The Worst Movies I've Ever Seen

The other day, my wife was talking about the worst movies that her parents had ever seen (the winner was something called Zardoz). But then she said their worst movie probably wouldn't hold a candle to what I've seen. She tells the truth -- The Evil Dead, Night of the Creeps, and Dragon Half are just some of the staples in my DVD library. And those are the ones I like.

Even though it's easy to make a bad movie, no one's really sure how. Some involved people whose head was up their own ass, making "films" with a "message". Some knew they were making trash and didn't care. Some were just mixed scripts, different cinematic visions, or something out of left field. The strangest coincidences can lead to the greatest movies (The Wizard of Oz's four directors) or the worst (Superman II's multiple directors). There are some movies even MST3K didn't touch (Like Child Bride for one).

I love my movies. I hate pausing or stopping in the middle, even to go to the bathroom. I only watch movies when I can dedicate enough time to its full length. As I result, I'm always griping about how I never have time to watch my movies. It is very, very rare that I stop watching any movie with the intention of never finishing it. I'd like to say it's to be respectful to the story, that stories should be finished. But it's probably more that I have OCD and need to know how something ends. But there have been exceptions, a few I've stopped watching before completion (or wish I had).

There's a distinct difference between a movie that's so bad it's good, so bad it's bad, and just... intolerable. These are my top five intolerables (along with some honorable mentions).


Your Highness

I was excited when I saw the trailer for this one. I love fantasy movies. But a fantasy that's a comedy? It's about time. There's no reason you can't put these two great tastes that taste great together. Plus Natalie Portman? I was hopeful. I was ecstatic. I was anticipating a fantasy-genre comedy meant that spec fic was on its way to be legitimized.

"Your Highness" took a shit over all that.

And it was almost a literal shit, since that's what all the humor was: juvenile fart jokes, weed humor, dirty pranks, and swearing. Let's make a list of what does not belong in fantasy -- weed, conventional curse words & slang, minotaur rape. Does not compute. Even the thirteeniest-year-old D & D player wouldn't find this movie funny.

Not to mention our main character is the most unlikeable, laziest douche I've ever met. Yes, it makes sense for a prince to be unambitious and hedonistic because of his position. But it's not okay to make that misogynist prince the sympathetic character.

I was sooo close to shutting it off. Sooooooo close. The only thing that stopped me was that I was watching it with someone, and I didn't want to be rude, even though the movie was my choice. Which is like making dinner and then realizing you used salt instead of sugar. But you keep eating it for the sake of convention. This movie offended me in the worst sense - my literary sense.


You've Got Mail

The first time I saw this, I turned it off just about after the credits were done, when Meg Ryan is flitting about her bookshop, smiling and humming with her chirpy, perky voice, smelling flowers and fawning over books like they're precious gems. (And yes, I said that and I'm a writer.)

Who wants to see a movie about Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks texting? Tell me who needs to see that? I certainly don't. I guess the big deal was that Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan were reuniting for the first time since Sleepless in Seattle. Except people forgot that, in that movie, THEY DON'T SHARE ANY SCREEN TIME.  So who cares if they're reuniting?  They never united in the first place! Fortunately, I never got to the part where Tom Hanks becomes the most uncharacteristically unlikeable character he'd ever played. Never thought I'd see that.

And I didn't.


The Gamers: Dorkness Rising

This kept popping up in my Netflix recommendations list, so I finally gave up and queued it. Boy, am I sorry I did. I like geek humor -- there's not enough of it out there -- and I had just come from listening to the utterly hilarious Penny Arcade D & D games on podcast.

This is so totally different than that. This seems to be a low-low-low-budget independent comedy about some RPG gamers that follow the old trope of "the character is the avatar". Unfortunately, every character is a jerk. One player keeps trying to have sex with everything, even in the throne room in front of the king.

There's ten minutes (or what feels like ten minutes) where the a player is arguing with a DM about how he wants to play a certain character that doesn't fit the universe/rules. That goes on for a while, and finally the DM relents, until the player tells him that he wants do something that violates ANOTHER rule of the universe they just went over.

