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Ricochet Movie Fight Club: Question 18
Last week Brian Watt came out of his corner raging for a Page One knockout. Philo’s Page Three uppercut sent him reeling and Brian ended up clinging to the ropes, eying the clock but still upright when the final bell sounded. His jaw may be a little sore today, but not too sore to ask: What is the worst movie (not a made-for-TV movie) ever made?
From Brian:
It should be a movie shown in a movie theater produced or distributed by a major studio (MGM, Universal, United Artists, 20th Century Fox, Columbia, RKO, Warner Brothers, Disney, etc.); a movie that others may have raved about which prompted you to see it; that was so bad, you may have walked out or griped about it and felt cheated for wasting your money on it; so bad that you may have even heckled it or made catcalls at the screen in the theater while watching it; and so bad that you may actually think less of others’ taste in movies – whether critics, celebrities, or friends — who actually hold this awful film in high regard.
Of course, the more comprehensive your answer on why the movie is so awful, the more persuasive your answer will be.
The Rules:
- Post your answer as a comment. Make it clear that this is your official answer, one per member.
- Defend your answer in the comments and fight it out with other Ricochet member answers for the rest of the week.
- Whoever gets the most likes on their official answer comment (and only that comment) by Friday night wins the fight.
- The winner gets the honor of posting the next question on Saturday.
- In the case of a tie, the member who posted the question will decide the winner.
Notes:
- Only movies will qualify (no TV shows) however films that air on television (BBC films, a stand-alone mini-series) will qualify.
- Your answer can be as off-the-wall or controversial as you’d like. It will be up to you to defend it and win people to your side.
- Fight it out.
Special thanks to Arahant for compiling a list of previous questions.
Movie Fight Club Questions by Week:
- What is the best film portrayal of a book character? Winner: Charlotte with 18 likes for Alan Rickman’s portrayal of Professor Severus Snape in the Harry Potter movies.
- What is the best motion picture comedy of the 21st century? Winner: split decision. In an exemplary display of genuine sportsmanship, Randy Webster conceded the fight to Marjorie Reynolds’ pick Team America: World Police.
- What film provides the most evocative use of location? Winner: Taras with 21 likes for Lawrence of Arabia. Wasn’t even close.
- What is the best film that utilizes or is inspired by a work of William Shakespeare? Winner: Dr. Bastiat with five likes for The Lion King, a film inspired by Hamlet.
- Which movie has the best surprise ending, or unexpected plot twist? Winner: Repmodad with 18 likes for The Sixth Sense.
- What pre-1970s black-and-white movie would be most enjoyed by a modern 18-to 25-year-old audience? Winner: E J Hill with 9 likes for a Casablanca. (He didn’t exactly designate it his official answer, and most of the likes may have been for the modern Casablanca trailer rather than for it as an answer to the question, but nobody seemed to dispute it on those grounds, so that’s how the cookie crumbles.)
- What movie did you go to based on the trailer, only to have felt cheated? (i.e., the trailer was 10x better than the movie?) Winner: Back to back wins by E J Hill with 9 likes for Something to Talk About.
- Name the worst movie portrayal of your profession (where applicable.) Winner: LC with 8 likes for Denise Richards’ Dr. Christmas Jones in The World is Not Enough.
- What is the worst movie that claims to be based or inspired by a true story? Winner: Tex929rr with 16 likes for the, “…terrible acting, and countless deviations from history,” in Pearl Harbor.
- What is your favorite little known movie? Winner: A last-minute rally for Tremors made the difference as Songwriter took the week 10 win!
- What is the best movie that you never want to watch again? Winner:
HitlerCharlotte with 15 likes for Schindler’s List. Sorry, Richard Oshea but Jesus won the real fight.
Week 11.5 Exhibition Match (as a make-up of sorts, since Songwriter didn’t get the week 11 question submitted in time) Name the best movie theme song ever? No winner declared but I’m pretty sure it was I.M. Fine with “Moon River.” - Name the best animated feature-length movie of all time. Winner: I.M. Fine with 10 likes for Pinocchio, and justice for I.M. Fine prevailed.
