Most disappointing movie

[Abdul Alhazred]

Revenge of the Nerds.

I was for one thing expecting some real revenge involving blood, not some non-football-player callow youths finally getting laid and playing some lame rock guitar.

What a disappoinment! :p

Furthermore, callow youths cannot truly qualify as nerds. Not even if all their classmates call them that. To be a true nerd you have to still be that way at the age of 45.

Real revenge of the nerds is like this:

The characters are 45 year old nerd (ON) to poor zhlub (PZ), in some back alley.

ON: Remember me? (pulls knife)

PZ: No. Leave me alone.

ON: You went to high school with me. And now I'm going to kill you.

PZ: You're crazy, leave me alone! (tries to run away, but is kicked in the crotch by ON, lies on the ground).

ON: You called me a doofus in front of the girls and they laughed at me. I decided back then that you had to die! (places foot gently on PZ's neck).

Fill in the rest. :p

[Ian Osborne]

Nightfall. Allegedly based on the Issac Asimov classic sci-fi tale, it's so boring I failed to finish watching it on each of the three times I attempted it. No characterisation, no plot and no connection with the Asimov tale that I could make out.

[Flame]

Crash.

I actually walked out of the cinema halfway through. First time i've ever done that and I haven't since.

Crap movie about people getting off by watching car crashes - I'm not sure how you could make this a good movie subject, but they failed to even try it seemed.

Toni

[a_unique_person]

That would have to be Spaceballs. I really like a lot of his earlier films. "history of the world" was the start of the slippery slope, with Spaceballs he hit rock bottom. The trailer had all the funny jokes, there weren't any more.

[LuxFerum]

The NeverEnding Story :D

[Flame]

Originally posted by LuxFerum
The NeverEnding Story :D

You shouldn't let your (necessary) brutality from the 'thread that won't die' override into other threads.
That was just mean.


:o not that I watch the neverending story whenever it comes on tv or anything.



shouldn't this be over in the entertainment forum?

[Marc]

Two that were very disapointing to me were Hotel New Hampshire and World According to Garp.

In both cases they were marketed as comedy films. Robin Williams making a silly comment after a plane hits a house? A bear riding a motorcycle through a large dinner party? Yup, looks like they are going for the laughs there.

Then when I actually saw the films... child suicide, grandpa dying on christmas morning, kid getting killed because of a stupid accident while mom was having an affair. Yeesh!!

[smalltlalk_2k]

The batman movies especially the Batman and Robin one. I've always been a fan of the Batman comics and graphic novels, his dark side mixed with his tremendous sence of justice just hits the mark with me. But the movies were horrible the first two weren't that bad but the last one with George Clooney was probably one of the worst movies I have ever seen.

[smalltlalk_2k]

Oh and I forgot to add. Just about any film with the actor Michael Pare. I remember when I was in the Air Force my buddies and I would stay up late drinking and watch cheesy Michael Pare movies on HBO. It seems during the 92-94 years that HBO really was in love with this guy.

[HarryKeogh]

godfather part 3

why did they make this?

[Brown]

"Congo" was an entertaining book and could have made a good movie. Could have, but didn't. Yuck. The story was butchered and all of the actors turned in sub-par performances. Tim Curry and Ernie Hudson in particular each deserved a hard kick in the pants for their performances.

[Thanz]

Originally posted by Flame
Crash.

I actually walked out of the cinema halfway through. First time i've ever done that and I haven't since.

Crap movie about people getting off by watching car crashes - I'm not sure how you could make this a good movie subject, but they failed to even try it seemed.

Well, your first mistake was assuming that it would be a movie. It was quite obviously a film, a study of the human condition blah blah blah and any entertainment value is strictly coincidental.

As for disappointing movies, I can't believe that we have got to double digits in replies and still no mentions of the Star Wars prequels. Very disappointing. WTF are C3-PO and R2D2 doing int these movies? Argh.

[LuxFerum]

Originally posted by Thanz
As for disappointing movies, I can't believe that we have got to double digits in replies and still no mentions of the Star Wars prequels. Very disappointing. WTF are C3-PO and R2D2 doing int these movies? Argh.
Those characters are quite common in a lot of movies.

