Movies you absolutely DESPISE

Cafe Society
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Most of my hated films have been mentioned already: Very Bad Things and The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover are just repellent. Ugh. And Bicentennial Man was awful, awful, awful. I’ll just never get that time back, and I want it.

But I’m kind of surprised to see that two others haven’t been mentioned at all. Maybe that’s because no one else saw them, or because they’ve blocked out the memories. So here goes.

Mr. Wrong with Ellen DeGeneres and Bill Pullman. It’s hard to put into any decent number of words why this movie is so bad. Normally, Bill Pullman’s a fine actor (Malice was great, IMO), but his character in this movie was just so awful. And Ellen DeGeneres wasn’t any better. Not believable at all, and this was before we knew she was a lesbian. Both of them are so woefully unsympathetic that you wind up just praying for a beam to fall on your head and deliver the sweet kiss of unconsciousness.

But even that movie was better than the crapfest that was If Lucy Fell. Starring Sarah Jessica Parker (Warning! Red Alert! Danger, Will Robinson!), and somebody else I didn’t recognize and can’t be bothered to look up. I’d spoiler-box the central conceit and the ending, but it’s just too awful; if I can keep someone from watching it by spoiling it, I consider that a moral victory. The central conceit is amoral and stupid, and the ending is so predictable you could have just turned it off after hearing the central conceit; you’d know what was going to happen either way. So:

SJP and what’s-his-name are good (platonic) friends and (I think) roommates. They make a pact that if they aren’t with someone in 30 days, they’ll kill themselves. Gack. Way to judge yourself based on your ability to attract a mate. This isn’t Wild Kingdom, for God’s sake. Then (of course), what’s-his-name eventually decides he’s in love with SJP, and has to rush off and save her from committing suicide by jumping off a bridge. Which he of course does, at the last minute; he took just long enough to decide he loved her to ensure that she would attempt to go through with the suicide pact, but not so long that she succeeded.

Awful. Just awful.

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Oh, and I forgot to mention that If Lucy Fell was billed as a–anyone? anyone?

A romantic comedy. I shit you not.

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Oh. The Cable Guy.

My first thought was Basic Instinct, which I hate not merely as one hates a work of art, but as one irrationally & idiosyncratically hates a person.

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Dumb and Dumber

I had to watch it during a car-ride with this other family. I usually don’t hate that type of comedy, but I just wanted to kill the characters at times. The reason I hated it as much as I did was mostly because there was the kid in the car with us who cracked up at every joke in the entire movie. It wasn’t a fun trip, cramped in the backseat of a car with a guy laughing hysterically at every idiotic joke.

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Ok. After much cajoling, I am finally going to explain my deep, abiding hatred-with-the-passion-of-a-thousand-burning-suns for The Breakfast Club. I appologize for not doing so sooner. I kept putting it off.

Many of the movies mentioned above are truely bad. The Breakfast Club is not. It is, in fact, (like almost all of John Hughs’s films) a rather skilfully crafted piece of entertainment. Mere badness, however gross, can always be forgiven. The Breakfast Club, however, is a personal insult, and that cannot be.

The movie is clearly set up so that each person identifies with one of the five main characters, each a high school stereotype. Each of the characters learns, over the course of the movie, to see himself or herself as something more than the image they have created for themselves, and in the process forms a connection with the other characters that leads to a romantic relationship that symbolizes the new, albeit uncertain, possabilities they see for themselves as they move closer to adulthood and away from the adolecent identities they clung to.

Each character, that is, except one. Like many on the SDMB, no doubt, I identified with the nerdy character, Brian, played by Anthony Michael Hall. At the end of the movie, while the other characters all run off behind the rolling credits to fuck like bunnies, Brian sits in the library doing their homework for them. And that’s the happy ending! As I said to moi yesterday when I mentioned this thread, it’s not that the geek ends up lonely at the end; it’s that he doesn’t! I could live with John Hughs merely suggesting that geeks don’t get laid. That’s sadly realistic, at least in high school. Hughs apparently, however, believes that geeks don’t deserve or need to get laid!

(Moi pointed out that Hughs released Weird Science, a movie dedicated to geek lust, six months after TBC. I have no answer for this. I can only evaluate each movie on it’s own terms.)

I really don’t know how to convey how angry and insulted this movie makes me feel. Imagine if a black character had learned “valuable life lessons” that resulted in them happily doing work for the other characters who went off to enjoy themselves. No one would stand for such a thing! (The fact that no black characters, AFAICT, appear in any of Hughs’s movies, as was pointed out to me by Rilchiam, is another annoyance, but not my personal beef.)

I’m certainly not suggesting that insulting geeks falls anywhere close to racism on the scale of social sins, I only wish to point out that such a movie as I described would clearly be insulting to blacks. Well this movie is insulting to me, and I don’t like it. In a movie all about “valuable life lessons”, the lesson I learned is that I might form brief friendships, but only if I do work for other kids, and that no matter what happens, the jocks and the “dangerous” kids will always get the chicks. And that I should be happy with that.

Even by Hollywood standards, I have to say, that moral sucks.

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I’m with Marley on this. But I thought it was pretty crappy, anyway.

Since I’m here, a vote for Barry Jarman’s Blue, which I refused to see, so my wife had to go with someone else. Pretentious rubbish was her verdict.

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I can’t believe it took so long before Natural Born Killers was mentioned. I’ll definitely second that, and throw in every other film Oliver Stone’s done (except the Castro documentary, which was interesting) for good measure - I didn’t think it was possible for any movie to make me think the Doors were more boring than I already did, but Ollie proved me wrong.

As long as I’m damning entire ouevres, I’ll add anything Vincent Gallo has been involved in, and put in a mild word for Tim Burton, who, with the exception of Ed Wood, which I enjoyed (and which was the least Burton-esque of his movies), has constantly made disappointing films while managing to retain a reputation as an auteur.

