Gigli ...

That’s right, pretty much everyone who has ever seen this movie has something terrible to say about it. I’ve never heard a positive comment about this flick, ever. Most people call it one of the worst films ever made, in fact. But why? Most people really never go into why Gigli is so bad, and while I never doubted that it was, I was always curious as to exactly what horrific alchemical combination of cinematic elements made this film so reviled. After all, I’m never one to write off a movie before I even see it. So what better to do now than give Gigli the Cinema Freaks treatment and figure out why?

First of all, let’s look at the plot summary: Two professional gangsters, a straight man and a gay woman, have to live in the same apartment to watch after a retarded kid so the mob can blackmail some senator, all while the man tries to turn the woman straight so they can have sex.

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Okay, well…it might not be that bad…you never know! It could be…erm, ehhh…okay, that sounds like the worst idea I’ve ever heard of. But hey, an idea alone doesn’t make a bad movie, so why not check out the two stars? Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, who met on the set of the film, and drew heavy tabloid attention at the time because of how famous they were. They ended up breaking up after the film was released, and you can pretty much ad lib your own joke here - there are numerous different ones. And as we all know, isn't tabloid garbage over the personal lives of movie stars the foundation for every good movie?

Alright, fine, let’s just get started on the movie itself. Clearly every element of this film’s production, before, during and after, is working against it when it comes to the film’s overall quality, but that doesn’t mean a thing about the movie before I actually watch it! I stand resolute on that. Let us delve deep into Gigli’s bloated fat and hopefully come out with a gem or two.

We start off with Ben Affleck, playing the title character Gigli, doing his laundry:

Extra quarters needed when you use the dryer for torture methods.

Oops, did I say laundry? I meant pressure-drying a well-toasted Mexican. I suppose they’re about the same. I just wonder if this is the same Laundromat that Dr. Horrible uses. Lord knows this movie would be better with a song and dance number from Neil Patrick Harris.

After he fails at that, his boss gets onto him about not being a good hit man. As punishment, he’s given the task of watching some retarded kid, the brother of a senator, as blackmail. Affleck goes to pick up the kid, whose name is Brian, and finds probably the most insulting stereotype you can get outside of Ben Stiller in Tropic Thunder:

And this guy went on to play in the Hangover series...you decide which is more of a smudge on his dignity.

Oh, okay, it’s not that bad, and as the movie goes on it does actually get a little bit funny. But seriously, can you get any more shameless pandering for an Oscar? The idea of this movie winning an Oscar is a bit silly though. And to be fair, he does have the only funny lines in the movie later on.

Back at Gigli’s apartment, Gigli basically shouts a lot and acts like a giant douche toward Brian. If you weren’t charmed by him up to this point, well THANK HEAVEN for these scenes! I just think any movie could be improved by adding screaming man-children who try to act way tougher than they probably really are! You know what else could improve this? An entirely implausible, unrealistic and silly plot thread introduced for the sole purpose of moving the ludicrous plot along!

There we go! This is J-Lo, playing Ricki, a female contract gangster-type person who was hired by Affleck’s boss because he didn’t trust Gigli to do the job alone. What exactly is so dire about this job anyway? He’s just taking care of some retarded kid for a few days. It’s not like it’s a matter of utmost importance. I guess I kinda see what he means; I mean the first five minutes Gigli gets Brian alone, he shouts at him and threatens him like a schoolyard bully on steroids. Yeah, real goddamn tough guy, right? But that’s exactly what I mean – the whole plot hinges on this implausibility, and so without it, the movie would fall apart. Great screenwriting, guys…

So the next ten minutes of the movie is pretty much just these three characters annoying one another. Gigli shouts a lot and in no way does he ever seem convincing as a tough guy. J-Lo mostly just keeps that irritatingly smug wise-ass look on her face the whole time and while she’s not as annoying as Affleck, she’s still pretty goddamn bad. Just watch the scene at the dinner table when Brian won’t eat and Gigli keeps shouting at him. Ricki gets involved, too, and the whole scene basically just becomes a cinematic nuclear bomb of annoyance.

Just look at some of this dialogue from our titular main character: If by some f--kin' miracle long shot you haven't heard of my reputation let me tell you who the f--k I am! I am the f--kin' Sultan of Slick, Sadie! I am the rule of f--kin' cool! You wanna be a gangster? You wanna be a thug? You sit at my f--kin' feet and gather the pearls that emanate forth from me! Because I'm the f--kin' original, straight-first-foremost, pimp-mack, f--kin hustler, original gangster's gangster!

…I am just at a loss for words. It’s like every 90s stereotype of white kids trying to act black rolled up into one overpaid, overrated Hollywood actor. If this was a 14 year old kid, it would be embarrassing, but when it’s Ben Affleck? The level of pure awfulness and life-ruining embarrassment just breaks the stratosphere and soars way into outer space. If you want nothing but a grown man verbally abusing a mentally handicapped person and a much smaller, less able to defend herself woman...well this movie is for you.

"LOOK AT ME, I'M TOUGH AND BADASS! I'M BULLYING A RETARDED GUY!" I seriously feel sorry for Affleck though, especially since he's trying so hard to be seen as a legitimate artist and filmmaker. This can't be helping his quest at all these days.

I mean this is bad. Really, really bad. It’s practically unwatchable. This is the equivalent to going to that family reunion you never wanted to go to, and having to sit there and listen to your divorced aunt and uncle trade jabs at each other while your baby cousin screams his head off, while you’re suffering from a painful ulcer. In fact, I think that’s selling the movie too short – the scenario I described is actually much preferable to watching Gigli.

