Guys and Dolls
Let's be clear: all musicals are bad. Especially trying, though, are musicals based on stories which totally corrupt the whole damn point of the original. Liza Minelli turning Goodbye To Berlin into Cabaret sets the teeth on edge. But this one really wins the award. Damon Runyan's short stories are minor classics. He wrote of hustlers, gangsters and whores, their tawdry menace never quite dissipated by his humour and unique literary style. This can not, I repeat not, be represented by a man in spats swinging round a lamp post singing "Luck be a lady tonight."
Absolute Beginners
Whereas this has a whole-hearted awfulness which transcends the commonplace awfulness of the musical genre. It is a film you watch in fascination from beginning to end, wondering how anyone could possibly have created it, produced it, acted in it. I mean, did nobody realise? There is an earnest plot detailing the rise of the far right in England and that's interspersed with a seemingly infinite number of scenes where Lionel Blair gets kicked in the goolies. And those are the best bits. My mind has blotted out most of the rest.
Pretty Woman
On this, the first and last words belong to Bongwater: 'Richard Gere with his oh-so Zen films and their oh-so Zen messages like: Hey, it's fun to be a prostitute! I wish I could spread my legs across Hollywood Boulevard! Because that's all we want, isn't it girls? Sucking and shopping, sucking and shopping… But it's the feel-good movie of the year, it's the feel-good movie of the decade, it's the feel-good movie of the millennium!'
Charlie's Angels
Probably not the worst Hollywood blockbuster but the one which really snapped my patience with the whole bloody business. The stubborn refusal to even consider anything original. The smirk-smirk, 'we're so clever' (just not clever enough to do anything original) treatment given to modern updates. And above all, the damn slo-mo everywhere. I mean, why do they think action is more exciting if it happens in slow motion? It doesn't. It's just slower. If this film had proceeded at a normal pace, it would have been over in 40 minutes and I might have used that extra hour of my life productively.
Four Weddings And A Funeral
In the early 1990's the British film industry finally seemed to be going somewhere. Pictures like The Full Monty and Trainspotting showed very different visions but ones both true and unique to the county. And then came Hugh Grant and Richard Curtis came along, and the template clanged down again. The whole of Britain reduced to a cliché; and not even our cliché of ourselves but America. A land where every Englishman is foppish and posh and rich and white. I still don't know from where I found the willpower to watch this dreck to the end. And though I've never dared watch them, I've heard Notting Hill and Love Actually are even worst.
Battlefield Earth
You probably didn't see this, put off the bad reviews, but may have thought, "Well, I bet it isn't that bad." Well I say unto you: it is. If anything, it's worst. There's regular hilarious sights of Fat John Travolta in a monkey suit. There's a nonsensical plot from insane cult leader and Travolta's guru, L Ron Hubbard. And there's somebody screaming "NO-O-O-O-O-O!" pretty much every ten minutes. Even if nothing happens to make them scream "NO-O-O-O-O-O!" they still do it. Perhaps they just realised what sort of a film they were stuck in.
Barb Wire
Remember Pamela Anderson, that icon of the 1990's? The woman who, thanks to constant cosmetic surgery, became a creature of long blond hair and massive lips and massive breasts and not much else? All men were supposed to lust after her but really she was as sexless as a piece of plastic; which was what she largely was, after all. This was her attempt to launch a movie career. She plays an in-your-face bar owner in one of those post-apocalypse wasteland deals. That was the by-line at least. Actually, it's just Casablanca. Not at first, admittedly; the transformation only happens gradually. Half-way through you start thinking "Hang on, this is a mite familiar," and by the end it only lacks Dooley Wilson tinkling away on the piano. Even her porno film with Tommy Lee would probably be more appealing. And thus ended Pamela Anderson's movie career.
Havana
And the Casablanca rip-offs roll on. Maybe I shouldn't lump this in with Barb Wire. But while that felt like it lasted about three hours, Havana actually has the nerve to actually be almost three hours. And it feels longer. All for a plot which every living creature on the planet knows the end to anyway. Perhaps they needed the time to cover the full astonishing gamut of Robert Redford's facial expressions: the concerned frown, the comedy flinch and, er, the other concerned frown.
Sleepless In Seattle
If I were God… Ah, if I were God. If I were God and I saw this, I'd forget any promises made with rainbows. I'd wipe the whole human race out and not make any exceptions this time. I'd make a new dominant species based on – well, lizards, birds, cockroaches, anything. Just as long as they were physically incapable of ever producing synthetic sentimental bullshit like this.
