There have been some threads devoted mainly to good commentary tracks on DVDs, but this is for the really stinky ones. Ones so bad that the so-called “bonus feature” is not much of a bonus at all. Here are a few I’ve run across:
Excalibur - John Boorman speaks in a monotone and never finishes a sentence. “Right here we were trying to… Oh, now here is where we… Okay, this part is…”
1776 - Very disappointing for me but picks up a little during the one deleted musical number. Consists almost entirely of one of the two commentators describing what’s happening onscreen, as if you can’t see for yourself.
Bowling for Columbine - Michael Moore turned over the commentary chores to his “receptionists and interns,” which is like eavesdropping on a conversation at a college bar. Has anyone actually sat through the whole thing?
And, on one of the Austin Powers DVDs, Mike Myers and Jay Roach simply cut out well before the end of the film.
I love “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, but Ang Lee spent much of the commentary discussing things that had absolutely nothing to do with what was being shown on the screen at the time. I turned it off half-way through.
Dominic Sena. His commentary for Swordfish is almost impossible to listen to, the guy’s constantly sucking on something. Drove me batshit crazy after about five minutes.
Airplane. I don’t think the Zuckers really wanted to do it - it was disjointed, and told me very little I didn’t know. About the only interesting things were who they didn’t get, and the studios reaction. Oh, and how bad it was.
It’s not a movie, but Fawlty Towers, especially the first season episodes (split across volumes 1 & 2). The director (who may be 100 years old) did the commentary. Poorly recorded in the first place, you can hear nearly every breath and slurp. And at times he appears to nod off only to be awakened by the audience reaction to a funny scene. And unlike most commentaries, they keep the show’s audio down to almost inaudible the entire time, even when the director is snoozing or has nothing to say.
Jason Mewes actually fell asleep during the commentary to one of Kevin Smith’s movies.
There’s a commentary track to La Jetee (sp?) where Terry Gilliam (who didn’t have anything to do with the film) talks about the movie. The commentary was recorded over the telephone so there was no connection between what was on screen and what Gilliam was saying.
Christopher Guest has done several surprisingly lifeless commentaries.
The commentary track for Lost in Space has the two guys that made the film basically talking about how important they are in Hollywood.
And I once saw some cheap straight-to-video sex thriller that sold for $1.50 but for some inexplicable reason had a commentary track. It was obvious the two filmmakers had not gone on to better things. During the course of recording the commentary, they ordered a pizza and then realized they didn’t have enough money on them to pay for it. They were scrounging around the studio for change and had to stiff the delivery guy for a tip. All on an open mike.
Actually, I quite liked the commentary for Excalibur. Maybe Boorman’s style of speech is a bit off-putting to others (sometimes it’s hard to understand what he’s saying) but there’s a lot of information he talks about that I found quite interesting.
On the other hand, John McTiernan’s commentary for Die Hard is awful – the guy’s voice is dry and irritating and he mumbles a lot, plus he offers almost NO insight into the film itself. Luckily there’s another crew member spliced in who does provide some interesting comments.
I’ve heard the director’s commentary for The Exorcist is one of the worst ever, though I’ve never heard it for myself.
That was for Clerks, and I found that one to be quite hilarious.
William Friedkin’s commentary on the “director’s” cut of The Exorcist was like that. I think William Peter Blatty did the commentary on the original DVD (or maybe even laserdisc) release. I’d really like to hear that. I’m betting it’s far more insightful and far less self-congratulatory.
And didn’t he show up drunk for the recording of the Clerks commentary?
Men In Black remains the movie with the most pondreously dull and gimmicky commentary track in my collection. My respect for Tommy Lee Jones sank seven notches after hearing him “uh huh” through that thing.
The commentary track to Back to the Future was, although interesting, usually unrelated to what was going on onscreen. It was a live audience Q&A session with the writer and director of the film, recorded after a screening on a college campus, I think. The session ended before they reached the length of the film, and they just switched back to the movie audio for the last few scenes.
The commentary track for Starship Troopers was absolutely awful. Verhoeven and the screenwriter spent much of the track either defending the movie and explaining what was wrong with people who didn’t like it, or talking about how imperialist the United States is.
Doesn’t MIB have the commentary subtitle track with an outline of whoever was doing the commentary on the bottom, so the effect is like watching an unfunny MST3K?
Shallow Hal was the greatest movie of this millennium, but the Farrelly Brothers couldn’t commentate their way out of a wet paper bag. The entire commentary consisted of them pointing out all the actors and extras who schmoozed with them during production, and the occasional plug for Price’s Fried Chicken in Charlotte, North Carolina. Their commentaries on the deleted scenes were even worse; they usually consisted of one of them saying “Ooh, watch what we do next here!” followed by the scene’s climax, followed by the scene ending before any of them could comment on what we just saw.
Do you really think it was that great? I mean, I liked it more than most of the other people I talked to about it, but I didn’t think it was that great.
Orange County: hillarious movie, horrid commentary. For some unknown reason, the commentators felt the need to explain jokes, and drone on about something or other. I had to turn it off about 10 minutes into the movie.
The commentaries on the first two Mr. Show sets are pretty bad–only intermittently funny and not very informative. At times you can barely hear David Cross because he’s too far from the microphone. Apparently fans have complained, because Bob and David say on their website that the forthcoming Season Four set will actually have some on-topic discussion.
