# 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:** 5
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2008, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/81 "2008-09-26T04:40:50Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Does it count if it’s dumb on purpose? Read upthread: apparently not. ---
**Author:** ![Hippy\_Hollow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hippy_hollow/32/4841_2.png) [@Hippy\_Hollow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hippy_Hollow)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2008, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/82 "2008-09-26T05:06:53Z")
> [@mariposalabrown](#): > > Along with _Epic Movie_ and _Disaster Movie_, I nominate _Date Movie_. I only even gave it a chance because of Alyson Hannigan, and I turned it off with twenty minutes to go. I never stop watching movie, but even getting that far into it, I just couldn’t take another second of it. I watch a lot of cheesy horror, and have a full appreciation of tons of “bad movies”, but those freaking \_\_\_\_\_\_ Movie movies kill me. What kills me even more is that there obviously is a market for them, because they just keep making them. I’m getting angry again just thinking about _Date Movie_. Yes. These movies, as well as any starring the Wayans Brothers. Keenan Ivory Wayans is the only remotely funny Wayans. Damon is funny like a broken clock is right twice a day. The other lesser Wayans suck the funny out of a movie, like a humor vacuum. Case in point: White Girls. Also the Nicholas Cage action movies. Con Air, 8MM are examples. Horrific films, both of them. ---
**Author:** ![Nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2008, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/83 "2008-09-26T05:33:58Z")
> [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > edit: oh, and **Demon Seed** [hijack] Forgive the hijack, but thank you, thank you, thank you, for mentioning that movie. I saw it on TV many years ago. I have remembered most of the movie, but came into it after it started, and never saw the name. For many years I’ve been wondering what the name of the movie was. My curiosity is finally satisfied. Thank you. [/hijack] ---
**Author:** ![Nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2008, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/84 "2008-09-26T05:43:04Z")
So that I’m not just hijacking, but adding something to this thread, I’ll second The Forgotten. I felt fine watching the movie, but after my wife and I left, as I thought about what I just watched, and all the questions and plot holes that came to mind, I actually felt empty. A movie actually made me feel empty inside. I’ll also add Escape from L.A. to the list. I should have just walked out of that one. ---
**Author:** ![Jolly\_Roger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/91b2a8/32.png) [@Jolly\_Roger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jolly_Roger)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2008, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/85 "2008-09-26T06:43:27Z")
> [@Nobody](#): > > So that I’m not just hijacking, but adding something to this thread, I’ll second The Forgotten. I felt fine watching the movie, but after my wife and I left, as I thought about what I just watched, and all the questions and plot holes that came to mind, I actually felt empty. A movie actually made me feel empty inside. > > I’ll also add Escape from L.A. to the list. I should have just walked out of that one. _ **The Avengers** _. I had to take a cab after seeing that in a theater. It erased my ability to drive. ---
**Author:** ![Sr\_Siete](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6de8d8/32.png) [@Sr\_Siete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sr_Siete)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2008, 9:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/86 "2008-09-26T09:40:37Z")
You know, I think that you are all too negative. So, to inspire some hope in the beautiful art of cinema, I’m going to counteract your examples of stinkers with one of the smartest movies I’ve had the pleasure to watch, the underrated masterpiece “Untraceable” with Diane Lane: Even though I am not a computer buff, I hate movies that get the technical stuff completely wrong because the writers can’t be arsed to study the subject they are writing about, but this movie got everything right. First off, there’s a killer putting people on complex torture devices that will kill the intended victim when enough people connect to the web page to watch. Just put the web down, you say? Wrong, cleverly the writers tell us that the server is located in Russia, a place that, as everybody knows, has got no law enforcement whatsoever. Actually the FBI won’t even bother in calling the server’s owner and telling him “Dude, like, illegal activity in there” because, with a clever understanding of Russian psychology, they know that any Rusky will be just too happy to let capitalist American dogs die. Then there’s the brilliant detecting job the FBI makes in that movie, really, really clever stuff: you see, when they are watching the first on line victim, one of the agents, Tom Hank’s son, says something really cryptic, he says, paraphrasing “If that was me, I would blink my location in Morse code”. Now, after he is kidnapped himself, Diane Lane needs just a few hours of watching his friend blinking at regular intervals, the one who said that he would blink in Morse code if he ever was in that position, to make the connection. Wow. I would have needed years of study before making that jump, but I guess that the FBI doesn’t hire fools. Unfortunately, regardless of Diane Lane’s quickness, Tom Hank’s son dies just when they were translating his last words. Now, somebody who doesn’t know anything about computers would just make the agents “rewind” the movie to get the rest of the message, like that was a videotape or something. Fortunately, the writers are savvy enough to know that it’s **impossible to record things from the Internet.