Hey, speaking of Duckman, I found the funniest tidbit of information…
The guy who wrote Duckman is currently writing scenarios for the WWF. 
About “Starship Troopers”:
Absolutely the worst movie of all time. Not only was the powered armor missing, but so were the bugs’ telepathic humanoid allies that that switched sides. And where was the line: “Bugs, Mr. Rico! Zillions of them!” But no movie could make a Heinlein story watchable. Heinlein’s books all have the same fault: an interesting story line, but no plot. “Starship Troopers” was his best, in that the story eventually had an ending. Most of the rest of his stuff just degenerates into a discussion of his social theories on incest, fascism, etc. Lazarus the Long-winded would be a better name for one of his characters.
A few thoughts on “Dune”:
Ewwwwwww! Where did the 19th century costuming come from? And are those things supposed to ornithopters? Quite possibly the most pompous movie ever made.
And talk about terrible movies: How about “Lord of the Rings”? Or the “carefully researched” “The Hobbit” which depicted the One Ring set with a stone? (A major point of the book was that the One Ring was easily identified as it was the only Ring of Power that had no stone.)
None of these movies had the redeeming feature of movies that are so bad that they develop their own cult following like “Dark Star” and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”.
Then there is the “historically accurate” and “carefully researched” “Pocahontas”, which was neither. We can forgive Disney for “Aladdin” (a movie true to the original story would have been rated NC-17), but what about “The Little Mermaid”? I hope Hans Christian Andersson haunts Eisner for that one.
The “Wall Street Journal” described “Phantom Menace” quite accurately: it appears to be nothing so much as a very long trailer for the next two episodes rather than a movie. Sort of like “Star Trek: The Movie” which spent an inordinate amount of time lovingly depicting the Enterprise in space dock. But back to the Menace: isn’t there any adult supervision for this oversexed 8 year old product of a virgin birth? So was his mother the product of an immaculate conception or what? Kind of gives new meaning to the Force, eh? And what about the unfortunate title? Everyone from Jay Leno on down has been ripping on it, or off it. The US in Yugoslavia is the phantom menace, for example, because of its ineffectiveness.
Speaking of phantoms, how about Casper? Another childhood hero destroyed by a greater devotion to special effects than to story line.
Oh, and for those who say, “well just don’t watch these bad movies” remember, the movie critics are often the worst judge of movies around: remember the raves that “Pulp Fiction” got? Speaking of which, I don’t know which was the worst part of that movie: was it the language, the scenes lovingly depicting drug abuse, the violence as a lark, the nonexistant scripture quotations, or was it John “Revolta” Travolta? Or maybe it was the fact that movie bore no resemblance to a pulp novel at all?
I loved Pulp Fiction for exactly the reasons you list above. It was an anti-movie. It wasn’t supposewd to be a high drama art flick. It was satrirical.
Pulp Fiction was QT jacking off into a brown paper bag. An “anti-movie”. What a load of crap.
Do not forget – to a large extent , form IS substance.
Don’t make me get medieval on yer ass, muthafucka. . . .
>^,^<
KITTEN
He who walk through airport door sideways going to Bangkok. - Confucius
LOL. Interesting pick up line…
Seriously though, if you’re looking for a movie with nothing but subplot, and not much of it, stilted dialog that passes for cleverness and cheap laughs then get “They Saved Hitler’s Brain.” The entire cast changes half-way through the movie, something so daring and awful even a Hollywood pansy like QT wouldn’t try it. Face it, QT wants to be the next John Waters, but lacks the balls. So he makes movies that only mean something to him. And maybe his boyfriend, Zed.
Okay, MUST wade in:
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For those of you pointing out that “Starship Troopers” was an (extremely clumsy) metaphor for fascism: Yeah, we got that – it still sucked.
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Never having read the book, I found “Dune” too incomprehesible to be truly bad. In other words, I didn’t leave the theater thinking, “boy that movie was rank!” I left thinking, “Wha?”
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The worse movie I recall seeing was a crappy little comic-book adaptation called “Darkman”. Anyone remember that one? TRULY awful – incomprehensible plot, crappy acting, and ridiculous dialogue (example: “If you’re not going to kill me, I have things to do!”) I thought the writer and director should have been taken out and shot.
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“Pulp Fiction” is gratuitously violent, unnecessarily profane – and awesome.
Being a movie junky I too must wade in.
Starship Troopers: I enjoyed it. Loved the effects. Thought it was alot of fun (A quality that gets overlooked by too many). And I did enjoy the satirical commentary. I thought it was less a commentary on Fascism than it was about the spin doctoring and glorification that the media is responsible for. All in all a solid movie, but not a one to add to my culturing.
Pulp Fiction: Again fun. Not intended to be taken seriously and was shot in one of the most creative ways posible. I love the non linear nature of the story line and the final closure tying it all together. Also I enjoyed the fact that it is not so much a white/black, good/evil story. Alot of gray areas.
The all time worst movie ever shown: Hands down Coolworld. It was a very clumsy interweaving of live action and animation, that took itself seriously.
