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Eight
Pages of fans worst movies they have seen
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Si
Spurious
1.
Batman and Robin Mr Joel Schumacher, take a bow. You have
successfully gathered-together just-about *every* conceivable
eeevil in the film industry, pasted them together with your
unusually sticky gonad-glue, told them to ham it all up as
much as possible, then farted it out at the distributors as
if they should be grateful. Let's not pull any punches, here:
this film is *bad*. Not just bad, even, but *really* bad.
This film is 'a bit pants' in the same way that the Universe
is 'quite big, really'. Professionally trained actors - with
drama-school diplomas and blah blah blah - have to train for
*years* to get this bad. Even Arnie must have cringed every
time one of those dipped-in-fanny-batter one-liners came along.
I also find it eminently funny that Joel chose as his Mr Freeze
- a character whose every-other word is 'freeze' this or 'frozen'
that - a man who has trouble saying 'r'. "Dere's a fleeeeze
comink." Ugh. Uma Thurman - in her defence - recently claimed
that she had felt her hamming-up antics were ruining the fillm;
she protested to Schumacher who told her that she wasn't acting-up
*enough*, and to shut-up and get on with it.... Which only
half absolves her of blame, but does rather lend weight to
the hunt-down-Shumacher campaign. Quite how *anyone* could
find a striptease from inside a gorilla-costume sexy is beyond
me - and Uma in those silly spangly glasses has more than
a little of the Elton John about it. I could bitch about this
film for days. The art director needs to be shot. The costume
designer has too much time on his hands and a fetish for unneccesary
flourishes. The special effects aren't all that special at
all and the stunts make 'Star Wars Episode One' look positively
*realistic*. Laaaaaame. Once again the entire background,
feel and mood of a comicbook creation are maligned by a director
with rather too much interest in glitz. C'mon Joel - didn't
you ever wonder about the word 'Gotham'? As in 'Gothic-Hamlet'?
He seems to be having a Las Vegas wet-dream and dribbling
the rather squelchy results all over the film-stock. "It's
more of a kids' film than the other batman films" he claims
- apparently unaware that most children with an IQ above 34
consider it to be condescending tripe. Si's verdict: Words
fail me. This is a baaaaaaaaaaaad film.
2.
Bram Stoker's Dracula Gary Oldman is one of my favourite
actors. I've heard him called 'unversatile', but point people
in the direction of 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead'.
I've heard him called 'boring', and smugly waft people in
the direction of 'Leon', or 'The Fifth Element'. What he generally
*is*, is flamboyant and pleasantly over the top. Which is
why I have absolutely *no* idea why he was cast for this part.
Dracula is supposed to be a gloomy, atmospheric chiller, yes?
Supernatural nastiness, gothicy shadowy blurb, etc? Whereas
*his* Transylvanian accent came-off as a rather lame Harry-Enfield
'Stavros' impression. ("Ah, dey cheeldren of dey noight. What
sweiet myoasic dey mayk..."). And Keanu Reeves? Mr 'Where-Did-I-Put-My-Facial-Expression'?
Trying to get all flustered and passionate whilst blurting
his way through a pants English accent (wait for him to say
'Budapest' - funny as hell). And what about lovely little
Winona Ryder as meek and demure Mina? Her ruptured-eardrum
inducing voiceovers had me reaching for the 'mute' control
more than once. This film, all in all, is a casting nightmare.
It's also very badly scripted, *apallingly* shot, *awfully*
paced and, all-in-all, not very good. Take a look at the convincing
Transylvanian skyline during the naff coach-chase. 'My Goodness,
what a lovely studio'-syndrome. Si's verdict: Ah, zie mhakers
of zis film, what swheet cockups dhey make.
3.
Blair Witch 2: The Book of Yawns (sorry, *Shadows*) --
Horror film, okay? Operates upon the single guiding principal
of.... well, *horror*. I went to see this just before Halloween.
I'd just been sitting around a little bonfire telling ghost
stories and was already sufficiently creeped-out. I would
have found an episode of Teletubbies scary by the point I
went into the cinema, so fully expected an adrenaline-soaked
zappoid-attack of the jitters. Consider this film from an
entirely objective standpoint. It's precursor - 'The Blair
Witch Project', was hugely successful due to its (some said)
innovative use of cinematic style and first-person perspective.
