Guilty Pleasures/Bad Movies
quote:
Originally posted by DalekTek790:
[b]I don’t think it’s fair to call the [i]Evil Dead[/i] films bad movies, because they’re [b]trying[/b] to be silly. The whole idea is to spoof those lousy B horror movies with the unrealistic zombies.[/B]
Agreed except on the matter of the first film. The first film was made as a serious horror film while incorporating elements of humor. It wasn’t meant as a spoof, but meant to take things in a different direction than one expected (for example, making the typical “female role” of the put-upon heroine in most 80’s horror flicks a male).
quote[quote][b]And I don’t see how anyone could not like the new [i]Godzilla[/i] and [i]Lost in Space[/i] movies. They took what was already a good sci-fi concept and expanded it to new excellence. The remake that really needs to die is [i]The Fly[/i] (1986).[/b][/quote]
Oh, man, we couldn’t be two more dissimilar people. Okay, for starters, Universal’s 1998 remake of [/i]Godzilla[/i] was a travesty. It basically said to anyone who might have cared, “To hell with what you actually *like* about Godzilla flicks, we’re making something completely different and calling it by that name, so what’re you gonna do about it?” The answer, of course, was “stay home,” as the film performed horribly after a decent opening weekend. Bad word of mouth killed it. What is not to like? The passing of bucks for one thing. The original 1956 film was a contemplation on the results of war, and weapons of mass destruction, with the citizenry being visited with an unspeakable horror because of atomic bomb testing. The 1998 remake basically says “The US is under attack, and it’s all the French’s fault!” There’s the wholesale ripping-off of the [i]Jurassic Park[/i] franchise. There’s the inane riffs on Siskel and Ebert. There’s the casting of Matthew Broderick, and giving him absolutely nothing to work with. There’s the total disregard for a cinematic icon (which, up until recently, was the most-licensed image in the world, surpassing Mickey Mouse). It taints a cinematic legacy, which is why Toho kicked the character out of retirement for [i]Godzilla: 2000[/i].
[i]Lost In Space[/i] is a celluloid dung-heap of a movie. Trite, shallow, meaningless fluff. It doesn’t even succeed as decent eye-candy. It’s ugly, it’s badly constructed, it’s got bad CGI, and it’s written by the same hack that brought us [i]Practical Magic[/i], [i]Batman and Robin[/i], and [i]Batman Forever[/i] along with some non-genre lackluster John Grisham potboilers. And, for all that, it doesn’t even succeed in being campy enough for “bad film” enjoyment. It’s mind-numbingly blase and middle-of-the-road crap. It’s neither good nor bad enough to get excited about, it’s stupendously mediocre, time-wasting rubbish.
And if I were a more judgemental beast, I’d say that your opinion on Cronenberg’s [i]The Fly[/i], in addition to your opinions on the previous 2 films, should invalidate any future value judgements you make. But I’m not.–Aleck