Tuesday, April 19, 2011

#91 - Meet The Spartans



This is one movie I was not looking forward to watching. Okay okay, no, there are not many I am looking forward to. But perhaps that is the fun of it. It's like walking past a really ugly person, you just can't help but look again. Well, what if someone was to tell you before you saw that ugly person what you were about to see. You know where I'm going with this... you would still look.

Thing is, with Meet The Spartans, I had already looked, and turned away 10 minutes later. I guess the reason I had watched it in the first place is I had not watched one of those horrible spoofs in a while, and I wanted to see if they had changed and perhaps gotten better. That is a resounding no! So this time around for me was to see if I would be able to make it further into the movie. I mean, I've had training in bad movie watching now, and I feel that I have more stamina in watching these flicks.

Well, the training has paid off because for the first time, my turn off point was later than that of Christie's. Granted, neither one of us would have lasted past the 25 minute mark (see the turn off point section below).  But still, call it a win for me. (Note to my sister: yes, I'm competitive, get over it.)

So, about the movie. Let's see, there was 19 blatan product placements, including two or three in movie commercials. If you are wondering why I kept count, it's because two product placements were thrown in our face within the first two minutes of the movie, so I figured why not see how many there was. If nothing else, it would keep my interest on the movie rather than watching the cat sleep which was much more interesting.

The "pop culture" reference count was not kept, but I'm sure it was worse. From Britney Spears jokes, to Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan, they told the crotch shot joke three times. There was a three or four judge panels refered to (American Idol like shows), and just a bunch of stupid crap that just wasn't funny. By our count, there was one funny part (father giving the chair to his kid in the background fighting ring as two people talked about stuff we didn't care about), and one chuckle moment.

There were countless mucus/liquid poop/vomit/spit to the face jokes which none were remotely amusing. And the worse was that even though their jokes were so obvious, they still needed to explain it to you. Take a scene where they have Rocky Balboa chained up as some monster they are going to release on the Spartans. It was quite obvious who they were trying to mock, but still, the camera had to have a close up of the boxer's shorts so we could read ROCKY on them. Oh thanks for that, I didn't get the reference before that close up. Thanks for understanding I am a moron. Well, I guess anyone that would willingly watch this movie is a moron. No, neither of us were willing, but we have set forth a challenge and we will not back down!

PAUSE.... LONG PAUSE...

... It has now been about 3 weeks since we have seen the movie, and it was so bad, I had a hard time writing this blog because honestly, I was hating myself for having to remember parts of the movie to write about it. Ugh! But I have to finish this if we are to continue our journey. I promised Christie I would finish this blog, and by god that's what I'm going to do. Anyway this movie doesn't deserve me talking about it anymore so let me just finish this rubbish and move on...

IMDb Rating: 2.5
JF's Rating: 1 - I'm still standing by that nothing will be worse than Bolero, but this was as bad... although, seriously, it was close... real close.
Chris' Rating: 2 - Yup, she hated it too.

JF's Turn off point: At the 25 minute mark, the troop of "300" (which was about a dozen in this movie) start off on their journey, and instead of a march, they hook arms and start skipping. The idiocity was too much for me to bear.
Chris' Turn off point: Around the 7 1/2 minute mark. I think it was the 3rd or 4th puke/muccus type joke, plus some gross looking guy had just finished sticking his tongue up a girl's nose. She had had enough.

Never ever watch this movie. Ever. Never ever. I mean it, you will hate yourself for it.

Monday, March 7, 2011

#92 - The Smokers



I was tempted to put up the video of the entire movie here, but I figured I wouldn't be that cruel. You know, I'm starting to see a trend with these bad movies. I state again that we were looking for the "they are so bad, they are good" movies when we started this journey. Instead we are getting movie after movie that are just so boring, badly acted with bad directing and even worse editing.

