There are some movies that are just so bad that you will never forget them. No matter how much you try.
Matt and I count these among some of the worst movies we have ever seen. In no particular order.
Cool World
I bet that they though after the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit that doing the same thing, only edgier, was a great idea. Not so much.
Highlander II
Highlander was great. Then they negated everything the first movie was about by making them all aliens. ALIENS! This movie was so bad, part III pretended part II never happened. That bad.
Shark Boy and Lava Girl
My kids made me see it some years back. I will never forgive them for that 90 mins. Even worse, it introduced Taylor Lautner who has the dubious distinction of being in another horrible movie…
Twilight Part II
Wow. I could not believe how bad this movie was. Put on a shirt, jerk. Vampires need killin’, not understanding. Just bad.
M. Night Double Feature: The Happening & Lady in the Water.
After some great movies and great success, M. Night fired the lady who used to tell him no. The Happening was so bad I actually called Matt from the theater to tell him how bad it was. I usually like Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel, but the acting was horrendous.
I imagine M. Night’s direction went something like this. “Zooey, act scared. Make your eyes bigger!! No bigger.” “Zooey, act angry. Make your eyes bigger!! No bigger.” “Zooey, act happy. Make your eyes bigger!! No bigger.”
“Mark, just stand there and look blank. No! Blanker!”
Side Out with C. Thomas Howell.
Actually, make that any C. Thomas Howell movie since the Hitcher. Actually make that any C. Thomas Howell movie or Rutger Hauer movie since the Hitcher. Except for Batman Begins. We will give Rugter a pass on that one.
What movies do you love to hate and why?
November 16, 2011 at 1:22 pm
G-Force. I watched it with my guinea pig because I'm awesome like that and probably very special mentally. Let's just say she died shortly thereafter.
The problem with kids movies nowadays is that they don't follow linear, streamlined plots. Editing is an art quickly going out of style. They try to do too much and can't adequately develop all the subplots.
November 16, 2011 at 1:28 pm
Howard the Duck for the win. You can end the competition now. I don't have words for how awful and creepy it was to see a duck try to get romantic with Lea Thompson. And it was rated PG!
First runner up prize for that one with Tom Green where he had sausages hanging on strings and played them like a piano.
November 16, 2011 at 2:01 pm
One summer I sat through, in consecutive weeks, Batman and Robin, Jurassic Park 2, and Con Air. I should have received a Purple Heart after that, because those are three of the worst movies ever made. The third installment of Pirates of the Caribbean was also up there, and didn't help to have teenage girls sitting behind us squealing every time Johnny Depp appeared on camera.
November 16, 2011 at 2:23 pm
With the exception of Alan Rickman, "Robin Hood: Prince of Theives". Oh, and anything else with Kevin Costner.
November 16, 2011 at 2:53 pm
X-men. All of them. They stink. I read the comics back when you knew you were a nerd for reading them, but you read them anyway. Mainstreaming nerdiness is not cool, it's just pretending nerdy isn't what it is, nerdy. Yes I still went to them, but I've come to an understanding that that was wrong.
Xanadu. Great music. The Olivia Newton John fresh from Grease muse helps Gene Kelly start a roller skating night club in his geriatric years. Yes I saw it instead of Raiders of the Lost Arc, proving my innate nerdiness. See above.
I'd love to tell you another movie I haven't watched and possibly own on DVD, like the Last Unicorn, but you've covered Shark Boy and I'm certain all parents subjected to it, even if it was free, want their money back or credit for time served in purgatory.
Any New Generation Star Trek other than First Contact, but Star Trek Nemesis deserves singling out as the cause of Patrick Stewart's having his legs broken with a wrench from Clue –yes I saw it, it stinked, causing him to go on and become the afforementined Professor X of the X-men movies. These flicks bum the nerd in me and others like me, because we wanted to enjoy them, and they're just not watchable.
Pirates of the Carribean II –makes you really mad the rum is always gone.
November 16, 2011 at 3:39 pm
Legion. I poop on Legion.
But American Beauty comes in a close second. Nothing like a movie in which every character is repulsive and degenerate, yet the film gets showered with accolades from Hollywood because, gosh, isn't everybody secretly repulsive and degenerate on the inside?
November 16, 2011 at 4:18 pm
I've never seen the movie- but the youtube clips of Nicholas Cage's wicker man look like the movie is the world's worst
November 16, 2011 at 4:26 pm
I am ashamed to say, that in my former pagan life, I hung out with a crowd that watched (ONLY) countless horror films. I sat through them but only thought a handful were okay. This genre has "wost movies" all over it. The worst I recall was something called "B….S…..F…". Among all the disgusting purposely violent, abhorrent crud, this was the worst! Yuch. (I went back and deleted the name – that's how bad this movie was. I don't want the curious to find it.)