By the way Joe Bob, if your gonna split hairs it DeNiro, not De Niro.
Egospark and cjcambell: I get the impression that you guys have never remotely enjoyed a commercially acceptable movie. If you don’t have to stay up until 4 am and/or specially order it from the video store you won’t like it.
Funny how all the papers who gave PM a bad review are being quoted and copied and referenced. Yet no words about good reviews. Do you think theres any false motivation here? Fact is negativity sells, ergo Littleton news coverage. I don’t give a squirt of piss what the papers write about PM, I enjoyed it. I think you guys bashing it are reveling in the rebellion and feel like your setting some counter-culture attitude. I’d say you remarks are more disingenious than the “lemmings” who go and enjoy this hypefest.
The facts expressed here belong to everybody, the opinions to me. The distinction is
yours to draw…
Omniscient; BAG
Bashing a film with as many flaws as PHANTOM MENACE has nothing to do with rebellion or counter-culture. It’s simply a matter of perception. The only people who ascribe ulterior motives to this are those who feel the need to dismiss criticism of the film itsel–as if it were somehow beyond criticism. (Well, it is, in a way: no matter how disappointing it is, the lemmings you mention will go anyway, and probably go again, in the hope that they can make their idol’s newest work surpass TITANIC at the box office.) But you don’t have to be mean-spirited or particularly cynical to spot what’s wrong with PM; you just have to like good movies, and wish this one (with all the money and resources it had) had turned out better.
Omni Well, jeepers. Why on earth would I go to the BBQ Pit and start a thread called “Big Hollywood Movies I Really Liked”?
That would be sort of foolish, don’t ya think?
For big-budget dumb movies, you can’t beat Independence Day, in my opinion. I rarely see films in the theater (mommyhood’ll do that to ya) and this was probably the only one I saw that year. The teeming millions were oohing and ahhing and I was laughing out loud.
“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds” – Albert Einstein
Bad movies are very plentiful in our world.
DUNE: my favourite bad film of all time! Especially Sting in the end fight scene when he bites Kyle Maclaughlin’s hand while smiling. That’s quality movie-makin’ right there. And what was Patrick Stewart even doing in that movie??
Bram Stoker’s Dracula: Decent cast (wonderful Gary Oldman!)good original story. AWFUL adaptation. I laughed through the entire thing.
Also, no one mentioned that DeNiro/Billy Crystal “gem” Analyze This. Now that Sucked with a capital “s”.
Omniscient wrote:
By the way, Omniscient, if you’re going to split hairs it’s “you’re” and “it’s” (not that I insist on splitting hairs myself 
)
So, would you pay $7.50 to see that in the theater? Maybe you should mention it to Lucas…
Bullshit, oh all knowing one. My primary goal in smearing TPM lies in hopefully steering people away from paying to see it. It’s abundantly clear that Lucas judges his own work on one over-arching criteria: how much money it makes!
Don’t believe me? An up and coming filmmaker visited Lucas at the Ranch and fawned over his work. This person remarked that they thought THX-1138 was one of Lucas’ finest and most artistic films, to which Lucas replied with chagrin (and in all seriousness): “But that one didn’t even make any money!” Yikes!!
My thinking is that if TPM fails to earn as much as he thinks it should, with any luck George will realize he messed up big time on this utterly uninspired cinematic lardball and call in a real filmmaker as he did on The Empire Strikes Back. That way, there will be a much higher probability that the upcoming sequels will actually entertain most viewers!
To defend TPM or encourage others to see it is to guarantee the next one will be no better – and possibly even worse (if that’s possible) – than this inexcusably horrible waste of film stock!
…didn’t see Phantom Menace… have never seen Star Wars or any of its sequels… have no interest in seeing any of the above… loved Pulp Fiction… hated Starship Troopers… I am completely incapable of finding political innuendo in Starship Troopers, Lion King, or any other movie that’s been blasted for having political innuendo… yes, I realise that I haven’t used any actual punctuation yet… yes, I realise that I spelled realise with an S rather than a Z… am wondering if I’m a moron for thinking that this thread would contain small lists of movies that each person thinks only a moron would watch… am wondering if I’m a moron for not realising that, it being a BBQ thread, there would only be arguing going on… just in case anyone cares which movies are crap IMHO (aside from the aforementioned):
PECKER
GUMMO
URBAN LEGEND (Jared Leto is droolworthy enough that it was worth it, though)
LAST ACTION HERO
THE LOST WORLD (sequel to the wonderful JURASSIC PARK)
…am still wondering if I’m a moron to think that anyone’s going to give this post a second thought before delving back into the Phantom Menace debate… enjoy arguing everyone… I’ll see you in MPSIMS
Hugs!
Chris
Hey now. The Last Action Hero was great, It was a lot better spoof than all that Lesle Neilson crap.
http://www.voicenet.com/~xavier/scripts/ mocks the plot of practically every movie to come out during the past year or so.
“[He] beat his fist down upon the table and hurt his hand and became so
further enraged… that he beat his fist down upon the table even harder and
hurt his hand some more.” – Joseph Heller’s Catch-22