The Smokers was no different, as it was filled with 10-20 second scenes that really didn't help to move the story along, and it just left you wondering what just happened. As usual, the acting was terrible, the story was stupid, there was plenty of missed opportunities to make this trash better, and I honestly didn't care about a single one of the main characters. I did try to like Jeremy (played by Nicholas M. Loeb) who was the only decent guy of the bunch, but the acting was worse than that old salesman on local TV talking about his great deals.

But besides the fact that the movie had barely anything resembling a plot, that most of the lines were corny, and that they had a Bolero'esque sex scene, I'm having a difficult time giving it a bad grade. Why you ask? Well, meet Dave:



Before I get into why Dave's five second of screen time was the best part of the movie by far, let me explain a little something here. First off, the filming feel was that of a TV show. Think Coronation Street. That's the feel it had. The way it was filmed anyway, as I would much rather watch 1.5 hours of that UK soap then watch this again. Now, top that off with the horrid acting. And that's not just from our main actors or supporting actors who were all bad, I mean, even the extras were bad.

I think the title The Smokers is in reference to Felicia Fasano, the casting director and her casting crew. Seriously, what were they smoking when they hired all these people? I mean, sure, they don't have to be picky about extras, but did they really should hire people who have a hint of an idea about how to act. These extras couldn't even walk down a hallway without making it looked forced. I blame the director, Kat Slater (who has since only directed adult movies) for this mess. But this mess brought us Dave.

So, about halfway through the movie while we were still searching for a plot, Christie and I really started to notice how bad the extras were in the background. We chuckled at some weird dance some chick did at a bar. Another dancing chick looks to the camera a few times and it reminded me of Ricky Gervais' character in Extras. Chris got a kick out of a camera totting, finger pointing student walking past a door. This was supposed to be a somewhat intense moment in the movie, but that was total failure in the face of comedy in the background.

So, who is Dave you ask? Ah, Dave, how can I do you justice? With moronic lines being delivered by moronic actors, I got lost at looking at what was going on in the background for entertainment. And there was Dave. It was a restaurant scene, and the editing cuts were making me dizzy, and then Dave. Looking all proud in the background, holding something up. He caught me so by surprise that I lost it, and couldn't stop laughing. Christie was asking me what was so funny. She had not noticed Dave yet. As we backed the movie up, I was breaking out in spits of uncontrolable laughter in anticipation of Dave's scene. Noticed, Christie fell in love with Dave right away. How can you not? Look at that face.

And if you are asking yourself "why Dave? How do you know that his name was Dave if he only had a 5 second background appearance in the movie?" I ask you to just look at that face and tell me he doesn't look like a Dave. Dave alone made this movie worthwhile watching. I will forever remember you Dave.

Oh, and before I leave you with this review, I guess I should tell you that this movie was about three girls with a gun that attempt to take sexual power back from guys by rapping them, but instead one of them gets rapped by some rich guy while his lollypop sucking limo driver watches on, and some other dude gets a bullet in the head. Trust me, it's dumb. All of it except for those 5 awesome seconds.

IMDb Rating: 2.5
JF's Rating: 3 (I wanted to give this a 2, but when I think about Dave, I want to give this pile of garbage a 4. Decided to go in the middle with a 3, but Dave mucks things up... silly Dave!)
Chris' Rating: 3 (She puts it on par with Kazaam)

Turn off point: Again, neither one of us had a turn off point. It was bad enough to want to turn away under normal circumstances, but really, there was enough stupidity in it to keep it amusing and not want to claw our eyes out.

ASSIDE: We skipped #93 because it is a foreign film, and honestly, we didn't really want to watch the movie without subtitles. We found a possible way to get subtitles for the movie, but haven't figured out how to make it work. If we can, we'll watch it, but otherwise, we'll just skip it. It's only cheating if you didn't invent the rules in the first place.

