If only…
I was browsing some blogs and saw a list of someone’s idea of the worst movies ever. As I was reading the list, I realized in seeing just a dozen bad movies in my life I’ve wasted an entire 24 hours. A whole day. How many times did one of these make you say “Well there is 2 hours of my life I will never get back?” Feel free to add your own in the comments.
In no particular order, an entire day sucked from my life by these 12 bad movies:
Brighton Beach Memoirs. I had a really bad date wrapped up in this movie so maybe that colors my memory of it. I don’t remember much about it other than hating it.
Glengarry Glen Ross. My college roommate’s brother raved about this one to us so we rented it one weekend. I don’t think we even made it to the end. We then called Paul and yelled at him for such crappy movie advice. My main memory is everything was dark, smoky, and depressing.
Xanadu is so bad what can I even say? My freshman year of college my neighbor had a VCR and owned 1 movie. Wanna guess which one? We watched it and made fun of it many times that year. At least it has some nostalgia for me now. Crap, now I have the song stuck in my head.
Grease 2. Michelle Pfeiffer has to be mortified to be associated with this. When making my list, I excluded most sequels but this one sucked so hard it had to be included. “I wanna cooooooollll rider. A cool cool cool cool rider…if he’s tough enough and he’s true enough…I want a rider who is cool.” How sad is it that I remember the lyrics to that song?
Real Men. My husband loves this movie. Perhaps I dislike it so much because I’ve had to watch it repeatedly. The big gun, the good package, aliens, a map, Russians…just so stupid. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead so we’ll just move on.
Broken Flowers. Up until now, I don’t think many would argue with my picks but I hear that there are actually people who liked this movie. Why? Basically we watched Bill Murray drive around a lot and have uncomfortable interactions with a few other people. There were about 10 lines of dialog in the whole freaking movie. I hate movies that I keep watching because I am convinced something will happen eventually and nothing ever does.
Trainspotting. This is for my dear friend Amy. Good tool to scare addicts straight. Bad movie. Depressing. Disturbing. Lots of shooting up and sitting around in filth. Might need some drugs after watching this one. Hate this movie (but love you Amy – smooches).
Thin Red Line. Longest movie ever. This one felt like it sucked up an entire day by itself. I swear the entire audience heaved a sigh of relief when it finally ended. No plot. Every time you learned anything more than a character’s name, he got blown up with lots of gore. Lots of famous people in it – all dead in the first 5 minutes of screen time.
Moulin Rouge. I just thought this was ridiculous and the music sucked.
Lost in Translation. See Broken Flowers. Hated this movie with no real plot. Nothing happened.
Patch Adams. Just bad. Not even cute – just bad.
Spanglish. I’m not sure this one was bad enough to be on the list but we just watched it on video and I was very disappointed. Not funny. Not feel good. Just a lot of people fumbling their way through life and making a mess of things. Where is the escapism in that?
Ah, yes, Broken Flowers and Lost in Translation were both terrible. But what about Water World?? That has to make the list.
The Transporter UHGGGGG- The music drives me nuts and of course I had to watch it a million times because I think My husband is in love with the guy LOL
Great post. As always.
Have to add my two cents. First, my heart was crushed by one entry — I can’t believe you put Xanadu on there. I loved that movie!! Granted, I was somewhere in the 7-10 year old range when I saw it, but anything with Olivia Newton John was the coolest thing in the world in my book.
I have two horrible, horrible movies to add to the list. First, David Lynch’s grad project movie — Eraserhead. All sorts of artsy people love this. Clearly I’m just rough around the edges because I thought it was the most horrible movie I’d ever seen.
Yet even that atrocity was eclipsed by this foreign flick (Scottish I think) that was distributed stateside, maybe ten years ago, called Breaking the Waves. Wow. That was bad, disturbing, and had no redeeming value, story, character development — not even a decent darn soundtrack. I’m ranking it the worst movie I’ve ever seen by far. And, imho, that’s saying something as I seem to purposely watch some really awful flicks. My taste has never grown past a 13 year old mindset, meaning I eat up all those silly teen flicks, doofy comedies, every dancing/cheerleading/gymnastics bring it on type movie that comes out, mindless shoot-em-ups, baddly dubbed kung-fu, etc, so, when this one falls to the bottom of the list, it’s pretty much unwatchable. I only got through it due to a trainwreck-like fascination, convinced there must be something more … was the director playing a joke on us all? But, uh, nope. They were seriously making that bad of a movie.
I also have to disagree about Xanadu-it’s so BAD it’s GOOD. I love that movie. We almost lived on Xanadu street. That would have been my utopia.
Grease 2? Oh lord. That’s the WORST movie with the WORST soundtrack.
Anything by David Lynch is a bad movie in my book.
Or anything with Steven Segal is guaranteed to suck. And my husband has seen ALL of them. UGH.
I’m with the girls on Xanadu. It IS the 1980s. Then again, maybe we shouldn’t be celebrating the 80’s? Speaking of which, I made the error of walking into Urban Outfitters the other day. Can those clothes really be coming back in again? Shoot me now…
Sorry, I digress…
I’d like to add Breaking the Waves with Emily Watson. Sooo disturbing and awful. Every minute more upsetting than the one before.
Can we do books next?
That is way more than 2 hours a pop- I hate to even begin to think how much time I’ve wasted because I felt like I should keep reading, on principal. Sigh…
Hmmmm. I guess I’m fortunate in that I haven’t seen most of them. Then again, I hardly see any movies.
I’ll agree with the PP on Eraserhead – disturbing.