So if you actually didn’t turn off the movie after that, we see Gigli trying to romance Ricki later on at night, even convincing her to sleep in the same bed as him for the hell of it. Wasn’t he just telling her how much he hated her a few scenes ago, and telling her how much he didn’t need her around? Given the way that Gigli has acted all movie up to now – i.e. like an impudent, tough-guy jackass – no rational woman would ever listen to him when he asked her to sleep with him. Hell, no woman would even find it the least bit endearing. But according to the movie’s warped universe, and its need for the plot to move forward, Ricki goes ahead and sleeps right beside him in the same bed.

Ohhh yeah, professional etiquette AND lesbian tendencies right out the window! Tell me, lesbian readers: just because you're not attracted to men, is it OK to sleep in the same bed with them because of that? I just love the several different yet equally proportionate tides of nonsense this movie is spewing all at the same time, within this one scene. It's just so unrealistic, even for an early 2000s rom-com, that it's practically the eighth wonder of the cinematic world.

She tells him she’s a lesbian, and that pretty much settles the whole movie, right? Clearly this romance will never work because Ricki is a lesbian, and since Gigli is a man, there’s no chemistry. So I can just turn the movie off now and not miss a damn thing. Phew. What a relief…

Oh, but of course that’s not true, because in Contrived Screenwriting Land, this just means that Gigli has a challenge set up for him! Because lesbianism is fine and well, unless you’re a really hot chick. In that case, it is the male prerogative to change her to straight! God this movie is bad. Is this really our plot now? Unless it’s going to go all Chasing Amy and actually explore the individual character rather than her sexuality, I don’t think it’s going to work. This movie has all the charm of an angry Wal Mart customer who lost his receipt. Incoherent, immature and out of touch with reality, expecting everyone else to play by his rules…yup, that’s this movie.

The next day Christopher Walken comes to see them, and at this point all I can wonder is how they got him to sign on for this. I guess his philosophy is that he’ll act in anything, with no restrictions on quality – he just loves acting. And you know what? I can respect that. Walken is a cool, funny guy, and he definitely brings this piece of shit up a notch. Even if his only contribution to the movie is talking about putting pie on his head:

Oh yeah Walken, bringin' the class. Easily the funniest part of this whole circus.

To be fair, that’s much more stimulating and interesting than what Gigli and Ricki talk about for the rest of the film. Hell, I’d rather watch a whole movie about Walken’s character. I bet at least he isn’t a self-important douchenozzle piece of shit who tries to romance a woman who by all biological laws of nature, isn’t interested in him and never will be. I’d much prefer Walken’s character had his own movie!

Sigh, but unfortunately the trainwreck must go on. Afterward, they go out and eat lunch at some place where a bunch of hooligans are blasting loud rap music. Gigli acts like a doofus and starts a fight with them, but Ricki diffuses the situation by going over and talking about how she can gouge out their eyes with some martial arts skills she has. Afterwards she tells Gigli that it was all bullshit and she was just putting on a show…wow, what a useful scene, movie. What does that establish? That Ricki is a good liar? Wow, what a great reason to have a scene.

Oh please J-Lo, bestow upon us some more of your wisdom and knowledge.

They go to see Gigli’s mom, and it’s pretty much just a waste of time, so I’ll skip it. Back at home, Gigli comes across Ricki doing some yoga in his room and they fight about which sex is more desirable in bed, men or women. It’s a stupid argument because, well, explaining why would just bring me down to the movie’s level. But I will say this: watching Affleck here, playing the tough guy, the sex machine, is about as embarrassing as the other scenes of him trying to act like a tough guy. Watching this scene is just a pinnacle of god-awful writing and embarrassing lines that I am surprised either actor ever wanted to show their face in public after seeing. It really comes down to a contest of which is more annoyingly bad: Affleck’s tough-guy, “I’m the biggest sex god in the world” act, or Lopez’s “I know everything about everything” bullshit.

…okay, well the answer is still Affleck. But DAMN does Lopez give him a run for his money here! You could buy a car if you had a dime for every time she gives an annoyingly pretentious speech in this movie! Might as well just call it a new philosophy: The Zen of Ricki.

The next morning we get introduced to another character that will make you want to bang your head against a wall, Ricki’s girlfriend, who refuses to listen to reason and just screams at Ricki for staying in a house with a man.

How come she's so hysterical? Why is she so rude to just barge into Gigli's place and cause a ruckus? How did she even know where Ricki was? The movie will have the grace to answer absolutely none of these.

Even though both Ricki and Gigli try to tell the woman otherwise, she won’t listen. The only thing worthwhile about this scene is the following dialogue exchange:

Bitchy Girlfriend Character: Who the f--k are you?

Brian: You’re the f--k are you!

Yeah, not much, but in this movie? I’ll take it. You may notice I haven’t been talking a lot about Brian, and that’s because frankly his scenes aren’t too bad. They’re not good, but at least you can tell the filmmakers were at least trying to make something a little bit likable with them, unlike basically any other part of the film. He keeps saying he wants to go to “Baywatch,” where “all the pretty girls are,” and every time Gigli just picks up a flashlight and pretends to talk into it like a phone, “finding out” that the “Baywatch” is closed for the day. It’s a pretty jackass move, and I’m not even convinced that Brian is stupid enough to really believe it, but whatever; it’s still one of the least offensive parts of this whole mess.

Anyway, if you can believe it, the bitchy girlfriend character goes nuts in Gigli’s apartment, grabs a knife out of his kitchen drawer and slits her wrists in protest of, I guess, the fact that Ricki is with a man. Did we just enter into another movie all the sudden? What the hell is this crap? It’s got nothing to do with anything in the film and leads to nothing at all.

This has been the emotional climax of an entirely different film! Thank you for your time.

Oh, except a quick joke about Brian coming in his pants when he sees pretty girls. Thanks for that one, movie…just, thanks.