Monday, February 21, 2011

#94 - Kazaam




While I did mildly enjoyed Daddy Day Camp, in retrospect, I may not have given it a 5, as it has affected the way I now watch movies. By that, I mean that I now get annoyed with touchy feely scenes. You know, the ones where they want to teach you a lesson by having the soft music in the background as one character is saying something important to another? Well, as soon as the first such scene happened in Kazaam, I rolled my eyes, and started to keep count. In the end, there were 6 soft music scenes in this 90 minutes of garbage.


You know, I'm still waiting for that "it's so bad, it's good" movie. This... was not it. If we had more than one turn-it-off-now options, I would have used one on Kazaam. Not only was the acting horrible, and no character was likeable, and no joke was funny, and the direction was awful, but none of the events were even remotely believeable. That came to a peak at the end of the movie when the building where our protogonist is goes up in flames. Mom's boyfriend who is conviniently a firefighter who conviniently happens to be at the scene conviniently saves the boy who conviniently just fell into his arms. But that's not the unbelievable part. The fact that a firefighter would walk into a building engulfed in smoke and flames without a facemask on. All he had was his hardhat with a shield on it. Then, when he walks out with the boy who I don't recall having a single smudge of dirt on his face, neither are greated by anyone. He just walks over to the mom, and that's that. More soft music, and more touchy feely crap. One would think peremedics would want to check the kid out. Guess not since he's squeeky clean.

In watching these bad movies, I keep trying to find what could have made these movies better. Kazaam would have been better if they would have simply thrown the script in the garbage can after reading it. No, but seriously, I am serious. Nothing could have saved this movie unless you change absolutely everything about it. Just for fun, I'll list what I can remember off the top of my head:

1) Don't allow Shaq to rap, or even better yet,
2) Don't cast Shaq
3) Don't make the main character (played by Francis Capra) such a bratty kid you want to kick in the ass.
4) Having a genie come out of a "boombox" is a very bad idea.
5) If you are going to have your genie come out of a boombox, make sure you show us how he got there in the first place. Don't just show his lamp falling off the table in the opening credit and then go dark as we hear a crashing sound and expect us to think it makes sense when he gets out of a radio.
6) Have your characters have some sort of consistency. Showing a character's growth and change is one thing, but they were flipping around like fish out of water at every turn of the movie.
7) Don't just add characters you don't plan on developing whatsoever just to add a bit of dilema to the story and then all of a sudden make them an important part of the movie.
8) Don't make this stupid movie! Ever!

I just can't be more clear about how I think this movie never should have been made. Is it the worse movie I've seen on this list so far? No, that still belongs to Bolero. It will have to be something really special to ever dethrown that thing in my eyes. But it's pretty darn close. AND IT'S ONLY #94!!! Honestly, what have I gotten us into?

IMDb Rating: 2.5
JF's Rating: 2 - But only because I want to leave myself some wiggle room.
Chris' Rating: 3

JF's Turn off point: It was quite early. I can't remember the time. It's been over a week since we watched the movie. It was so damn bad that I couldn't even bear to think of writing about it. I died a little inside writing this blog.
Chris' Turn off point: She had none. I don't get her. She wants to see how it ends. Really? I think it should have ended in the garbage!

Monday, February 7, 2011

#96 - Alien From L.A.



It finally arrived, and we were so excited that we watched it twice. I'm not joking, I'm being serious. One of the rules was that we had to have no distractions when we watched the movies, or else it wouldn't really mean anything. Christie came over, but brought her two munchkins with her (4 and 6), so when we tried to watch the movie, we really weren't into it much. Her 6 year old didn't like the music very much, so we were a little worried about her there, and her 4 year old loved the movie so much he was asking questions every 15 seconds about it. Then, there was the fact that I fell asleep for 10-15 minutes of it, and my sister came to visit at some point during the movie. So, at about 75% through the movie, we shut it off, and decided to try again another day.

