ENC Heel,
I think you’re certain to be disappointed by the answers people give to your question. You want people to name truly bad movies, but you ask them not to list B movies, just those made with some degree of professionalism.
The problem is that bad A movies are seldom entirely stinkers. They tend to be two- or two-and-a-half star films. Occasionally they sink to the level of one-and-a-half stars. The real stinkers, though, tend to be made by people new to the film industry, with unknown actors, and on tiny budgets. These are frequently one-, one-half-, and no-star films. They don’t get much distribution, and when they are seen, no one has any reason to think they should be great. They’re just forgotten except by the people who treasure bad films.
Every once in a while, a film made on a small budget is good. This doesn’t happen nearly as often as you might think. For every highly praised independent film that gets discovered at a film festival and then distributed to theaters, there’s a dozen mediocre films that even the festivals won’t touch.
Nearly all of the movies mentioned in this thread are major Hollywood productions. They aren’t terrible exactly, but they’re much worse than what should be possible with a large budget. Much of the comments about these films in this thread are hyperbole. Of course these films are third-rate, and we shouldn’t allow the PR that surrounds any Hollywood film to blind us to that fact, but they’re not the abominations that many posters have claimed.
Here’s my comments on some of the films that people have already mentioned. Incidentally, I have many film reviews already online at the following URL:
http://www.dcfilmsociety.org
Click on reviews and then on the individual film titles. Not all of the reviews are mine.
One of my pet peeves, as you can see in my review of it, is Good Will Hunting. Yes, there’s some decent acting and the direction is O.K., but the plot is ridiculous. The film is utterly ignorant about what real geniuses are like, and the therapy scenes are cliched. Matt Damon’s character is a jerk, and Minnie Driver’s is a doormat.
The acting is reasonably good in Titanic and the special effects are great, but the plot is worse than any other Oscar winner I’ve seen (and I’ve seen 43 of the 61 winners). They make the people on the Titanic act worse than they did in reality. I dislike rich people as much as anybody, but the fact is that for once they did act like gentlemen and ladies. People knew they were going to die, but they stepped aside to let others into the boats. Instead of filming a story about courage, James Cameron made a silly love story.
Starship Troopers, as I say in my review, is a gigantic act of prostitution on Paul Verhoeven’s part. He clearly despised Heinlein’s novel, so he put in the Nazi symbolism to show his contempt for the work.
I liked Ishtar. There was something downright surreal about Beatty and Hoffman’s characters. Not only were they the world’s worst wannabe songwriters, but by being in their late 40’s, they came across as the world’s most deluded wannabes.
Heat wasn’t terrible, but it’s certainly overrated. The best acting is not by De Niro, Pacino, or Kilmer, but by Diane Venora, Amy Brenneman, and Ashley Judd. Why isn’t Diane Venora a star?
I liked Joe Versus the Volcano.
The Full Monty is O.K., but not really Oscar-level material. It’s a highbrow Benny Hill sketch.
The English Patient is well acted, well directed, and even has some nice dialogue, but it’s based around a stupid idea. It’s like the anti-Casablanca. The feelings of two people are worth more than the outcome of World War II.
You’ve Got Mail is overrated for the reasons I detail in my review.
Austin Powers is nowhere near as funny as it’s supposed to be. I couldn’t force myself to see the sequel.
Meet Joe Black is a mess. MST3K would have a field day with it, since nearly every line is proceeded by pregnant pauses that make it easy to fit clever comments in. Try to make sense of the end of this film. What exactly is Claire Forlani’s character supposed to do when she goes back to the party? Is she supposed to tell people, “Thanks for coming to my father’s birthday party. He’d thank you himself, but he just died. Please meet my new boyfriend. He died in a car accident a couple of days ago, but he’s all better now.” Incidentally, when I saw the film in a movie theater, the audience actually cheered when Brad Pitt’s character got killed.
One that no one’s mentioned yet is Night Falls on Manhattan. It’s the most morally corrupt film I’ve ever seen. It actually claims that it’s all right for prosecutors and police to make up evidence, since all criminals are slime who don’t deserve any rights. See my review of this film.