Also SUPERMAN 3, and JAWS 3.
BTW, Plan 9 From Outer Space was GREAT! Paper plate flying saucers and the foam mattress "ground" kicking up when a character falls…hard to duplicate those awesome special effects.
November 16, 2011 at 4:30 pm
@Maggie: I hope you asked for your money back. Like anything else if it is not what you want get your money back and send Hollywood a message.
November 16, 2011 at 5:56 pm
"Plan 9" and "Destination Mars" are neck and neck, except that I don't know if a movie that was intended to be awful should count. In which case, I have to say, based on what I saw in the short number of minutes that we watched before we had to turn it off, "Black Swan" goes to the top of my list.
November 16, 2011 at 6:43 pm
Aw, come on, Fr. Erik. How about every Kevin Costner movie except Silverado? John Cleese as an evil sheriff? Extra points for Linda Hunt trying to look coy?
November 16, 2011 at 6:57 pm
The second and third Pirates of the Caribbean movies were pretty awful. Not as awful as the movie called (I think) Pirates! which was a rock version of Pirates of Penzance, with some of the Gilbert & Sullivan in it to sneer at. What is the point?? Jurassic Park. Honeymoon in Vegas And possibly the worst movie I have ever seen: the recent Green Hornet. Talk about idiotic. Brit Reed was an annoying person that in any normal movie would have some sort or epiphany and become a good person, but he didn't. And Cato was a super genius content to be his chauffer. Wha???? Plus people were slaughtered right and left but not in a fantasy, "they don't matter because this isn't real" way.
Gail Finke
November 16, 2011 at 6:59 pm
I forgot The Name of the Rose. Like Jurassic Park, it MISSED THE WHOLE POINT OF THE BOOK. But the Green Hornet was still worse. Excruciating. Gail Finke
November 16, 2011 at 8:03 pm
"The Tree of Life" with Brad Pitt. Hands down, the worst movie ever!
November 16, 2011 at 11:32 pm
Oh gawd, I think Pat nailed it. "Cool World" is the worst movie I've ever had the misfortune of watching. Almost unbelievably bad, but at least I saw it on TV and only wasted about half an hour of my life on it.
Unfortunately, I can't say the same about the first "Hulk" movie (the one with Erick Bana). Everything about that movie sucked big time, but the worst was that I actually paid to see it at the movie theater. Not only that, but I sat through the whole thing instead of walking out after the first hour, so I actually wasted over 2 hours of my precious time plus several dollars on this stinker.
"Pirates of the Caribbean" 2 and 3 were so crappy that I just pretend they don't exist at all. Same for the Star Wars "prequels", to me, they're nothing but badly-written fanfiction that should never have been filmed.
And don't get me started on "Jurassic Park 2". I don't remember another movie were I was actually hoping, and I mean REALLY hoping that the T-Rex would just rip that annoying female protagonist to bloody shreds. Now that would have been a nice scene to watch! 🙂
November 16, 2011 at 11:44 pm
In general:
Any "Director's Cut" version especially one put together by someone who is not the director of the movie (e.g. Amadeus). Scenes were cut for a reason.
Any movie involving Quentin Tarantino.
Any Nicolas Cage movie except Raising Arizona.
Any movie with Cher.
Any movie that needs to be re-edited and re-released to make it slightly more intelligible (Dune, Dune Director's Cut, Dune TV Version, et al) or that needs a vocabulary sheet to understand what is going on (Dune as released in theaters in 1984).
Anything that Michael Moore produces.
November 17, 2011 at 12:33 am
Things to do in Denver … When You're Dead. In our defense, it was only listed in the paper by the first part. We left about 5 – 10 minutes into it.
Starship Troopers is a close second. The book is a great read, the movie sucks.
November 17, 2011 at 3:11 am
The Star Wars prequels. Have those been mentioned or did you all successfully wiped their existence from your memory?
Movies I couldn't make it to the end of:
Wagon's East
The Babe (John Goodman)
Anchor Man
Once Upon a Time in Mexico (1/2 hour in we wanted everyone to die)
Scream (was this supposed to be a comedy?)
The Break Up
November 17, 2011 at 3:34 am
OK: Bird on a Wire (Goldie Hawn and Mel Gibson), Waterworld (Kevin Costner): AWFUL!!!!! Those are 4 hours of my life I will never get back.
Here's what I have to say about Kevin Costner: When you do your first movie and then they cut you out of the whole thing (except for where you're in the coffin) and spend the rest of the movie talking about you, you are probably not a good actor. Just sayin'.
November 17, 2011 at 3:36 am
And Natural Born Killers. When I first saw it I was like, "Wow, that's so deep." Then I started thinking about it. It's about as deep as a bottle cap.