That other day happened to be the following evening, and Christie complained that she hadn't fallen asleep the first time and had paid attention. Complain all she wants, she had to watch all 90 minutes of it the second time around. Her question asking 4 year old joined us again for round 2, and honestly, he made the movie more interesting.

So, the story is about a girl that goes by the name of Wanda Saknussemm played by model Kathy Ireland who can't pronounce Saknussemm. Wanda is girl who wears really big glasses and wears baggy clothes which apparently makes her ugly. She fears any kind of adventure (she is scared to fly and gets car sick, so no trips for her), and let's not forget her annoying voice. Why oh why did they have to give her that annoying voice (I sure hope for her it wasn't her real voice). To me, it would seem pretty basic that you would want your main character to be at least somewhat likeable to have a successful story.

Apparently, this is supposed to be some sort of spoof about Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. To be honest, it seems to have more links to The Wizard of Oz, including Wanda stating that she's no longer in Kansas after falling down a very deep hole.

So, our flying fearing heroine goes to Africa to find her father she hasn't seen in 10 years. She flies there during a storm in what appears to be a small cargo plane. Heck, if I was scared of flying, and going from Los Angeles to Africa (not sure where in Africa) I wouldn't go by a big commercial jumbo jet, no, I would go by this sketchy looking plane instead. Brilliant!

Down the rabbit hole she goes, and into the long lost city of Atlantis where her father is held prisoner. The fun starts as we start to realize that the same actors are being used for multiple roles in the movie. Now, this would be fine if they were parallel roles from one world to the next, but they aren't. I mean, one guys plays the cook where Wanda works, and the supreme decision maker in Atlantis. Huh? Oh, and he also plays a bartender which neither Christie, nor I picked up on that. Some play as many as four characters. One actor (Janet Du Plessis) actually plays two important characters, and while one could see the reasoning for those two characters being played by the same actor, she also plays a minor role as a claims officer. Again, huh?

The music in this movie is just awful. There are tons of chase scenes, and sometimes the characters stop and they have a "moment". I can buy that if the music would keep you in tense mood, but no, it goes all soft and lovey dovey. Yes, the pace is that bad. Plus, add in Christie's own pet peeve of weird misplaced camera angles, and you have a movie where you have no idea what you're supposed to be feeling... especially when you don't know if you like the annoying talking heroine.

Overall, the movie is watchable and would have been a decent film had they not made Wanda so annoying, and had they had money to cast more actors.
IMDb Rating: 2.5
JF's Rating: 4 (I rate it just above Police Academy 7)
Christie's Rating: 4 (She rates it just bellow Police Academy 7)

Turn off point: Once again, there were no point during this movie where we were clawing our eyes out and wanted to run out of the room. It's the type of movie that while annoyed at it's badness, you just want to see it through.

Already having access to Kazaam, we will be on track next time... joys!

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

#95 - Daddy Day Camp



We cheated a little this week. Alien From L.A. was a really hard movie to find, and we are currently waiting for it via e-bay. So, instead of just waiting around, we figured we'd skip it and come back to it when it arrived. So Daddy Day Camp it was.

Both Chris and I cringed when we saw this one on the list. Well, we cringed at almost every movie on the list, but you know, I have to tell a story here, so just amuse me. We all know how Eddie Murphy has been doing bad movie after bad movie, so when he decided to pass on this sequel to his smash hit (I kid) Daddy Day Care, you have to wonder just how bad the script was.

Instead, Cuba Gooding Jr. reprises the role of "Daddy" and after watching the preview for this movie, I was honestly expecting the worst. By worse, I don't mean Bolero worse, as nothing will ever have as profound a negative effect on my life as this movie has. And if you don't want to just take my word for it, ask Christie, I think it affected her even more. That movie makes me angry now, but really, I should learn to let go...

