Sunday, January 9, 2011

Bad Movie Review

Welcome to the Bad Movie Review.

If your a regular follower of the Banter, I thank you. It's hard to believe I have a regular follower(s) after only a week of posting, therefore, you are AWESOME! For the others that have just stumbled upon it, welcome aboard (you are equally awesome, just so you know). I hope to entertain you for a long time in the future.

In an earlier post, I shared with you how to recognize a bad movie. Check it out here.  First, a disclaimer: I will discuss a bad movie. Get that. It is b.a.d. Second, a spoiler. I will probably give you the gist of the movie and spoil the ending. Third, just because it was bad does not mean I don't recommend it. Quite the opposite. I am encouraging it.

I watch a lot of movies while on the bike trainer. Many of the titles are new to me. Some are actually quite good. Not this one. Today's bad movie is entitled, "Dark Rising".  It was immediately obvious that this was a bad movie based on the previously established rules. It broke rules #1-4, 6. I have not had the guts to check out rule #5. The premise:


A young girl goes missing. Many years later, a group of 20-somethings (beautiful people) seance her back from the dimension in which she was cast as a lass. One of the male characters is in love with one of the females, but she is in a relationship with one of the other females. The last female 20-something wants to be a witch and buys a book on summoning. Witch girl, who is in pig-tails the entire film, takes the group on a camping trip, summons the missing young girl, who was presumed dead. (Oh, there's also a buff guy, who happens to be an obnoxious friend of the male lead, but is completely useless to the entire scenario.) But, the young girl has grown up and spent her entire childhood until now fighting demons. Apparently, the best way to fight demons is with an axe, knife, and bikini. Upon coming through the dimension, a demon comes with and wreaks havoc on the camping trip. The only way to cast out the demon is to re-open the portal and force the demon through, which was done by the male lead character to show his manliness. The demon-fighter bikini girl finally gets home, the evil lesbians die, and the male lead returns as a prince of the other dimension who needs help in fighting an entire legion of ugly demons. Bikini girl is more than willing to help in the fight and immediately falls in love with prince boy. Good stuff.

From the onset of the movie, it's tough to tell if these are professional actors or randomly selected people from the J.C. Penny catalog. Other problems with the film:
  • It has B-movie level effects without the B-movie budget.
  • It has, best to memory and not indicative that I was counting, 3 separate scenes of unnecessary nudity all involving the same character.
  • The male characters are constantly wearing jeans and full sleeves while the female characters, at most, are wearing shorts and half-shirts, and a bikini.
  • None of the fight scenes give the illusion that actual contact was made between fist/axe/knife and adversary.
  • Tons of cheesy trying-too-hard-to-be-funny lines. Such as Him: Give the the axe, I'll kill the demon. This is my new manly side. Her: Since when? Him: It's new. I'm trying it out and I'll let you know how it goes.
  • Did I mention that the female lead character is never seen without her bikini?
  • Something was rising in this movie and I am quite certain it wasn't the dark.
I highly recommend you watch this bad movie. It has action, adventure, plot, beautiful people, and (apparently) a sequel. Advice for you should opt to see it...
-Ignore the obvious badness and focus on the positives. I try to think of the old, classic show "Mystery Science Theater 3000". They excelled at watching bad movies and made the best of it.
-Do not watch this movie while wearing bike shorts, especially if you are male. (Some lessons are learned the hard way through experience.)
-Do watch this movie if you live in a fraternity house and are in need of a good, drunken laugh.

It is, at this point, that I am interested starting a bad-movie contest. The rules:
1. The movie must be a new title to me. I've seen a bunch of bad movies from the 80s, not too many since then.
2. The movie must violate at least 2 of the rules. More violations are better.
3. The movie cannot violate the Kevin Costner rule (see Rule #4). There may be a Katherine Heigl rule added at any time.
4. A description of the movie, in 100 words or less, must be given in an effort to convince me to watch it.

I will select the best (or worst, based on perspective) bad movie, watch the movie, and give a detailed synopsis in the future (hopefully 2 weeks or less, depending on the response), complete with accolades for the recommender. I've got lots of biking to do before Ironman Lake Placid and since I don't want to risk outdoor biking in this climate, I've got lots of movies to watch. In the future, I hope to have prizes but I may be getting ahead of myself. Let the games begin.

1 comment:

  1. I would like to nominate:

    Nice Girls Don't Explode (1987): April has a problem. Whenever she gets anything like passionate with a guy all sorts of things seem to spontaneously combust (vis IMDB)

    ReplyDelete