Bad movie night is the best night
Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2019 2:46 pm
It started with Mystery Science Theater 3000 - I had always wanted to get into that show - and it snowballed from there. Now every other Friday night is bad movie night. We watch the refuse from the bottom of the refuse pile, where the movies are much less movie than dripping compost.
And it's amazing. Two of my kids, aged 13 and 19, usually finish watching with me. My wife often doesn't make it through. And we laugh, and laugh, and laugh... as long as the movie isn't boring. That's the cardinal sin of film, one of the few things that can make a movie completely unwatchable.
Weirdly, we learn a lot about storytelling. We also learn who to blame when a movie goes wrong, and who to praise when everything comes together.
I think I'll start posting reviews here. Here's what we've watched so far, in no particular order. Warning: it's an embarrassing number of bad movies.
What are your favorite awful movies?
The Wizard. "I love to Power Glove. It's so bad." So is this movie-length Nintendo commercial.
Superman III. Christopher Reeve, what happened? Richard Pryor, why? Half-cent techno-thievery! Missiles! Evil robots! Delightfully strange.
Superman IV. Gene Hackman is the best. Budget issues. Tiny Milton Keynes + a fire hydrant = New York.
Mac and Me. McDonald's-Coke love child and E.T. ripoff. Drinking out of the dirt with a straw. Intermission dance number set at McDonald's. Cops blow up a grocery store by shooting it. A must-see unwitting commentary on mindless commercialism.
Star Trek V. Nichelle Nichols does a sexy fan dance. They meet God, I guess. William Shatner writes a love letter to himself and calls it a movie.
Inspector Gadget. Ferris Bueller meets Robocop. Pretty good until the surgery, then... dumb.
Super Mario Bros. Not bad for a kids' show. As an adult... dumb.
The Care Bears Movie. Not bad for a kids' show. As an adult... creepy as hell.
Krull. A space opera not set in space. A Chosen One, a girlfriend kidnapped for her human uterus, a changeling, a giant spider, and an unbeatable Chosen One fantasy weapon that does nothing. Almost everyone dies. Good times.
Leonard Part 6. Opens with Bill Cosby leaping from the roof of an exploding factory on an ostrich. All you need to know.
Hercules in New York. Hercules banished from Olympus = Arnold Schwarzenegger banished from Central Park. Thunder bolt = bent rebar. Watch Arnie beat up a man in a bear costume, just because.
House II: The Second Story. Bill Maher plays an ass. Nothing else makes sense. The doggerpillar is cute.
The Pagemaster. Macaulay Culkin learns the fun of reading from sad cartoons. Wastes a perfectly good Christopher Lloyd.
Cars 2. OMG why.
Cop and a Half. Cute little kid + crusty Burt Reynolds = "comedy" buddy cop show. Kid legit pees on Burt's shoes. Classic!
Baby Geniuses. Baby language is a real language, yo. One of many, many dumb ideas. But fun! Christopher Lloyd, why are you in so many bad movies?
The Master of Disguise. If you want to hate Dana Carvey, this is for you. A few brilliant moments in a sea of OMG why.
Popeye. Live-action movie thinks it's a cartoon. Loved it as a kid, bewildered by it as an adult. Actual song lyrics: "He needs me, he needs me, he needs me, he needs me, he needs me, he needs meeeeee."
Furry Vengeance. George of the Jungle is attacked by forest animals who are all smarter than him. Stupid, watchable. You will laugh or cry. Have you heard of Schrödinger's cat?
The Emoji Movie. Fellow kids, here is a movie for you. So movie, such bad, my dudes.
Birdemic: Shock and Terror. Nature retaliates by sending exploding birds against us. Many exciting parking scenes. Do not watch this without Rifftrax commentary (available on Amazon Prime!) or it will make you want to die. With Mike, Kevin and Bill, it's loads of something resembling fun.
The Last Airbender. Too cartoonish to be taken seriously, takes itself too seriously to be fun. M Night, what happened to you?
Fluke. Depressing show about a kid whose dad dies, comes back as a dog, watches one new friend after another die, and then remembers he used to be a jerk and deserves no happiness. Also, if a dead dog-dad calls his widow on the phone, what else could he do but pant into the receiver? Why should I care about this idiot?
