Badmovies.org Forum

 :buggedout: :buggedout: :buggedout: :buggedout:

This miserable POS film has haunted me since 1989: it was supposed to be this huge anti-South African film but it - like when Cry Freedom was unbanned a year or so later - became a big local box office hit.

At least now I have a nice coffee table coaster as I only paid ZAR10 ($1) for it  :wink:

I was going to write : "Poor you!"  But you get it. 

(https://media.tenor.com/images/584cea3fa5148a9946556fc95982ee19/tenor.gif)

 :teddyr: :teddyr:

After the censors here passed it uncut (with a huge age restriction) the SA public embraced it and made it a box office success.

The SA Consul General in Los Angeles was quoted as saying that "it was a ugly film".

For us average Americans, it's just annoying. 

The film gives the impression that most people from SA speak with atrocious accents and do a little bit of drug running and Kruger Rand smuggling on the side. The filmmakers must have groaned in disbelief when the film did very well here at the box office and it remains the only anti-SA film to ever be a financial success: all the others, like Cry Freedom and A Dry White Season flopped. 

It’s a very odd phenomenon. Steven Seagal’s On Deadly Ground (1994) had a similar effect in Alaska. It is a terrible movie on every level imaginable. Nothing in the film that portrayed Alaska was accurate; we do not all ride on horseback up here, our Native villagers live in houses not deerskin huts or igloos or whatever those were supposed to be, etc.

Yet despite all of the crap reviews, it still made over $38 million of its $50 million dollar budget back. While technically a flop by box office standards, it didn’t do as bad as it deserved to do. I personally love the movie now because it is so bad and manages to do an equal job in offending Native American culture. Steven Seagal is such a magnanimous prick in this movie.

Check out this hilarious old 1994 review: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-03-04-ca-30062-story.html%3f_amp=true (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-03-04-ca-30062-story.html%3f_amp=true)

I dare anyone to top the awful BONES episode in which they travel to Argentina. I'm honestly unable to feel offended by something this trivial, but it did gave me some good chuckles. These reviews pretty much sum it all up:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3205978/reviews (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3205978/reviews)

Okay Trevor, this question has been bugging me since last night. Aside from the Prawns and the gigantic UFO parked over Johannesburg, how accurate was District 9 (2009) in portraying South African city-dwellers? Are they really that cynical and apathetic when it comes to extraterrestrials?  :teddyr:

Everyone was taken for a ride regarding that film: people thought it was a sci-fi film (one of SA's first) but it was actually an anti-SA film made by an idiot who obviously had a terrible time growing up here. I left after 30 mins and asked for (and got) my money back.

SA city dwellers are, for the most part, nice people, especially the people who live in Johannesburg, the New York of Africa. If Johannesburgers can help you, they will but mess with them..... well.......  :buggedout:

I almost walked out of the theater too when I first saw this in 2009. I’m one of those rare people that did not like The Blair Witch Project (1999) when it first came out, and that whole “found footage” genre never really appealed to me after that bad movie masterpiece Cannibal Holocaust (1980) which, in my opinion, was the only “found footage” movie that ever did it right. District 9 (2009) came dangerously close to becoming yet another “found footage” movie until it finally and wisely went “real world” on us after about an hour into the film. I liked how they ripped off some ideas from the Half Life 2 video game when it came to some of the alien weaponry, and the Nigerian warlord and his gang were hilariously bad.  :teddyr:

(https://i.imgur.com/YgPZDQ0.jpg)

 :bouncegiggle: :teddyr:

I wish I could give you karma for that.  :teddyr:

Sidebar: Joss Ackland (Arjen Rudd) spent many years here as a theater actor and the film's cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt ASC was born here.