I like to call them as " tension breakers".

They appear every time that the bad mood in the movie is too long. Then they show up, make some funny stuff, and the spectator can relief the stress. Which make the movie more tolerable.

and then profit.:D

[alfaniner]

Originally posted by Ian Osborne
Nightfall. Allegedly based on the Issac Asimov classic sci-fi tale, it's so boring I failed to finish watching it on each of the three times I attempted it. No characterisation, no plot and no connection with the Asimov tale that I could make out.

That's the only one where I was literally bored to tears.

[Glory]

Men In Black

I was really looking forward to it and it just did nothing for me. It was predictable, the jokes weren't funny and it felt like they had cut half the story to bring it in at under 100 minutes. I wish Sonnenfeld had stuck to being a camera man. He was brilliant at that but wow is he a bad director.

Glory

[hgc]

Originally posted by Marc
Two that were very disapointing to me were Hotel New Hampshire and World According to Garp.

In both cases they were marketed as comedy films. Robin Williams making a silly comment after a plane hits a house? A bear riding a motorcycle through a large dinner party? Yup, looks like they are going for the laughs there.

Then when I actually saw the films... child suicide, grandpa dying on christmas morning, kid getting killed because of a stupid accident while mom was having an affair. Yeesh!! Seems you have a problem with John Irving, author of those 2 books.

How about scene in Hotel New Hampshire where Wilfred Brimley (right character?) knocks out a wall panel with a barbell, and a stuffed, dead dog pops out? That's funny stuff.

[hgc]

I'm putting all you "Jacob's Ladder" fans on notice. That movie was a vomitous pile of crap. Bring it on.

[Glory]

Originally posted by hgc
Seems you have a problem with John Irving, author of those 2 books.

How about scene in Hotel New Hampshire where Wilfred Brimley (right character?) knocks out a wall panel with a barbell, and a stuffed, dead dog pops out? That's funny stuff.

Those movies bear little resemblance to the the books on which they were based. Aside from that, the marketing of the films was the problem. Irving's stuff is funny but it isn't comic. No one in Hollywood knows how to market films that don't fit neatly into the boxes they create in the market place. Invariably they want to sell dramas by playing up the funny parts and comedies by playing up the pathos. They want to make the audience think that "My Dinner with Andre" is a rip roaring frolick.

Glory

[shecky]

Many big movies of the last several years. Titanic. Leaving Las Vegas, Gladiator, Moulin Rouge, a few I forget...

[Thanz]

Originally posted by LuxFerum

Those characters are quite common in a lot of movies.

I like to call them as " tension breakers".

They appear every time that the bad mood in the movie is too long. Then they show up, make some funny stuff, and the spectator can relief the stress. Which make the movie more tolerable.

and then profit.:D
I have no problem with the type of character - the tension breaker or comic relief. I have a problem with these two specific characters being in the movie. It makes no sense from a continuity standpoint. Darth Vader made C3P0? R2D2 with jets? Doesn't it make more sense to have new tension breakers (I know, Jar Jar was supposed to be this) rather than some need to tie it ALL in to the other 3 movies?

Why do we need to go to Tatooine all the time? Why do we hide Darth Vader's son on Darth Vader's home world with Darth Vader's family, at a location that he has been to before?

Why is Boba Fett's dad the clone for all of the storm troopers? How do the Storm Troopers go from a super soldier army to bumbling fools in the other movies?

I just feel that too much time was spent trying to tie in all of the movies (dickens-style, it seems) that it detracted from the movies. I now here that Chewbacca makes an appearance in the third movie. Lord help us all.

[Rosencrantz]

I agree with Thanz. In the original trilogy, C-3P0 and R2-D2 were the Fools, the narrator characters who were in a sense telling the story, because almost everything happened from their point of view. They were usually present, in each divergent thread. This was brilliant. Their characters didn't develop, but they didn't need to because they were droids. Their purpose was comic relief, yes, but also to give the audience an ally, a position of simple ignorance in which to place themselves in this unfamiliar universe and safely get to know the other characters.