Solarbabies. Post-apocalyptic lacrosse-roller-hockey players save the world from drought with a glowing orb. Recommended for its relentless weirdness.
Frogs (1972). Many frog close-ups to establish that hopping frogs are scary. Almost everyone dies, but the frogs kill only one dude. By hopping menacingly near him.
The Stupids. A villain named Mr. Sender plans to steal everyone's mail and garbage. Well, that's what our hero thinks. I wanted the actual villains to destroy the world just so this nutjob would fail. Also, aliens show up.
The Net. Sandra Bullock is a professional beta tester. The writers try to warn us of the dangers of technology but know nothing about it. Works exactly as well as it sounds like it would.
Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold. Budget Indiana Jones with more chest hair. Darth Vader plays an ax-swinging African-Klingon. Stop-motion action figures paddle tiny canoes. I swear, movie, I'm laughing with you.
Tentacles. Jaws bandwagoner with an eco message. Starts by killing a baby off-screen to show us the monster means business. Has good actors who want to be anywhere but on set. No, movie, the mannequin's legs bobbing upside-down didn't sell the shot.
Foodfight! Product placement! Lame plot! Bad CG! What else could you possibly need?
Santa With Muscles. Hulk Hogan loses his memory of being a jerk, thinks he's Santa Claus, and defends an orphanage from overcooked villains. Everyone is incompetent, which is funny! Right? Highly recommended anyway.
Slappy and the Stinkers. Free Willy, but the orca is a sea lion and someone spliced in grandma's interminable home videos of when the child actors came to visit. Also, everyone is dumb, which is funny! Right?
Batman and Robin (1997). This movie will not let up. You will be entertained, even if it takes all the colored lighting and ice puns in the world.
Hawk the Slayer. British sword-and-sorcery B-movie bomb. High point is when a witch dispatches a guard with magic silly string. Did you know Halloween decorations can turn your back yard into a credible haunted forest?
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Intentional B-movie starts as so-bad-it's-good and levels up to so-bad-it's-bad. The musical numbers are surreal.
The Star Wars Holiday Special. What do you get when you cross a vaudeville variety show with Star Wars and shoot for the small screen? Wookiee VR porn and a totally baked Carrie Fisher, somehow. And pain. Lots of pain.
Lady in the Water. M Night, what happened? You can tell us. Who hurt you?
Son of the Mask. If you've ever wanted to see one baby inexplicably soak his dad with three urine streams at the same time, this movie is for you.
The Legend of the Titanic. The "real" Titanic story, written by a four-year-old and animated with the seriousness of a terrorist plot. A giant octopus is meant to be cute but terrifies small children.
Pixels. Adam Sandler saves the world from video game aliens by being the world's biggest loser. Serena Williams and Martha Stewart reward his short, mulleted sidekick with a threesome in the Lincoln bedroom.
The Little Mermaid (2018). Live-action story written by a four-year-old and produced with the seriousness of a nuclear war. There's an Asian wolf-man, a fortune teller who can stop time, a baby-faced ringmaster villain, and a showdown that can only be described with "WTF?"
The Amazing Bulk. Speaking of WTF, there's this... this... thing. Terrible acting. CG sets the actors "walk through" by shuffling their feet in front of a green screen. CG superhero. Stock models. Stock footage. Satellite docking porn. Amazing indeed.
The Galaxy Invader. Hillbillies hunt an alien and get killed because they suck. I hate everyone in this movie. Rifftrax helped us get through it.
Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D. Before Jacob started taking his shirt off to turn into a wolf, he starred in someone's LSD trip. Cognitive dissonance isn't just for fundamentalists, it's also for my kids, who grew up loving a bad, bad movie.
To Catch a Yeti. Meatloaf stars in an awful flick about a tiny, furry, googly-eyed thingamabob with giant feet who... loves to ski? So many punchable characters. Rifftrax saves the day again!
Yor, the Hunter From the Future. Every movie should have a glassy-eyed action hero like Yor. Every movie should pivot to a totally different story 2/3 of the way through. And they should all play a cheesy 80s metal ballad riff whenever the hero does something awesome. "YOR'S WORLD, HE'S THE MAN / YOR'S WORLD, HE'S THE MAN!" He is the man, indeed.
