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October 28, 2005
Sweet googly moogly, that was bad!
I saw a movie this week that was so bad… so amazingly rancid… that it was kind of exciting. (And anyone who has in mind to e-mail me and to demand to know what film it is… no! No hints, no associated talent… no nothing! I will not write or hint a word about this film itself until it arrives in theaters. Sorry. Besides, you should see it for yourself with eyes wide open.)
Yes, there is something almost as exhilarating about a truly hideous movie as there is about a great movie, but both keep you on the edge of your seat, wondering just where in hell it could possible go from there.
A really bad movie sets my mind is aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought careening thru a cosmic vapor of invention. (And a really great movie inspires theft of quotes… check out the Blazing Saddles' "memorable quote" page on imdb, which is practically half the script.)
I mean, who could make up the storyline and characters of XX2: State Of The Union? And I was really excited to see just how crazy the folks at Revolution could have gone… and damned if they didn't top anything I had even considered with a super speed train chase coming out of the Congressional basement that Ice Cube would land on with another vehicle. Really spectacularly stupid. Love it.
Not to lay it all at Sony's door, but Stealth... wow! Just when you thought the wacky secret team of fliers couldn't do something less believable, they go for it! Need a bikini scene…go on a vacation to an island paradise… for a day. Need a funny guy to die first… call Jamie Foxx. Want to have a heroic ending… have the live guy hero talk the crazy computer into doing the same kind of behavior that made us think the computer was crazy so he can save his love interest by attacking a sovereign nation that has nukes. Brilliant!
Ir doesn't always work. Bad News Bears wasn't nearly bad enough. Brothers Grimm hurt because it was so close to being really interesting. Bewitched and Kicking & Screaming were both frustrating because it was as though the filmmakers gave their films over to the prayer that Will Ferrell was THAT funny. But no one is THAT funny.
But hey… Son of The Mask was like watching some bad hallucination that was so far beyond explanation that you started to wonder whether you were missing the genius. As Alan Cumming tried to rise above the death knell, it was just fantastic. It was like one of those movies where someone is trying to get out of a wooden coffin, cracking off their fingernails.
Paramount figured out just how painful it was to see Susan Sarandon explain that she had learned to tap dance, fix a car, and be a stand up comic all in the week since her husband's death. A great actress, a great writer/director… a home run failure of billion dollar proportion.
Kurt Russell and Kelly Preston looked like their hard plastic suits could pinch off a critical body part in Sky High at any time. But there was some kind of kinky joy in that journey.
Lsst year's Dodgeball was kind of the recent king of bad movies gone right. I mean, you literally have to be willing to laugh every time someone gets hit in the balls with a rubber ball. You have to think that Ben Stiller with giant fake breasts is funny. You have to go with the moral of the story coming from the guy who thinks he's a pirate and Lance Armstrong. It's terrible… but it's great. But like Napoleon Dynamite, there is an incredible sweetness that makes the bad into something lovely and golden.
But now, I'm talking about films that really aren't that bad … not joyous rage bad. Spanglish was that kind of bad. Catwoman was that kind of bad. Alexander was that kind of bad.
So what looks good as the next great unintentional horror show? Well, I would go with Aeon Flux ahead of all comers. But let's hope note.
The great weekend for excremental potential is November 23, with The Ice Harvest, In The Mix, Just Friends, and Yours, Mine and Ours all showing the potential to be really, really bad. Surely, a couple of the films will just be mediocre. But I am sneakily rooting for that joyous moment where you just have to whisper to the person next to you and then, by the third act, you can say it out loud because the whole room really wants to be part of the meltdown.
The film I saw this week is, put simply, a stunning achievement in bad. Loved it!