Later on, because attempted suicide puts them in the mood, Gigli and Ricki have sex together. Well actually that’s a bit of an oversimplification. What really happens is this: Gigli and Ricki are riding in the car and Gigli decides he’s fed up with it all, that he can’t take it anymore! He confesses his love to Ricki in one of the worst, least-inspiring movie speeches of all time, presented verbatim here:

You know something? You're right. It is sadness. Its sadness and I'm f--king sad. You got me. You're a genius. You know why I'm f--king sad? Because I got this f--king beautiful-sexy-gorgeous-hearthrob-o-rama-f--king-smart-amazing-bombshell-seventeen-on a f--king ten scale- girl sleeping in a bed right next to me and you know what? She's a stone cold dyke. A f--king untouchable, unhaveable, unattainable brick wall f--king dyke-a-saurus rexi. So its sad. Okay? What you want me to do? I feel f--king sadness about that. There's nothing I can f--king do. And not only is she a major babe, but I really like this girl a lot, a lot, I mean she's not like anybody else I ever knew before and that's a completely f--king new one on me, and I don't even know her real f--king name so there you go. Oh and in case you're interested, my life sucks. Alright? Stick a fork in me I'm done.

My heart is just crying. But you know what the strangest part of this whole sad-sack love story is? That speech up there; that contrived, poorly done, emotionally retarded speech? IT WORKS.

That’s right – it actually gets her into bed with him. I guess the secret to any lesbian’s heart is making horrible profanity-laden, immature and selfish speeches! Straight men, rejoice!

They talk some more about which sex is better at having sex, and, okay, I’ll bite: how is this argument in any way worth having? They’re literally arguing for or against homosexuality. Dude, Affleck; it’s not really up for debate which team she’s swinging for! It’s not like they’re impressionable little kids choosing which sport to play, you know! But I guess he really does think lesbians can be swayed easily to turn straight…and in this case he was right…sigh. There goes more of my faith in humanity. The idea of these two having sex so casually and spontaneously after Ricki just went through an emotional confrontation with her girlfriend is just ludicrous, and further shows that the film is completely detached from reality. A logical plot? What’s that?

Then we get some other long, drawn out bullshit about this mob boss guy played by Al Pacino, of all people – unlike Walken he does not give a film-redeeming performance, and instead just comes off as incredibly dull, loud and obnoxious. His whole point in the movie is to tell them that he didn’t like the idea of having Gigli kidnap Brian. That’s really about it…amazing…he kills the other mob boss guy who we saw at the beginning, and then threatens to kill Gigli and Ricki, too. Until Ricki goes on another one of her oh-so-enlightening speeches and talks him out of it pretty quickly, to be honest…I mean really? This is your big final confrontation? A guy changes his mind after a pretentious lesbian makes a speech?

He looks like an out of touch old codger trying to remain cool and hip...great character movie; I'm just so blown away. I'm also blown away that you got such an irritating performance out of Al Pacino of all people.

After that the movie decides it’s done torturing us, and decides to just kind of end. They drive Brian to the beach, which he claims is the Baywatch he’s been looking for all movie – some kind of filming set with a bunch of chicks and dudes in bathing suits. He finally goes and talks to one of them, which I guess is supposed to be the emotional climax of the movie.

…or is the emotional climax when Ricki comes back and tells Gigli she wants to be with him?

Alriiiiight, they had no chemistry and by all the laws of human interaction, this scumbag shouldn't have ended up with this pretentious lesbian, BUT IT'S A HAPPY ENDING! WHOO!

I don’t know; the movie couldn’t even decide. This whole thing is like five different movie clichés all in one! Is it the touching story of two unlikely people who fall in love? A mob scheme gone wrong? Or is it the story of how a cold-hearted thug helped a mentally ill person?

Well, either way, Gigli is just unbearable. It’s as bad as everyone says. I will say there are a few moments that maybe could have worked, if done by a more competent director and given more emotional weight, like the parts about Brian. The film is poorly acted, poorly written and the directing is ho-hum at best. But most of this is just ear-raping, eye-gouging horrors at how annoying Affleck and Lopez can be, and amazement at how they’re annoying in such specially unique ways. It’s seriously amazing how little chemistry on screen these two have. Doubly so because they were legitimately interested in one another offscreen - you'd think that would have translated to at least a little bit of a feeling like their characters at least liked one another. But I guess the power of the awful script really just transcends any other efforts to salvage the film, because the two of them act like they just met in an elevator before being asked to come make the movie.

Really, Gigli is just living proof of how we shouldn’t expect so much from a film solely based on who’s acting in it, and especially not if said actors are notoriously popular heartthrobs famous for tabloids and “who’s dating who” tidbits. The late 90s and early 2000s was full of this kind of celebrity idolization, in a much deeper way than today’s more informed generation has it, and Gigli was the final nail in the coffin for that kind of shallow appreciation of movies. I really do think people have gotten a lot wiser since, though; because really, there hasn’t been a big flop like this since. Not one that everyone was really on the edge of their seats waiting for, anyway. So it’s good that we’re finally learning that much, anyway, and if that’s the best thing I can take away from a viewing of Gigli, then I’m okay with that.

And I think the BIGGEST lesson I’ve learned from this terrifying journey is that I don’t have to restrict myself to any one genre to review movies. Hell, even when I started out, I knew that. Where did I lose the way? From now on I think I’ll just make a vow to review anything, from any genre. That sounds like a way better idea than just becoming stagnant by only reviewing one type of film. So I guess this is a good happy ending after all. And to think it came from Gigli. Who ever saw that one coming?

Grade - F

Troll 2 - OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!!!!