- What is the worst acting performance in an otherwise good film? Winner: In one of the most brutal fights we’ve seen yet Repmodad fended off a furious 12th-round onslaught by Gary McVey to give Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves the win with 20 likes.
- What is the quintessential American movie? Winner: Miffed White Male pulled off the comeback with 20 likes for The Right Stuff. There was a two-way tie at 19 for second place as well.
- What’s the most entertaining movie set during WWII? Winner: Arahant clearly won with Casablanca’s walloping 30 likes despite the withering onslaught by Sisyphus on the final day.
- What is the best movie love story? Winner: Songwriter with 20 likes for The Princess Bride with 20 likes. Up managed to make a strong showing and Dr. Bastiat is still conducting recounts trying to “find” some uncounted votes.
- What’s the best’ buddy’ movie? Winner: Brian Watt wins with 12 likes for The Man Who Would be King.
Published in General
The Robin Williams movie Jack. A boy who ages 10x normal. A 4 year old who looks like he’s 40. (Final Answer)
My original thought was Bicentennial Man. Then, The World According to Garp. He’s really been in some stinkers.
And, I actually like Robin Williams. Especially Awakenings, which is under appreciated.
Are you certain that the scientists who decided on the Neanderthal mating thing hadn’t smoked so much pot they watched and re-watched Quest one time too many?
How about Birdman of Alcatraz? Starring Burt Lancaster! I never saw it, though. Who wants to see a movie about a convicted murderer turned amateur bird vet?
Per wikipedia: A surly convicted murderer held in permanent isolation redeems himself when he becomes a renowned bird expert.
The Five Worst Movies I’ve Seen, from worst to really worst.
A. Zoolander is great!
B. The Lobster (thanks Lois!) and Under the Volcano are so many times worse ( simply unwatchable!) than the not very good but watchable movies like Mulholland Drive, the English Patient, the Hobbit, and even the Notebook which women love but guys like me barfed at.
C. No one has mentioned all the Leftist political crap movies like RFG, or Vice or the Al Gore Movies which none of us probably watched but deserve a special category in Movie Watching Hell for unadulterated crap.
D. Oscar Nominated Best Pretentious Crap – The Hours comes to mind, but I am sure there are many,many more. 50 years ago I had a film class with a lot of Ingmar Bergman movies which were like getting a two hour lobotomy each time you watched one.
E. David Lynch is an acquired taste, ( I know, I know too artsy fartsy for most at Ricochet) but Twin Peaks is a very interesting series.
I loved “Blue Velvet,” but boy howdy, I can sure understand why other people don’t.
His deal was for his own survival, and his wife and children’s. Yet he still complains. What I mean is that Scorsese is knocking the audience’s willingness to stick it out with Henry. Pauline Kael mentioned somewhere that when she watched Raging Bull, that, “Pesci calls DeNiro a dumb [redacted], then DeNiro calls Pesci a dumb [redacted], and [she] asked [herself], ‘Why am I watching these dumb [redacted]s.’”
Like Funny Games, there is an ugly inclination on Scorsese’s part to illicit our anger at having watched the story – about characters like Henry Hill, Sam Rothstein, and Jordan Belfort. A chastisement from the guy who decided to give us the stylish pictures devoted to demons.
Scorsese has been pretty clear about how he wants us to take the final scene, and his intent to have us repulsed by Hill’s lack of remorse. As one critic put it, he used to be a director of the streets – and was interested in the moral dilemma therein. (This is why I argue for Taxi Driver). For much of his career, he’s been self-righteous, in the Hollywood sense, and, at the same time, a purveyor of self-pitying cynicism. We’re all schnooks!
Keep in mind that this is the movie that influenced all of the directors who gave my generation its moral instruction. My generation is burning down businesses, pulling down statues and canceling people.
I was seventeen when I saw Food of the Gods, featuring the immortal Marjoe Gortner. I thought, “Hey, it’s based on an H.G. Wells novel. How bad can it be?” Did I mention that I was seventeen? Bad story, bad acting, and quite possibly the worst special effects since Plan Nine from Outer Space. It has forever scarred me.
