# Worst Movie You've Paid To See **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 30, 2001, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-youve-paid-to-see/78872 "2001-08-30T03:06:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![FEotU](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b9bd4f/32.png) [@FEotU](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FEotU)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2001, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-youve-paid-to-see/78872/141 "2001-09-05T07:58:10Z")
National Lampoon’s Class Reunion. I had a couple hours to kill so went to see it by myself in the late (around 5:30) afternoon. My first clue that it was a lousy movie was when the lights dimmed and a quick look around the theatre told me I was the ONLY person there. ---
**Author:** ![Superdude](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/superdude/32/13450_2.png) [@Superdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superdude)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2001, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-youve-paid-to-see/78872/142 "2001-09-05T13:18:03Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by FriarTed \* > \*\*Cool World _Holly Wood naked couldn’t have made up for that POS- only redeeming part- Brad Pitt & his cartoon girl_ > \*\* I second this one, too. Paid 50 cents to see it, and got my money back. But I sat through it all. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Billy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Billy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Billy)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2001, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-youve-paid-to-see/78872/143 "2001-09-05T13:35:35Z")
There are two words after which any discussion of the worst movies ever must surely pause, if not end outright. Those words are: King Ralph. That movie sucked worse than the all-consuming void of deepest empty space. ---
**Author:** ![Danimal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bb73d2/32.png) [@Danimal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Danimal)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2001, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-youve-paid-to-see/78872/144 "2001-09-05T14:54:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by VarlosZ \* > \*\*Besides, I have all your asses whipped: I saw **Mr. Baseball** , starring Tom Selleck as an aging American baseball plaer who gets traded to Japan. So stupid. \*\* [hijack] I **love** _Mr. Baseball_. It is a very good picture of what life is like for _gaijin_ baseball players in Japan, the characters are diverse and not stereotyped, it’s very funny at some points, and the main character actually learns and changes. It’s a good movie, and dammit, I will not hear its name mentioned in the company of _Independence Day, Battlefield Earth, Wing Commander_ and _Dungeons & Dragons_. [/hijack] ObBad Movie: So, anybody seen _Space Rage_? A crime against Richard Farnsworth, that was. ---
**Author:** ![UrbanChic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/9dc877/32.png) [@UrbanChic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UrbanChic)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2001, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-youve-paid-to-see/78872/145 "2001-09-05T15:18:20Z")
…The Avengers. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Corrado](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a88e4f/32.png) [@John\_Corrado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Corrado)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2001, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-youve-paid-to-see/78872/146 "2001-09-05T15:50:14Z")
He is, quite probably, one of the most accomplished songwriters of the latter half of the 20th century. His music helped to shape a generation, and his talents are beyond compare. But never, ever, let Paul MacCartney write and direct a film. _Give My Regards To Broad Street_ wasn’t even worth the soundtrack. ---
**Author:** ![freckles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47c2d/32.png) [@freckles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/freckles)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2001, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-youve-paid-to-see/78872/147 "2001-09-05T16:05:00Z")
I can’t think of the name of the movie but it was released in the last year or more, begins with ‘U’ and it was about a comic book hero and villian thing. Can anyone remember the name of it?? All I remember was that it was really bad and I haven’t meet one person who has liked it. Ohh just remembered it was Unbreakable. Such a bad movie ---
**Author:** ![Gregor\_Samsa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a6a055/32.png) [@Gregor\_Samsa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gregor_Samsa)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2001, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-youve-paid-to-see/78872/148 "2001-09-05T17:51:03Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by The\_Raven \* > \*\*…But what about **The Burglar** (could be wrong on the title), the Denis Leary flick where he breaks into the rich family’s house on Christmas Eve or something like that? The people who wrote this movie are horrible monsters and deserve to die. > > \*\* You’re not referring to _The Ref_, are you? I thought this was a really funny movie. I enjoyed it. ---
**Author:** ![Nixon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5fc32e/32.png) [@Nixon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nixon)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2001, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-youve-paid-to-see/78872/149 "2001-09-05T18:20:13Z")
IMHO: Hudson Hawk sucked as it couldn’t decide whether it was a serious action film or a comedy…but the worst movie I have ever paid to see is The English Patient Tedious, pretentious drivel that refused to end. Surely this movie is being used as an instrument of torture throughout the world instead of punishment by swift execution. Who were those characters? Who cares? I kept hoping that they would touch off one of the elaborate booby-traps but no, the audience neeeded more torment. Did it have a plot? I can’t remember as with each boring inch of film my mind slowly atrophied. And such cinematogrophy, the endless sea of the desert, the endless emptiness, the empty endlessness, - watching paint dry would have been more entertaining. Yes it was a successful chick flick, except that the “hero” gets the girl killed and himself maimed but what was I expecting… a good flick? …the Spanish Inquisition? dos centavos ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2001, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-youve-paid-to-see/78872/150 "2001-09-05T23:54:04Z")