Nilbog, Utah is one wacky town. Shunning Mormons in favor of vegetarian midgets who have acquired special powers from a steam-spewing slab of Stonehenge, this quaint little hamlet, through the charisma of a local preacher and a Sheriff named Freak, orchestrates the kidnapping of unsuspecting tourists, force-feeds them green slime, and turns them into trees, all so the little buggers can devour the plant people in a slobber-filled orgy. Thankfully, a Hemingway-esque grandpa, conveniently dead, supplies a deus ex machina in the form of a bologna sandwich to bring credibility to the proceedings. Confused? Undoubtedly, but this is Troll 2, one of the all-time champs of bad cinema that just happens to live up to the billing. Instead of cheeky irony through the route of intentional incompetence, this is the real deal; a piece of crap made by the deadly serious, as well as the seriously damned. Having just seen the documentary Best Worst Movie, a wonderfully reverential revisiting of the cast and crew, as well as a history of the film’s rise from obscurity to cult classic, I was well armed with the particulars, but it took an actual viewing to set it all straight.

Having no connection to the original Troll, nor featuring trolls of any kind, Troll 2 follows the semi-retarded Waits family as they decide to take a vacation to the one town in Utah that has no natural wonders, campsites, or actual things to do. But dear old dad, Michael (played by George Hardy, who, we learn from the documentary, is a dentist in Alabama, but now trades on his inappropriate fame to the exclusion of all else), is convinced that a few ramshackle barns and dilapidated storefronts will be enough to keep his family interested for several weeks. Thankfully, they are exchanging homes with some locals, who greedily accept Michael’s keys without so much as an introduction. The son, a plucky little shit named Joshua, has been warned by his expired pee-paw to avoid the town because of the homicidal goblins, but dad ignores such nonsense with his usual can-do spirit. Greeting a table full of assorted green (and poisonous) beverages, cakes, and donuts upon arrival, dad, mom, and sis are about to dig in when grandpa appears to Joshua, stops time, and commands him to come up with a plan in 30 seconds, or else meet with certain doom. Fulfilling his end of the bargain, Joshua leaps on a chair, pulls down his pants, and urinates on dinner. Tragedy is averted, but only long enough to see Joshua punished by a screaming father: “You can’t piss on hospitality! I won’t allow it!” The line has made Mr. Hardy famous, which he cheerfully recites at midnight screenings, conventions, and yes, even at the film festival I attended, where he was an honored guest.

Needless to say, a full plot summary is both unnecessary and unbearably taxing, as the real show lies in the acting. All are atrocious beyond compare, but no one reaches the dizzying heights of hellishness of one Connie Young (playing the Waits’ daughter, Holly). Check it all off in turn — stilted, teeth-grindingly earnest, painfully emotive — but her finest hour is the impromptu mirror dance, which combines the worst of late ‘80s hair, clothing (a Garfield t-shirt!), and gag-me-with-a-spoon vernacular. The film seems to think she’s a sexy young vixen (she first appears in a leotard lifting weights), which is proven when the town’s hottest stud, Elliott, comes to call. She’s not having it, however, as he spends way too much time with his male friends. It’s an unreasonable ultimatum, though I doubt she’d think so if she were to see the scene where he and his buddies drive a camper to Nilbog and routinely stumble out in various stages of undress. At one point, two of the boys are in bed together, shirtless and unconscious. Fortunately for Holly, most of Elliott’s friends are devoured by the goblins, though one is tortured in a bizarre mating ritual with a local nutjob. In one of the most incomprehensible scenes in movie history, the aging harlot knocks on the camper door, produces an ear of corn, and proceeds to make out with the boy with the cob clenched between her teeth. The heat generated by the kissing produces several pounds of popcorn, much to the delight of the young man, as well as a stupefied audience.

Apparently, it is imperative that victims eat green slop before being slaughtered as plants, as no one is so evil as to murder a human being. All the locals treat eating meat as the gravest of sins, including the strange store keeper, who flies into a fire-eyed rage at the mere mention of bacon. Coffee is also strongly forbidden. Some might interpret all of this hostility as a bizarre subtext, but it’s hard to believe that anyone is supposed to come off sympathetically. Nevertheless, it is important to learn, thanks once again to the documentary, that the director, a humorless Italian named Claudio Fragasso, saw depth and pathos where others saw dwarfs in bad Halloween costumes running around with sticks. Fragasso has, to some extent, signed on for the cultish celebration, but more often than not, he’s brooding while others laugh along with demented crowds. Apparently, he saw spiritual struggle and a parable of survival, but thus is the peril of filming a script in a language he could barely understand. At least Hardy, fame whore that he now is, hasn’t tried to channel his lone role into Shakespeare in the Park. Sure, he gets pissed when he goes unrecognized at horror fests (a booth he mans goes unvisited), but he never loses that toothy grin.

The same cannot be said for Margo Prey, the woman who played the mother, Diana Waits. There isn’t a single convincing moment throughout her shriek-filled performance, but the true tragedy lies in her post-movie life, which has been filled with loneliness, mental illness, and a future that, at best, involves hoarding or a hasty suicide. One would think that she too would ride the gravy train of assorted conventions and the autograph circuit, but apparently she couldn’t survive the film’s finale, in which she is devoured before her son’s eyes, even though the entire family had appeared to escape Nilbog’s wrath. Did they not set the preacher on fire? And what about that aforementioned bologna sandwich, which just happens to set off a chain of events whereby every goblin within earshot vomits green Jell-O, falls to the floor in full seizure, and dies? And what about those crude lightning bolts that run straight from Stonehenge to the goblin’s frail hearts? Nope, not enough. Everyone, it turns out, survived, and followed the Waits family home, perhaps in anticipation of Troll 3. Alas, it was not to be. For now, we’re stuck with a masterpiece of crapola; the one that damn near got away, only to be revived by a new generation of cinematic masochists. Here’s to ‘em.