So Daddy Day Camp starts off with unfunny jokes in an over the top situation at the day care where all of Hell's kids come to stay while Lucifer goes to work. So, in the beginning it appears that it is going to be a real bore of a movie loaded with bad slapstick comedy. But was surprises me as the movie gets going is there are a few memorable moments that honestly made me laugh and smile. Those early chuckles had Christie saying we could no longer be friends. As the film moved along, she warmed up to the idea that this movie wasn't really that terrible.

Yes, we've seen this type of movie a thousand times. Run down camp (or business, or club, or whatever) with a bunch of loveable losers who have to worry about a more successful camp (or business, or club, or whatever) that is trying to buy them out. And of course, there is money issues, and it all comes down to a competition that will make or break our heros' day. I think my favourite part of this film is when there is that initial spark of competition between the two camps. Not because it was clever, or particularly well written. It was the fact that it was at that moment that line that broke Christie was delivered...

"You won't last a month," Lance (played by Lochlyn Munro), the owner of the successful camp says to our hero Charlie. The, all tough looking and with attitude, Lance's son (played by Sean Patrick Flaherty) adds: "Yeah. Thirty-one days. Or 30. Except for February, which stands alone." Granted, that doesn't sound overly funny, but the delivery of the line was spot on. The kid has a few other lines like that which cracked me up. Although, my favourite line was when the dorky kid who is trying to impress the pretty girl starts talking about World of Warcraft, and he states "I'm a Level 40 Blood Elf Druid" when she clearly has no clue what WoW is. Ah, funny.

Movies with so many kids live or die by the casting, and I think Daddy Day Camp did a pretty good job here. The brainy young girl, the nerdy kid with a love guru younger brother, the cute pukey kid, and the smart ass kid of the bad guy all played their parts really well, and honestly, it's these little actors that made the movie watchable for me. But what could have been a decent movie overall was ruined in the last quarter of the movie as there were non-stop hearltfelt scenes with soft music and all. We get it, you're trying to teach us life lessons. Groan! One or maybe two of these moments would have been more than enough. I lost count after 6 or 7.

There was also the climax which was the big competition. Yes, we all know the good guys are going to win, but the director didn't even try to make us feel like they might not. It was very lame and uninteresting to say the least. To be honest, I was enjoying the movie until the sappy stuff started just before the competition which ended up being a bore.

IMDb Rating: 2.5
JF's Rating: 5 (Would have gone as high as 6 had the cut out half of the "emotional" scenes at the end)
Christie's Rating: 5 (She turned around, and realized that compared to what we have seen so far, this one was pretty good)

Turn off point: There were none. Perhaps at the end when it got really boring and you knew what was going to happen and you were watching it on TV you might switch the channel knowing you weren't going to miss anything of importance.

Until next time, let's hope there's an alien in the mailbox.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

#97 - Police Academy 7: Mission to Moscow



In 11 years from 1984 to 1994, there were seven Police Academy movies, and Mission to Moscow was the final installment. And while everyone agrees that the series started to go down the tank right after the first one (IMDb ratings: PA1-6.3; PA2-4.9; PA3-4.4; PA4-4.0; PA5-3.5; PA6-3.3; PA7-2.6) it is quite impressive that in this seventh film, there are still five original characters/cast members from the original movie. I would imagine they were short on cash, or that was the only script that was on their coffee table. There are no other reasons to keep going with this series.

Before watching #7, I decided to watch the original which I had not seen in quite some time. (I watched it without Christie... sorry.) While it wasn't overly clever, it was written well enough to have a few laughs and be enjoyable. I was actually quite surprised at how well it stood up with time as I got to know Mahoney all over again. Good times. And while Mahoney was last seen in the 4th movie, it was sad not to see Hightower, who had previously been in all installments of this series. But, like I said, it was impressive to see that five characters still remained. Now, see if you can remember these names: Larvelle Jones, Eugene Tackleberry, Debbie Callahan, Thaddeus Harris, and Eric Lassard.