And my addition to the list: Open Water. I actually felt seasick and I’m a scuba diver and can handle the waves. And they just had a marathon of it last weekend that I noticed flipping through channels at Guatoberfest. And to think a sequel is coming out. What more is there to say?
Ok – I have to admit that I actually liked two of the movies on your list!!! I liked Brighton Beach Memoirs and Moulin Rouge – and I loved the music!!!! 🙂
But I agree with the most of the rest of your list (the ones I’ve been unfortunate to see). I also agree that ALL of Steven Segal’s movies should be on this list!!!
Love this list. I couldn’t agree more about Broken Flowers. We were so excited to see it and then we could not believe how great the reviews were.
Okay, based on box office figures, I know I’m in the extreme minority on this one, but I absolutely hated Titanic. The special effects were good (though that’s not usually my thing), but the plot and dialogue were so, so terrible! Ugh. And that was 3 hours of my life I’m not getting back. I’m still bummed about that.
I totally got Trainspotting and Spanglish (which I loved b/c it didn’t end with warm fuzzies) and enjoyed them both. My husband and I also enjoyed Natural Born Killers and Pulp Fiction, if you want to have a better idea of the type of genre we like.
What movie, starring Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe, and Leonardo DiCaprio was complete and total suckage, even with all those names in it? The Quick and the Dead. Awful, awful, awful movie.
Have to disagree with Patch Adams…..DH and I liked that one.
I liked Grease 2 as a kid but as an adult you are absolutely right! “I wanna C-O-O-L R-I-D-E-R!!!!
Lost in translation was defianatly lost……I expected it to be really good and was sadly disappointed.
hum, I will have to think of my worst movies ever now!
You didn’t like Xanadu????? I was in elementary school at the time and that was like High School Musical for our age group! It was pure, cinematic genius! (Okay, I confess I rented it a few a years ago and it totally blows.)
I am happy to say that I’ve never seen any of those movies!
I’d like to add Groundhogs Day to the list though. That is the only movie I ever walked out of theater part way through. Talk about a waste of time.
Let’s not forget Kingpin – totally sick and completely unfunny. We actually walked out (a first for me).
I’m getting a sad anti-Bill Murray vibe from the post and comments. Poor Peter Venkman.
Have you ever seen Shakes the Clown? Now that is one painful waste of film.
I can proudly say I’ve never seen Xanadu. However, I did like Trainspotting and Moulin Rouge. I’ll have to discuss crappy movies with the trusty husband. I am terrible at remembering titles. However TH… an encyclopedia of movies.
I knew as soon as I realized the topic of this post that you were going to put Trainspotting on your list. For all of you in blog world, Trainspotting was awesome. It is listed as #179 on the ‘Top 250 Best Movies of All Time’. HA!!!
It would take days for me to make a list of my top 10 most hated movies but a few that spring to mind are: Used Cars, Mr. Deeds, Boat Trip, The Bourne Supremacy, and Heat.
I agree with your list, except of course for the whole Trainspotting discrimination. Also, I thought that Spanglish was pretty good and I am not a big Tea Leoni fan but I laughed.
I LOVED Xanadu…..I have it on VHS, lol. and Patch Adams….one of my favorites. I’m a sucker for a somewhat true story (PAtch Adams, not Xanadu…lol)
I do agree with you on the others though, pretty bad.
LOL. You’re gonna get a lot of comments, Michelle. 🙂
My “worst” list would have to include: Joe vs. the Volcano (the only movie that I ever walked out on in a theater), all of the Pee Wee Herman movies and Howard the Duck. Oh, and The Talented Mr. Ripley…’cause it was just soooo disturbing to me…I guess I would rather watch Howard the Duck again than see The Talented Mr. Ripley for a second time. : 0
God bless.
Fun post! I agree with most of your list but haven’t seen a few. Here are some to add… True Lies, Pumpkin (I think that’s what it’s called. Did anyone else see this movie with Christina Ricci? HORRIBLE!), Snakes on a Plane…LOL
I have to say that I loved Patch Adams and Spanglish….
But the others I have never heard of….
I ask alot of questions before I see a movie, and so all the movies I see is pretty good..
I’ve heard that Evan Almighty is great……I bought it today!
LOL. I agree on most of these…especially Grease 2. ICKKKKK! I kinda liked Patch Adams, though (I am so embarrassed)…
I like Grease2 – it always remind me of fun sleepovers with my girlfriends… waxing nostalgic I guess. And I liked Moulin Rouge too…
As for movies I did NOT like: Fargo (it got to be pretty disturbing after a while) and Memento (I just don’t GET it).
oh, I just thought of one I hated…… 4 weddings and a funeral! UGH! I also agree with PP on Groundhogs day, took a real genuis to come up with that one!!!!!!
Kelly (AB)
Hey I like Groundhog Day!
Hey I like Groundhog Day!!
Hey I like Groundhog Day!!!
Hey I like Goundhog Day!!!!
Absolutely hated Lost in Translation. I have no idea why people thought it was such a great movie. It was B-O-R-I-N-G so there was not interest in Broken Flowers since I heard it was more of the same.
Worst movies ever: clockwork orange, rocky horror picture show
Oh, now I LOVED Howard the Duck when I was in the 8th grade. But EEGADS that movie is TERRIBLE. I don’t know which was worse-the duck or the CRIMPED hair…*shiver*
I totally agree with all your picks….except one. I shamefully admit that I loved Grease 2. I know every word to every song on that horribly awful cheesy movie. And most of the dialogue too. What can I say. We all have our vices.
Nice post.
I hope you’ll comment my diary..
Thank You Again