Grade - F

The Room - Oh Hi Mark

Tommy Wiseau is not, technically, famous. He has never been on the cover of Us Weekly, nor has he been the subject of salacious rumors on E! — in short, he is the sort of person who can usually walk down the street without being stopped. Yet on a recent Friday night outside New York City's Ziegfeld Theatre, Wiseau was greeted by a mob of fans. They chanted his name, crowded around him for pictures and roped him into a game of catch. After he entered the theater, the people he left behind spoke in awestruck tones. Said one: "This is the best night of my life."

The crowds were there for a midnight showing of Wiseau's unfathomably strange film The Room, to celebrate the anniversary of its inaugural New York City screening (Wiseau was talked out of his first choice for the location, Yankee Stadium) and to launch a national tour of the film.

(Unusually for a midnight-movie favorite, The Room contains no flesh-eating ghouls, no polygamous devil cults and no time-traveling transvestites. It is essentially a domestic drama, and the plot is simple: Johnny (Wiseau, who also wrote, directed and executive-produced) is dating Lisa (Juliette Danielle), who is cheating on him with his best friend, Mark (Greg Sestero). The actual film, though, is like a Koch snowflake of badness, wherein any scene has an infinite number of things wrong with it. Conversations start and stop and change topic at random, and the characters speak a strange brand of English that sounds like it has been filtered through three different Internet language translators. Major plot points are introduced — drug deals, underwear theft, breast cancer — and never dealt with again. There are languidly unerotic sex scenes, and interminable minutes devoted to the coffee orders of people standing in line in front of the main characters at Starbucks.

But The Room rises above garden-variety awful for a number of reasons, not least of them Wiseau himself. With his hulking physique, mane of black hair and vaguely Teutonic accent, Wiseau is jaw-droppingly miscast as a Regular Joe romantic lead. He looks like he should be playing a death-metal singer or a Viking warrior.

The film's backstory is just as mythically muddled. Rumors abound regarding its production, chief among them that Wiseau bankrolled the estimated $6 million production by importing leather jackets from Korea. (A distortion, he says: "I designed an American leather jacket, and we imported it from Korea on my design.") Asked to explain his age and background, Wiseau is less forthcoming. "That has nothing to do with what I do," he says. "My private life is my private life." In 2003, he booked The Room for two weeks at a Los Angeles theater, rented a billboard to advertise it on L.A.'s Highland Avenue and submitted it to the Academy Awards. Apart from a middling review in Variety, Hollywood paid little attention. But word was spreading of the film's unique appeal. After two weeks, Wiseau says, audiences were camping out outside the theater. Popularized by YouTube and name-dropped by famous fans (comedian David Cross and actress Kristen Bell both sing the film's praises), The Room has found devoted fans across the country. It has also shown in Canada, Australia and the U.K.

"It's just so ego-based and so melodramatic, like the strongest, most vulnerable thing you can imagine," says New Yorker George Gross, one of the organizers behind the Ziegfeld screening. "It just collapses upon itself." Spellbound by the film after seeing it in October 2008, Gross and two friends acquired a print of The Room from Wiseau and screen it at Village East Cinema once a month to sellout crowds.

Now that one man's poorly made vanity project has become a cult hit, it would be easy to paint the film as a sideshow attraction that exists only to be mocked. But Wiseau insists that The Room is deeper than its critics would suggest, full of layers of symbolism. (A question about the underwear subplot brings forth his ideas on privacy, respect and the way people treat their neighbors in Indiana.) Indeed, at least one screening attendee at the Ziegfeld has written a paper on The Room as ironic comedy. Most fans say they have genuine appreciation for the man and the film, and come to screenings not to bury Wiseau but praise him. "It's a celebration," says Gross. "Like, 'Here's one of my favorite jokes: Yay!' "

Grade - F

Batman And Robin - The worst of the Batman franchise

 

 

The Batsuit is wrapped around Clooney; O'Donnell returns as Robin; Arnie is Mr. Freeze and Thurman is Poison Ivy. The only other thing you need to know is that Wayne's Uncle Alfred (Michael Gough) is unwell and Alicia Silverstone arrives not to nurse him but to free him from his life of servitude.
So much for social conscience, but is it fun? Well, yes it is. For the first half-hour it is, anyway: close-ups of the bat and the bird getting suited and booted; chilling with Mr. Freeze in a wham-bam set piece; introducing bad-guy Bane; and fertilising fantasies as Poison Ivy turns from nerdy botanist to vengeful sadist. It all leaves you ready for more.

But then more is exactly what you get. Rather too much more, as both plot and audience attention span stretch to breaking point.

Schumacher has learnt a little from Batman Forever and has reined in the vertigo-inducing crash-cuts making Batman And Robin a lot easier on the eye. But with the change of pace comes a change in emphasis, the target audience now perhaps a little younger and more receptive to cornball wisecracks.

The overall impact is more like the 60s TV series than anything envisaged by D.C. Comics' Bob Kane (whose consultancy credit must be largely contractual) or Tim Burton (whose gloomy architecture of the first two films is the sole remnant of his Dark Knight vision).

In place of Gothic pathos, Schumacher has a simple three-point plan. One: never let anyone say anything profound when there's an excruciating pun to be made. Two: never let anyone use a doorway when there's a wall to smash through. And, three: never ever get the good guys into a situation that can't be solved by a Bathook-and-wire firing thingy. Actually, there's is another, unwritten rule; never let the good guys upstage the talent. And so they don't.