Let's be clear: all musicals are bad. Especially trying, though, are musicals based on stories which totally corrupt the whole damn point of the original. Liza Minelli turning Goodbye To Berlin into Cabaret sets the teeth on edge. But this one really wins the award. Damon Runyan's short stories are minor classics. He wrote of hustlers, gangsters and whores, their tawdry menace never quite dissipated by his humour and unique literary style. This can not, I repeat not, be represented by a man in spats swinging round a lamp post singing "Luck be a lady tonight."
Absolute Beginners
Whereas this has a whole-hearted awfulness which transcends the commonplace awfulness of the musical genre. It is a film you watch in fascination from beginning to end, wondering how anyone could possibly have created it, produced it, acted in it. I mean, did nobody realise? There is an earnest plot detailing the rise of the far right in England and that's interspersed with a seemingly infinite number of scenes where Lionel Blair gets kicked in the goolies. And those are the best bits. My mind has blotted out most of the rest.
Pretty Woman
On this, the first and last words belong to Bongwater: 'Richard Gere with his oh-so Zen films and their oh-so Zen messages like: Hey, it's fun to be a prostitute! I wish I could spread my legs across Hollywood Boulevard! Because that's all we want, isn't it girls? Sucking and shopping, sucking and shopping… But it's the feel-good movie of the year, it's the feel-good movie of the decade, it's the feel-good movie of the millennium!'
Charlie's Angels
Probably not the worst Hollywood blockbuster but the one which really snapped my patience with the whole bloody business. The stubborn refusal to even consider anything original. The smirk-smirk, 'we're so clever' (just not clever enough to do anything original) treatment given to modern updates. And above all, the damn slo-mo everywhere. I mean, why do they think action is more exciting if it happens in slow motion? It doesn't. It's just slower. If this film had proceeded at a normal pace, it would have been over in 40 minutes and I might have used that extra hour of my life productively.
Four Weddings And A Funeral
In the early 1990's the British film industry finally seemed to be going somewhere. Pictures like The Full Monty and Trainspotting showed very different visions but ones both true and unique to the county. And then came Hugh Grant and Richard Curtis came along, and the template clanged down again. The whole of Britain reduced to a cliché; and not even our cliché of ourselves but America. A land where every Englishman is foppish and posh and rich and white. I still don't know from where I found the willpower to watch this dreck to the end. And though I've never dared watch them, I've heard Notting Hill and Love Actually are even worst.
Battlefield Earth
You probably didn't see this, put off the bad reviews, but may have thought, "Well, I bet it isn't that bad." Well I say unto you: it is. If anything, it's worst. There's regular hilarious sights of Fat John Travolta in a monkey suit. There's a nonsensical plot from insane cult leader and Travolta's guru, L Ron Hubbard. And there's somebody screaming "NO-O-O-O-O-O!" pretty much every ten minutes. Even if nothing happens to make them scream "NO-O-O-O-O-O!" they still do it. Perhaps they just realised what sort of a film they were stuck in.
Barb Wire
Remember Pamela Anderson, that icon of the 1990's? The woman who, thanks to constant cosmetic surgery, became a creature of long blond hair and massive lips and massive breasts and not much else? All men were supposed to lust after her but really she was as sexless as a piece of plastic; which was what she largely was, after all. This was her attempt to launch a movie career. She plays an in-your-face bar owner in one of those post-apocalypse wasteland deals. That was the by-line at least. Actually, it's just Casablanca. Not at first, admittedly; the transformation only happens gradually. Half-way through you start thinking "Hang on, this is a mite familiar," and by the end it only lacks Dooley Wilson tinkling away on the piano. Even her porno film with Tommy Lee would probably be more appealing. And thus ended Pamela Anderson's movie career.
Havana
And the Casablanca rip-offs roll on. Maybe I shouldn't lump this in with Barb Wire. But while that felt like it lasted about three hours, Havana actually has the nerve to actually be almost three hours. And it feels longer. All for a plot which every living creature on the planet knows the end to anyway. Perhaps they needed the time to cover the full astonishing gamut of Robert Redford's facial expressions: the concerned frown, the comedy flinch and, er, the other concerned frown.
Sleepless In Seattle
If I were God… Ah, if I were God. If I were God and I saw this, I'd forget any promises made with rainbows. I'd wipe the whole human race out and not make any exceptions this time. I'd make a new dominant species based on – well, lizards, birds, cockroaches, anything. Just as long as they were physically incapable of ever producing synthetic sentimental bullshit like this.
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