In the prequels, this is rarely the case. They don't come into the story until most of the way through the first movie, and then seem to ride along with the characters for no good reason, even in ways that are detrimental to the story (why would Anakin and Padme bring an engineering droid with them when posing as a traveling couple?) Does this possibly mean Lucas actually didn't intend the droids to serve that role in the first movies, that he has inexplicably decided to remove this clever story device from the later movies, or that it wasn't his idea in the first place but that someone convinced him to do it and was unable to convince him again?

Or perhaps Lucas now believes that all of his audience is already familiar with his universe, so they want familiar characters to ride on rather than any sort of neutral chorus characters. I still think it causes major damage to the story, though. C-3P0 and R2-D2 are not common, everymen characters any more. In the first few minutes of Star Wars, when Darth Vader's star destroyer attacks Leia's ship, the two insignificant droids she entrusts with her desperate mission to Obi-Wan Kenobi cannot be coincidental.

I find all this very depressing. As a kid, I remember feeling like in Star Wars that anyone could become a hero. Now it seems like you can only be a hero if your father was the hero, or you somehow knew the hero's father. Think The Force is with you? Want to be a Jedi? Too bad kid, you just don't have the midichlorions. Why don't you try being a Musician instead?

When are they going to tie Han Solo and Lando Calrissian back into the story? So far they seem like the only major characters who haven't been foreshadowed in the prequels. Let me guess: Han Solo's father was an important general in the climactic "Attack of the Clones," and in Episode 3, Lando's father buys the cloning facility and turns it into a mining colony called Cloud City.

If they're bringing in Chewbacca, what about Chewbacca's father Itchy? And could they bring back Art Carney to reprise his role as the junk dealer who smuggles information to their home planet on Lifeday? And what about Jefferson Starship?

I think I better end this rant. I could go on about Star Wars prequels for far too long.

I have to say that the most disappointing movie, in my memory, was Neverending Story 2. I don't know what everyone's talking about regarding the first one (I haven't gotten around to slogging my way through the thread that won't die), but it only covered half the story of the book, and I had hoped the second one would start on the second half, all the incredibly good stuff they cut. But no, it was really horrible, and I think it's one of the only movies I ever got up and walked out of.

[Hexxenhammer]

Originally posted by Rosencrantz

If they're bringing in Chewbacca, what about Chewbacca's father Itchy? And could they bring back Art Carney to reprise his role as the junk dealer who smuggles information to their home planet on Lifeday? And what about Jefferson Starship?


You're truly showing your Star Wars geek stripes here Rosencrantz. I'm also one of the elite with a copy of the Star Wars Holiday Special.

The Boba Fett cartoon is cool. But they should have known he was evil when he kept hitting his sea serpent.

[Rosencrantz]

Originally posted by Hexxenhammer
You're truly showing your Star Wars geek stripes here Rosencrantz. I'm also one of the elite with a copy of the Star Wars Holiday Special.Hee hee. I love the commercials, too. Is it just me, or were commercials incredibly long back then?

Originally posted by Hexxenhammer
The Boba Fett cartoon is cool. But they should have known he was evil when he kept hitting his sea serpent. See, I don't get why people keep saying he has this streak of goodness and love of order. He strikes me as a mercenary through and through. When does he ever behave honorably? Is that something out of one of the books I haven't read or something? Back before the authors knew that Darth Vader was Luke's father?

[Glory]

George Lucas has one purpose in mind when it comes to making Star Wars movies. They serve as commercials for his real money makers, ILM and Lucas Arts and whatever groovy sound process he's touting. The prequels are basically product reels which show off what they can do at the ranch this week . Story is thrown together and he figures he better put in someone fammilliar because audiences like that.

Glory

[epepke]

Originally posted by Glory
George Lucas has one purpose in mind when it comes to making Star Wars movies. They serve as commercials for his real money makers, ILM and Lucas Arts and whatever groovy sound process he's touting. The prequels are basically product reels which show off what they can do at the ranch this week . Story is thrown together and he figures he better put in someone fammilliar because audiences like that.


I think George Lucas went the way of Alfred Hitchcock.

Hitchcock made some really, really good films. However, Francois Truffaut and a bunch of other Frenchmen with names that sounded like chocolate fixated on him and came up with the auteur theory. Unfortunately, Hitchcock seemed to have bought it and started making a lot of crappy films.