And it's amazing. Two of my kids, aged 13 and 19, usually finish watching with me. My wife often doesn't make it through. And we laugh, and laugh, and laugh... as long as the movie isn't boring. That's the cardinal sin of film, one of the few things that can make a movie completely unwatchable.
Weirdly, we learn a lot about storytelling. We also learn who to blame when a movie goes wrong, and who to praise when everything comes together.
I think I'll start posting reviews here. Here's what we've watched so far, in no particular order. Warning: it's an embarrassing number of bad movies.
What are your favorite awful movies?
The Wizard. "I love to Power Glove. It's so bad." So is this movie-length Nintendo commercial.
Superman III. Christopher Reeve, what happened? Richard Pryor, why? Half-cent techno-thievery! Missiles! Evil robots! Delightfully strange.
Superman IV. Gene Hackman is the best. Budget issues. Tiny Milton Keynes + a fire hydrant = New York.
Mac and Me. McDonald's-Coke love child and E.T. ripoff. Drinking out of the dirt with a straw. Intermission dance number set at McDonald's. Cops blow up a grocery store by shooting it. A must-see unwitting commentary on mindless commercialism.
Star Trek V. Nichelle Nichols does a sexy fan dance. They meet God, I guess. William Shatner writes a love letter to himself and calls it a movie.
Inspector Gadget. Ferris Bueller meets Robocop. Pretty good until the surgery, then... dumb.
Super Mario Bros. Not bad for a kids' show. As an adult... dumb.
The Care Bears Movie. Not bad for a kids' show. As an adult... creepy as hell.
Krull. A space opera not set in space. A Chosen One, a girlfriend kidnapped for her human uterus, a changeling, a giant spider, and an unbeatable Chosen One fantasy weapon that does nothing. Almost everyone dies. Good times.
Leonard Part 6. Opens with Bill Cosby leaping from the roof of an exploding factory on an ostrich. All you need to know.
Hercules in New York. Hercules banished from Olympus = Arnold Schwarzenegger banished from Central Park. Thunder bolt = bent rebar. Watch Arnie beat up a man in a bear costume, just because.
House II: The Second Story. Bill Maher plays an ass. Nothing else makes sense. The doggerpillar is cute.
The Pagemaster. Macaulay Culkin learns the fun of reading from sad cartoons. Wastes a perfectly good Christopher Lloyd.
Cars 2. OMG why.
Cop and a Half. Cute little kid + crusty Burt Reynolds = "comedy" buddy cop show. Kid legit pees on Burt's shoes. Classic!
Baby Geniuses. Baby language is a real language, yo. One of many, many dumb ideas. But fun! Christopher Lloyd, why are you in so many bad movies?
The Master of Disguise. If you want to hate Dana Carvey, this is for you. A few brilliant moments in a sea of OMG why.
Popeye. Live-action movie thinks it's a cartoon. Loved it as a kid, bewildered by it as an adult. Actual song lyrics: "He needs me, he needs me, he needs me, he needs me, he needs me, he needs meeeeee."
Furry Vengeance. George of the Jungle is attacked by forest animals who are all smarter than him. Stupid, watchable. You will laugh or cry. Have you heard of Schrödinger's cat?
The Emoji Movie. Fellow kids, here is a movie for you. So movie, such bad, my dudes.
Birdemic: Shock and Terror. Nature retaliates by sending exploding birds against us. Many exciting parking scenes. Do not watch this without Rifftrax commentary (available on Amazon Prime!) or it will make you want to die. With Mike, Kevin and Bill, it's loads of something resembling fun.
The Last Airbender. Too cartoonish to be taken seriously, takes itself too seriously to be fun. M Night, what happened to you?
Fluke. Depressing show about a kid whose dad dies, comes back as a dog, watches one new friend after another die, and then remembers he used to be a jerk and deserves no happiness. Also, if a dead dog-dad calls his widow on the phone, what else could he do but pant into the receiver? Why should I care about this idiot?
Solarbabies. Post-apocalyptic lacrosse-roller-hockey players save the world from drought with a glowing orb. Recommended for its relentless weirdness.