The show opens with Pamela Guest as a news anchor. The way she delivered her lines, and her semi cross-eyed look made me laugh. I actually enjoyed that entire opening scene with her and Stuart Nisbet. It was silly, but funny all the same. Although, I was waiting for the news director played by David St.James to yell "Cut to commercial, cut to commercial" when the news anchors got out of control. He didn't and it made me a little sad. Why? I don't know, just thought it would have been that funny cliché moment to end the scene.

So, with that opening laugh, and the knowledge that Hellboy and Saruman were in the movie, I figured, how bad can this really be? Well, it wasn't good, but it wasn't anything where either Chris or I wanted to jump out of a window to make it stop. The writing was bad, the editing was bad, the jokes were forced, the new characters were uninteresting (although, every time the absolutely gorgeous Katrina, played by Claire Forlani, was on screen, the movie had my full attention), the story made little sense, and the most annoying was the bad audio dubbing/sound effects which was so obvious at times it hurt my brain.

Speaking of audio, they really forced the issue when it came to having Sgt. Larvelle Jones make sound effects. I mean, making sounds to unlock a safe? Really? And having a Three Stooges trio that only whistled and made stupid noises instead of having dialog was not as funny as I presume they thought it was when they wrote them in the script.

The stupidity of this film was eye rolling really. The main villain played by Ron Perlman (who turned in a subpar performance) knows that there is a team of American cops that are after him, but throughout the film he has no trouble inviting people with American accents into his entourage. Oh, and apparently, in Russia, they don't speak any Russian, they just speak English with Russian accents. That includes random young boys on the street. So, it then begs to wonder why they needed a translator (Forlani's character Katrina) at all, and who was apparently doing a great job. Ah, right, a love interest was needed. A love interest I didn't care about even though the eye candy was nice.

There was an almost gut busting funny moment in the movie, although, I'm sure it wasn't scripted as funny. There is an elaborate chase scene near the end of the film when Capt. Debbie Callahan gets kidnapped. Newcomer Cadet Kyle Connors, played by Charlie Schlatter, jumps on the roof of the getaway car and the rest of the crew jump into a police van and a chase ensues. When inside the van, all windows have these yellow curtains which made it painfully obvious they didn't want to spend money on a background. Even though those 'out the window green screens' look fake, they are much better than yellow curtains. Then, you have Connors. Don't go get a stunt man, no, just tie up a dummy dressed like a police officer on the roof of the car. Seeing that mannequin being thrown about was hilarious. The whole chase scene was so funny that we actually rewound the movie to watch this very funny action sequence. Actually, we watched it again because Chris hadn't noticed the dummy flopping about. Those special effects were too good for her eyes to notice.

In all, it was a sad attempt to continue something that should have ended with the first movie. I guess it took a US box office draw of just $126,247 for the studio to realize that you can't get blood from a stone. Or a corpse for that matter.

IMDb Rating: 2.6
JF's Rating: 4
Chris' Rating: 4

Turn off point: Neither Chris nor I had a turn off point for this movie. Chris said it was like Hababam sinifi askerde, but that we knew what they were saying. I think it was a little more slapstick than that, and while most of it failed, it was still a movie I had no problem sitting through and watching to the end. Had it been on TV, I probably would have switched the channel at some point, but that being said, if there had been nothing else good on to watch, I may have gone back to it as well.

So, from Moscow to L.A. we'll see you next time with the review of Alien From L.A.

Monday, January 10, 2011

#98 - Bolero


"Follows the tale of a young woman's sexual awakening and subsequent journey around the world in pursuit of her ideal lover. Encounters include an Arabian sheik and a Spanish bullfighter. Her friend and butler accompany her and help to arrange her couplings."

Could be interesting right? If there had been an awakening, or a journey, it could have been. The sad part of #98 (which has fallen to #96 as I write this) is that there is no fun story to tell outside of the movie. It was easy to find, and it's not a foreign film we can't understand. We did try to combine the knock off snuggies which are basically blankets with buttons, and that was good for a laugh before we started the movie.

