Gigli

   I just don't know what to say about this movie. Gigli is a film that really makes me question the intelligence of the entire film industry. The 2003 film tried to be a romantic comedy. I say tried because I don't think it was either funny or romantic. It follow a low ranking mobster with 'a heart of gold' and a lesbian hitwoman are forced to work together after kidnapping a federal prosecutors mentally handicapped brother. I know it sounds so great already. Who could have possibly thought that this was a good idea. Affleck's character makes fun of the mentally handicapped and the film depicts them in a really offensive way. Lopez's character is no better. She has some very bizarre thoughts about sex and sexuality that she delivers while doing some provocative yoga. Of course her being a lesbian doesn't stop the two of them from hooking up and eventually falling in love because all it takes is an idiotic wannabe tough guy to turn a lesbian strait. The entire film makes me hate it. The characters are so stupid, the script is terrible, and the entire premise makes me hate it.
  The film got plenty of attention before it even came out because at that time Affleck and Lopez were together in real life. Their power couple known as 'Bennifer' grabbed a huge amount of attention and hype for the film. Unfortunately for them the film also received a huge amount of terrible reviews before the release. It grossed under four million its opening weekend and Sony pulled all of its ads. The second weekend box office sales dropped eighty-two percent and by the third weekend only seventy-three theaters were showing it. In the end the film grossed $7.2 million while it had a budget of $75.6 million.
    This film really is remarkably terrible. Besides being offensive it was just really boring. Almost nothing seems to happen in a film that somehow lasts two hours long. Al Pacino and Christopher Walken both wander into the film each for one embarrassing scene. You never actually get to feel any connection to any of the characters and honestly I just grew to hate them all. It might sound terrible but I was actually hoping for a car crash or something to just at least try to make the movie interesting. Apparently the fake newspaper The Onion agreed with me when they wrote an article saying that focus groups demanded an ending where both Lopez and Affleck's characters both died.
     Gigli became the first film in history to sweep the top five categories at the Razzies Awards, including Worst Picture, Worst Actor (Ben Affleck), Worst Actress (Jennifer Lopez), Worst Director (Brest), and Worst Screenplay (also Brest). This just show that this movie is terrible and should really have been abandoned long before shooting started. As Marlow Stern, the entertainment editor and writer for The Daily Beast, said when he looked back at Gigli ten years after it came out "it is the movie equivalent of the Hindenburg disaster"(Stern).

Battlefield Earth

    Battlefield Earth is a 2000 sci-fi film that takes place in the year 3000. The film is based on the the first half of the L.Ron Hubbard novel of the same name. Hubbard is the inventor of Scientology, and as a long-time scientologist John Travolta had to do wanted to make a film based on the Hubbard book. Travolta had a lot of trouble raising money and finding a studio to back the film. In the end Travolta ended up spending millions of his own dollars to make this film. The book takes place in the year 3000 where an alien race called Psychlos have taken over Earth and controlled it for about 1000 years. Humans, or man-animals, as they are called for some reason are an "endangered species". Humans are either living like prehistoric tribes or as slaves in the Psychlos home base, which is basically a giant greenhouse.
   The film follows human, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, as he travels from his primitive tribe to explore. He meets up with a hunter and then they are both captured and enslaved by the Psychlos. Travolta played the head Psychlo on Earth, Terl, who was forced to remain working on Earth because "he didn't know that it was the senators daughter". The Psychlos are on Earth to mine for gold and Terl decides that he will use the 'man-animals' to mine gold for him so he can try to get back to his home planet. He takes Jonnie and decides to teach him using a 'teaching machine'. Jonnie learns to speak the Psychlo language, although you wouldn't know that they speak a different language because they make no distinction. Everyone talks in eEnglish it is not until Jonnie learns the second language that you realize they haven't been talking to each other. Eventually Terl leaves Jonnie and a bunch of other 'man-animals' in the middle of nowhere to mine gold. The Psychlos cannot comprehend the fact that humans are capable of really anything even though they are surrounded by the destroyed civilization that humans built. At one point Terl and his secondhand Psychlo argue if 'man-animals' can fly. You would think that such a powerful race would be able to remember the past, even humans know what life was like 1000 years ago.
     Jonnie decides to save Earth and leads a revolution. Somehow he trains other humans to fly in flight simulators while giving Terl gold from Fort Knox, which somehow was not found in 1000 years of looking for gold. Jonnie also finds a hidden group of military jets, that are fully functional and loaded after 1000 years of sitting. The revolution is of course a success as the greenhouse that the Psychlos use to breath in is destroyed and somehow the entire Psychlo planet is blown up.
The entire film is just painful to watch. The script was ruined by Travolta  because when writer JD Shapiro, who was originally brought in to write the script, refused to implement various changes requested by Travolta, screenwriter Corey Mandell was signed up instead. This made the whole script just a mess. The Psychlos them self look ridiculous. They all have dreads, weird chin beards, hairy hands, and are just slightly bigger than humans. They are also surprisingly stupid for being a superior race. The entire production looks just bad. The breathing nose plugs that they use look like shoelaces stuck up their noses, the cgi is pitiful, and everything just looks ugly. The soundtrack is so loud and over the top that is just gets in the way. Eveything is so loud for no reason. As David Edelstein, a film critic for slate magazine, says "that is not an overstatement. A horse hitting the ground sounds like a bomb going off. A bomb going off sounds like a planet exploding. A planet exploding sounds like—I'm out of hyperbole. People in the audience dig their fingers into their ears and howl in agony"(Edelstein).
   This was a film that was based on a best selling sci-fi novel that still couldn't be good. It was the obsession of John Travolta, who managed to ruin the movie. Battlefield Earth really is just terrible. It tried so hard and failed just as hard. It just goes to show that maybe you shouldn't look at Scientology to help you make a film.

