# Movies so stupid that they literally drain off IQ points as you watch **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 25, 2008, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142 "2008-09-25T12:37:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/1 "2008-09-25T12:37:38Z")
Couldn’t sleep last night. Maybe it’s the economy, maybe it was the caffeine, maybe the beer. Anyway, on one of the “Flix” channels, I noticed that there was a movie called _Paradise_, starring Phoebe Cates and Willy Aames. I think to myself, “Wasn’t this some sort of Blue Lagoon inspired knockoff?” and then my other brain says “Maybe Phoebe Cates will be naked – did she do naked? – I think that was really her in that one scene in _Fast Times at Ridgemont High_ – let’s give it a looksie”. OMFG I could have written a better script when I was twelve years old. The plot is ridiculous, the acting is wooden at best, the two principal actors start shedding clothes with no explanation, although Aames character is supposed to be kind of religious, animals show up out of the blue in places they ought not be, etc. The only redeeming quality of this film seems to be Phoebe Cates’ lovely young body, and even that kind of creeped me out. In real life I’m about 1 year older than her, but in this film I think she’s around 18-19 and looks like about 14 years old. Okay, someone top this (and leave Battlefield Earth or whatever it is out of the discussion, that one is retired). ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/2 "2008-09-25T13:17:08Z")
**10,000 B.C.**. I did a thread on it that I’m not going to repeat here. The movie is a virtualy repository of DUMB. It is a Mine of DUMB, capable of supplying the world’s need for DUM\ **Author:** ![Ronald\_C.Semone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/cc9497/32.png) [@Ronald\_C.Semone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ronald_C.Semone)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/3 "2008-09-25T13:34:19Z") **Legally Blonde II** is so ridiculous as a depiction of the procedural steps in the legistative process in the U. S. Congress that the script might have been written by someone who had never actually heard of it, let alone studied it. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/4 "2008-09-25T13:37:44Z")
I actually saw “Paradise” in a theater when it first came out. I have two memories of it: 1) Willie Aames chiding Phoebe Cates about how much she had been eating (hint, hint), and 2) In one scene of Aames swimming nekkid, one teenish audience member exclaims “I can see it!” ---
**Author:** ![RiverRunner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/977dab/32.png) [@RiverRunner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RiverRunner)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/5 "2008-09-25T13:51:08Z")
Perhaps it was just me, but I thought that **St. Elmo’s Fire** was amazingly stupid when I saw it mumblemumble years ago. My wife loved it, but she’s six years younger than I am, and I think maybe we were at different stages of our lives at that point. **Independence Day** has to be a contender. RR ---
**Author:** ![shiftless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@shiftless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shiftless)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/6 "2008-09-25T14:01:27Z")
Yes, **Independence Day**. The latest **King Kong**. Saw it about a year ago and my brain still hurts from the T-Rexs swinging on vines. On the other hand, **Idiocracy** makes me feel smart-- Maybe it’s got electrolytes? ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Lendervedder](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_lendervedder/32/8488_2.png) [@Happy\_Lendervedder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Lendervedder)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/7 "2008-09-25T14:25:13Z")
Made of Honor. It was the in-flight movie on a flight from San Fran to Detroit, and even without wearing the headphones past the first 15 minutes, I felt stupider when I walked off the plane. ---
**Author:** ![UncleRojelio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unclerojelio/32/3160_2.png) [@UncleRojelio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleRojelio)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/8 "2008-09-25T14:29:20Z")
I feel stupider for having paid money to see [The Forgotten](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0356618/). Aliens?!? Really?!?!?!?!11!!One ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/9 "2008-09-25T14:42:51Z")
> [@UncleRojelio](#): > > I feel stupider for having paid money to see [The Forgotten](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0356618/). > > Aliens?!? Really?!?!?!?!11!!One I feel smarter for having [reviewed it](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=307943&highlight=forgotten). > [@](#): > > I want those 88 minutes of my life back. > > When I saw who was in this movie, I thought “Hey, how could I lose?” Julianne Moore, Anthony Edwards, Gary Sinise, Dominic West, and Alfre Woodard? That’s a cast! > > And the plot – a woman mourning the death of her son suddenly finds out that there are no records of her son, and nobody remembers her son. Not her shrink, her neighbors, not even her husband. The NY Times doesn’t even have a record of her son’s plane crashing, in which nine children died. > > This is compelling stuff. Sounds like a an idea for a great movie. Maybe someday someone will make one. > > What do we get instead? > > _UNBOXED SPOILERS FOLLOW_ > > Space aliens. Yep. Stupid farging space aliens are abducting kids for experiments. What are the experiments? Why, they have travelled through the vast reaches of space, defying incredible odds and fantastic dangers, so they can measure… > > …wait for it… > > …a mother’s love for her children! Yep, you read that right. That have actually developed scientific instruments to measure how much human females miss their dead children. > > All in the name of science, right? > > But wait, it gets better. When the main alien measures that, in one case, the measurement turns out to be “a whole lot”, he somehow deigns the experiment to be a failure. And his reaction is “Boy, my supervisor is gonna be pissed!” > > He somehow ressurects the dead son (and at least one other child), or implants the memory of this child in her head (but no one else’s, somehow or other). And this gives us a nice happy Hollywood ending. > > I want my 88 minutes back. I want my $3.99 back. I want those actors back in respectable and non-stupid movies. ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/10 "2008-09-25T15:32:50Z")
