By Patrick Gibbs
It's that time of year again when families gather together and honor the memory of the Puritans by parking themselves in front of the TV and pretending that there is nothing strangely homoerotic about watching large, sweaty men in helmets pat each other on the backside. It's that time when the Macey's Thanksgiving Day Parade comes along to showcase giant inflatable characters like Willard Scott, roughly 18,000 High School marching bands, and several high spirited production numbers from upcoming Broadway musicals, most of which are so bad they will close at intermission. It's a time when people complain that this special holiday is passed over far too quickly in favor of Christmas, which they whine has become all about commercialism, as they make sure they have collectively forked over enough money to the Norbest and Stove Top Stuffing Corporations to cover the national deficit.
It's that time of year again when families gather together and honor the memory of the Puritans by parking themselves in front of the TV and pretending that there is nothing strangely homoerotic about watching large, sweaty men in helmets pat each other on the backside. It's that time when the Macey's Thanksgiving Day Parade comes along to showcase giant inflatable characters like Willard Scott, roughly 18,000 High School marching bands, and several high spirited production numbers from upcoming Broadway musicals, most of which are so bad they will close at intermission. It's a time when people complain that this special holiday is passed over far too quickly in favor of Christmas, which they whine has become all about commercialism, as they make sure they have collectively forked over enough money to the Norbest and Stove Top Stuffing Corporations to cover the national deficit.
As for me, having been a vegetarian for roughly ten years now, I spend a lot of time around now thinking about the turkey I won't be eating, content with a small helping of dinner rolls filled with cranberry jelly with a side of mashed potatoes. But I'm still thinking about that turkey. They call it Turkey Day for a reason, and it is in that spirit that I now plunge into a forced and clumsy segue to an article about bad movies.
The following is a list of turkeys that I am either thankful for, because of the unintentional laughs they provided, or, like so much over eating, simply made me nauseous. (No, I am not going to mention “TROLL 2” - that would be too easy, and frankly I am sick to death of talking about the damn thing.)
Happy Thanksgiving!
Set in the kingdom of Ehb, “In The Name of The King” stars Jason Statham in the role of a simple farmer, creatively identified to the audience by the name “Farmer.” It seems that Farmer is an orphan who was adopted by the village (which makes you wonder if his name used to be”Orphan” but he changed it when he got old enough to grow five o'clock shadow across his entire head.). When Farmer's wife and son leave to sell vegetables in the town of Stonebridge, his farm is attacked by creatures called Krug. Fortunately, this being a Jason Statham movie, Farmer happens to be an expert at every form of Hollywood mixed martial arts, and with the help of his friend and mentor, Norrick (Ron Perlman, who deserves far better), he fights off the Krug and travels to Stonebridge, while on the way encountering various obstacles, including a mischievous band of tree dwelling lesbians. I am not making this up.
Now, if you're going to make a medieval fantasy adventure, you of course need a Wizard and a King. And who better to cast as the evil Wizard and the corrupt monarch than . . . Ray Liotta and Burt Reynolds? Yes, that is really who plays these roles. And if you are asking yourself the questions “how' and 'why?” the answer is simple: this is a Ewe Boll film. For those unfamiliar with this great artist, Boll is the recipient of the Golden Raspberry 's Worst Career Achievement Award, and is widely regarded as having directed most of the the worst movies ever to be made based on video games. Think about that last one for a moment.
Ever the class act, Boll issued a press release in 2006 stating that he would challenge each of his five harshest critics to a 10-round boxing match. But his greatest claim to fame as a filmmaker comes from publicly announcing, in response to criticism of his work, that if a million people told him to stop making movies, he would do so. This was followed by a massive internet petition, and as of June 2011, there were 364,572 signatures.
And speaking of unique casting decisions, wait until you get a load of John Wayne as Mongol chief Temujin, later to be immortalized as Genghis Khan, in the Howard Hughes produced epic THE CONQUEROR.
The story follows Temujin in his early days, as he wages war and falls madly in love with the Tartar Princess Bortai (played by Susan Hayward – apparently, Tartar women were known for their red hair). From the moment they meet, Temujin is so excited he can barely keep his false mustache on, and he proclaims that Bortai is “Wuh-man. MUCH wuh-man.” With this kind of steamy, romantic dialogue, it's no wonder Hughes himself kept a copy of this film shut away with him, watching it over and over again by himself in his later years.