Batman and Robin

Batman and Robin is the first of the high budget films that I will be looking at. The 1997 film was the last of the four original Warner Brothers batman films. This film received such negative reviews that Warner Bros. cancelled the unproduced Batman Triumphant and ended the series. This film was one that really should have been better. There was a $140 million budget, a proven director and actors, and a large amount of fans from the previous films and comics.
   The film pits Batman and Robin against Mr. Freeze, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Poison Ivy, played by Uma Thurman, and her henchman Bane. Batman and Robin get joined by Alfred's niece, Alicia Silverstone, who becomes Batgirl. Mr. Freeze's evil plan is to freeze everybody and save his cryogenically frozen wife. Poison Ivy wants to destroy the animals and let her genetically modified plants take over the world.
   Alfred is diagnosed with the same disease that Mr. Freeze's wife is also suffering from. This disease has no cure, but luckily Mr. Freeze was an Olympic athlete and doctor who was the leading researcher in the disease. Of course by the end of the film Batman convinces Mr. Freeze to give him the cure that he came up with for the first stage of the disease, that Alfred is suffering from. The entire film is so predictable that you could just watch the first half hour of the film and guess what happens. The characters are so shallow that there never seems to be any real connection that the audience gets to the characters.
   The entire film set is so over the top that makes the whole film ridiculous. This film is closer to the 60's TV show than the recent Batman films which take a much darker look at Batman. Batman and Robin is a ridiculous film, but doesn't capture the same goofiness that made the show so great. This is not what was wanted by any Batman fans and derailed the entire series. This film seemed to be all action and no plot. There are scenes that seem to be in there just to spend money and show random action. There was one scene where Batman and Robin play hockey with Mr. Freeze's henchmen with a giant diamond. Speaking of diamonds, this film seems to use diamonds to explain how all the technology works. Somehow Mr. Freeze uses diamonds to keep his suit cold and to freeze Gotham. Diamonds are also somehow used in a giant telescope.
   This is a film that should have never been made how it was. There was the funding, the actors, a director, and a studio that should have stopped this. The entire film was so over the top and ridiculous that it ruined the Batman series. Movie critic Roger Ebert puts it perfectly when he says "give the foreground to the characters, not the special effects"(Erbert). This is a film that almost killed Batman movies. Batman and Robin was a film that took Batman where no one wanted it to go and is painful to try to watch the whole way through.

The Room

     The Room is a 2003 drama that was written, directed, produced, and starring Tommy Wiseau. The Room follows a love triangle between a banker, Tommy, , his fiancee,Lisa, and his best friend, Mark. The Room has some of the worst acting which is not helped by the fact that it is one of the worst written films with huge problems that arise and then are never addressed again. Lisa's mother randomly comes in one scene to talk to Lisa and says that she has breast cancer. This is never addressed again at all and just leaves the viewer confused and completely thrown. Other random events happen, like a drug dealer pulling a gun on Tommy's neighbor, and then never get addressed again.
     The entire film also seems to take place in about three locations, in the living room, in the bedroom, and on the roof of the apartment building. There are so many things that that seem to come up over and over. Wiseau seems to have an obsession with having his characters throwing a football around, and Tommy saying "oh hi" to everyone he sees. This might have to do with Wiseau's terrible acting but either way it is hilarious to watch. There are a number of other small things that you might notice in the film if you look close enough. There are a large amount of framed photos of spoons throughout the house. One thing that you cant avoid seeing are the long, drawn out sex scenes. These scenes are all accompanied by music that sounds like its from an adult video, but with worse acting, and are disturbing to watch for what seems like the whole length of each song.
     Despite, or perhaps because of all of this, The Room has developed one of the largest cult followings of any film in the last decade. Similar to the Rock Horror Picture Show, The Room is shown in theaters around the country and people interact with the film. Fans will throw plastic spoons at the screen every time a framed spoon can be seen as well as shouting along to some of the best lines. This has caused many to look closer at the film and some view it as a very important film.''It is one of the most important films of the past decade,'' says Ross Morin, an assistant professor of film studies at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. ''It exposes the fabricated nature of Hollywood. The Room is the Citizen Kane of bad movies.''(Clark). Although I don't see The Room as being quite this important, I do think that it is a great film to watch with a few friends and make fun of.