That is to say, the makers got-away with the cheap gimick
of using handheld camcorders to make a box-office hit. Sickening
I know, but what can you do? Then some bright-spark rocket
scientist decides to milk the Blair Witch cash-cow a bit more
by making a sequel... Did it attempt to recreate or outdo
the stylistic individuality of its predeccessor? Did it bollocks.
What you have here is your basic 'group of young people in
scary situation' naff horror whose reliance upon the concept
(rather than the perspective) of video surveillance became
pretty moot when the 'sting-in-the-tail' was revealed. Some
films - 'Usual Suspects', 'The Sixth Sense', etc - are able
to use a nice big whopping twist-ending because it brings-together
all the unspoken ambiguities from the earlier plot. *This*
drivel just yawned its way through a couple of hours of seen-it-all-before
dreariness before announcing rather smugly that everything
we - the audience - had witnessed had been hallucinated and
the *real* version of events had been captured on the various
security cams and blah blah blah. Annoying. Very very very
very *very* bad. And also very very very very *very* not-scary.
Si's verdict: *Yaaaawn*.
4.
Scary Movie About as scary as a dollop of jam. About as
funny as a dollop of jam. About as original as a biiig dollop
of jam in the all-comers antique jam-dollop festival. Spoof
films have this tendency to shoot a million and one gags at
the audience in the space of two hours on the premise that
- even if most of them aren't funny or aren't noticed - there'll
still be enough left to give the audience a giggle. Unfortunately,
someone neglected to mention this to the maker of this shit-awful
piece of cinematic filth: the result is that jokes come-around
at the sultry pace of one-per-five minutes and about 50% of
them go so-far off the mark that William Tell's blindfolded
son might have had a bit of a problem... Don't get me wrong,
*occassionally* a funny gag creeps-along and makes itself
known.. The problem is that the director obviously realised
he had a humour-problem and tried to draw-out every funny
moment for several minutes until whatever vestiges of comedy
originally lay therein are squandered and battered to death
with a large rolling-pin. Si's verdict: A very very big lump
of human excrement. The occassional protrusion of peanutty
goodness (or the semi-buried gem of undigested sweetcorn)
provides occassional relief, but can't disguise the fact that
the remainder of the film is essentially shite.
5.
Waterworld Let's get some things straight, shall we? Kevin
Costner - balding hero of 'The Bodyguard' and 'Robin Hood,
Prince of Muppets' - is *not* Mad Max. I'm sorry, Kev, but
there you go. No matter *how* much you leap from altitudinous
rigging and play the nasty-but-nice 'noble savage' thing,
you are simply not gonna manage it. Swashbuckle all you want,
me boyo, but at the end of the day all you're doing is convincing
us of what a lame imitation this piece-of-shite film really
is. "I know," says some bright-spark conceptualist, "let's
rip-off one of the best post-apocalypse films of all times
but.... uh.... hang on...... yeah, yeah, right, let's make
it really *wet* as well, okay? Yeah! That'd work, right? Now
where's my cheque?" Little girl with a map on her skin. Nasty
nasty pantomime villain who wants to 'spare her life' because
skinning her alive is too much trouble. Hello-oo?.. Kev can
breath underwater. This doesn't explain how he can dive half-a-mile
under without his puny little head popping like a balloon
(oh, how I prayed..) There's no rain anymore, right, and yet
on the cutesy-wootsey island at the end there's a neat little
bubbling stream. Thbbbpt. Oh, and the best one of all: Kev
and his 'oops-my-top-won't-stay-on-my-shoulders' bit of fluff
are trying to protect the annoying kid, right? The kid subsequently
gets captured by the nasty 'I-smoke-cigarrettes-so-I-*must*-be-evil'
baddie and how do our two heroes react to the tragedy? Right
- they get all groiny with each other on the deck of the mullered
boat. Si's verdict: Half a cup of semi-congealed man-juice
mixed liberally with the internal fluids of a rabid mongoose.
Mix with plenty of (salt)water, a dash of derivative scripting
and some of the silliest plot-facets in the world. Cack.
Si
gets a page to himself for this by dint of his "comments
being waaay longer than anyone elses. Students too much time
on their hands!
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