| The Internet is buzzing with talk of Snakes on a Plane. Why, you ask, are all the ’net nerds going apeshit for a movie that boasts little more than Samuel L. Jackson and a plot that can be summed up in its four-word title? Because sometimes you just need to see a bad movie.
Back when I was a cinema snob, I decided I would only watch films that made the top of those "best films of alltime" lists. After a few weeks of brilliant cinema, work by such masters as Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock and Roman Polanski started to seem merely mediocre. Admittedly these auteurs are all responsible for their fair share of duds, but that wasn’t the problem. I realized that by watching so many good movies, I had lost perspective. Yes, Citizen Kane is amazing compared to Police Academy 3: Back in Training, but compared to Notorious it’s only pretty good.
We need bad movies to help us appreciate the good ones. They act as a cinematic sorbet to cleanse the viewing palate. Still, there are some truly bad movies that are a joy to watch (the Video Vulture will back me up on this one, I’m sure). So, in the spirit of revelling in crap, here are six films that are so poorly made, over-indulgent or laughable that they really deserve special mention.
And unless you think this is just idle chatter, keep this in mind – I own every single one of these films.
MONSTER MOVIES
· Octaman (1971, dir. Harry Essex) – Most monster movies, with the exception of The Bride of Frankenstein, leave something to be desired, but this one takes the cake. Featuring primitive makeup effects by the now award-winning Rick Baker, Octaman is the story of science gone awry and the people forced to face it. How they keep a straight face staring at an actor who is clearly staring out of the mouth hole of a giant man-sized octopus suit is beyond me. Can you see the fishing line that they use to make all eight arms move at once? Not if you and your friends get drunk before you watch it.
· Anaconda (1997, dir. Luis Llosa) – Boasting a cast that includes Jennifer Lopez, Jon Voight, Ice Cube, Owen Wilson and Eric Stoltz, the real star is a 30-foot animatronic snake that picks these poor suckers off. Voight plays the grizzled snake hunter on the trail of the elusive title character. Lopez and Cube play members of a film crew who couldn’t tell one end of a camera from another. Stoltz spends the whole movie in a coma, leading one to believe that he signed on without reading the script and then begged the writer trim his part. Just when you think Anaconda can’t get more ridiculous, the snake pukes up Voight, who was eaten whole a few scenes before. He actually winks at the camera. Perfect.
TEEN COMEDIES
· Freaky Friday (2003, dir. Mark Waters) – I loved the original Freaky Friday when I was a kid and I’ll admit Lindsay Lohan has nothing on Jodie Foster, but this is a rare case where a remake was warranted. Years after the trend of body-switching movies ran its course, Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis manage to breathe new life into a tired idea. Not terribly smart, but remarkably entertaining. The fact that a pre-eating disorder Lohan is charming isn’t nearly as surprising as her ability to out-act Curtis.
· Bring it On (2000, dir. Peyton Reed) – This cheerleading comedy starring Kirsten Dunst and Eliza Dushku never really reveals whether it is laughing at or with the sub-culture it portrays. Catty divas, jerky jocks and the confusion of young love – it’s everything you loved and hated about high school. Bring it On may be full of gender commentary and an exploration of racism and social critique, but it also has more finger-banging jokes than you will ever see in a movie with a PG-13 rating.
ACTION SEQUELS
· 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003, dir. John Singleton) – How did the director of Boyz N the Hood wind up directing the sequel to The Fast and the Furious without Vin Diesel? Who cares? Fast cars, hot chicks and a paper-thin plot with holes big enough to drive an entire street race through. Did I mention the fast cars? The driving sequences are spectacular, making this one even better than the original. This is the Godfather II of street-racing-cop movies. See also Torque.
· Bad Boys 2 (2003, dir. Michael Bay) – Michael Bay’s buddy cop followup to Bad Boys is a textbook example of what happens when ego runs unchecked in Hollywood. Will Smith shows mercy on a post-rehab Martin Lawrence by agreeing to star in this over-the-top exercise in violence, excess and misogyny. Strippers – check. Double entendre – sure. High-speed car chases involving automatic machine guns, speedboats and corpses – why the hell not? And the best part is that when this movie should be over, Bay takes Smith and Lawrence to Cuba and spends another half-hour blowing shit up. A tactical team of special forces troops actually use live iguanas to disarm a state-of-the-art security system before tossing the bad guy on a landmine. It’s two-and-a-half hours long and the DVD still has deleted scenes. |
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