O'Donnell's independent-streak strop soon wears thin and although Clooney is cool in the suit, his Wayne is too laconic, too angst-free, and given to unseemly smirking. Batman And Robin therefore is once more about the nemeses: about Arnie looking like a cross between Gary Glitter and the Lloyd's building, Uma as a set of French curves squeezed deliciously into a green Lycra body-stocking, and er, Bane (her grunting muscleman sidekick who grunts and, yup, has muscles).
But even Arnie (his name at the top of the credits, his dumb-ass one-liner shtick squeezed until the pips shriek for mercy) cannot compete with Thurman. In perhaps the sexiest turn ever seen in a PG rating, she melts celluloid every time she touches it, camping it up but never denting her cool cred. Silverstone and Elle Macpherson (as Bruce Wayne's squeeze) don't even come close. In fact, Silverstone is a major disappointment; though apparently fresh from "Oxbridge", she's not even asked to attempt an English accent, and sulks the whole movie through until, almost too late, the bat and the bird finally get a bat-bird and audiences turn on Batman Begins.

Grade - E -

Camp end to dreadful era for Schumacher at the helm of the Batman franchise. Let's hope he doesn't get his hands on it again.

 

Blues Brothers 2000 - Worst Movie I've Ever Seen In My Whole Entire Life

I'm sure that every one of us has, as of early 2015, experienced a horrible remake of their favorite movie or franchise. There's Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the Star Wars prequels, even Dragonball Evolution...but the biggest stab-in-the-face I've gotten is from Blues Brothers 2000.

Oh, and the Disney sequels. You're not supposed to do a "Return to Neverland" unless you have voice actors that are dead-on to the original voices.

Originally, the Blues Brothers were just characters used during the warm-up skits on Saturday Night Live, which was enough to have an album released. When that was successful, the movie debuted a few years later. In super-brief, here's how it goes...there are two brothers. When the shorter/older one named Jake (played by John Belushi) gets out of jail, his brother Elwood (played by Dan Aykroyd) takes him to visit the orphanage they used to go to. The Penguin (do not call nuns this) tells them that the orphanage is going to close unless they get $20,000. Jake and Elwood go out to find concert gigs and acquire the money, all the while randomly cameoing famous African-American singers, and driving through stuff.

If you don't at least smile from seeing this poster, then you are obviously an impertinent devil of the sea.

This is in my opinion one of the greatest movies of the 80's and my favourite movie of all time. Even today's children have at least a faint grasp of who Jake and Elwood are. They're the Blues Brothers. They sing. They drive through malls. They're awesome.

So, let's go back to 1982. John Belushi has long been struggling with an addiction to cocaine, as was sadly common in the 70's-thru-80's. He's found in a hotel room, dead from a lethal combined injection of cocaine and heroin. I don't even know what to say...John was extremely talented. And then he was gone. It's not like we can go back in time to warn him, or send Cathy Smith back to jail (even Robin Williams said she was creepy) for furthering John into the drug chaos of the day. His career ended with several of the most well-known movies of all-time, including Animal House. Why did this man have to die?

Unfortunately, Dan Aykroyd got a little "creative" fifteen years later. It wasn't bad enough that he attempted a short-lived animated series, but he got at the helm of a second movie...this is Blues Brothers 2000. And it sucks.

There's an old Canadian anti-drug PSA from 1991 that shows a boy going into his room. He pulls out a packet of cocaine and looks at it nervously. As he's about to dump it out, a Black man in skateboarding clothes jumps out of the ceiling, throws the crack out the window and shouts, "MAN, WHAT'CHA DOIN'? STOP YOURSELF WHILE YOU CAN!" That's what everyone wanted to yell at Dan and John Landis. Come to think of it, I'd show that same PSA to John, too.

My father once said that the only decent plot for a Blues Brothers sequel would involve Elwood preparing Jake's funeral, because he died of a SUPER AWESOME CAR CRASH that may have involved a shark. Dad didn't come up with much then, but he added that maybe Elwood would find out that his mother is still alive and being a recluse somewhere, then he'd try to track her down for the funeral, all the while visiting old characters. But it's not the same if there's only one brother and a "Blues Mom". This would make a satisfactory (but not great) movie. If you get anything below this, then maybe you should stop working on it altogether. This is like the part in the SNL skit "Don't Look Back In Anger" when John (dressed as an old man) dances on Dan's grave...only, transpose either person and there you are.

Since John was...dead and all, you couldn't really bring Jake Blues back in without looking horrible. They could have had JIM Belushi, John's brother, play Jake, except Jim was doing voices on crappy cartoons and probably couldn't be found. And apparently they were going to bring Jim in as "Brother Zee Blues", but for some unknown reason, he wanted nothing to do with it. So, Jake was announced as being deceased in the movie, as well as Curtis (the guy who took care of Jake and Elwood when they were kids in the orphanage, remember?). Now, when so many actors from the original movie are dead, you're supposed to stop planning the film, rather than kill off the character. It only gives everyone a stinging reminder that John and Cab Calloway are dead in real life.

Instead of really dwelling on Jake and Curtis's deaths, Elwood goes off to find Curtis's illegimate son (whom has become a sherriff) and try to invite him into the band. Wait, what? To try and simplify this, let's say my father and brother died somehow. Then, I would have to decide whether to prepare their funerals, or to go find my Dad's astrayed cousin and invite her to work on this website with me. Which is more logical? However, the first option isn't movie material. If the movie went like this, it would be two minutes long. Elwood wake up in a little bedroom in the back of a bar. He would make some toast, get a phone call that Jake and Curtis were dead, make a surprised face, then it would cut to black and the credits would roll.

Elwood is denied by Curtis's son Cab, so he leaves to go work at a stripclub as the announcer. He finds out the bartender Mack, played by another John by the name of Goodman, is good at singing and makes him a Blues Brother. Mack has been bothering the Russian mafia, who then burns down the club. Elwood decides to restart the band, then adopts a boy named Buster and brings HIM into the band. They drive around to places from the old movie to show how much theyve changed, bug the mafia, bug some white supremecists, and be chased down by Cab and the police. Then they go to Louisiana and have a Battle of the Bands, while being electrocuted by a voodoo queen. End movie.