It's like someone made a full movie version of the Dungeons & Dragons audio bit. Except much, much worse. All the characters do is bicker over petty shit and act like stereotypes. All the potential in this kind of comedy died because it was about the passive-aggressive, argumentative, horndog geek. I stopped watching partway through when I realized the movie was just a waste of my time.

(Editor's Note: Apparently, I've talked about this movie before and didn't realize it, until I was Google Image Searching for pictures and my own blog entry was the first hit.)


The Winslow Boy

A long time ago, I read a list of fifty movies that few people had ever seen and should. There were several good discoveries like The Arrival, Pulse, and Birdy. But not all of them, like Testament and Time After Time. And for some reason, The Winslow Boy was on there. I should have known this would be crap when there was no known stars, no science fiction elements, and a lot of British looking things.

This is based on a play about a boy who gets kicked out of his wealthy private school and goes back to his wealthy house, where his wealthy parents fret about what their wealthy neighbors will say and their wealthy daughter marrying the wealthy naval captain and I just don't fucking care. Let the little kid suffer. Give me people with some real problems.


Muppets from Space

I don't think I'm spoiling anything when I say this movie takes a shit all over my childhood is confusing, at best. Muppets had been on a decline ever since Jim Henson's death, as one would expect. Yet they continue beating the dead horse to the ground, squeezing
every...
last...
drop.

But the biggest nail in the coffin, the moment we knew it was all over, was Muppets from Space. The plot rips off Close Encounters of the Third Kind and adds the schmaltz of Follow That Bird. It's the Muppet equivalent of "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" -- a totally unnecessary sequel, focusing too much on the new, unlikable characters, D-List guest stars, and corruptions of existing characters. All the charm Henson gave to the muppets is gone. It even has the "nuke-the-fridge" moment of Gonzo finding out he's an alien.

No. You can't do that. Gonzo has never had an origin story. He's not supposed to. I know all the other muppets are some kind of stylized animal, but Gonzo is a "weirdo" or "whatever". He always has been, he always should be. Next you're going to be telling me his fur is made of midichlorians.

The muppets can be good again, but if you try to make them the same as Henson did, you'll fail. If you deviate too much from what Henson wanted to do, you'll fail.  It's a delicate balance, and this movie never even tried to do either. The magic is back, my ass.

Honorable Mentions

Scream 2 - Speaking of unnecessary sequels, boy, this certainly... was one. I never got the appeal of the first Scream movie, but at least it was watchable. Someone pointing out all the tropes and errors in a slasher flick is like someone saying wrestling is fake. Everyone knows that.  Doesn't change the fun of watching.

But Scream wasn't even about that. Past the one or two bits of self-referential humor, it was a knock-off of "masked-man-with-a-knife" movies like Halloween. And those are tame by today's standards. But then you make a movie that's exactly the same thing? No thank you.

The Family Man - Speaking of unnecessary sequels, let us not forget the unnecessary remake. I liked this movie the first time I saw it, when it was called "every It's a Wonderful Life parody in a sitcom". Could there be a more blatant plot steal than this movie? Starring Nicolas Cage -- our era's Kevin Costner? You can call it a modern-day version or a homage all you want.  I'll call it like I see it: "transparent copy".

Jabberwocky - My dad told me this was one of the later Monty Python movies, since I'd already seen Holy Grail, Life of Brian, Something Completely Different, Meaning of Life, and the entire "Flying Circus" series.

My dad lied. It's directed by Terry Gilliam and stars Michael Palin, but contains nothing Pythonesque or funny. I don't remember a damn thing about it -- my mind tuned out for its duration.  When the credits rolled I asked "It's over? Why? What happened?"

A Walk To Remember - Mandy Moore is hot. She's especially hot as a demure, upbeat, moral girl with cute bangs, brunette hair, and long flowing dresses. She's especially hot when I apply my imagination and... oh, wait. Sorry, I need to save that for my next fan fiction. Anyway, this movie told me everything I need to know about the works of Nicholas Sparks -- characters acting implausibly, bubbly afterschool specialness with strong Christian overtones, and plots that just don't work.

