Truly wretched movies are, as the saying goes, like pornography: Hard to describe in very specific language, but you know them when you see them. I would be hard put to actually *rank* the worst movies I’ve seen in any rigorous manner … since there are so many variables involved.
Some things are constant though:
* The movie must take itself seriously … “Jason X” is, by any dramatic standard, a horrible film … but it *knows* that it is terrible, and it constantly winks at us as it goes even more over the top.
* The dialogue must be horrible, with all the fluidity of a glacier, and all the grace of a slug.
* The costumes, sets, camera work, and such must be, at some level, wrong. You can never escape the knowledge that you are watching actors through a camera. You’re looking at the nice shiny belt buckles on the peasant hunters and thinking “those weren’t made with a hammer, and no hunter with half a brain wears shiny metal that reflects while he stalks his prey”
Today, a new movie joins my bottom 10: Eragon. It’s in the same sack as Ultraviolet, Queen of the Damned, and Battlefield Earth. Keep in mind that I *own* Versus and Alien Arsenal. Those last two are high art of a low form. Eragon, well, it just sucks.
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