Two movies I walked out of in the theaters: Showgirls and some French pieceashit called Romance, which was also an “erotic” movie that wasn’t the least bit erotic.

Most recent totally pointless film I rented: The Clearing with Robert Redford and Willem Defoe.

Movie I despised that everyone else raved about: Fight Club. I thought it started out strong, then devolved into complete inanity, and found the final “twist” so moronic that the Brooklyn Bridge wouldn’t have been enough to suspend my disbelief.

Goodefellas being on this list boggles the mind. Ditto The Big Lebowski.

And for those who named Patch Adams: are you telling me you couldn’t tell how much it was going to suck before you watched it?

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Well, this list clearly comes down mainly to personal preferences, so I’ll weigh in with mine. All I’ve gotta do is list what I’ve seen on airplanes recently. So:

The Day After Tomorrow: along with every single thing Roland Emmerich has ever directed, except oddly enough, Stargate

Just Married: trapped in an airplane seat with Ashton Kucher and Brittany Murphy. Kill me now.

A Cinderella Story: I can’t beleive this wasn’t a straight-to-video Disney Channel ‘Special’.

The Last Samurai: Yep, folks, the most important thing in life is to die pretty.

I see one common thread here is that a lot of folks hate pretention. Me, I don’t have that much of a problem with it, so I can easily sit through a Paul Thomas Anderson, Stanley Kubrick or Coen Brothers film that would have many here run screaming for the exits. Whatever.

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The Big Chill – the narcissistic yuppie who made this takes the lives of these narcissistic yuppies way too seriously. And the movie completely destroys the good music that’s in it. Hell, couldn’t Kasdan actually have a creative thought or two instead of simpy playing top-10 hits from the Sixties? Worst soundtrack ever. I love that in High Fidelity they disqualify the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” from one of their top-5 lists because of its association with the Big Chill.

A girl I was seeing once loved the Big Chill. I have to say that it seriously lowered my estimation of her.

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**Un chien andalou **. Yes, I know it was important and original and groundbreaking. I also found it tiresome and irritating after a few moments. It was similar to watching television when a hyperactive toddler has the remote control.

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Um… Sorry?

Toss in another vote for Armageddon. I still want to hunt down Bruce Willis and make him return two and a half hours of my life.

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Well, I really liked it (even though I was cringing for a couple of days before watching it because I’d found out that the eyeball scene was the first freaking scene in the movie!), but I can certainly understand why someone wouldn’t. It’s not like it has a plot, or even a coherent narrative structure. Or any conscious symbolism (in fact, it was intended not to mean anything at all). And it’s a silent film, which grates on some people. Plus, I don’t remember it having any dialogue.

But heck, it’s only 17 minutes long. Better than watching an infomercial. :slight_smile:

And it has nudity. :wink:

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Few movies really squick me, probably because I’m pretty selective about what I watch, but this was one. The only redeeming thing about is the sole of Juliette Lewis’ foot as she Bogarts her cigarette right into the camera.

The worst thing for me is the much-ballyhooed comedy laff riot that turns out stale, flat, or afflicted with Tell-A-Storyitis. I was vastly underwhelmed by Time Bandits, and most of A Fish Called Wanda.

M. Hulot’s Holiday was like watching paint dry: pratfall, pratfall, pratfall, pratfall…I guess you have to be French to really see the genius of it. I’ve seen Pete Smith Specialties that made me laugh harder.

Anything with which Lorne Michaels is involved is like watching paint dry on your very best Irish linen tablecloth.

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I’m pretty sure you’re answering your own question here.

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Full disclosure: I own a lot of the movies already mentioned including Moulin Rouge and Dancer in the Dark. And, as Alan Smithee’s post has suggested, I liked The Breakfast Club, though I won’t subject the boards to a rehash of our argument. :wink:

Hey, if it worked for those Highlander fans, I don’t see why we can’t get in on this action, too. Good call, Grace.

Re: A Clockwork Orange, Chapter 21, and Kubrik
My understanding, having recently read the full version, is that the author had every reason to believe Kubrik was aware of the final chapter but deliberately chose to film the book without that ending.

Films folks have raved about that I couldn’t stand include Gladiator and Natural Born Killers. But I don’t think I DESPISE those films. In fact, I can only think of two films that earn this distinction: Todd Solondz’s Happiness and a film that has thusfar gone without mention and I’ll choose to keep to myself, lest I expose more people to its vileness. There’s only one review of it on IMDb (where the subject, ominously, is “I consider this to be the best film I have ever seen”) and it’s only garnered 3.5 out of ten stars…though, in all honesty, I think that’s far too generous.

Those are the only two films I wish I had not seen.

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Another vote for A Clockwork Orange . Truly depraved. And not in a good way.

I would rather bathe in Hydrochloric acid than sit through Eyes Wide Shut again. Gah!

Along Came Polly …Unoriginal, pointless tripe. Like a bad sitcom only worse. Ben Stiller has lost his new penny shine.

Why did I see Runaway Bride you ask? What on earth was I thinking you ask? Uh huh. Exactly. Caca from start to finish.

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Blast from the Past traumatized me badly.

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Knowing full well that people are very divided over this one…

I couldn’t bear a single frame of the hyperkinetic, anachronistic irritation that was Moulin Rouge.

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I loved all these movies…particularly The Reflecting Skin. That’s it. We’re not going to the show together ever again!

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1)Fire all the human and/or humanoid performers.

2)Throw out the script.

  1. Give the blind ferret a seeing-eye buddy ferret .

  2. Give the 2 ferrets a couple of crabby cats to harass.

This would be loads more fun than about 2/3 of the alleged comedies Hollywood grinds out in a given year.