Sorry – it’s not just the historical errors. even taking the movie at face value, it’s stupefyingly dumb.
– The quasi-Egyptians ha ve to go through deserts, down the river, through swamps filled with giant carnivorous birds, and snowy mountains just to kidnap slaves? They’d better DAMNED good slaves.
– They do the same thing for wooly mammoths? How the hell do they get them through the swamps and down the rivers? Do they only kidnap babies? Did they go to superhuman effort to kidnap a breeding pair?
– Our Hero falls into a pit trap filled with puka sticks and does get impaled? And doesn’t see the trap? Even after a Giant Sabre Tooth Tiger falls into the same trap???
– And the sabre-tooth tiger doesn’t get impaled on the sticks, either??? (Even though a puny little goat DID???)
—and our doughty Hero, getting out of the trap, decides to release said Sabre Tooth Tiger? Is he INSANE???
– Even if he believed (rightly, it turns out) that said tiger won’t eat him, his friend – the one with the injured leg – is waiting out there at the end of a scent trail Our Hero left. All the Tiger has to do is follow it back. Thanks for the Free Lunch!
Or —
Oh, hell, there’s just too much dumb to try and sum up in a single post. This is an enjoyable movie, but you have to either MST3K it or else shut down all your critical faculties.
Spawn was very poorly reviewed, but I thought it was decent. Admittedly, John Leguizamo’s costume and makeup were over-the-top and WTF, but I liked the plot, acting (Michael Jai White was excellent), and special effects.
I made a topic JUST like this called what movies were critics way too harsh on?
A recent movie I only saw part of was Babylon AD from 2008, it looked like a very competent post apocalyptic B movie with some great sets and effects work. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a PA movie set in Russia/Asia and some scenes like the market were very cool. I didn’t see the ending which was one of the critics big complaints.
I thought Surrogates was a well done scifi thriller with some moderately interesting plot ideas and visuals, but if you believe the critics it is the worst offense film has committed.
The movie Slipstream has a crazy low rating, with reviews calling it the worst movie ever made. Are they crazy? It has AMAZING location shooting in Turkey which gives the film a cool feel, granted the flying scenes go on and on but I was never bored and it sure kept my attention. In a post apocalyptic future an android fugitive that assisted its terminally ill owner in suicide is being hunted by Mark Hammill, a lot of small airplanes are involved.
I can see why. Rise of Cobra certainly has its faults, but it’s by no means as bad as some people seem to think, relatively speaking. I’d rank it among the top two or three live-action movies based on action figures.
I suspect that when I see it, I will add John Carter to my list. The way the media gleefully piled on that movie is almost sad. It was like bullies in the schoolyard.
Sure Disney marketed it poorly but it looks really fun. Unfortunately it was only available in 3D in my area so I am waiting for Blu Ray.
Okay, I’ll say it: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
It compares quite unfavorably with the original IJ trilogy, of course. But if it were somehow possible to judge it separately from the other three, it could be argued that it was just a silly, implausible action chase film. Passable, fun popcorn fare. The expectations were just so impossibly high that a cheesy, not-so-great movie became the worst abomination ever projected on a screen.
I’m really confused by that – as I stated in the relevant thread at the time, I thought John Carter was an excellent film. It hangs together better than the Star Wars prequels and is more satisfying than Avatar. I’[d watch it again if it were still out, and I’m sure I’ll get it on disc. I’d love if they made more. But with the critical reception, they certainly won’t. Pity. Edgar Rice Burroughs and Disney is a perfect matcch (look at Tarzan), just like Disney and Jules Verne should have been.*
I also think the previous Mars movie – Mars Needs Moms – was a great little, improperly promoted flick. I would pigeonhole either of these movies as “bad”. They’re not in the same class as Plan Nine or 10,000 B.C.
*But Disney only made two straight Jules Verne films – 20,000 Leagues and In Search of the Castaways. They made at least two faux-Verne flicks – The Island at the Top of the World and Atlantis, the Lost Empire, but that was only in looks, not in content. You could argue that The Black Hole is almost a riff on 20,000 Leagues, i suspect. Disnrey doesn’t do well when it tries to come up with its own original Vernish plots.
I think Heaven’s Gate is one that maybe fits in the same category as Waterworld. After you whittle away all the notoriety how much money they spent and how disastrous the production was and how poorly-received the initial cuts were, the version of it that eventually ended up in the home video world actually isn’t terrible.
Let’s not include underperforming blockbusters here, people. A blockbuster with lackluster ticket sales is almost never an actually bad movie.
Otherwise this is going to be a list of people talking about how one time their buddy said “Goodfellas” was boring, but then they watched it, and hey, it was pretty good.
It should be noted that “John Carter” is not an epic critical bomb. There has never been any consensus, by anyone, that the movie was an appalling suckfest. It got 51% of the Tomatometer, which isn’t good, but doesn’t qualify as an unmitigated shitpile - it’s not in the bottom 1000 bad movies on Rotten Tomatoes. It got reviews pretty much in the middle of all the other over-the-top CGI schlockfests.
“Mars Needs Moms” scored a 37%, which is bad, but again is not epically bad. In any given week 2-4 movies will open that will do worse than that.
The reason those movies are famous is that they were FINANCIAL bombs. “John Carter” pulled in a fair amount of box office but the budget overruns were so bad that it will still manage to lose money. The early reports that it would be the biggest financial disaster in movie history were hyperbole, but it’s going to end up losing money. “Mars Needs Moms” was on the other hand a financial disaster of absolutely Biblical proportions.
And I don’t think you can blame the critics for that. I think you nailed it; they were horrifically promoted movies. I have a six-year-old who loves going to the movies and who never once, not even for an instant, expressed the first degree of interest in seeing “Mars Needs Moms,” and that’s an epic fail. As for “John Carter,” the promoting of the movie failed to convey in any coherent way what the hell it was about or why I should go see it.
I like that movie quite a bit, so much as to say it is actually a really good movie. Even better than Temple of Doom, actually. And I like Temple of Doom.
Here is one that I like to the point of being blown away by the dislike of it:
Van Helsing
My favorite non-Wolverine Hugh Jackman movie(and better than X3 or that Origins movie).
Ok, lets start, I can’t find this list, so bear with me. I also did look this one up explicitly and it seemed to be rated 0%, but in reality they’d got 2.8/10 from 5 reviews, which strikes me (using that thing called a brain), 28%. Unless they’ve got a mad way of doing things…
Anyway, I’ve never really cared about Rotten Tomatoes, never felt the need to rate anything for them, but now I will have to join because…
Return of the Killer Tomatoes is one of the great satires of bad movies of the time. Perhaps some morons have watched it because it was a very young Clooney in it, and rated it, but to me its a classic mentioned to someone who loves funny cult movies, along with other such classics (albeit different) as After Dark, Evil Dead II and Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure.
The fact that it’s even being mentioned alongside the likes of Ishtar, Gigli and Showgirls makes me think rotten tomatoes is a place where morons review movies…
Ecks vs. Sever is often listed as one of the worst movies of all time. Maybe I was just in a good mood when I saw it … pretty people, reasonably coherent, things blew up real good. I’ve seen way worse movies than that. (Including many listed above. )
I have to agree about *Return of the Killer Tomatoes. It is a great, underappreciated flick that isn’t bad. Its writing, sacting, and production values are all infinitely better than the original Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, and it’s got a lot of clever moments in it.
Rotten Tomatoes probably axed it because they’re jealous of other “Tomatoes” doing well.
)