the Bee Gees.  And then they try to tell a story using the lyrics from the Beatles' music, which you really can't do since those lyrics, for the most part, make no friggin' sense.  But that doesn't stop them!  So we get a character named Mr. Kite played by George Burns.  And a character named Dr. Maxwell played by Steve Martin.  (Yes, he has a silver hammer!)  It's ridiculous.  And it would be bad enough if it were just a dumb musical, but the fact that it bears the name and music of one of the greatest albums of all time makes it all the more appalling.  That's a bad movie.

Just sayin'.

9 comments:

Kyle Baker said...

Rotten Tomatoes has it at a whopping 14%.

Here is a hilarious review I just noted:

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=4132715&mode=print

Seth Masket said...

Awesome review. Brutal.

Marc said...

I nominate Solarbabies, 1986, in which Jamie Gertz and Jason Patric attempt to roller skate across a desert to escape a Starship Troopers/Mad Max/Rollerball-type situation controlled by Charles Durning, should be kitsch by now. It's not:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-iRR94_b3M

Seth Masket said...

You make a strong case, Marc. I remain a strong Charles Durning devotee, although I think he peaked with Muppet Movie.

jim said...

Even by your criteria, I'd have to think that Wild Wild West fails so miserably to be entertaining even with its entirely decent cast that it should be your worst movie ever. It remains the only movie I've walked out on, and I sat through all of the execrable Lost in Space with Joey-from-Friends.

The absolute worst movie ever is Red Zone Cuba, which is so confusing and incoherent it makes Cthulhu scratch his head.

The worst film with a decent budget is Species 2, which has the greatest OMG WTF ever. At the end, one of our heroes, who is a black dude, saves the day by smearing some of his blood on something and jabbing the alien monster. Because of the alien's extreme purity and evolvedness, it cannot cope with the genetic inferiority of the black man's blood and so its head asplode. Literally.

jim said...

I'd also nominate Spielkubrick's AI, because it has a character say, without any hint of irony, "I'm sorry I never told you about the world."

Seth Masket said...

I never saw "Species 2," although the first one is near the top of my list. It's very "Core"-like in that it has some extremely talented actors (Ben Kingsley, Forrest Whittaker) doing horrible work. But there are also some horrible actors in it doing horrible work, which isn't that hard to do, which is why it's not at the top of my list.

jim said...

The first one is awesome.

My favorite part is the part where they explain that Forest Whitaker is an empath and can sense some sort of psionic whatever. So they send him into the train car, and he looks around at the gore splattered all over the compartment and he says -- wait for it --

"Something bad happened here."

But in all seriousness, Species 2 is as bad as twins in Transformers 2.

Jeremy Montano said...

Can I nominate "Gigli"? It even ends with the mentally-handicapped kid dancing on the set of "Baywatch." I wish I was kidding.