Star Wars was great. It was fresh and simple, and the hairdos were better than Logan's Run. I may be the only person on the planet who remembers the interview with him at the time wherein he said that he basically made it because the money from THX-1138 was running out and he wanted to avoid having to get a job. Also where it pleased him that people were comparing it to westerns, which it was.

All of a sudden, Joseph Campbell siezes upon it and starts teaching it in classes, and then I think that Lucas bought the deal and imagined that he had an overaching mythology in mind. So we got The Empire Strikes Back, a solid soap opera and doubtless a big surprise to the goyim who didn't know that Vader was strikingly similar to the Yiddish word for father. And then the third in the installment, cheesy perhaps, but with a valid concept of the primitive overwhelming the technologically superior. Hundreds of millions of dollars of merchandising later, and nothing much but some CG and a weenie blaster shot to make Han Solo look like a more vanilla character, and we get Episode I, which seems like little but a way to sell more toys and some bad pseudoscience from a screenwriter who had obviously read about mitochondria but who could not remember how to spell it. Episode II at least had some nice Metropolis-like elements but still wasn't enough to remove the bad taste of Episode I. And Yoda jumping around like a banshee lacked subtlety.</p>

[JAR]

My list:

Kingpin
Rob Roy

[SteveW]

Originally posted by epepke


I think George Lucas went the way of Alfred Hitchcock.

Hitchcock made some really, really good films. However, Francois Truffaut and a bunch of other Frenchmen with names that sounded like chocolate fixated on him and came up with the auteur theory. Unfortunately, Hitchcock seemed to have bought it and started making a lot of crappy films.


</p>


Ummmm, could you be a little more specific as to which of Hitchcock's films were "crappy?" I can't think of one that would fit that description. Although Logan's Run certainly does.

[Mr Manifesto]

I think Lucas has lost the plot. I think he only had it by a thread with Return of the Jedi (You know someone's running out of ideas when the same Evil Behemoth (Death Star) is recycled- couldn't he come up with any other kind of 'secret weapon'?). Now he doesn't have it at all. He's still fixated on the concept of installations with a single weak spot that blows the whole place to bits (witness witless Anakin's destruction of the orbiting platform in Phantom Menace from Beyond... or whatever...). Attack of the Killer Clones was simply petulant.

He needs to give the franchise over to people with fresh ideas. I was about to suggest Ang Lee but... speaking of disappointments... Incredible Hulk, anyone?

[thrombus29]

First off, I loved Crash, thought it did justice to the book, but the message that it is trying to send comes through a lot more muddelled.

I Kinda liked Garp and Hotel New Hampshire because I had read the books and knew what to expect. I like John Irving, which is why the movie version of A Prayer For Owen Meany (Simon Birch) is the most dissapointing, crappyist, badly done piece of poop that has ever pollouted the world. That movie took top ranks after Back to The Future II held the spot for many, many years.

[Glory]

Originally posted by thrombus29
First off, I loved Crash, thought it did justice to the book, but the message that it is trying to send comes through a lot more muddelled.

I Kinda liked Garp and Hotel New Hampshire because I had read the books and knew what to expect. I like John Irving, which is why the movie version of A Prayer For Owen Meany (Simon Birch) is the most dissapointing, crappyist, badly done piece of poop that has ever pollouted the world. That movie took top ranks after Back to The Future II held the spot for many, many years.

I like Irving as well which was why I steadfastly avoided A Prayer For Owen Meany. I could see quite well from the ads what they had done to it.

Glory

[epepke]

Originally posted by SteveW
Ummmm, could you be a little more specific as to which of Hitchcock's films were "crappy?"

Topaz, Family Plot, to some extent Frenzy, and even The Birds.

[aerosolben]

Originally posted by LuxFerum

Those characters are quite common in a lot of movies.

I like to call them as " tension breakers".


"Gimmick" is the appropriate technical term. They are a device used by filmmakers who are unable to get their story to stand on its own merits, and so bring in characters completely unrelated to it to engage the audience with throw-away gags.