The site of Wayne earnestly stumbling his way through the role is initially amusing, and when you add to that the embarrassingly inept dance sequences by Hayward and company, and the presence of Agnes Moorehead (of “Bewitched” fame) as Temujin's mother, this really sounds like a bad movie to be savored, but sadly, THE CONQUEROR is genuinely an ordeal to sit through. By the end, you won't just be glancing at the clock, you will be staring at it in fascination in the vain hope that perhaps itl will do something entertaining.
This is one of the most infamous films of all time, for many reasons, but perhaps the most note worthy is the fact that while most of the movies mentioned here can at least make the lame defense that they never killed anybody, that is tragically not the case here. The exterior scenes of THE CONQUERORwere shot on location in Kanab, Utah, 137 miles downwind of the government's Nevada test site. In 1953, extensive above-ground nuclear weapons testing occurred at the site. The cast and crew spent many arduous weeks on location, and Hughes later shipped 60 tons of dirt back to Hollywood in order to match the Utah terrain to lend authenticity to studio re-shoots. The filmmakers knew about the nuclear tests, but the federal government reassured residents that the tests caused no hazard to public health. Director Dick Powell, actors Pedro Armendariz, Agnes Moorehead, and even the films stars, Susan Hayward and the legendary Duke himself passed away due to cancer that has been linked to the nuclear testing.
This movie is noteworthy if for no other reason than the simple audacity of trying to make a whole movie based on the idea that “it's funny because it's not funny.” This philosophy can be hilariously effective on LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN sketches (for example, the week long “Find Out How Much Gas Smokin' Joe Frazier Has In His Car” bit), but as a premise for a feature film, it is a bizarre oddity that really didn't work, but it's strangely fascinating for it's uncompromising, if asinine, vision.
Chris Elliot, who first gained fame as “that annoying guy on David Letterman,” plays Nathaniel Mayweather, a snobbish, self-centered "fancy lad", who has been invited by his father to join him in Hawaii by setting sail on the Queen Catherine. However, after annoying the carriage driver, he is forced to walk the rest of the way to the docks.
Nathaniel makes a wrong turn into a small fishing village and he meets the not-so-bright cabin boy/first mate of a vessel with the charmingly low key moniker The Filthy Whore. Nathaniel mistakes this for a theme ship, due to its condition. Actually it's a fishing boat that is home to four foulmouthed fishermen. It is not until the next morning Nathaniel realizes that he is on the wrong boat. So Nathaniel becomes a part of the crew, sharing in their “adventures.” Along the way, he falls in love with a beautiful young woman named Trina, who has been trying to break a world record by swimming around the world without any assistance or contact by another human being. The plot only gets more muddled and inane from here. Letterman himself appears in a cameo, speaking the now famous line “Would ya like ta buy a monkey?” Producer Tim Burton, who seems to have a strange penchant for deliberately alienating audiences, wisely decided to back out as director of the film, leaving that duty to co-writer Adam Resnick.
Not to be confused with Marvel Studio's mega blockbuster, beloved by all, this 1998 clunker was based on a popular '60's television series which still has many enthusiastic fans, most of whom would like to forget this movie ever happened, as would the distinguished cast , as well as director Jeremiah Chechik (“BENNY & JOON”), who went on to direct episodes of “GOSSIP GIRL” and “JONAS.”)
The film opens with John Steed, played by Ralph Fiennes, a dashing and extremely proper gentleman, and agent of “The Ministry,” in a training course, which he finishes successfully. Next, we see Dr. Emma Peel (Uma Thurman) at home, where she receives a phone call telling her to go to a gentlemen's club - no women allowed - where she meets Steed for the first time. The Ministry confronts Peel with an accusation of sabotaging the “Prospero Project,” a secret program to control the weather. Mrs. Peel claims she is innocent, and she is sent to work alongside Steed to find the real culprit. Enter August De Wynter, an old ally of The Ministry, played by Sean Connery (you get it? It's a spy movie, but the VILLAIN is played by Sean Connery. Isn't that clever?) De Wynter commands an army of evil doers in Teddy Bear suits, and together they have whisked the instruments needed for the Prospero Device off to a secret island. Emma and Steed arrive at the island, and Emma defuses the device just as a hurricane forms over London, while Steed and De Wynter engage in a duel. The film ends with a rousing song entitled “Strange Weather,” which has a tune that must have had two or three notes just different enough from “Goldfinger” to avoid a major lawsuit. Either that or Connery was the only person ever connected to the Bond franchise ever to see this dreadful film.