I figured that even if this movie was bad, there would at least be some nudity. Apparently there was a controversy about this movie's graphic sex scenes, so hey, could be good right? Even as a young teenager staying up on Saturday night to catch an episode of Bleu Nuit I don't know if I would have cared to stay up to watch this garbage.

First off, this story is about a girl who is just out of a boarding school, which means she is supposed to be 18 years old. This "young girl" is played by a 28 year old Bo Derek who looks.... well, 28. Actually, she probably could have pulled off a 35 year old character better than how she fared as an 18 year old. Second, she is supposed to be a virgin. A virgin who within the first five minutes of the film goes running around topless on campus after graduation. Right.

To start the movie, we are treated to a two minute piece of a silent movie with what appears to be a sheik saving a damsel in distress. From that, our 28 year old virgin, who just graduated from high school (which is a more likely scenario as the character was nothing more than a dumb blonde) wants to lose her virginity to a sheik, which she does find. Now, keep in mind that this sheik thing is her wildest fantasy, and she offers this dude her "gift" of virginity, and he wants it. Only to fall asleep after being smacked in the face with a honey and milk covered stomach. No, I am not making this up, scout's honours.

Failing to get properly devirginized by this sheik, the fantasy fails by the way side, and she settles for a bullfighter. Not only is our heroine going after a bullfighter who already has a lover, but she will get help from a 13 year old girl who is just waiting to turn 14 so she can bed this very same bullfighter. Oh, and this 13 year played by then 15 year old Olivia d'Abo also has a nude scene, and I'm not up on all the laws, but wouldn't that be child porn?

Anyway, so we get to the point in the movie where our virgin is one no more, which the dialogue makes sure we understand this point. This sex scene I will give credit that it's pretty graphic in the sense that it pushes the limit and comes close to full fledged porn territory. Outside of that, it's dumb, awkward, and quite frankly uninteresting and hard to watch. The sex scene in Team America: World Police was more erotic than this one.

But this is not enough for our now non-virgin girl. She wants to find ecstasy, and oh does she ever! Well, actually she find a big "exstacy" neon sign. Close enough I guess. It does come with a big fan and a fog machine, so it's a win right? Wait, what? You're confused? About what? That the ending love/sex scene on the bullfighter's bed (who btw, is now a recovered impotent accident prone bullfighter) it becomes windy as the pink neon sign appears in the middle of the fog, which they point to just so you don't miss it. Awesome, no?

There are so many stupid scenes in this movie, I'd have to go through the entire movie to touch on them all. And the dialogue is just as brutal. "Do you like virgins?" is what her friend asks some random guy she finds cute. But worst of all is the editing. The cuts from scene to scene leaves you saying "what the?" at every turn. My favourite was when the chauffeur is sitting in the kitchen, and his chair starts to tip backwards, and the scene goes into super slowmo as the old guy is falling. At this point we're wondering where this is coming from. Is he drunk? What made him go back like that? Is he going to get hurt? You have time to think about all these things as the fall lasts about 30 seconds. But just as he is about to finally drop, the movie cuts to another scene, and this whole slow motion moment has no purpose... at all. Why? Why not just cut that 30 seconds and make the movie shorter. Shorter would have been better.

This movie was so bad that I was very close to using my veto on this one. But we had already watched 60 minutes of it, and had "only" 44 minutes left. I'm just glad we had beer and snacks.

IMDb Rating: 2.5
JF's Rating: 1 (Seriously, there will be "as bad as" but never "worse than")
Christie's Rating: 2 (She's optimistic that there will be worse)

Turn off point: Christie and I had the same turn off point this time around, and it was during the virginity losing sex scene. This was supposed to be the big moment in the story, the reason why they were "traveling the world", and yet, it was very anti climactic. Especially since there was no build up, and by that I mean, there wasn't a single kiss between the two before he placed himself in position for that initial thrust. "No, no," she pleads, shaking her head side to side as she pushes him slightly away. She looks at him and says "I'm not a virgin anymore" with a big smile as she lets him continue. Ugh, just reliving that scene has made me stupider.