The problem with this is how Elwood is now the star, when previously, Jake and Elwood were equally stars. Jake did 75% the talking, because Elwood was supposed to be a quiet character, but now Elwood has Jake's personality. Plus, the plot is mediocre and on the level of every cheap children's cartoon, and new "brothers" weren't needed. DAMMIT, AYKROYD! WHAT DID YOU THINK YOU WOULD ACCOMPLISH? This is worse an idea than "Speed Racer: The Next Generation"! I'm sixteen years-old with the mind of a nine year-old, and even I think this is terrible!

Worse yet, this sequel beat the original movie's world record for "Biggest Movie Vehicle Pile-Up". This movie made less than 1/10th of the original movie's income, was done with an outlandish plot and numerous people dead or unavailable, and it destroyed what made the Blues Brothers famous. Remember this?

It was ALL THEY EVER HAD and you SHAT ON IT.

I really don't want to be angry at Dan, given that he was also in Ghostbusters, which inhabits a huge, warm spot of my childhood. But really, what I've said before is...what good could have possibly been achieved through a sequel more than 16 years after your co-star and buddy died? To be honest, Blues Brothers 2000 plays out like a fan fiction. A BLOODY FAN FICTION. Speaking of which, look what you inspired. To be blunt, everything by "3LW00D" is horrifying, which shows you kids should never look up fanfiction for live-action productions, unless you enjoy the taste of your bile.

My verdict...this movie was completely unnecessary, and it's hard to think of what kind of motive there could have been behind its creation. I’m not saying that Blues Brothers 2000 is the worst movie in existence, I’m saying that it’s the worst movie I’ve ever seen, but it still takes my favourite movie, puts it in a neckhold and punches it in the face repeatedly.

 Grade - F - SHAME

Birdemic: Shock And Terror

There are a lot of bad movies, but few are so bad they're good -- typically in an unintentionally campy, "we're laughing at you, not with you" sort of way. Intentional or not, Birdemic: Shock and Terror has gained a reputation as such a film. It's an exercise in train wreck moviemaking that has sold out screenings across the US and has earned press in national publications due to its sheer ineptitude as an homage to Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.

While on the opposite end of the production spectrum as Avatar, Birdemic is no less of a cinematic experience that must be seen to be believed.

Rod (Alan Bagh) is an environmentally conscious and inexplicably successful software salesman living in the sleepy coastal town of Half Moon Bay, California.

One day, he runs into Nathalie (Whitney Moore), an ex-classmate who is equally inexplicably successful as a model; although her photos are the equivalent of Glamour Shots, she somehow manages to get signed by Victoria's Secret. They start to date, and things go swimmingly, ending up in a romantic getaway at a sleazy motel room. But, just when all seems right in the world, IT happens.

Birds start to attack the town, pecking and clawing people to death and acting as suicide bombers, flying headlong into gas pumps and other locations susceptible to exploding upon bird contact. Rod and Nathalie team with another couple, Ramsey (Adam Sessa) and Becky (Catherine Batcha), to fight through the carnage, aided by Ramsey's conveniently accessible stash of guns in his van.

The birds, it seems, have been driven crazy by global warming, pollution, gas-guzzling vehicles and other stuff the director saw in An Inconvenient Truth. (Seriously. Rod and Nathalie even go to see the movie in the movie.) Our heroes drive out of town, but the epidemic is too widespread to avoid. They rescue newly orphaned kids Susan (Janae Caster) and Tony (Colton Osborne), remarkably unscarred from seeing their parents pecked to death, and the group does their best to survive, but what can be done to fight a birdemic?

As a salesman and entrepreneur, writer/director/producer James Nguyen should be praised. A software salesman by trade (thus explaining the fact that, hilariously, the hero in each of his three movies thus far has been a salesman), he scraped together the resources for Birdemic and acquired distribution by pasting fake birds and carnage to his car and driving through Park City, Utah during the Sundance Film Festival.

As a filmmaker, though, he has no business being behind a camera. His so-called "romantic thriller" Birdemic is dimwitted and utterly amateurish in all aspects, from the script to the cast to the direction to the dirt-cheap special effects -- and yet, that's what makes it so mesmerizing. If Nguyen had been a better filmmaker or had had any training whatsoever, Birdemic likely would never have been picked up by a distributor, and if it had, it would've been just another sub-SyFy creature feature cluttering Blockbuster shelves. As it stands, Birdemic is an epic showcase of hamfisted moviemaking that would make Ed Wood wince.

Within the first post-credits minute, the ineptitude begins: abrupt cuts, awkward silence, stilted dialogue, the production value of an HR sexual harassment video, actors who seem like the only English they know is what they memorized from the script. One scene features a different angle for almost every line of dialogue. Another sequence just shows Rod driving, getting gas, waiting in traffic, arriving at work and walking into his office. Inside, a follow-up scene features 75 seconds of applause (with looped audio). Later, one of the group's "adventures" is walking around yelling "Tony!" after the boy wanders off. They find him. He's fine. End scene.

But while such scenes make Birdemic awful, what pushes it into craptastic territory is, of course, the birds -- or should I say, the CGI blobs that vaguely resemble birds. The bird attacks consist of what look like free animated GIF stock images copied and pasted across the screen, the barely mobile birds just hovering as their victims scream or, in one ridiculous moment, hit them with coat hangers.

It's enough to make you wonder if it's all one big gag or a viral attempt by a studio -- especially when a Los Angeles screening was presented by the stars of the Adult Swim show Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, whose humor intentionally mines the same sort of low-tech awkwardness that characterizes Birdemic. However, seeing interviews with Nguyen and reading articles like this unflattering account of the behind-the-scenes chaos convinced me that the movie is indeed legit.