** Now, that’s good writing. But you may think that the writers or writer or whatever just knows a lot about computers and FBI protocols but not really anything else: WRONG AGAIN. There’s an impressive knowledge about cars there. You see, a few minutes later, Diane Lane has to enter a car for some reason, and the only way is through the driver’ window. Now, a lot of ignorant people believes wrongly that breaking the glass of a car window is pretty hard, but in the movie they know that you only need to nudge it slightly in the center with your elbow and it will shatter like a cheap glass of champagne. Absolutely magnificent. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2008, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/87 "2008-09-26T10:42:59Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > [_Deep Impact:_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Impact_(film)) Much less dumb than _Armageddon,_ but shares the premise that if an extinction-level asteroid is headed toward Earth, you can solve the problem by blowing it into millions of fragments of equivalent aggregate mass, all headed towards Earth. Well… a bunch of little rocks has a much larger surface area than one big rock, so more will burn up in the atmosphere. I think that was the logic there, insomuch as the word “logic” can be applied to the movies in question. ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2008, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/88 "2008-09-26T10:47:17Z")
> [@5-HT](#): > > But wasn’t **Starship Troopers** a satire? I thought the whole point was making it over the top to mock the political viewpoint of the novel? The problem with that notion is that the dumbest elements of the film don’t really have anything to do with the viewpoint of the source novel. The excruciatingly contrived “love” triangle, the faux- **Aliens** gadding about-- “Hello, Mr. Space Mantis? Your victims are here!”-- these are all well-established, highly generic American cinematic dumbness tropes. So rather than being an insightful satire of Heinlein’s politics, the movie actually reads like a textbook example of how the Hollywood blockbuster machine takes genuinely intelligent source material and dumbs it down into unrecognizability. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2008, 11:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/89 "2008-09-26T11:17:26Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Well… a bunch of little rocks has a much larger surface area than one big rock, so more will burn up in the atmosphere. I think that was the logic there, insomuch as the word “logic” can be applied to the movies in question. Yeah, but all of the kinetic energy still arrives, it’s just transferred to the atmosphere rather than the Earth’s crust. With a small object it might help, but with an asteroid “the size of Texas” I don’t see the benefit. ---
**Author:** ![AllWalker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/db5fbb/32.png) [@AllWalker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AllWalker)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2008, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/90 "2008-09-26T15:46:22Z")
I watched _Not Another Teen Movie_. The next day, I almost failed a maths exam. My friend got 100%. I’m blaming the movie. ---
**Author:** ![Ellen\_Cherry](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellen_cherry/32/3600_2.png) [@Ellen\_Cherry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellen_Cherry)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2008, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/91 "2008-09-26T16:10:58Z")
Have any of you endured the supersonic dumb that is COCKTAIL? This movie is so stupid I’m not even sure I remember what little plot there was. I do know that I didn’t watch the whole thing, which in itself is some sort of epic drain of something, for when it was released Tom Cruise was still sane, I was in my 20s and IN MAJOR LUST with the boy. So, for me not to watch it merely for the muscle~y eye candy, it had to be bad. But, as far as I can recall, it was merely about the ultra-boring, mind-numbing lives of bartenders who can flip cups around while they make the drinks. People watch, people clap! People enjoy the talented bartenders! Who are cute! The end. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Scrivener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@The\_Scrivener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Scrivener)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2008, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/92 "2008-09-26T16:20:49Z")
Seconded. I tried to catch up on the cinemediocrity of **Cocktail** a couple of years back, when there was apparently nothing else worth watching whatsoever, and couldn’t take more than a few minutes of it. And I’m a major Bryan Brown fan (I own the miniseries **A Town Like Alice**!). Here’s another stinker: **Speed 2**. Saw that baby in the theater. I still like Sandra Bullock and Jason Patric, but together, they didn’t have any charisma or chemistry whatsoever. I think the movie may have gotten a few [golf] claps at the end, but I’m pretty sure those people were just being sarcastic. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2008, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/93 "2008-09-26T16:36:16Z")