Malcolm in the Middle - I know this isn't a movie, but I had to include it.  I hate, hate, hate, hate, HATE this show. Everyone is an absolute dick to each other.  For no reason. Nobody is redeemable.  Nobody gets punished for being an idiot.  Nobody experiences consequences for their behavior. They're bad people who are bad at being people. They're jerks. They're bullies. They're sociopaths. Parents and kids alike.

I hate every fucking second of this show. I hate their stupid expressions, their yelling, that theme music. I hate fucking Frankie Muniz's retarded, jaw-dropped expressions and wide-angle lenses. I hate that boy with the big ears. I hate that shrewish mom who can't stand her own family, which she helped create. I hate that ridiculously ignorant motherfucker of a dad who's got the maturity of a dog. They're trailer trash, and they should all be lined up and shot.

Stuck on You / The Bourne Identity - There's no real reason to lump these two together. The only commonality is Matt Damon, who I don't like as an actor. He did Good Will Hunting and then nothing else, (except maybe for The Departed, but that also had Martin Scorese and Leonardo DiCaprio on its side).

Stuck on You - I don't get why everyone's so in love with the Farelly brothers. Ooh, it's a Farelly brothers comedy. What does that even mean? Who are they? Why is this a selling point? Their movies aren't good: Shallow Hal, Dumb and Dumber, Hall Pass. This is not how you advertise.

The Bourne Identity - I cannot imagine a more tedious action movie. It's based on a book that's twenty-two years old, meant to compete with James Bond. Well, then it should have come out the same time as James Bond. Brainwashed assassins? Been done. Car chases? Been done. Government agent being chased by his own people? Been done. One man crusade? Been done. The story's full of cliches.  It's like no one told the movie makers that the 90's happened.

Westworld - I already mentioned my problems with this in my "Top 5 Movies That Need To Be Remade". Basically, it's a great idea that had piss-poor execution. There's no conflict until 80% of the way through, when it becomes a technology-gone-haywire/Terminator rip-off.

(Editor's Note: Unlike "Dorkness Rising", I wasn't the first hit on this one. Boo.)

Eraserhead - David Lynch doesn't make movies. He makes films. Films are art. Again, no idea why everyone's so in love with this movie. Yeah, it's got some great imagery. Got some fucked-up ideas, some creepy shots. But it's all mish-mashed together with a story so incoherent, full of deviations, it has to be constantly interpreted and analyzed, which is the sign of a lazy writer.

Down Periscope - Kelsey Grammer stars in "Police Academy in a submarine". Sounds like a winning formula to me. Especially with the Police Academy movies getting such high marks. And star power like... Rob Schneider and Harland Williams. There's no way this couldn't be chock full of hackneyed, played-out jokes, toilet humor, and a script that sounds like it was written on the plane ride to the studio.

Transformers III: Dark of the Moon - I thought it was necessary to include a contemporary movie in the list, just to show that intolerable movies don't solely exist in the eighties or low budgets. Blockbusters can be just as bad. Five or ten years from now, people are going to look back at Transformers and say "This was a top grossing movie!? It's nothing but CGI and people falling!" And who thought Shia LaBeouf was a good idea for this role?  He's going to make some bad career decisions, fade himself into obscurity, and end up on one of Dr. Drew's rehab shows.

Killjoy - You already know what you're in for when you've got a direct-to-video horror movie with African-American urban youth and a killer clown. Channel Awesome's review provides a nice summary of what you're not missing. The only reason I'm including it is this movie was a bit of a stepping-stone in my writing career. In the sense that, when I saw it, I thought: "I can write better than this. If this guy could get his script made into a movie, there is hope for me."

Reign of Fire - I saw this one in the theater, and I was excited. I thought "Ah, finally, a movie that combines fantasy and science. We're going to find out how dragons work!" as I was misled by dialogue in the commercial/trailer: "two glands in the mouth secrete separate chemicals, combined with exhalation -- natural napalm". In fact, this is the only line that even gets close to anything resembling science. The other 89 minutes is a tedious, post-apocalyptic cheesefest that belonged on the "Sci-Fi"/"SyFy" channel, but somehow got upgraded with thanks to Christian Bale and Matthew McConaughey.

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