(a) I can’t believe some of the movies people have hated… Hudson Hawk, There’s Something about Mary and The Fifth Element are all excellent movies, imho. And Independence Day is good clean fun (unlike that pile of filth, Armageddon). (b) Some quite bad movies that no one has mentioned, or that bear repeating: -Mortal Kombat Annihilation -The Quest (starring Jean Claude Van Damme… vaguely reminiscent of the recent Atlantis movie, but live action, one thousand times worse, and with some bad martial arts and no atlantis) -The Governess © But the absolute worst movie I have ever seen, accompanying young cousins, is without a doubt: Thomas and the Magic Railroad ---
**Author:** ![snac](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/90db22/32.png) [@snac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snac)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2001, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-youve-paid-to-see/78872/151 "2001-09-06T02:50:59Z")
Hands down–Harold and Maude. Most of my friends suggested that since I felt that way, I had obviously missed the entire point of the film and should go see it again. Some of them are still my friends, but sometimes I wonder why. ---
**Author:** ![rackensack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@rackensack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rackensack)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2001, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-youve-paid-to-see/78872/152 "2001-09-06T04:25:30Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by MaxTheVool \* > \*\*© But the absolute worst movie I have ever seen, accompanying young cousins, is without a doubt: > Thomas and the Magic Railroad \*\* Tell me about it. Had to take my son (who’d just turned three at the time) to see it in the theater. What the hell was Britt Alcroft thinking? If they’re like my son, most kids that age would happily sit through an hour and a half of Thomas and Percy and Gordon and Toby and the rest of the Sodor Railway rolling stock just zipping up and down the track; you don’t really need a plot. But no, she decides that there has to be dramatic tension, conflict, a struggle between good and evil – put my three-year-old in a dark movie theater for only the second time in his life, where he’s expecting insipid little Thomas stories like he’s seen on TV, and you throw at him a menacing diesel engine with a nasty claw who’s trying to off Thomas and his pals, along with Mr Conductor, Peter Fonda, and anyone else who gets in his way? Oh yeah – that reminded you: you need to include some Shining Time Station stuff for the kids who’ve only seen Thomas on there. Hmm, nothing much for the girls – hey, how about you throw in a girl character, Lily, who helps save Thomas and his friends by finding the source of the gold dust. What gold dust? Oh, the magic gold dust that’s the only way to get from the Island of Sodor to Shining Time and Muffle Mountain – well, the only way except for the Magic Railroad, but it doesn’t work anymore because the magic engine called Lady disappeared and now there’s no way to make more gold dust, so Mr. Conductor and his cousin Junior will get stuck on Sodor and get weaker and weaker until there’s no more magic and Didi Conn is wandering around a post-apocalyptic Shining Time Station, watching the sign that the kid on the horse – you know, Lily’s friend – just finished repainting at the beginning of the movie blow back and forth, while Peter Fonda (Lily’s grandfather) mourns his dead wife and tries to figure out how to make Lady the magic engine run again, since he’s the one who made some unnamed but apparently horrible mistake that caused her to break down in the first place, 40 or 50 years before. Lessee, what’re we missing – oh yeah, we need a dog somewhere: send a Benji look-alike to do a Lassie number and convince the girl to get on the wrong train at the beginning of the movie, then show up and look smug a couple more times in the next 80 minutes. Ending? Oh yeah – need one of those I guess. Hmm. Well, obviously this nasty diesel has to bite the dust, but just as obviously it can’t be Thomas or any of his friends that off him – can’t have the little buggers in the seats thinking Thomas killed anyone (or was anything more than “slightly cheeky” to anyone). The hell with it – we’ll just have a viaduct conveniently disintegrate under the diesel as he’s chasing Thomas and the magic engine, Lady, and Peter Fonda (who’s driving Lady). (I want it noted that that’s the first time I’ve even veered close to a drug or sex reference, despite the constant temptation of a subject that involves Peter Fonda and magic gold dust). I’m aware that description makes no sense. Trust me, it makes a lot more sense than the film it describes. Nevertheless, my son has watched it on video dozens of times over the last year or so, so I’ve had plenty of opportunity to have my opinion changed, or to find that it makes more sense on subsequent viewings. It doesn’t. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2001, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-youve-paid-to-see/78872/153 "2001-09-06T05:24:50Z")
So let me get this straight. We’ve seen 152 posts and nobody has mentioned the 1999 adaption of **Wild Wild West** with Will Smith and Kevin Kline. What’s up with that? There are bad movies that are still watchable, and then there are movies that are just painfully bad. Take the aforementioned **Starship Troopers**. If you’re one of those snobs who actually want a plot, oringinal FX, good dialogue, or any of that other good movie stuff, you should probably avoid it. However, if you like watch good looking people fight gigantic bugs with machine guns, it’s almost worth watching. **WWW** , on the other hand, could not possibly appeal to anybody. The action sequences last only a few seconds, and in between them are long stretches of pathetic attempts at humor that fall completly flat. Even if you snuck into this movie, it would still be a rip off. ---
**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2001, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-youve-paid-to-see/78872/154 "2001-09-06T06:23:40Z")
I’ll second **Bless the Child** and I’ll third **Mortal Kombat: Annihilation**. I enjoyed the first **Mortal Kombat** and I can still quote it, but all I remember from the second one is they switched actors and I wanted to walk out after 5 minutes. ---