> [@5-HT](#): > > But wasn’t **Starship Troopers** a satire? I thought the whole point was making it over the top to mock the political viewpoint of the novel? There was not the slightest indication Verhoeven **understood** the political viewpoint of the novel. In fact, I don’t think he even read it. ---
**Author:** ![Nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2008, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/94 "2008-09-26T16:40:13Z")
I thought the whole “It’s a satire” thing came about after the movie bombed and the creator, or producers, or whoever, were trying to save its reputation. ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2008, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/95 "2008-09-26T16:49:38Z")
[Megaforce](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084316/), hands down. Disco-era jumpsuited motorcyclists with fabulous hair save the day. My favorite line: the cowboy mechanic, the actor of which speaks with the stupidest Texan accent of all time, says of the team brain, “He’s got more degrees than a thermometer!” ---
**Author:** ![Don\_Draper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Don\_Draper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_Draper)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2008, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/96 "2008-09-26T17:15:54Z")
[Another Gay Movie](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443431/) - Even going in, I expected it to be bad, but not as **aggressively** stupid as it was. Somehow I imagine that if, in the spring of 1969, the rioting, rebellious drag queens & gay rights pioneers at Stonewall were shown this movie, and told that _this_ would have been the end result of all their struggles, then all the drag queen would have put on their street clothes, the men would slip wedding bands on their fingers & invent fake wives, the women would put on make-up and frilly dresses, and they would all go on to lead lives of quiet desperation, but thinking confidently to themselves “this way is much better.” ---
**Author:** ![N.Sane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/f19dbf/32.png) [@N.Sane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N.Sane)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2008, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/97 "2008-09-26T17:18:27Z")
Another vote for _Date Movie_. Alyson Hannigan must have been blackmailed. It’s the only reason I can think of for her being involved in that dreck. ---
**Author:** ![Punintentional](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9de0a6/32.png) [@Punintentional](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Punintentional)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2008, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/98 "2008-09-26T17:27:22Z")
> [@Ronald\_C.Semone](#): > > **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. Hmm… the fact you applied any thought at all regarding procedural steps in the legislative process in the U.S. Congress in regards to this movie says a lot about you. (Or your arrogance). ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2008, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/99 "2008-09-26T17:30:31Z")
> [@Jeff](#): > > I think Starship Troopers is a lesser form of stupid. I honestly can’t decide whether or not the movie has any actual merit (or whether such merit is merely an artifact from the book, which I can only dimly remember). But I wouldn’t cast it down in the pits of stupid-movie-hell with movies like _Swordfish_, where I think the cast and director ought to personally reimburse the audience for the time and money spent watching it. Most dudes that hate Starship Troopers because it didn’t do a good job of adapting a very good book to the screen. But if you simply look on the film on it’s own, (without thinking of Robert H spinning in his grave) then you see it as a fun SF action film. Where only the commercials made it up to great, the rest was “eh” to “eh+”. Plus boobies, which gives any film an add’l +, or 1/2 star. Thus Swordfish gets a F+, as it has some fantastic rarely before seen boobies. Heck, they may move it to a D-. ---
**Author:** ![Punintentional](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9de0a6/32.png) [@Punintentional](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Punintentional)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2008, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142/100 "2008-09-26T17:32:54Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Most dudes that hate Starship Troopers because it didn’t do a good job of adapting a very good book to the screen. But if you simply look on the film on it’s own, (without thinking of Robert H spinning in his grave) then you see it as a fun SF action film. Where only the commercials made it up to great, the rest was “eh” to “eh+”. Plus boobies, which gives any film an add’l +, or 1/2 star. > > Thus Swordfish gets a F+, as it has some fantastic rarely before seen boobies. Heck, they may move it to a D-. please inform me before you use that rating system again. You owe me a new monitor, keyboard, and carpet. Too funny! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-so-stupid-that-they-literally-drain-off-iq-points-as-you-watch/465142.md?page=6)