Bad movies that should have been good

[The Burgomaster]

Here is my partial list:

* THE SICILIAN - casting Christopher Lambert as a Sicilian was just a disaster waiting to happen. And Michael Cimino hasn't made a good movie since THE DEER HUNTER.

* THE CHAMBER - I was really disappointed in this movie. Gene Hackman seemed to be very out of touch with his role.

* PAINT YOUR WAGON - Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin . . . in a musical????

* WIRED - This movie about the life and death of John Belushi disappeared from theaters VERY QUICKLY. I rented the video and I actually got a headache watching it. Bad, bad, bad.

* TAI PAN - They took the source material for what should have been an epic and turned it into a cheesy film that most people don't even remember.

* THE VALACHI PAPERS - Charles Bronson as a Mafia soldier? Bad acting, bad script, bad direction . . . a huge disappointment.

* STARDUST MEMORIES - The only Woody Allen movie that I have tried to watch several times, but could never make it more than half way through.

[Fearless Freep]

Dude, "Paint Your Wagon" was great!

[Dave:Blackeye15]

The animated Lord of the Rings movies-sucked.
the animated The Hobbit movie-could have been done better(like quite a bit)

CHildren of the Living Dead-It could have been a LOT less painful to watch and more of a entertaining zomibe movie instead it's one of the worst movies i've ever seen.

-the first rule of fat club-

[Ellie]

I agree. Paint your Wagon was a good movie.

[Scott]

I'll have to see PAINT YOUR WAGON.

BATTLEFIELD EARTH
SLEEPY HOLLOW (the new one)
PLANET OF THE APES (the new one)
HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES

[raj]

I liked Sleepy Hollow, even though I grew up on the story and it took me a while to accept the, um, alterations.

[The Burgomaster]

PAINT YOUR WAGON was considered to be a very good stage musical, but the movie was a genuine turkey. Pitiful. Simply pitiful.

[Fearless Freep]

Never saw the stage musical.  Thought the movie was a lot of fun

[dean]

i actually really liked sleepy hollow, though i found paint your wagon a little odd, i didn't mind it so much.

planet of the apes [new] holds a wierd place in my rating scale, as it kinda breaks even between bad and good: i liked most of what tim burton did, but i didn't think it was as good as the book or the original film, but tim burton tends to frustrate people like that [just look at mars attacks: alot of people hated that film, yet i thought it was great]

[yaddo42]

"Paint Your Wagon" would have made a better film with the same cast if they had gone for a straight comedy, and dropped the songs. The story and Lee Marvin's broad performance are fun, and the town's collapse is a hoot. But the movie doen't work as a musical.

When I read the novel "The Sicilian", I kept wondering how did they manage to screw it up. The book reads like Puzo either adapted a screenplay he had written or he intende the novel to be a film all along. The characters' innner thoughts don't advance the story much, and the dialogue is so simple and straightforward, little would have had to be changed to awrite a screenplay. There are enough action and sex scenes to flesh out a movie, and they are spelled out so directly that they could be storyboarded easily. I've only seen parts of the movie, and don't remember much of what I did.

Never seen "Wired" but after reading the book, a badly written true hatchet job and I'm not even that much of a Belushi fan, I'm curious to see how bad it is. If it's as bad as the last two movies Belushi completed, "Continental Divide" and "Neighbors"then it must really be awful. The first was a dull romantic comedy with weak jokes and little chemistry between the leads. But the second was as bad as people said it was, the kind of movie that put you in a bad mood that sticks around when it's over. Supposedly a dark comedy about suburbia, it fails at everything: badly written, badly acted, ugly and dull looking, with a stupid ending that seems out of place with the dull story we've seen until then.

[Negative Creep]

Pearl Harbour shouldve been great but was bogged down by that stupid love story, Star Wars Episode 1 as well. Burn in hell Jar Jar Binks

[Bargle5]

Neighbors also had one of the worst ad campaigns ever. The TV commercials gave away all the punch lines to the gags in the movie. I went to see it with friends and knew how every setup would end. I didn't do much laughing.

[yaddo42]

From reading "Wired", everyone connected with "Neighbors" knew the film was bad after the troubled production, the fights Belushi and the director had, awful scores from focus group and preview audiences, etc. The studio, attempting to salvage some of the money they sunk into what they now knew was a bad movie, were pushing for a big opening weekend, front-loading it in a way, to get as much money as they could before the bad word of mouth poisoned the box office.

So the ad campaign was probably intentional. My parents went to see it with my aunt and uncle at the time. They used to go see movies together quite often in the early 1980s, that is the one movie they went to see that they didn't come back from laughing or talking about what they saw. In fact, I don't think they ever said anything about when they got home. When I finally saw it years later, I could see why.

I want to read the Thomas Berger book it's based on, it's supposedly a great suburban dark comedy and worlds away from the movie.

[Neon Noodle]

I thought Freejack could have been better - It seems to be a requirement in bad futuristic movies to make cars look as goofy as possible.

[Dropo]

I actually thought that SPIRIT OF '76 could have been much better with the right actors and budget. I really liked the concept.