I was listening to an old episode of one of my favourite podcasts, filmspotting, where they did a “Top 5 favourite box office bombs”.
That’s the inspiration for this thread. Please check Wikipedia’s “List of biggest office bombs” and admit to the world your most guarded secret: Which is your favourite box office bomb.
My favourite one is actually a pretty solid film with actors that would have diserved an Oscar nomination… if they had hired a good accent coach. The movie is, of course, K-19 the Widow Maker.
A good story, solid performance (minus the accents) and great filmmaking makes this an excellent movie that I`ve seen many, many times.
Feel free to dazzle the Board with your intellect by including other box office bombs that are not in the list.
Ishtar, of course. Really not a bad little movie, with some hilarious moments. The first 20 minutes is just plain laugh-out-loud comedy. It flags after that, but the final third has one of the best comedy bits in the past 30 years (the arms auction scene). The ending is very abrupt and unsatisfying, but the songs redeem it. Paul Williams deserves an award for coming up with such bad but earnest songs and lyrics – they sound like songs written by someone without talent, which is how they’re supposed to sound. That’s very hard for a pro songwriter to do without going over the top.
Death to Smoochy is my personal favourite, but of the ones on the linked list, I kinda liked Soldier and K-19, and I blame the failure of Battlefield Earth on the director for failing to clamp down on John Travolta’s agonizingly hammy overacting. A reserved, menacing performance would have mitigated the disaster significantly.
I’ve always like The 13th Warrior. Not enough to see it in theaters I guess.
I *did *see it in the theaters. It’s a damn good film.
I had no idea it was so expensive to make, though. I always thought it was just a well-made B-movie.
Ditto. I see it as a dark comedy masterpiece. My only complaint is that I’ve never been able to accept Catherine Keener as a sexpot. Ever.
Of the linked list, I’d say Man in the Moon is a pretty damn good movie.
It’s one of my favorites…I watch it on my laptop pretty much every time I fly.
Also Sahara.
Just for the record, I saw 7 films from the OP’s list in the theaters when they came out.
I thought Adventures of Baron Munchhausen was a lot of fun.
Hudson Hawk is a great movie and everyone who hates it is wrong. So there.
Yea, there are some pretty decent films on the list. Baron Manchusen, Smootchy, Man on the Moon and 13th Warrior are good movies.
I also liked Sahara, The Postman, Hudson Hawk, The Avengers and Hart’s War, though I can understand why they didn’t do well.
I vaguely remember liking Treasure Planet, but I can’t really remember anything about it now.
Maybe I should make a point to see more box-office bombs. If you put a list of top grossing movies, I’d probably have about the same like/dislike/neversaw ratio.
The only movie on that list I have seen is Treasure Planet. I think I liked it, though like Simplicio I don’t really remember anything about it. But how could the combination of cyberpunk and Robert Louis Stevenson not have been cool?
Didn’t we get a peek at Uma’s pink plumpies in that one???
Without a single shred of doubt - Stuart Saves His Family. It’s a remarkably nuanced, poignant little flick that also happens to be pretty funny.
And another: Heaven Help Us, though I don’t rightly know if that was a bomb, in the strictest sense of the term.
Of the ones listed: Heaven’s Gate, definitely, and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
When I saw the dinner scene with the penis shaped nose on the Judge I thought I’d shit laughing.
Wild, Wild West. Not on the Wiki list but I’m pretty sure it’s considered a huge bomb. I’m also pretty sure I’m the only person on the planet who absolutely loves this movie and thinks it’s incredibly funny.
I guess Bringing Out the Dead didn’t perform well at the box office, but I adore that movie. It’s easily in my top 5 all-time favorites and I think one of the best things Scorsese ever did.
Not listed in wiki’s list, probably because of inflation, but D.W. Griffith’s “Intolerance” was a bomb in 1916 that bankrupted his studio but is considered a masterpiece today (despite switching among four stories which gives it a “meanwhile, back in Babylon” character).
I liked THe 13th Warrior. I liked the book a lot more.
I also liked Soldier. A lot of the acting and plot was pretty bad but I really liked Kurt Russel in it.
First of all, let me just say that any executive who agrees to spend 100 million on a movie whose biggest star is Jamie Kennedy (Son of the Mask) NEEDS to lose their job. I recognize it’s a sequel of The Mask but it doesn’t have Jim Carrey in it and that’s kind of a big part of the original.
As for the list my favorite is easily The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.