At least our next movie (Police Academy 7) will have nostalgia attached to it. Until then, never watch Bolero!

Sunday, January 2, 2011

#99 - Marci X



I've never worked so hard in my life to find a good movie, let alone a bad one. Someone is making sure that there are as few available copies of this movie as possible. I suspect anyone that was involved in this movie. Heck, even if I was just one of the lighting crew, I would not want my name associated with this piece of filming.

I had to order the DVD from Amazon and the cost was 88% shipping and handling. It was $0.49 for the movie itself, and $3.49 in s&h costs. I've never been so excited in my life to received something in the mail that I knew was going to waste 84 minutes of my life that I knew I was never going to get back.

So, the film stars Lisa Kudrow and Damon Wayans. I know, you are wondering how could a Wayans film be rated so low, right? I was asking myself the very same question when we first saw the list. No, but seriously, these are two actors (can you classify them as such?) that I'm not very fond of. No, I was not a fan of Friends, so appologies to Kudrow fans out there. Speaking of Kudrow, her character, Marci, in this movie doesn't fall far from her character on Friends. I guess the dumb blonde is what she feels comfortable doing. But I really should give her credit for doing whatever she could with the script she was given.

As for Wayans, has he ever done anything remotely funny? It's a serious question. He is supposed to be this big bad ass hip hop superstar, gangsta rapper if you will in this movie, and in the end, he makes Vanila Ice look cool. Oh, I just died a little right now as it reminds me that we have a Vanilla Ice movie on this list somewhere. But I stand by my statement, Wayans attempts to come across as this don't mess with me bad ass whose every nasty word turns on the ladies. Samuel L. Jackson could not have made this character look cool, and Morgan Freeman could not have made this character sound good. (Yes, you know Freeman has the coolest voice ever!)

Something tells me that this was also a half assed attempt at a musical, as there were quite a few music numbers, but they all fell flat. Not a single number brought even a single smile to my face. I reached my "I've had enough" point when Kudrow and her dumb girl possy (three characters with no substance) are in a seemingly black only club, and they stop the dj so that they can show the crowd their knowledge of black culture by doing some Kenya dance they learned back in school. It was insulting to anyone who has half a brain cell. Even though I had had enough, we pushed on, as I know I will need my get our of jail free card for something far worse.

What was really frustrating about watching this movie is that there was no thought at all put into the script. The idea itself had a chance at being something decent and watchable. I'm not saying that anything could have made this an actually good movie, but a 5/10 star movie it could have been. There were too many "this makes no sense" moments. To be honest, it wasn't as bad as it was boring. A really bad movie you can laugh at, or cringe at its badness, but this was just, well, dull. None of the characters were interesting, none of the jokes were funny, and there wasn't a single piece of acting that didn't fall flat. Best acting was the cameo of Mary Hart playing herself on her Entertainment Tonight show.

The best part during the movie was looking over at Christie as she sat on the couch all comfy in her snuggy knockoff that she bought for the sole purpose of these bad movie nights. What's better than to look like a real dork while sitting down to watch what you know will be a horrible movie? And yes, she got me one too, and I was not able to get out of wearing mine, so I too, looked like a dork.

IMDb Rating: 2.6
JF's Rating: 2 (I wanted to rate it 1, but I fear that there will be worse)
Chris' Rating: 3

JF's Turn off point: At the 40 minute mark when they were doing their Kenya singing and dancing..
Chris' Turn off point: It appears as though Christie has a high bad movie tolerance, as she did not have a turn off point. She likes to see where things go, and while she admits it was bad, she would have watched it all the way through even if she could have stopped it. She is a brave soul.

Until #98, I wish you a bad movie night.