[American Cyborg: Steel Warrior](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109098/). Yes it was a Terminator 2 style knock-off, so it was expected to be bad. But it was even worse than bad. Really. Normally with a post apocalyptic world one has all these neato images, devices, or societies to distract the viewer/reader from how frigging unlikely the depicted scenes are. No - the little effort they put into the settings was to borrow the Max Headroom set, and forget that Max Headroom was satire. A friend talked me into seeing the movie with him, and there were four of us in the theatre. The only truly memorable thing about the whole movie was when one of the four of us shouted out, as we MST3Ked the film, “Be quiet! Noble celluloid died for this film!” [Bio-Dome](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115683/). Of course, given that it starred Pauly Shore, there’s not much more than needs to be said about it. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/11 "2008-09-25T15:49:48Z")
I woke up in the middle of the night to some John Wayne Air Force movie. I never saw so much stupid packed into 15 minutes in my life. He played an Air force officer in charge of a female Russian defector who happened to be a pilot. She had a full dress uniform and medals with her, had no accent(or even a bad attempt at an accent) and was allowed to fly an American jet. Just before I went back to sleep, the officers were hatching a plan to allow her to see all the latest top secret technology and determine what the Russians didn’t have by what she was most interested in. :smack::smack::smack: ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/12 "2008-09-25T16:03:02Z")
Should we have a special category for John Wayne films? Because, while what you describe sure sounds stupid - it’s going to be hard pressed to match the concentrated stupid in the John Wayne Temujin/Genghis Khan biopic: [The Conqueror](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049092/). ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/13 "2008-09-25T16:25:35Z")
> [@runner pat](#): > > I woke up in the middle of the night to some John Wayne Air Force movie. I never saw so much stupid packed into 15 minutes in my life. He played an Air force officer in charge of a female Russian defector who happened to be a pilot. She had a full dress uniform and medals with her, had no accent(or even a bad attempt at an accent) and was allowed to fly an American jet. Just before I went back to sleep, the officers were hatching a plan to allow her to see all the latest top secret technology and determine what the Russians didn’t have by what she was most interested in. :smack::smack::smack: I think that was _Jet Pilot_. A Howard Hughes film, if I recall. And unless I dreamed it, there’s actually a scene in which John Wayne explains that in America, we sublimate our individuality in favor of a team effort, and she says that in the USSR, the individual is celebrated. Something like that; kind of weird. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/14 "2008-09-25T16:29:29Z")
**Cruel Intentions II** edit: oh, and **Demon Seed** ---
**Author:** ![Mahna\_Mahna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e47c2d/32.png) [@Mahna\_Mahna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahna_Mahna)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/15 "2008-09-25T16:32:24Z")
I’d like to submit the entire oeuvre of Jean-Claude Van Damme as textbook DUMB. Though I did always get a kick out of the half-baked excuses they’d sometimes come up with for his accent (My personal fave - he’s from Quebec… because clearly, no one in the US watches enough hockey to recognize a real quebecker accent). 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/16 "2008-09-25T17:13:05Z")
> [@RiverRunner](#): > > Perhaps it was just me, but I thought that **St. Elmo’s Fire** was amazingly stupid when I saw it mumblemumble years ago. You are not alone, believe me. ---
**Author:** ![corkboard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9bcb4/32.png) [@corkboard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/corkboard)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/17 "2008-09-25T17:15:10Z")
_Evan Almighty_. OK, I should have known going in that it would be bad. But I enjoyed _Bruce Almighty_, and I thought this would sort of be along the same lines but with Carell instead of Carrey. Oh dear God, it was dumb. So dumb it made my hair hurt. So dumb it made my dog cry. Dumb to the point that I was offended at the filmmakers passing this story off on me, and expecting me to enjoy it. I would have given it a big pass if it had at least been funny, but it was the worst combination- dumb and not funny. No redeeming value whatsoever (except maybe a couple shots of Lauren Graham. Yum.) ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/18 "2008-09-25T17:16:17Z")
Every **Planet of the Apes** movie that didn’t have Charlton Heston as the star. ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/19 "2008-09-25T17:18:57Z")
[Enchanted.](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0461770/) Oh, it looked cute and wry in the movie theaters, so I tried to watch it when it came on cable. But when the heroine managed to get all the creatures of the forest (and the drain) to clean the apartment in the real Manhattan I gagged. It would have been a lot funnier if she’d done her little tra-la-la trill and nothing happened. Fish out of water, people, means fish out of water. You do not bring the water to the fish. You leave the fish out of the water for maximum hilarity. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/20 "2008-09-25T17:25:31Z")
I’ve been accused of racism for saying this (which pisses me off), but I’ll say it anyway— anything that begins with **Tyler Perry’s**. Medieval morality plays with characters named “Embodiment of Pure Evil” (and u.s. for ‘Innocence’- proud member of Equity) or a Greek tragedy where the actors wore 20 pound masks of a scowling face would have more nuanced characters. This guy is dreadful. It’s a tragedy that with so many out-of-work and underemployed black filmmakers only he seems to get the $900 billion deals. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142.md?page=2)