Early buzz was extremely enthusiastic – the trailer looked like colorful, campy fun, and the chance to see perennial Oscar nominee Fiennes in a light- hearted adventure, Sean Connery as a sneering villain, and Thurman in tight leather jumpsuits, seemed to appeal to both audiences and critics alike. Unfortunately, the final product is a plodding, jumbled mess, completely devoid of excitement and humor, played too seriously to be fun but written and directed too ludicrously to be taken seriously. In an effort to salvage this disaster, the studio chopped the film to bits in editing in the theory that if it can't be good, at least it can be short. To say that the stars have all fared better is to be charitable to the point of Mother Theresa of Calcutta. Thurman's one note, vampy seductress routine is even more forced and irritating than it is in “BATMAN & ROBIN,” and Fiennes seems to be experiencing severe intestinal discomfort throughout, especially when he is called upon to smile (and with this script, who could blame him?). Fairing marginally best is Connery, who seems to be channeling “Flintheart Glongold” from DUCKTALES, and frankly, was so used to making bad films at this point that he only occasionally seems to stop and wonder why he is waving a cane, wearing a kilt, and, I cannot emphasize this enough, COMMANDING VILLAINS DRESSED IN TEDDY BEAR SUITS. If this movie was a horse it would have been shot to put it out of it's misery. Sadly, it was not a horse, and instead it was shot to cause viewers misery.
The people of Mars, including Momar ("Mom Martian") and Kimar ("King Martian"), are terribly concerned that their children Girmar ("Girl Martian") and Bomar ("Boy Martian") are watching too much Earth Televison (Errtel?). The children are enthralled by the broadcasts from Eath, in particular station KID-TV's interview with Santa Claus in his workshop at the North Pole. Consulting the ancient 800-year old Martian sage Chochem (a Yiddish word meaning "genius," because no Christmas movie would be complete without a Jewish joke), they are advised that the children of Mars are growing distracted due to the society's overly rigid structure; from infancy, all their education is fed into their brains through machines and they are not allowed individuality or freedom of thought.
Chochem notes that he had seen this coming "for centuries", and says the only way to help the children is to allow them to have their freedom and be allowed to have fun. To do this, they need a Santa Claus figure, like on Earth. After careful deliberation, the Martian leaders, using all of their logic skills, conclude that the ideal Santa Claus figure would be . . . . SANTA CLAUS. The decision is then made to abduct Santa from Earth and bring him to Mars, stopping off briefly to attack Iraq (okay, I made up that part.)
When they arrive on Mars, Santa and the children build a factory to make toys for the children. However, the evil Voldar (no idea what that is short for) and his assistants, Stobo and Shim, sabotage the factory and change the programming so that it makes the toys incorrectly. Of course, it's up to our heroes to save the day, and to sing the theme song, “Hooray for Santa Claus,” as follows:
S-A-N-T-A, C-L-A-U-S
Hooray for Santy Claus!
You spell it S-A-N-T-A, C-L-A-U-S
Hooray for Santy Claus
Hooray for Santy Claus
Yay yay for Santy Claus
He's fat and round, but jumpin' jiminy
He can climb down any chiminy!
When we hear sleigh bells ring
Our hearts go ting-a-ling
'Cause there'll be presents under the tree
Hooray for Santy Claus!
Hoo-raaaaayy forrr Sannn-tyyyy Clauuuusss!
Hooray for Santy Claus!
SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS is a standard on any list of the worst films of all time, and film scholars love to point out that the young actress playing “Girmar” was none other than a young Pia Zadora, or at least they did back when anyone, anywhere, knew who in the hell that was.
