The part where the main character repeatedly gets hit with bamboo canes, I have never laughed so hard in my entire life.
A friend of mine worked on Starship Troopers, as an actress / stuntwoman. She said that Verhoven’s direction was pretty humorous, and often simply amounted to “Shoot de bugs! Shoot de bugs!”
Better Off Dead is at 82% on RT. I think sometimes people assume that comedies like this one are considered bad movies, but it turns out that they’re pretty well respected.
I’m with you on Solarbabies (0% on RT - with only a few reviews), though I haven’t seen it since I was about ten (but watched it about 100 times before that). I’m guessing if I watched it now, it would be quite terrible!
I’ve shown this one at my Bad Film Festival. It was immediately obvious when it came out how bad it was, but the cast seemed to be so damned happy making it that it’s infectious. certainly the stuntmen loved it – the desert trikes were apparently really well-made and robust, unlike what they often had to work with.
A couple bad 80s movies that I love to rewatch…they weren’t great, but they fun to watch and much better than the %'s below.
Tango & Cash - 39%
Rambo: First Blood Part II - 29%
Twins - 36%
and one’s I’ve already seen mentioned in this thread…
Spacehunter and Tommy Boy.
I’ve read a S#$T ton of his books and they are so over the top that I’ve come to the conclusion he’s deliberately doing it to punk his readers. It’s like Picasso renting a monkey to paint for him so he has more free time to play with his money. And I’ll probably read a few more of them. Still have a stack from the used book store.
I’ve seen Midnight Madness, and I mean that expressly. My unique contribution: Mr. Mom. Taught me what NOT to do in the supermarket.
I should point out, by the way, that absurd and over-the-top as the movie is, the book is even wilder (Abraham Lincoln conspiracies, anyone? And Cussler finagles a guest shot for himself in the book).
The works of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs (and of either of them independently) are similar over-the-top techno-thrillers. AFAIK, the only one to be filmed is The Relic, which is relatively tame (believe it or not) in terms of how ridiculous things can get.
The fact that we’ve only had two Cussler movies and one Preston/Childs movie, despite their humongous output and the inherent cinematic quality of these books is a puzzle to me. It can’t be because the American audience is too sophisticated or discriminating for these books to be filmed. So there must be some other reason.
You forgot to mention that the film left out the hero of the book, that human X-File-The incredible Aloysius Xingu L. Pendergast. Pissed me off to no end.
Nothing But Trouble 9% - Good quotable movie, and the 80’s fashions are HILLarious.
**
Bulletproof **8% - That movie is awesome, I would never have guessed it’d be rated so low.
**The Last Airbender **6% - I’ve never seen it all, but there is a lot of hate for this movie I just do not understand. Perhaps it’s because I’m not familiar with anime.
…and then I got bored looking.
It’s OK – I didn’t miss him. I really don’t much care for that character, or his Infallible Evil Twin Mad Scientist Brother.
The Running Man.
Yes, I’ve read the Stephen King book, and yes I loved said book, and yes I realize that to most people the movie was an insult to everything the book was about.
But I really see this movie as it’s own separate thing, and love it for what it is, which is a goofy, over-the-top, Reagan-era action romp, complete with professional wrestler-style villains.
Oh, and Richard Dawson was fucking great in it.
It was also the last movie that Erland de Lidthe de Jude appeared in. He played “Dynamo”. It was the movie where we finally got to hear him sing*, although, with all the noise in his scenes, it was hard to hear.
Erland’s character Grossberger sang in the film Stir Crazy, but that wasn’t Erland’s voice – I heard him sing when we were both in MIT Musical Theater Guild productions, and that voice sounded nothing like his.
Mr. Mom is at 84%. I think maybe we just think a lot less of our fellow man that they can’t possibly like the same movies as us!
Didn’t check RT, just know that’s my go-to for mindless, “oh yeah I know that movie”, entertainment.
61%.
The Return of Captain Invincible.
I haven’t seen it, either, but it seems like Shyamalan completely squandered what should have been built-in interest in the film (i.e., the Nickelodeon cartoon, which was very well-liked). He started with a controversy over casting Caucasians in roles that were pretty clearly Asian in the cartoon, and then delivered a movie with bad acting and a lousy story.
I wonder if it would have received the same level of scorn, had the movie been an original work, rather than based on the earlier cartoon.
This - the original TV show was much loved by its fans. It would have been hard in any case for anyone to encapture an entire season of a TV show in a movie, but the fact that it was done in such a ham-handed manner made the movie impossible for the fans of the series to like.
ShowGirls (17%) There is something so filthy about it and ridiculous that I just absolutely love it. I want it on dvd. Also, Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitters Dead is a cute film I can’t believe it’s considered “bad”.