Monday, May 18, 2009

Bad Movie Twin-Bill Overwhelms Helpless Viewers

Yesterday Mike Amanda and I (Jill hid in another room) watched a mini-marathon "Bad Movie Night" composed of "Repo - The Genetic Opera" and "Showgirls".

Wow!

Showgirls, of course, is a tried and true bad movie night staple - a real jawdropper of a movie gone very, very wrong - but its funny, campy and willfully wrongheaded. We have been debating whether Elizabeth Barkley, the "star" of Showgirls was shtupping the director when this movie was made, which would account for why she was allowed more than enough leash to hang herself about 90 times in 90 minutes. Lets say her "acting" isn't exactly finely nuanced. She musta went to the Psychotic Episode School of Acting, I would say. And the sex scenes with Kyle Maclachlan: Huh? What? Eh?

An aside on Showgirls: we can't figure out why the black "boyfriend" sub-plot is even in the movie. Its functionless, unless you count the "Bitch, get me a beer!" line as ghetto comedy. I'm not sure about this character. Is he squatting in that warehouse or can you actually rent something like that in Vegas? Why is it all smoky?

On the other hand, Repo is almost too bad for words. The plot is hopeless, the songs are horrendous, the acting execrable, the dialog unintelligible.

It reeks, people.

Talk about show-stoppers - this movie is one long "What the F?" scene after another (and not in a good way.) And its way way way way way way too long. Mike kept time-checking - "Oh shit, we got 55 more minutes of this!" "Oh no! Still 35 minutes left - its seems like we've been watching this for four hours!"

Its an opera that mixes rap (I think that was rap), sing-songy narration, graphic novel segments, shrieking pop opera (think Meatloaf on crack writing music for an Evanescence video featuring people who can't really sing with gratuitous cameos - like Joan Jett = ka-ching, payday Joan?)

Paul Sorvino seriously should have his Actor's Guild membership shredded for his performance. Sure, maybe you need a pay-day, but come on! Is he doing penance of some sort?

And oh, here you go: Effing Sarah Brightman is featured in this mess near the end, but fortunately is impaled on an iron pike fence after ripping her own eyes out just when you KNOW you can't take any more of her. Hey, I think I just identified the movie's high point, except any scene featuring Sarah Brightman by definition cannot count as a high point.

This is the first bad movie night movie we actually had to stop in the middle and take an hour break to get through. Now, that's bad. We sat through the interminable "Gerry" without a break and its basically just a movie with two guys walking in the desert for two hours. Repo made Showgirls look like fine art.

No Mas!

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