Still, that doesn't eliminate the possibility that Nguyen is secretly a cinematic genius who realized his own shortcomings as a filmmaker and decided to slap everything together as haphazardly as possible, hoping that people would recognize its camp potential. Could it be that he hired inexperienced actors not just to save money, but also to feed into the awful spectacle of it all?

If so, he certainly hit the mother lode with Alan Bagh, an actor so bad, he's hypnotic. He's like an automaton, seemingly incapable of human emotion as he plods through his dead-eyed, mumble-mouthed performance, delivering lines like "Hey, those people on that bus are being killed by birds" like he's saying "Hey, look at that cow." He's the William Hung of actors, and if it turns out that he's actually pretending to be a bad actor, he deserves an Oscar, stat.

Maybe thinking that there's something more behind Birdemic is giving too much credit to Nguyen. Besides, I prefer the romantic notion of an untrained Vietnamese refugee scrounging together resources for a passion project and delivering an earnest, straight-faced effort to create a "romantic thriller" with a socially conscious message about global warming and exploding birds.

Grade - C+ (So bad it's...well, not necessarily "good," but at least entertaining.

Fantastic Four (Fantastic Bore)

I watched Fantastic Four to review because I was almost certain I would hate it, and I needed something to help me unwind in the stressful summer period. It's a fairly safe assumption that anyone who ever had any actual talent in 20^th Century Fox has long since abandoned the company to an invading force of leprous retards who create design documents by flicking fountain pens at a pile of shredded paper. I was looking forward to a delightfully horrible movie to get good and angry at, but it turns out I was disappointed. Fantastic Four is so bad, so utterly putrid, that I can't even get worked up about it! It falls right off the edge of my critical spectrum into the black cloying void of dispassionate loathing. It doesn't even have the hilariously awful quality of previous Fantastic Four movies, like in the last one which made the Silver Surfer look like some damp, cardboard cut-out.

The only slightly tolerable parts of Fantastic Four is the atmosphere of the film, mainly because you could give Mr. Fantastic a shield, unfocus your eyes, and convince yourself that you're watching Captain America: The Winter Soldier - a much better movie. The action within the film is almost entertaining but given the humourless tone, the lack of dynamic between the titular characters, and completely squandering the promise it displayed it falls incredibly short of being anything spectacular, unlike The Winter Soldier. It also doesn’t help that the film’s aesthetically drab and dramatically inert, and doesn’t offer anything memorable.

The leprous retards of 20^th Century Fox have basically been lost in their own little world for the past few years, but occasionally something penetrates their malformed three-inch-thick skulls. Recently for example, the notion finally broke through that most people want Fantastic Four movies to be about The Fantastic Four and that their ever expanding entourage of side characters can all go dive under a tractor. So the cast of supporting characters is cut down on this venture. Mole Man makes an appearance but he was with the series while it was still good so I'll let that one slide. We're also introduced to a new "better" cast for the Four with less humour and more boredom. It doesn't help that the dialogue's so blimming embarrassingly written I had to pretend I was listening to it in German just to give it enough of a sense of cultural distance that my hands didn't keep slipping off the top of my head and fastening around my throat.

Another thing that finally penetrated their minds is that putting the Fantastic Four in a darker environment is repeatedly proven to be like releasing freshwater fish into the Dead Sea; they just don't get along. So the main plot consists of the fantastic four slowly becoming what they should’ve been at the start of the movie. Then 20^th Century Fox’s nanny was called away and they fell back on their leprous retard instincts. Ironically this movies pacing is just all over the damn place, starting with Reed’s childhood, jumping to the "One Year Later" title card and things go off the rails. Twelve months from the characters’ lives are gone, and the audience is thrown back into the proceedings after a lot of things have already happened to the main characters. Throw in a rushed fight with Doom, and the heroes suddenly find themselves with their own headquarters at the end. Another issue was the lack of character development. While Reeds was at most, tolerable with his intellect at the expense of his personality, the other members come off as complete jokes. Aside from her pattern recognition and brief flirtation with Reed, Sue wasn’t that interesting. Johnny was established as a "hothead," but he seemed more angry than brash, and his reasons for joining the team were flimsy at best. Ben was essentially a blank slate whose primary function was being Reed’s friend, and even when he did turn into The Thing, he was mopey the whole time. Granted, I’d probably be sad if I turned into a rock monster, but this Ben Grimm had none of the sass and personality he had in the comics and previous film series (not that were any good). I'm ashamed enough that I'm even watching this, movie, and now the movie itself is insulting me for it!

Mind you, even the sound department sounds like something you’d here from a film with of budget of like £15,000. Most of the sounds in this movie sounded like a vuvuzela attached to an elephant dying of flatulence, and the green screen effects were so goddamn noticeable sometimes that it made me want to pick my own teeth out with a pizza slicer, and in terms of costumes, Doctor Doom looks like a kid you’d have knocking on your door at Halloween, (actually even THEY would look better than him)

This isn't the movie for you if you like jumping right into the action. Come to think of it, this isn't the movie for you even if you don't. I'm not sure what kind of person could consider this the movie for them but they probably live in a cave and subsist on raw fish. Nostalgia is the only reason The Fantastic Four still get a free ride despite repeatedly rubbing their little faces in our own with terrible movie after terrible movie. The Fantastic Four are done. They've passed it. They don't need more movies, they need help! Specifically the kind of help that involves taking them behind the shed and tearfully putting both barrels through their confused, oblivious little faces. Stuff them, mount them, bring them back as The Incredibles.

Grade - F (For Fantastic Flop) - Avoid at all costs