And I mean both kinds of “worst.” As @ficuswhisperer said in the Ghostbusters thread:
The only movie I ever walked out on was Shakes The Clown back in 1991. It was a test screening at a mall somewhere in the Valley, so it didn’t cost me anything. Even though Robin Williams was a scream in his uncredited role as a mime teacher, I simply could not bear to watch more than 45 minutes of this pukefest before I’d had enough and had to leave. Since then I’m sure I’ve seen worse movies, but I can’t remember any of them, and I never had occasion to walk out on a movie again.
Now, Neil Marshall’s Doomsday was a complete shitburger of a movie that ripped off everything from Mad Max to Escape From New York and did it pretty clumsily as well, but man did I have fun watching that movie. I’d watch Neil Marshall direct traffic. He never bores me, and his Dog Soldiers is the finest werewolf movie I’ve ever seen. If I were the type to get high, I’d totally toke up and watch Doomsday again right now. It’s my Showgirls.
I remember watching that as a kid and finding it pretty funny. I would imagine if I saw it today as an adult I would hate it. I’m not tempted to test this theory.
I absolutely hated Crash (the 1996 Cronenberg filim). As a fan of his other work I sat through it in misery hoping for some sort of payoff that never happened.
My grandmother saw a movie every day, until close to the end of her life. She would watch any movie, but she walked out of this one, and she never did that. I think she would vote as you did.
Well, with Night of the Lepus you’re kinda getting what’s advertised on the tin: killer bunnies, after all. Few people’s miles are gonna vary, you ask me.
As for Cronenberg’s Crash, knowing Cronenberg and being passingly familiar with what Ballard’s book was about, I knew it probably wasn’t for me. With Haggis’ Crash, I was fooled by people (even ones I normally trust!) saying how good it was. When it won the Oscar over Brokeback Mountain, I just about shit a brick.
I got free preview tickets to see this giant pile of crap. Y’know, the previews where they ask you to watch the whole damn thing and fill out a survey afterward? [ed.: oh, a test screening, like @Donald_Petersen said!] I stuck it out for some damn reason (had nothing better to do that night?), but I’d say more than half of the audience left before it was anywhere near being over.
I bet I’ll get some shade for this one, but another movie I just couldn’t stand was O Brother Where Are Thou. It’s one of those films where I keep hearing others say how great it is and I wonder what’s wrong with me that I had such a viscerally negative reaction to it.
Also, Mixed Nuts. Man, fuck that movie. I worked at a movie theater when that was out and had the misfortune of watching it after one of my shifts. This is a film with an AMAZING ensemble cast with an accomplished director that was just a heaping pile of garbage.
Finally, and I know this one is going to really pop some monocles, The Goonies. Yes, I said it. Everybody I know just loves this film and gushes over how great it is. I’ve seen it maybe 5 or 6 times and I just don’t get it. Maybe it’s because I never saw it as a kid so I don’t have any nostalgia built up for it but every time I watch it I just find it to be varying levels of awful.
When I was a kid, we saw The Glacier Fox, which was billed as a cute documentary about foxes doing fox things. So my parents took me and my siblings to see it and we watched in horror as the fox started a family, then mom is caught in a trap, loses her leg gruesomely and slowly dies, then a kit goes blind, then the blind kit dies, and a few other kits slowly die off from predators, getting lost and starving, or being mauled by snowmobiles, or other horrible things. All with a deeply weird voiceover (by a tree watching all this with tree-like detachment) minimizing all the agonizing deaths happening. This became my standard by which bad movies are judged.
Y’know, it’s funny, but I had that same reaction to the very first Coen Bros movie I ever saw: Fargo. All of my buddies loved it, and I just couldn’t stand it. I’ll have to rewatch it someday to see if my opinion has changed in 20 years, but I bought the DVD for that very purpose 10 years ago, and I have yet to peel the shrinkwrap off it. I may never get around to it.
But I did love the second, third, and fourth Coen Bros movies I saw, including O Brother. I thought it was an absolute hoot, and it makes me happy every time I see it.
I was around 8 or so, which certainly made it worse. It might be merely bad as an adult to watch a fox kit slash film narrated by an objective-seeming tree, way worse when you’re a kid.
Take an otherwise great cast and put them in an awfully written on every level film. Dust off a rejected 1950s mad scientist / haunted mansion script, and then when Star Wars is a success, change the setting to “In Space!!!” and film it.
You and I had the exact same experience. Fortunately I got to watch a special event premier so the experience cost me zero dollars. Hell, I would pay twenty bucks for my time back.
Only after that movie did I realize that I could have left the second I saw Colin Farrell’s dick. I’m not opposed to male nudity in film, that just happens to be where my memory of the movie ended.
Other crapfests?
Jumper or if you prefer, JMPR. (Which actually had a good premise.)
Lost in Translation, which I convinced myself I liked for a while, but it turns out I like Japan, Bill Murray, and Scarlett Johannsen. Just not all at the same time. It came out at exactly the right time for me to just start seeing a lot of indie and indie-type films where nothing happens and none of the characters develop.