It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World
Not one laugh for me during the entire film which must have been hard to accomplish with all those great comedians in the ensemble cast. Maybe one giggle near the end with the swaying palm tree which was slapstick evocative of the silent era and not the effort of any specific one of the comedians in the film. Not even Jonathan Winters was able to make me laugh in this sad film. The only halfway effective performance in the film was by Spencer Tracy and he wasn’t supposed to be funny. I did enjoy the scenic shots of the California desert near Palm Springs and Palm Desert and every time I drive that twisty highway, CA 74, that descends the escarpment into Palm Desert I think of the scenes filmed on the then newly opened road as I take in the panoramic view. There are people that claim to like this film and it gets shown fairly often on TCM, etc. Still even with that evocative scenery, a failure of a film.
Official answer.
Per B (as the girl who nominated The Notebook), even some women hate it. I’ve never gotten why people go gaga over Nicholas Sparks overall, probably the same reason Harlequin Romance novels are so popular.
Yeah, I guess so. But it was equal with Noah, so it can’t be a stand-out winner anyway.
OKAY: I NOMINATE NOAH (2014) (Somebody has to second me because I’ve already voted for Spaceballs and I won’t take it back.)
Noah and his family are chased by the murderers and seek refuge with the fallen angels known as the “Watchers”, in whose territory Methuselah lives. The Watchers are confined on Earth as creatures of stone for helping humans banished from the Garden of Eden. Fallen angels are actually the victimized good guys in this movie.
This one I successfully avoided. I accept your representations if only to avoid seeing it.
Yes Superman 4 definitely terrible. Even worse than Bolero.
Come on! You didn’t laugh when Jimmy Durante kicked the bucket?? 😂😂😂
I had a similar situation with a recent popular James Patterson novel called The President is Missing. I overheard someone musing, “Hmmm. I wonder what that book is about.” I chuckled about that all day.
{Sadly} Well!
My dumb jet lagged brain read 1 as Bandolero, and I was really disappointed that someone disliked that film so much, it’s no The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, but it’s ok. And Jimmy Stewart and Dean Martin is a unique combination.
I just asked my wife about this and she answered instantly “The Good Girl”.
Then after I explained the premise of the conversation and the question, she thought for a second then said “And you didn’t say anything about My Chauffeur?”
I believe that was featured in an episode of MST3K.
As an honorable mention, Airport 1975. I can’t say much about the acting or the filmography, but I can distinctly remember my mom, for whatever reason, borrowing it from the library one Friday night for us to watch, and her and my dad promptly falling asleep like 15 minutes into the film. I was 10 or 11 years old, and sat there to continue watching, because I thought it was so special to get to watch a grown up movie. That stupid thing traumatized me for years; I had never even seen a plane in person before and watching people get sucked out of one, fall from one, have shrapnel come through the windows, the crew die, etc., when the whole thing was quite dark visually and had ominous music besides, was terrifying. I’m pretty sure I started seeing Charlton Heston in my nightmares.
Yes, yes it was. People talk about Joel vs Mike, but a movie or show is only as good as its villains, and Dr. Forrestor and TV’s Frank were so much better than Pearl & Co.
Someone dissed my defense of The Lost World. I couldn’t find it in my brief scrolling-through, but I’ll do my best to fight for an underrated movie to the best of memory – of both the movie, and the argument against:
I never read Crichton’s novels. As I understand it, the plots of both stories were chainsawed in their adaptation to film. Of what little I know of the source material, it strikes me as essential to make a story – craven capitalism was traded in for misguided wonder. The fact that Crichton allowed it is telling.
I consider the movies to be Spielberg’s stories, and Spielberg’s theme is Fatherhood. Ian Malcolm, as depicted by Jeff Goldblum, becomes a real man the same way Sam Neil’s “Alan Grant” does in the original. Malcolm’s daughter isn’t even the same race. I’d say, considering the admission in the first movie, that he’s “always looking for a future Mrs. ex-Malcolm,” it wasn’t an arbitrary decision to pick a black girl (the immensely popular – at the time – Vanessa Lee Chester) for the part.