**Author:** ![edwino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@edwino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/edwino)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2001, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-youve-paid-to-see/78872/155 "2001-09-07T07:31:17Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by elfkin477 \* > \*\* > Hmmm…That’s one of my favorite christmas movies, and I think it’s very funny. You thought Austin Powers was really funny, right? I’ve noticed that there are two types of comedy, action-comedy(which are usually sprinkled heavily with bathroom humor, too) and verbal-comedy, and it seems that many people prefer one and hate the other. I know I do… \*\* Eh, I think it was the scene in the beginning with Madeline Kahn stuck in the elevator, IIRC. Austin Powers was OK (not one of my favorites) I do like my dick jokes, but I also like verbal humor – for instance certain British comedies, Woody Allen, etc. Perhaps the movie just started out so bad that I was scarred. Maybe we were grouchy before we went in and the first half hour or so of the movie that we actually saw did nothing to cheer me up. [Rant On!] I do remember that the movie to which we went after walking out was _Dumb and Dumber_ which is definitely in the top 10 worst movies I have ever seen in the theater (with classics like _Speed 2_, _Lost in Space_, _Deep Impact_ and so forth). Call me crazy, but I have never enjoyed Jim Carrey in anything from _Living Color_ onwards. I know, you all **love** Jim Carrey and how dare you, you must be the antichrist for not liking him. I will say that one of my funniest moments at the movies did come in Jim Carrey’s movie _The Mask_. It is a tender, touching scene where he is in jail and confessing his love for Cameron Diaz. Well, the dude about 2 rows in front of me really let a loud long one rip. At first nobody did anything except the guy, who chuckled for a while. Slowly, over the course of the scene, the laughter spread throughout the whole movie theater until everyone was laughing hysterically. That was far funnier than Carrey prancing around like an epileptic Lipizaner screaming “SMOKIN!” [/rant] ---
**Author:** ![edwino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@edwino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/edwino)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2001, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-youve-paid-to-see/78872/156 "2001-09-07T07:43:01Z")
Never seen _North_ but I just read Ebert’s review. I can’t decide whether to actually believe him or to run out and rent this train wreck. It is definitely one of the best movie reviews I have ever read. Notice the use of the word “hated” 10 times in 6 sentences near the bottom of the story. [http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebert\_reviews/1994/07/931635.html](http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebert_reviews/1994/07/931635.html) ---
**Author:** ![Blackclaw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e68b1a/32.png) [@Blackclaw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blackclaw)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2001, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-youve-paid-to-see/78872/157 "2001-09-07T19:25:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by magdalene \* > \*\*_Blow_ was not just a title. > > P.S. Very few people (and critics) get that _Starship Troopers_ is supposed to be a satire. To quote the director, “When we show people in Gestapo uniforms, we are saying that they are _bad_.” \*\* I think the problem with this movie is it’s title. If they had called it “Space Bug Killer” I would have enjoyed the satire. But it wasn’t “Space Bug Killer,” it was “Starship Troopers,” my favorite Heinlein novel. They crushed my favorite novel and I despise them for it. I’ve heard the director didn’t even read the book. ---
**Author:** ![Cliffy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/59ef9b/32.png) [@Cliffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cliffy)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2001, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-youve-paid-to-see/78872/158 "2001-09-07T20:14:45Z")
Raising Cain. Awful, awful, awful movie. Had John Lithgow and MPD going for it, you’d think it would be good. But no. After they established that the core Lithgow personality was a sympathetic character, they proceeded to have his wife sleep with the first guy she met – out of the blue. Then, after this, you all of a sudden were supposed to switch your loyalties to the shrew wife and the lunkhead boyfriend and forget about all your sympathies for Lithgow. Oh, and they telegraphed the hell out of the “shocker” ending. –Cliffy ---
**Author:** ![LateComer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b5ac83/32.png) [@LateComer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LateComer)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2001, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-youve-paid-to-see/78872/159 "2001-09-07T20:50:50Z")
[Inframan](http://us.imdb.com/Title?0073168) as the second film at the drive in. [Super Fuzz](http://us.imdb.com/Title?0082924) [Spaced Invaders](http://us.imdb.com/Title?0100666) None of which was worth a nickel. ---
**Author:** ![acconav](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f4b2a3/32.png) [@acconav](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/acconav)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2001, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-youve-paid-to-see/78872/160 "2001-09-17T08:00:50Z")
it’s rare for me to really really hate a movie (i actually liked most of the flicks mentioned in this thread!), but there are a few bad movies worth mentioning, like **Virus** with jamie lee curtis, **Monkey Bone** , **Jurassic park 3** (jesus, why did i pay for that when i knew it was gonna suck??), and **Lost Souls** , that horrible end-of-the-world flick w/ winonna ryder. LS is actually the second worst movie i’ve ever seen, surpassed only by… **Cabin Boy**! how is it that no one has mentioned this piece of crap?? god, it was horrible… no redeeming qualities whatsoever [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-youve-paid-to-see/78872.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-youve-paid-to-see/78872.md?page=9)