Ahh, yes, what I call the IMDb/Amazon Rule: There will always be at least one person who gives a horribly bad movie above a 7 and (this is key) will write in a comment like, “I don’t know why everyone says this is such a bad movie” and really MEAN IT.
Here’s another for Mystery Men, though I could’ve done without Pee Wee Herman.
Hey, I liked that film!
Well, to give Paul Attanasio credit, he wrote a fairly accurate adaptation of a truly lousy Michael Crichton novel.
I didn’t like Mystery Men. I think Pee Wee Herman’s character is emblematic of what was wrong with the movie. You’re just a fucking idiot if you include a character like his in a movie like Mystery Men. Dumb and Dumber, fine. Something About Mary, fine. Prolonged fart jokes fit right in with such droll fare. But Mystery Men was supposed to be a whip-smart spoof of the superhero genre. The general cluelessness that made Pee Wee Herman’s character a likely addition to the cast doomed the movie from the start.
Umm, you wanna see a smart spoof of the superhero genre, check out The Specials, or for even smarter takes on the culture which spawned the genre, try Free Enterprise or Comic Book Villains. Hell, the TV series the Tick had it all over Mystery Men.
another fan of MYSTERY MEN, Coppola’s Stoker’s DRACULA, Coppola’s/Branaugh’s Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN here.
I will totally agree that THE AVENGERS and THE MADWOMAN OF CHAILLOT were horrid misuses of great casts & source material. I saw the film MofC soon after I was in a college production (I was the conspiring Baron, btw, Woody Harrelson I think had a bit part- it was Hanover College). We did a better job by far!
I’ve been dying to see The Specials, but I’ve never seen it available for rental on DVD or video ANYWHERE. Is it even currently in print? And I was disappointed by Comic Book Villains, despite being written and directed by James “Starman” Robinson. But I tend to think the blame doesn’t lie with him, or with the good cast, but rather with pushy studio people who had to interfere.
More recently, I would also have to nominate Hannibal. It had its moments, but overall was a stinker despite Anthony Hopkins, et al.
I don’t have a nomination, I just wanted to share my love for both Mystery Men (which was good), and Death to Smoochy, which was fuckin’ fantastic. Mark my words: in twenty years, Smoochy will be a cult icon.
You forgot Eddie Izzard and Fiona Shaw, (two people, incidentally, whom I would like to see performing live on stage before I die, although not necessarily at the same time). Add a fantastic TV series and a huge special effects budget as well – yea verily, somebody had to work very hard indeed to make this movie as bad as it was.
And I too liked Mystery Men, “The Spleen” notwithstanding.
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Sean Connery et al. should have been a fun movie, instead I was bored out of my mind and actually figured out the “surprise” early on but thought they had ignored the original stories the characters came from.
I think I’m the only person who actually liked Sphere (both the movie and the book).
I’d have to lay down what I considder to be the worst sequel ever, Alien: Resurrection.
Jeff Bridges
Jessica Lange
Charles Grodin
DeLaurentis’ remake of King Kong
Truly bad.
I’m suprised that Analyze This and Analyze That did as well as they did IN SPITE of the ensembles.
Williard, with Crispin Glover. I’m not even really a fan of the original, or even of horror movies in general, but even I saw it as a movie role that Glover was born to play. Unfortunately, they bobble it by timidly skimping on the gore. It just wasn’t scary.
Art
The Specials is 10 times better than Mystery Men. Keep checking the Scifi Channel’s monthly schedules, I taped in in October or November, and I know it was on once before earlier in the fall too, so they seem to like it. (I didn’t like Comic Book Villians either)
I loved Willard. It’s not a horror film, it’s a subversive morality play on what happens when you’re completely passive to the world and your own will.
I could not stand this version of Les Miserables Geoffrey Rush, Liam Neeson, Uma Thurman, and (to a lesser extent) Claire Danes. There was just something about the way Neeson’s Jean Valjean seemed (to me) to have a carnal interest in Thurman’s Fantine, that I did not pick up on when reading the novel. “No!” I screamed in my head when I saw it. “He promised to care for Cosette out of chivalry, not some unrequited love!”
And having just watched Branagh’s Hamlet, I have to say that, even though Branagh’s version is much closer to the actual text of the play, I prefer Zeffirelli’s Hamlet (starring the controversial Mel Gibson), as far as movie versions go.
Branagh’s goes with the “yes, Hamlet had sex with Ophelia, and we’re talking lots of sex, not just one time” view, while Zeffirelli’s seems to leave that more open to your own conclusions. Also, in Branagh’s, when Laertes kisses his sister goodbye, he doesn’t kiss her like a sister – my brothers have definitely never kissed me like that. 'Tain’t brotherly at all.
Hamlet, Sr. is also less compassionate and human – instead of his desire to be avenged stemming from his sense of betrayal towards his brother and wife, the Hamlet in Branagh’s version is terrifying. (And probably closer to what Shakespeare was aiming for – “So frown’d he once when, in angry parle, / He smote the sledded Pollacks on the ice.” “Martial stalk”, etc. But I like my dead Danish kings to still retain some humanity.)
Branagh’s Hamlet annoys the hell out of me, too. There’s something that’s inherently irritating to me about his portrayal of the “crazy” Hamlet. Ugh. His lines come too fast, and while he sounds like a blathering madman, his presentation does a lot to steal away the impact and wit of the text in Hamlet’s exchange with Polonius.
Yeah, Branagh doesn’t win 'em all, not by a long shot.
Death to Smoochy is okay, but given the cast it’s definitely not what it could have been. And it came out in 2002 - WAY too late for a movie spoofing Barney, who peaked around 1995.
Kelsey Grammer, Ian Holm, Pete Postlethwaite, Patrick Stewart, Peter Ustinov.
should’ve been great, but it wasn’t.