Eventually, the lost worlds of Isla Sorna and Southern California (once like the Garden of Eden) collide, and it gets ugly. All of the glass and brick and steel of modernity can’t stop this T-Rex from its infant. I stand by it as a faithful sequel to an unlikely success.
The trouble is, this is way too broad a question, and impossible to answer. There are way too many bad movies out there, each bad in it’s own way. And frankly, for every one mentioned here, I can name a worse film:
Is How Stella Got Her Groove Back any worse than Eat Pray Love?
Is The Exorcist II really better than the original?
Is Adam Sandler’s lazy self-indulgence worse than Kevin Costner’s, Pauly Shore’s, Spike Lee’s or George Lucas’?
You don’t like Taxi Driver? What about the other boring grim dreck that came out at the same time, like Nashville or The Deer Hunter?
Battlefield Earth? What about Zardoz? The Postman? The Last Jedi (Green milk, anyone?)?
Brooks’ remake To Be Or Not To Be is in every way worse than Spaceballs. (Personal note: I won two tickets to a showing of To Be Or Not To Be when it first came out. My wife and I were the only people in the audience. We didn’t buy popcorn.) And neither of them are as bad as any of the solid waste in the Scary Movie franchise.
Who’s That Girl and Shanghai Surprise are both worse than Gigli, and they are not even close to being the worst Madonna films.
Yes, From Justin to Kelly is dreck. It’s not worse than Crossroads, Xanadu, Grease II, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Beach Blanket Bingo, or, the magnum opus, Breakin’ 2, Electric Boogaloo.
The Room is awful, but nowhere near matches the (low) quality of any of the films in the Neil Breen oeuvre.
So, here’s my official answer: They’re all bad, but there’s a movie that’s worse.
No! I refuse to allow it. This was a good schlock movie. My young self always felt fir the old couple accepting their fate together. Sad. Plus giant rats and ants. Awesome!
I was so impressed with the book, Chrichton’s Jurassic Park, that I refused to see the Jurassic Park movie – for YEARS! I just knew they were going to butcher it! Then, about 15 years later, I finally saw the movie – and enjoyed the heck out of it!
Edit: @josepluma makes a great point in comment #147 below: “Careful! You’re about to get the most likes on a movie that’s good.”
So if you’re tempted to like the above comment, know that I appreciate the thought, but please refrain. We don’t want to taint the poll with my off-hand reminiscence.
I’m glad Bolero got a mention, but it got me wondering what really defines a bad movie.
For example, speaking hypothetically, if a bunch of teenagers at music camp were allowed to rent movies once a week, and one of those movies was Bolero, rented at the suggestion of an all-around good musician / court jester who really knew how to build it up, and you sit around with a bunch of guys and gals watching the movie and laughing, and eventually get tired of it and fast-forward to the final scene, and joke for the rest of the week about the spelling of ecstasy, would it really count as a bad movie?
In other words, are we looking for a movie whose badness makes it unenjoyable in any context?
Careful! You’re about to get the most likes on a movie that’s good.
As others can attest, I will fight to the death for Nashville!
?
I think for a movie to be bad, it can’t possibly be treated as simply silly. This rules out Zoolander and Bolero, for example, and perhaps Barbarella, as well as a whole lot of other movies with comically bad special effects.
A bad movie is a movie that takes itself absolutely seriously but somehow fails to bring its audience along.
My vote is for Children of Men. Pretentious, lacking any characters of interest, with coded leftist messages about immigration. One reviewer compared it to Blade-Runner. Please. I left midway through.
Why you should vote for Children of Men: while it received fewer awards than The English Patient, it billed itself as a more serious movie with a more important message. The English Patient could reasonably be considered escapist romantic fare. So the gap between ambition and delivery is greater for Children of Men, making it a worse movie.
(Part of the problem here is that most people have seen all the movies nominated as good, whereas bad movies attract fewer viewers. I never saw Stella or The English Patient, so I can’t vote for either.)