Frogs (1972). Many frog close-ups to establish that hopping frogs are scary. Almost everyone dies, but the frogs kill only one dude. By hopping menacingly near him.
The Stupids. A villain named Mr. Sender plans to steal everyone's mail and garbage. Well, that's what our hero thinks. I wanted the actual villains to destroy the world just so this nutjob would fail. Also, aliens show up.
The Net. Sandra Bullock is a professional beta tester. The writers try to warn us of the dangers of technology but know nothing about it. Works exactly as well as it sounds like it would.
Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold. Budget Indiana Jones with more chest hair. Darth Vader plays an ax-swinging African-Klingon. Stop-motion action figures paddle tiny canoes. I swear, movie, I'm laughing with you.
Tentacles. Jaws bandwagoner with an eco message. Starts by killing a baby off-screen to show us the monster means business. Has good actors who want to be anywhere but on set. No, movie, the mannequin's legs bobbing upside-down didn't sell the shot.
Foodfight! Product placement! Lame plot! Bad CG! What else could you possibly need?
Santa With Muscles. Hulk Hogan loses his memory of being a jerk, thinks he's Santa Claus, and defends an orphanage from overcooked villains. Everyone is incompetent, which is funny! Right? Highly recommended anyway.
Slappy and the Stinkers. Free Willy, but the orca is a sea lion and someone spliced in grandma's interminable home videos of when the child actors came to visit. Also, everyone is dumb, which is funny! Right?
Batman and Robin (1997). This movie will not let up. You will be entertained, even if it takes all the colored lighting and ice puns in the world.
Hawk the Slayer. British sword-and-sorcery B-movie bomb. High point is when a witch dispatches a guard with magic silly string. Did you know Halloween decorations can turn your back yard into a credible haunted forest?
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Intentional B-movie starts as so-bad-it's-good and levels up to so-bad-it's-bad. The musical numbers are surreal.
The Star Wars Holiday Special. What do you get when you cross a vaudeville variety show with Star Wars and shoot for the small screen? Wookiee VR porn and a totally baked Carrie Fisher, somehow. And pain. Lots of pain.
Lady in the Water. M Night, what happened? You can tell us. Who hurt you?
Son of the Mask. If you've ever wanted to see one baby inexplicably soak his dad with three urine streams at the same time, this movie is for you.
The Legend of the Titanic. The "real" Titanic story, written by a four-year-old and animated with the seriousness of a terrorist plot. A giant octopus is meant to be cute but terrifies small children.
Pixels. Adam Sandler saves the world from video game aliens by being the world's biggest loser. Serena Williams and Martha Stewart reward his short, mulleted sidekick with a threesome in the Lincoln bedroom.
The Little Mermaid (2018). Live-action story written by a four-year-old and produced with the seriousness of a nuclear war. There's an Asian wolf-man, a fortune teller who can stop time, a baby-faced ringmaster villain, and a showdown that can only be described with "WTF?"
The Amazing Bulk. Speaking of WTF, there's this... this... thing. Terrible acting. CG sets the actors "walk through" by shuffling their feet in front of a green screen. CG superhero. Stock models. Stock footage. Satellite docking porn. Amazing indeed.
The Galaxy Invader. Hillbillies hunt an alien and get killed because they suck. I hate everyone in this movie. Rifftrax helped us get through it.
Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D. Before Jacob started taking his shirt off to turn into a wolf, he starred in someone's LSD trip. Cognitive dissonance isn't just for fundamentalists, it's also for my kids, who grew up loving a bad, bad movie.
To Catch a Yeti. Meatloaf stars in an awful flick about a tiny, furry, googly-eyed thingamabob with giant feet who... loves to ski? So many punchable characters. Rifftrax saves the day again!
Yor, the Hunter From the Future. Every movie should have a glassy-eyed action hero like Yor. Every movie should pivot to a totally different story 2/3 of the way through. And they should all play a cheesy 80s metal ballad riff whenever the hero does something awesome. "YOR'S WORLD, HE'S THE MAN / YOR'S WORLD, HE'S THE MAN!" He is the man, indeed.
Not to say we'd necessarily even get the same movies or shows - our Netflix selection is quite different from the US and is based on how they can negotiate licenses.