Birdemic: Shock and Terror

Birdemic: Shock and Terror is the newest of the films that I will be watching having come out in 2009. Given this it was amazing how the special effects were worse than those in the 1990 film Troll 2, much worse. Birdemic was written and directed by James Nguyen, a Silicon Valley software salesman whose family fled Vietnam in 1975 before the fall of Saigon and grew up in the United States. Nguyen never attended film school or got any formal training, if you can believe that, and spent 10,000 and seven months worth of weekends to make this. Nguyen was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds and tells the story of a software salesman from Silicon Valley, Rod, who begins dating a fashion model, Nathalie. Then flocks of eagles and vultures attack the town that spit acid and explode on impact with the ground.

    As I am sure you are I was very excited to see this happen. You might be surprised that there are no birds in the entire first half of the film. No Nguyen decided that the first half should be specifically for developing the characters and relationship between Rod and Nathalie. This wouldn't be too bad if this had actually happened though. Rod acts more like a robot than a human, neither have any personality, and half of the scenes are completely unnecessary. One scene just shows Rod driving to work and sitting in traffic, for over a minute. There are scenes throughout the film that are just panoramic shots of northern California for over a minute with just birds screeching playing in the background. 
       You will never understand how important music is in films until you hear the deafening silence that shows up in Birdemic. Nguyen must have been trying to do what Hitchcock did in the Birds. Hitchcock used no score, but instead he used sound effects. In a meeting with Even Hunter, the original screenwriter for the Birds , Hitchcock argued against using music saying that it would diminish from the terror of the birds(Documentary: All About The Birds). Nguyen fails to do this leaving huge gaps of awkward silence throughout the film.
        Birdemic began to pick up a cult following after Nguyen brought it to the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. He was not invited to come, but showed up anyway and promoted his movie by driving around with a huge fake eagle and fake blood covering his car and showing the film in local bars. Nguyen was able to achieve such a level of terribleness with this movie that it just has to been seen to be understood. With acting worse than the average persons ability, special affects so bad that a high-school student could make them on paint, and a story written at a middle school level, you will have trouble watching this movie even while making fun of it. Birdemic really shows that just because you love films doesn't mean that you can make them.

Troll 2

 

       I started with what might be the worst, or best. Troll 2 has seemed to topped a majority of the lists of worst movies that I have seen. The movie was originally made under the name Goblins, but was changed to Troll 2 to try to feed off of the popularity of the 1986 film Troll. The new name didn't help much nor did it make sense, since there are no actual trolls in the movie. Troll 2 was directed by Italian director Claudio Fragasso in 1990. Fragasso could barely speak English and hired an all Italian film crew who could also not speak English. It starred small-town dentist Dr. George Hardy, 10 year old Micheal Stephenson, and a group of I can only assume random people off the street, none of whom spoke Italian. Seriously , one actor explains he was out on a pass from a mental institution when he was cast as the ominous store owner: “The actor they hired didn't turn up and they said, OK, you've got the job.” Even the budget for the film was so low that actors had to provide their own clothes. From the start the movie was a disaster.
     The plot of the film, if you can even believe that there was one, was written by Fagrasso and his wife. It follows a family that goes on vacation by switching houses for a month with a family in the small country town of Nilbog, the name about as clever as the plot got. The son Joshua, can see and talk to his dead grandpa Seth, who warns him abut goblins. Basically the town is full of people who are really goblins that want to turn them into half plants half humans and then eat them. The whole plot doesn't explain itself at all. There are random bits that pop up, like the fact that the evil druid gets her power from a Stonehenge block and it is defeated by touching it. As with many things some people try to read into Troll 2 searching for a deeper meaning. Some have said that it is a brilliant film that addresses anorexia, vegetarianism, and heath culture in general. I can see some of the points that are made, but seriously? If you watch the movie you can see that any meaning was lost somewhere in the train-wreak that created this movie.
     Everything about this movie is awful. The plot is barely there, the acting is horrid, the soundtrack is almost entirely just an electronic keyboard, and it just leaves you wondering what you just spent the last 95 minutes doing. Ths movie is so bad that Micheal Stephenson, who starred in Troll 2 as a child, made a documentary about the movie in 2009 titles The Best Worst Movie. He now tours with some of the cast of Troll 2 to various conventions and events catering to the cult following of the movie.

Intro / Other Blogs

    I have always loved terrible movies. Ever since I can remember I would love watching those bad sci-fi channel original movies, such as yeti, megashark, octoshark, ghost shark, ice spiders, and wyvern to name a few. So for my freshman writing class in college I will be creating a blog about what are considered six of the worst movies ever made. I have limited myself to movies made since 1990 to help marrow it down a little bit. While researching these movies I found so many different articles and blogs saying that they knew the worst movies ever. What I did was look at a ton of these different lists and piece together a list of my own with movies that seemed to keep appearing towards the top. I ended up with six different movies that are all very terrible. What I will be doing is writing a post after I watch each movie describing it, giving some background for the movie, and explaining why it made the list.