Rosencrantz's analysis is spot-on, too. Lucas needs to realize he can neither write nor direct, and stick to production.

[jj]

There's always "Plan 9 from outer space" but I have a new one.

I was, thanks to international travel, given the joy and delight of watching "Charlie's Angels 2, Full Throttle".

THREE (*&(**( TIMES in two flights

Ok, it stinks, I guess you'd figured that out already from the name of the thread, but oh how it stinks.

It wants to be (choose at least 1)

Detective Story
Love Story
Superhero Story
Soft Porn

and what does it get right?

NOTHING AT ALL

It's almost as bad as "The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart". Now THAT just s****d, too.

Do I have to pick only one? Awww...

[Zep]

Don't hold back, jj! Tell us what you REALLY think! :)

And I thought you said you slept most of the way here and back. I'm surprised ANYONE could actually stay awake to watch that sort of film. Then again, maybe that's what it's supposed to do - anaesthetise the passengers. My flight-attendant relatives tell me that sleeping passengers are the easiest to manage...

[jj]

Originally posted by Zep
Don't hold back, jj! Tell us what you REALLY think! :)

Sorry, against the rules here.

And I thought you said you slept most of the way here and back.

Slept some, in those torture-chairs they call 'airline seats' that are 6" too short to support my head and shoulders, have no back support,

Oh never mind. You know what I mean.
I'm surprised ANYONE could actually stay awake to watch that sort of film. Then again, maybe that's what it's supposed to do - anaesthetise the passengers. My flight-attendant relatives tell me that sleeping passengers are the easiest to manage...
I was two rows behind the (*&(*&*( screen. It was BRIGHT. They kept flashing Lucy Liu and Ms. Diaz at me. But then they'd switch to Drew Barrymore. GAH! Sadists.

[epepke]

Probably because I'm a Dickhead, Minority Report was one of the most disappointing movies in recent years. The original story by Dick had plenty of tension, intrigue, and plot twists to make it a decent movie, but almost none of them were used. The tension in the movie was "will Tom Cruise get away," whereas in the short story, it was the very continued existence of the society built around Precrime.

[Candace]

Originally posted by hgc
I'm putting all you "Jacob's Ladder" fans on notice. That movie was a vomitous pile of crap. Bring it on.

How DARE you! Vomitous piles of crap everywhere are WEEPING at your harsh and undeserved comparision right now!

What did a vomitous pile of crap ever do to you?!



The only movie worse than this one was Flatliners. Why won't these people realize that if you make a movie where the whole point is to care if the characters come back from the dead, you should be ABLE to care about the characters?

[hgc]

Originally posted by SteveW

Ummmm, could you be a little more specific as to which of Hitchcock's films were "crappy?"

Originally posted by epepke


Topaz, Family Plot, to some extent Frenzy, and even The Birds. Don't forget the lementable Torn Curtain. It's like Topaz, with extra stink on top.

What went wrong with Hitch? I think he didn't know how to update himself. Not only were his characterizations relentlessly old-fashioned, but his look-and-feel, whatever that is, didn't fit in a modern setting. There was no way that the aesthetic that worked so well in with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief was going to fly with Paul Newman and Julie Andrews in the 60's. I don't know how to make this more tangible, but the times overtook Hitch and left him in the dust.

[hgc]

Originally posted by Candace


How DARE you! Vomitous piles of crap everywhere are WEEPING at your harsh and undeserved comparision right now!

What did a vomitous pile of crap ever do to you?!



The only movie worse than this one was Flatliners. Why won't these people realize that if you make a movie where the whole point is to care if the characters come back from the dead, you should be ABLE to care about the characters? Here I am spoiling for a fight on "Jacob's Ladder," and it comes from the wrong direction. Alas, my apologies to vomitous piles of crap.

[Glory]

Originally posted by hgc


Don't forget the lementable Torn Curtain. It's like Topaz, with extra stink on top.

What went wrong with Hitch? I think he didn't know how to update himself. Not only were his characterizations relentlessly old-fashioned, but his look-and-feel, whatever that is, didn't fit in a modern setting. There was no way that the aesthetic that worked so well in with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief was going to fly with Paul Newman and Julie Andrews in the 60's. I don't know how to make this more tangible, but the times overtook Hitch and left him in the dust.