ENTRAPMENT (1999)
For the last time, once nice shot of Catherine Zeta-Jones's butt does not make this a good film. Grow up.
THE THREE MUSKETEERS (2011)
THE THREE MUSKETEERS (2011)
So, the duo has moved on from video games to higher minded fair, and they decided to tackle classic novelist Alexandre Dumas. Unfortunately, they don't just tackle him, they leap on his back and beat him to death with shovels. They also apparently think that his last name is pronounced “Dumbass.”
In Venice, the Three Musketeers, Athos, Porthos and Aramis, with the help of Athos' lover, Milady De Winter (Jovovich), steal airship blueprints made by Leonardo Da Vinci, in a sequence that plays so much like it wants to be in a MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movie that at any moment we expect to see Jovovich rip her latex mask off to reveal the face of Tom Cruise (which would be a marked improvement.). However, they are betrayed by Milady, who gives the blueprints to the Duke Of Buckingham, played by Orlando Bloom, who seems to have been told to play the character “sort of like a gay record producer.” When the Musketeers return home, Cardinal Richelieu forces them to disband to pay for their shame.
One year later, the young D'Artagnan (Logan Lerrman) leaves Gascony in hopes of becoming a Musketeer, like Chris O'Donnell before him, but he is mortified to discover that the Musketeers no longer exist, and at press time there are no plans for a reunion tour. It isn't long before D'Artagnan challenges the villainous Captain Rochefort to a duel, and along the way finds himself scheduling duels with Athos (Matthew MacFadyen), Porthos (Ray Stevenson) and Aramis (Luke Evans.) all for the same afternoon. Sound familiar? Sounds like a fairly typical adaptation of Dumas, right?
Well, we can't have that.
Before long, the movie seems to say “Book? What book?”and D'Artagnan and his new found friends are off to stop an evil scheme by the Cardinal and Buckingham, which, for reasons that I am still trying to figure out, involve giant airships just like the one Teddy Ruxpin used to ride on with Grubby and Professor Newton Gimmick, except that these come equipped with flamethrowers and steam punk Howitzers (for those of you who don't know, steam punk is a term used in popular fiction to justify adding stupid, anachronistic machines into stories where they don't belong.). The majority of the action packed final third takes place aboard these airships, which is refreshing, because the last thing we want when we go to see a version of “THREE MUSKETEERS” is a lot of sword fighting.
The performances range from passable (MacFadyen, Stevenson and Evans, capable actors who have given memorable performances in better films, but are given little to do here), to awkward (Lerrman, who is painfully out of place as the lone American trying to pass himself off as French in a cast full of Brits trying to pass themselves off as French), to laugh out loud terrible (Jovovich – is there really any need to say more? - and Orlando Bloom, who has become fashionable to bash, but honestly is not without talent, and showed in the “THE LORD OF THE RINGS” and “PIRATES OF THE CARRIBBEAN” that he could fight like a modern day Errol Flynn. Here he is reduced to prancing around like a fop, doing an a vague, unidentifiable accent (the Duke of Buckingham can't be British, after all – the French are British!) and delivering lines such as “Athos, as I recall, the last time we met you were down on your knees as well.” But the most jaw dropping performance comes from Oscar winner Christophe Waltz (“Inglorious Basterds”) as Richelieu. Waltz is clearly very aware that the material is beneath contempt, and that he is there to add prestige and pick up a fat paycheck, and proves once again to be a major addition to the Hollywood elite by, in only a few years time, giving up and churning out the same kind of half hearted, “eh, you still like me because I was good in that one movie you liked” style of utterly lifeless performance that it took Robert De Niro decades to perfect.
The only consent Anderson made to restraint was leaving the “D” out of the title following the word “Three,” and in truth, the 3D is actually pretty good, and the only reason to watch the film. But in an age when everything is made in 3D, this is hardly a selling point. If you want a Three Musketeers that leaves you satisfied, buy a candy bar.
So that's my list of Turkeys, and if you haven't seen any of these films, then you truly have something to be thankful for this year.
So that's my list of Turkeys, and if you haven't seen any of these films, then you truly have something to be thankful for this year.
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