That was the starting point; the perspective. It wasn’t an exercise in consistency for consistency’s sake; that was how the tone was adopted. Those aspects you mention would be perfectly valid in a commercial propaganda film–like all the Andrews Sisters movies; Mrs. Miniver; things like that. There were a lot of pro-war movies made in Hollywood DURING the war. John Wayne, Clark Gable, Judy Garland, Greer Garson, et al., all made their share of very gungho, patriotic “Buy Bonds!” movies in 1941-1945. Hollywood did its share to keep the home fires burning. I suspect that was more what Verhoeven had in mind, rather than the more straight-forwardly didactic propaganda films produced by the military.
lissener, I thought ST reminded me a lot of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. Perhaps just b/c of the outrageous cruelty towards anthropormophized characters & the political subtext (which pretty blatant - is that what everyone keeps getting their undies in a bunch about?). Both films disturbed me mightily; I never did finish Roger Rabbit.
Now, for a stupid, stupid movie – Rocky IV. By far the worst movie that I didn’t walk out of (wasn’t my idea to go in the first place). I doubt that one’ll have any defenders.
The Life of David Gale was nauseatingly awful.
Pretty Woman was stupid, but full of pretty people. My Best Friend’s Wedding was even worse.
Air Force One was really, really stupid - isn’t that the one where Harrison Ford is hanging onto a rope dangling out of the back of an airplane? And the one plane blows up right next to the other one, without sending it to the ground? Who thinks up this stuff?
Yes, usually. Some people don’t agree that there is a political subtext; that it’s just a straightforward SF action flick. I think it’s pretty blatant too, but not everyone agrees.
Three pages and no one has mentioned C.H.U.D.? Was there a rule that it had to be a recent movie?
Of course I had the advantage of watching this movie for the first time at a screening hosted by its screenwriter, Parnell Hall, who very kindly pointed out all the hilarious inconsistencies as they happened onscreen. Still, I think its basic stupidity would have shone through regardless.
This is what I had in mind when I started this thread. Good stuff!
One more post about Mars Attacks! :
I liked this film–a lot! How can you not love a movie where Jack Nicholson plays the President of the United States? But in all the previous posts, no one has mentioned that the end is a direct rip-off from Attack of the Killer Tomatoes ! For me, that was the one disappointment in an otherwise entertaining film.
Another good category of “worst movies”–the “I"m-supposed-to-care -about-this-character?” film. From this point of view, I nominate The Doors and The Wall .
Not even counting the fact that, IMHO, Val Kilmer is possibly the worst actor to ever curse a movie screen, self-destruction elicits absolutely no sympathy from this quarter. The same argument applies for The Wall --on top of the fact that it probably never should have been filmed in the first place. And, if that wasn’t enough, BOB-FREAKING-GELDOF??? EWWWWWW!!!
BTW, I am a huge fan of both The Doors and Pink Floyd–some things should just be heard and not seen.
Huh? Excuse me while I pick my jaw off the floor. I haven’t seen The Doors, but he’s been good in everything I’ve seen him in, and he was downright perfect in Tombstone. He even manages to come off good in crap like Alexander and The Saint.
You want dumb? How about Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace? I haven’t seen either since the 1980’s, but they were both pretty stupid.
fessie, what is the political subtext of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Not to mention Top Secret. 
*I guess Pearl Harbor sucked, just a little bit more than I miss you. *
I vote for Wedding Crashers as the stupidest movie I’ve seen this year; it bored me almost to sleep. I felt like I was watching the same formula that I had seen 10 times before.
I’d say that without the smiley.
Roger Rabbit is a broadly comic companion piece to Chinatown. While the latter was a neo-film noir mystery that dealt with the underhanded mechanizations involved in bringing water to the Los Angeles Basin (mainly by stealing from the Owens Valley), Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is a neo-film noir mystery parody about the underhanded mechanizations involved in the construction of LA’s freeway network after WWII. Basically, like in the movie, LA used to have an extensive streetcar and public transportation system until the 1940’s when it was dismantled in favor of buses and the freeways that exist now. The reason why this was done is because GM-- acting through a bus company it had holdings in–and the oil companies got together to buy out and dismantle public transportation systems throughout the U.S. so they could replace the streetcars and trolleys with buses and get more people to buy more cars and use more gasoline. Los Angeles was the most famous (infamous?) example of this plan.
(Of course, this is an historical conspiracy theory. I’m sure you can find sources disputing the existence of this plan.)
And you’re not the only one. Intuitor’s “Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics” page names The Core as the worst movie physics movie of all time.
Well, there is one that springs to mind.
And I don’t know how much of that is subtext.
Some really stupid movies in thia thread, plus some ggod movies getting trashed…
My vote: ** Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home** Who the hell thought up this one? Send the crew back in time to save the whales? It was all just an excuse to run up a few jokes about the future interacting with the past (done much better with Back to the Future!). I was a big fan of the original Star Trek, but stood and "booed"at the end of this one in the theater!
Highlander Endgame. I couldn’t even follow it. I rented it and did not finish it. That has never happened. Even ignoring the horrible continuity problems of all Higlander sequils, I was lost, lost, lost.
And I defend Val Kilmer and Ryan Reynolds as really fun to watch, no matter what they are in.
The scene that did it for me was when the submarine is attacked (or hits something. I forget) and the immense command room is suddenly thrown into disarray, with sirens blaring, etc. two of the random sailors in the room go over, set the big war room table thing back up and replace the pieces and then return to stand near the wall.
Uhm, hello? Don’t they have, like, battle stations to go to or something?
“In the event of an attack, you guys stay here and make sure all the furniture is put back in order.”
I agree that The Day After Tomorrow is incredibly stupid, but I love it anyway. I’ve seen it three or four times, and each time I have a blast. And I liked Saw.
Hm. I’ve never seen the movie, but I’m on a D&D-based messageboard where the scriptwriter hangs out sometimes, and from the way he talked about the movie, he had a blast writing it and really, really didn’t give a shit about the physics. For him, it was an exercise in high-camp, pulpitudinous scifi, the kind of thing that it would be fun to play through. I get the impression that criticizing its geophysics is a little like criticizing the biological science in The Mummy Returns.
Daniel