Posts filed under 'Bad movies'
August 15th, 2008
Whether you agree with the politics behind this film (and frankly, I don’t), this looks bad. Really bad. Yes, Jerry Zucker was one of the guys responsible for AIRPLANE! and THE NAKED GUN! (and, before that, KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE), but apparently the mighty have fallen. The jokes are nothing better than something you’d see on an old episode of AMERICA’S FUNNIEST HOME VIDEOS or one of those awful “parody” flicks Tinseltown keeps churning out, like EPIC MOVIE or MEET THE SPARTANS. There are funny guys out there with a conservative viewpoint — writer P.J. O’Rourke, for example – but apparently none of them were involved in this movie.
July 16th, 2008
… but this is too good not to share. It’s a list of 50 movies that made more in their opening weekend than Eddie Murphy’s latest masterpiece. Among them? Even this movie, widely considered one of the biggest bombs in Hollywood history…
 
Yes, it’s BATTLEFIELD EARTH, which more than doubled MEET DAVE’S opening take. Click here to see the rest.
July 10th, 2008
… but Eddie Murphy — you know, the guy who stars in MEET DAVE – didn’t even show up at the film’s premiere Tuesday, according to this report at Cinematical.
The site also reports that, in a bit of typical Hollywood flackery, a producer claimed Murphy couldn’t attend because he was too busy filming his next masterpiece, A THOUSAND WORDS. Trouble is, Brian Robbins, the director of that movie (and MEET DAVE) was at Tuesday’s premiere. Hmmm.
I guess this is one thing Eddie Murphy and I have in common: Neither of us wants to sit through MEET DAVE. (Also, we both had torrid affairs with Scary Spice.)
Remember when Eddie Murphy was one of the funniest guys on the planet? So do I, but it’s getting tougher and tougher.
June 20th, 2008
Mike Myers’ latest comic epic, THE LOVE GURU, is getting savaged by critics and has accumulated a whopping 16 percent score at Rotten Tomatoes. (To put things in perspective, that’s less than half the score of YOU DON’T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN, another critical darling.)
Having paid my penance by seeing THE HAPPENING (19 percent, three points higher than GURU) last week, I’m not hiring a babysitter just so I can suffer through another bad movie this weekend. But I’m dying to hear from someone who’s actually seen it. Is it really that bad? I pegged it as a lousy movie weeks ago, and I have the feeling I was right.
But you never know. If you see THE LOVE GURU this weekend, please swing by here and offer your thoughts. And thanks for taking a hit for the team.
June 19th, 2008
I saw THE HAPPENING last week, and to say it was a disappointment implies I had hopes it might actually be good. Truth is, after watching Shyamalan’s LADY IN THE WATER and reading the book THE MAN WHO HEARD VOICES, I had a pretty good idea that THE HAPPENING was going to be pretty bad. And it was. Very bad, in fact. After the movie, my wife and I kept picking it apart, thinking of ways every single scene — heck, every single shot — could’ve been improved with a rewrite here, a tweak there.
I’m just talking as a movie watcher (and books-about-movies reader) here, but it seems to me that Shyamalan needs someone he trusts, someone he’ll actually listen to, to take his screenplays and give them a good, tough once over. His dialogue is awful, his scene construction is frustratingly bad and the entire plot plays out in a bland, boring manner. This, after all, is a movie about people committing suicide for no reason. The tension should be almost unbearable in every scene. Instead, there’s no tension at all.
I’m not alone in my take on THE HAPPENING — the critics have been pretty brutal — but here’s a review worth reading. It’s from Jim Emerson’s excellent Scanners blog, and he’s responding to the idea proposed by film critic Kim Newman (who I normally agree with) that the backlash against the happening is a sign of racism against Shyamalan’s Indian heritage. As Emerson rightly points out, that’s not the movie’s problem:
“Shyamalan’s previous debacle, “The Lady in the Water,” exhibited all the same problems as “The Happening,” especially on the level of Filmmaking 101: knowing how to “cover” a scene, how to set up a shot, when to cut to the next one and what it should be. WATch ing; thismovieiS a B I T L LLL L i Kk e Re-LiKe-ADING -thisSENTence. It’s random, erratic, and and the errors distract from the feeling and the sense of what it’s trying to convey.”
 Read the whole thing — along with some interesting comments — here.
May 22nd, 2008
Before watching IRON MAN, I was forced to sit through the trailer for Mike Myer’s upcoming atrocity, THE LOVE GURU, which looks like it might have the distinction of being the worst movie ever made not starring a Wayans.
But the lack of laughs isn’t the only problem, here. There’s also the nagging issue of (near) eternal damnation.
The Web site Defamer.com reports that besides being blasted by spiritual leaders all over the world, the movie could, literally, send Myers and company to Hell. And not just development hell, either.Â
Defamer quotes Sean Clarke, editor of the Spiritual Science Research Foundation as saying “based on an afterlife demerit point system, those involved with making the movie can anticipate residence in the second region of hell for 1,000 years.”
Don’t think Mike and his co-stars are the only ones in for centuries of fiery torment. You, the ticket buyer, could be in trouble as well. Defamer continues:Â ”Watching it for entertainment would carry its share of consequences, too.”
Of course, after watching THE LOVE GURU, you’ve already spent about two hours in hell. Does that count as time served?
