Monday, March 02, 2009

2008: Movies That Sucked


A month or two or so away I was going to write a post called "The Oscars Suck Like Always" in which I was going to critique this year's Oscar nominees and award them Michael Keatons according to their placement on the Universal SUPERBLOG!! Scale of Suckitude to Ruliness (USSSR). But time flew and now the Oscars are over and there's little to be gained by pointing out that, say, The Krazy Kaze of Billy Butt-Head was beautifully photographed but essentially vapid and banal and overly sentimental and stupid. Or that it was much too derivative of the vastly superior Forrest Gump (adapted by the same writer), as seen in The Curious Case of Forrest Gump. (The linked video would perhaps have been revelatory for you back then, as Billy Butt-Head had recently been released, but now it's old news. Anyway, everything I could have written about Billy is said better here.) So I won't.

But while I'm on the subject: I know every single person on the planet except me loved Slumdog Millionaire but... well, I kind of liked it too, but I also found it contrived and brainless. Did you know that in the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? contestants are allowed to leave the studio after hearing the question? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Also:

Plot holes: The original TV show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" is recorded in studio some days before the actual broadcast. The show that we see in the film is broadcast live, which raises the incongruence that the person from home can easily see the question on TV having plenty of time to come up with an answer before receiving the actual call.

There were several (and too many) assaults on common sense in the film, and I found them needlessly distracting. Obviously, the filmmakers wanted to use a game show with pop culture cachet but were too lazy to use it in a consistent and logical way. Somehow, these little stupidities in overhyped but otherwise fairly benign movies annoy me more than complete shit like Wanted or Hancock. Why is that?

Next time: Movies that ruled.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Krazy Kase of Benjamin Netanyahu was a bit shit, really.

Cross Forrest Gump with Big Fish and you get a Forrest Fish, which doesn't really work.

Anonymous said...

I've thought about that fucking movie as "Billy Butt-Head" for so long that I have to rack my brain to remember the actual title. The Curious Case of... uh... Bernard Butler? Benny... Burton?

Matthew said...

Wow, you're absolutely right. About everything, I mean.

Anonymous said...

Uncle was here!

Somebodyiusedtoknow said...

Yes yes, Koala is a brilliant man whose opinion I cherish more than my own children of which I have none.

Discrepancies in the plot like the one you described bug the shit out of me too.

...BENJAMIN Button. :-)

Anonymous said...

Thank you my lovely internet friends. It's so nice that we all mildly dislike the same things.

Keep ur ice peeled for a follow-up post entitled "Movies that ruled" in the very very near future. (It will suck.)

Anonymous said...

Maybe it's because Wanted and Hancock are supposed to be trash. Most people know that going in, so you can just kick back and enjoy the stupidity.

Anonymous said...

Those are the same people who laugh when they see a retarded person on the street.

I expect "trash" to be both entertaining and have a modicum of internal consistency and intelligence. It's not a license to suck.