Ten Films I Wish I’d Walked Out On

Since I’m not a real film reviewer, I don’t have to sit through every horrid film that comes down the line-I can pick and choose the movie I want to watch. I can avoid the really bad movies like Pluto Nash, Deuce Bigalow, and the Transformers movie. But once in a while I am fooled by Good Directors, Good Actors, and what look like Good Movies. Expecting a good movie and being shocked numb by a bad one is the Movie Studios stealing my money and time. They lied to me and made me think these were going to be good movies, or at least OK movies.

So here is my list of movies I paid to watch in a theater and should have demanded my money back.

1. Peter Jackson’s King Kong-Worst Movie Ever. I really can’t say that often enough. When it comes to fairly recent movies, Peter Jackon’s King Kong is a vast waste of time, effort, and money. At least an hour could have been cut from the monster movie and no one would have missed a single frame. The effects were overblown and often totally pointless-why was that scene with the killer worms there anyway? This movie isn’t worth a movie rental. Hell, it isn’t worth the time to download or watch online.

2. Waterworld-not quite as bad as it is rumored to be, but still pretty bad. This Kevin Costner movie pretty put an end to his Big Movie Hollywood career. The story of a mutant and his passive quest for Dry Land in a world covered with water. Among the many odd things is the fact that Spam and Cigerettes are still good thousands of years after they were made. The big punchline of the film is that the oil tanker Valdez was the bad guy’s ship. Waterworld also a little longer than it should have.

3. Wild Wild West-This is the rare really bad Will Smith movie. The story of a black man who somehow becomes a Secret Service Agent right after the end of the U.S. Civil War. Among the other unbelievable items in this movie are mechanical wheel chairs, a life support system for a man with the bottom half of his body missing, and a giant steam powered spider. Wild Wild West was heavy on the gross out humor and light on the plot.

4. Dances With Wolves-easily the most over rated movie in history. One of those movie releases that had Oscar buzz long before anyone had even seen it. My main problem with Dances with Wolves is that Kevin Costner is the only sane white person in the entire movie. And, of course, the Native Americans are all paragons of one sort or another. Little Big Man, for my money, did a much better job of showing Native Americans as real people-and did it first.

5. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover-this horrid bit of business got a lot of good movie reviews the year it came out. This is a story of adulatory, murder, cannibalism, and varied and sundry acts of random violence. It stars an often nude Helen Mirren and a few other British actors I have seen in much better work elsewhere. This was a well made film, but just as a trash bag made of silk is still a trash bag, this film is still vile and disgusting.

6 Sweeney Todd-I was looking forward to this Johnny Depp movie, it seemed right up his alley. And for the most part, he was good in Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. My problem was with the graphic death scenes and the wholesale murder which was part and parcel of the story. The songs were amazing, but the constant murder was sickening. Not exactly a love movie. Maybe it won’t be so bad as a DVD rental on the small screen, but it was just bad on the big screen.

7. Charlie and The Chocolate Factory-One of an endless number of remakes that should have never been made. This Tim Burton film is a disgrace to all of us old enough to have fond memories of Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka. Johnny Depp looks down right ghoulish in this children’s movie, and the only good part of the film was the small role played by Christopher Lee. The burn unit and Willy Wonka chopping a bug in half and tasting its blood make this a movie one I should have walked out on.

8. Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom-this was the dark and creepy Indiana Jones in one special effect after another. An action film with too many bowls of eyeball soup and monkey brain entries. Too many long chase scenes and silly escapes-even for Indiana Jones. This movie was a major disappointment. Spielberg was half heatedly trying to make a horror movie as Raiders had been a tip of the hat to action Serials. It ended up just horrible.

9. Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes-Ok, I should not have expected this to be a great movie. And the fact that I really liked the original Planet of The Apes should have warned me to steer clear of this one. But the movie trailer looked ok and I normally like Tim Burton-but this was just weird. The make-up and effects were good, but the story was from another world as well. Tim Burton’s Planet of The Apes has the worst ending to a movie ever-does anyone understand what happened?

10. The Brothers Grimm-Terry Gilliam has made a number of interesting films, but The Brothers Grimm is not one of them. Like Baron Munchhausen, the look and feel is somehow wrong-the story silly when it should be serious, the special effects not all that special. Part of the problem is that the title and director set the expectations too high-I was expecting a film about the The Brothers Grimm. Perhaps a remake of The Wonderful World of The Brothers Grimm. But this would have still be a dreadful movie, no matter the title.

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