During their last Comedy Central episode (Laserblast), Mike and the Bots pointed out various movies that Leonard Maltin had rated the same as their experiment, namely 2 & 1/2 stars.
The object of this game is to find good movies Maltin ranked as either worse or somewhat better (3 stars) than Laserblast.
I’ll start out with some examples:
A Bridge Too Far - 2 The Abyss - 3 Monty Python and the Holy Grail - 2 & 1/2 Zulu - 3 The Towering Inferno 2 & 1/2
Alternatively, you could find really bad movies that were listed as being as good as Laserblast, such as:
Animal House, two stars. Leon, AKA The Professional, two stars. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, three stars. Taxi Driver, two stars. Legend, two stars. Revenge of the Nerds, two stars.
Whenever Leonard Maltin is mentioned, I think of one particular review he gave on Entertainment Tonight. In the early days of ET, the show was less in bed with the studios and could be critical of bad movies. His review of Transylvania 6-5000 was short and to the point. He came on, saying nothing, while a recording of “Pennsylvania 6-5000” played in the background. The music played for a while, Maltin still said nothing. Gutsy – a talking head saying nothing on tv is much like dead air on the radio. Finally, the song came to the point where the music stops and the band yells “Pennsylvania 6-5000.” Maltin yells along with them: “Transylvania 6-5000 [sub][sup](short pause)[/sub][/sup] stinks.”
When he was regular reviewing on ET, he gave a 1-10 rating.
There was some really bad movie, he gave it a ZERO.
Then there was another really bad movie. Started showing a clip. LM stood up, waved his hands (as if to say “bah!”)
and left, as if to say “not worth reviewing”
For a while ther, LM opinins pretty much matched mine.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon = **1/2 Deuce Bigelow, Male Gigolo (which he allowed his teenage daughter to review for the book) = **1/2
He manages to give **** to any number of mediocre “classics” (paging The Ten Commandments), but can’t manage to find more than one movie with **** in the last two years? And that one movie’s The Cider House Rules?!?
The guy does know his film history somewhat (he’s written OK books on animation and comedy shorts, among others), but I’ve seen the man speak/moderate discussions in person, and I’m inclined to think he has the worst type of vanilla middle-brow tastes. And as a reviewer, he’s an idiot.
Personally, I can’t figure out the value (or interest) in this exercise. 2 1/2 is basically another word for “mediocre”. Finding other moview that have been reviewed as mediocre doesn’t make them in any way similar to this Laserblast (a movie that I’ve never even heard of, but I suppose you can’t argue with free advertising and what appears to be a hooky gimmick.)
My tennis playing is god-awful. So is the tennis playing of Stephen Hawking. Same with Louie Anderson. Same with Bruce Lee (especially since he’s dead). Therefore, there are amazing similarities between all of us!
We’re showing up the arbitrariness in Leonard Maltin’s ratings.
It’s an open secret that a lot of the ones in his books are reviewed by staffers, but they need more editorial consistency. Sometimes there’s no way for the reader to tell the difference between a fun piece of fluff and a classic that didn’t suit one writer’s tastes.
That’s right, in Leonard Maltin’s opinion Laserblast was a better movie than Blade Runner.
Now, I’ve never heard of Laserblast either. Maybe it really is a better movie than Blade Runner. But Mike and the Bots generally had good taste, so I’m going to guess no.
Battlestar Galactica In Sens-O-Round 2.5 The Toxic Avenger 2.5
I’m sure the Coens are happy to know that their work compares favorably to a television show hacked down to a feature-length film.
However, he gives a sterling review for Night of the Living Dead, 3 1/2 stars, while at the same time giving Show Girls the finger–a “stupefyingly awful movie.”
I have no complaints with either of those reviews.
Actually, it shows here that he gave it only *1/2!.
But that’s not as bad as David Cronenberg’s vastly underrated The Brood, which he gives a BOMB, but still manages to give the truly terrible The Patriot, Simon Birch, Volcano and Chris O’Donnell version of The Three Musketeers *** each.