I haven't seen Topaz but Torn Curtain is recognized as one HItchcocks more awkward pieces. He never liked using either Newman or Andrews. They were each pushed on him by the studio. Neither actor was particularly suited to the characters or to the style of the picture. They would have been much more at home in "The Trouble With Harry" though I quite like that one as it is. I really liked Shirley Mac Laine when she was young.

Glory

[epepke]

Originally posted by hgc
There was no way that the aesthetic that worked so well in with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief was going to fly with Paul Newman and Julie Andrews in the 60's.

Good point, and yet I don't know--North by Northwest seems to me in some way I can't explain far less dated than Frenzy. I think that in the latter he may have been trying too hard to update himself.

Also good point on Torn Curtain. But, like Topaz, I think that a lot of the problems were with things that he often got right but just didn't. At his best, Hitchcock was almost laconic. Topaz relied far too heavily on a plethora of false-suspense subplots that seemed to get glossed over later with dialogue.

I think that Hitchcock at his best was so very good that people tend to gloss over the times when he, well, wasn't. Psycho, for example, has what is probably the worst ending in the history of film. It's so bad that people block it out and don't even remember it existed. I also think that, maybe, some wise televisors decided to cut it. For those who have so forgotten, after the insanely great "Mother" scene, there's a good two reels of some dipweed spouting pseudo-Freudian gibberish in court. What's that supposed to tell us? That Norman was nuts? Think we already figured that out?

[hgc]

Originally posted by Glory


I haven't seen Topaz but Torn Curtain is recognized as one HItchcocks more awkward pieces. He never liked using either Newman or Andrews. They were each pushed on him by the studio. Neither actor was particularly suited to the characters or to the style of the picture. They would have been much more at home in "The Trouble With Harry" though I quite like that one as it is. I really liked Shirley Mac Laine when she was young.

Glory Agreed on "The Trouble with Harry." Great cast also includes John Forsythe, Edmund Gwen, Mildred Natwick and Jerry Mathers.

[hgc]

Originally posted by epepke


Good point, and yet I don't know--North by Northwest seems to me in some way I can't explain far less dated than Frenzy. I think that in the latter he may have been trying too hard to update himself.

...Definitely. I think I didn't make myself clear. It's Hitch's later films that are dated, not his mid-career ones. The films of the 40's and 50's are almost all great to watch today. What happened in his later career is he didn't know how to make current movies. Hence they come off as stilted, stuffy, uncompelling, unentertaining, etc.

Now his films of the 30's -- there's a different problem. Many of them are just a little too shabby.

[boooeee]

Originally Posted By Rosencrantz
Hee hee. I love the commercials, too. Is it just me, or were commercials incredibly long back then?
Not nearly as long as the Holiday Special itself seemed to be. Watched the bootleg taped cop at a friend's house around the holidyas. I swear that thing clocked in just shy of six hours. Although there is something about unsubtitled Wookie-speak that makes time crawl.

If I ever have the chance to meet Harrison Ford, I know exactly what I'm going to say to him : "Happy Lifeday, pal".

The commercials were awesome, though. My favorite was some bizarre promo for the Garment Worker's Union. Apparently they had unionized for the right to make really ugly shades of plaid, and wear them on their commercials.

[kittynh]

"Tuck Everlasting" a favorite of the young crowd (4th-7th grade).

Disney totally screwed up that movie. The kids were so excited to see it. Come on disney, this was a lot of kids "Harry Potter"

[Marc]

Originally posted by kittynh
"Tuck Everlasting" a favorite of the young crowd (4th-7th grade).

Disney totally screwed up that movie. The kids were so excited to see it. Come on disney, this was a lot of kids "Harry Potter"

When Disney got the rights to all of Miyazaki's works in the US it made a lot of anime fans nervouse. His stuff is excellent!! We were all scared they would be Disneyized, but they did a good job with what I saw. They just burried it all. Princess Mononoke, which outdid Titanic in Japan, was only released in 50 theaters in the US, none of them in New England. Then in an extended release it was finally available in a shoebox theater in this state. Not quite the respect this quality film deserves.