Are you skeptical of Vanessa Hudgens's ability to play "street-smart" in Sucker Punch this weekend? You are? Settle down and breathe, because she already played "book-smart" and "Stanford-bound" in High School Musical 3: Senior Year. I anticipate your complaints: "Yes, Movieline, this is a bad movie," you caw (while secretly groping the "W" on your self-made Wildcats letter jacket), "but is it lovable?" I contend that it is! And not just because Zac Efron is the only person in history to look more like a Fisher Price Little Person as he ages. Let's dribble the basketball of intellect between our legs and figure it out.
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It's How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, girlchild! The movie that made "You're So Vain" uncool again, as if Janet Jackson and her Carly Simon sampling weren't enough. This 2003 romp is the finest in Pillow Fight Cinema, the kind of movie you pop into your DVD/VHS/toaster while your girlfriends and you jump on a bed and decapitate each other with couch cushions. "Gretchen, stop!" you yell, spitting up feathers and entrails. "Kate Hudson just made a joke about puppy pee, and I missed it." Gretchen recants and stops licking up your viscera. She likes Kate Hudson too, and we all like Kate Hudson, and what is wrong with our upbringings. This movie is Bad ™ and we Love ™ it. And Matthew McConaughey, the Lincoln Lawyer himself, stars as a Matthew McConaughey lookalike. Let's get into it.
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Yes, we're over Charlie Sheen and his Bengal viscera, but we've actually been over it for 17 years, remember? The world already explored Charlie Sheen's tiger soul in the 1994 action movie The Chase. You've seen it before. It had Kristy Swanson in it, because she's one of 1994's champions. The Chase puts Charlie Sheen's mania in perspective so we can (once again) put it behind us -- that is, if we can stomach a carousel of unlikable characters and the thespian prowess of Henry Rollins. Good luck, everyone.
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"Do you know where you're going to?" asks the theme to Diana Ross's 1975 movie Mahogany. Well, do you? Turns out it doesn't matter, because Mahogany doesn't know either. Is it a fashion movie? A love story? A political thinkpiece? A treatise on how photographers are gay predators who suckle your breasts and try to kill you? The answer: All of the above! And yet, so much less. After seeing Ms. Ross on Oprah this week, we've had a craving for her old films, and Movieline has chosen to reexamine the nuttiest one of all. The one where she fornicates with Norman Bates.
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Happy Oscar week, you third-class stowaways. Quoth the thespian Bill Paxton, "Are you ready to go back to Titanic?" The point is you're not. It's 2011 and we're still 192 years away from comprehending Titanic's world-paralyzing success, its Best Picture win, and Jack Dawson's hack drawing skills. He's just never going to get into Oberlin at that rate. You won't find explanation for James Cameron's sorcery here, but near, far, wherever you are -- you will remember and recoil at the royal badness of Titanic.
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Otherwise known as Your Honors Student Will Sacrifice His Livelihood For Porn. Holler, 2004! The Girl Next Door is one of the last horndog comedies to eschew parody and go for realism -- but barely. It lives in a post-Shannon Elizabeth universe where the untouchable hottie (Elisha Cuthbert) has to be a porn star because all other options are exhausted/boring. How stupid! I'm game! And so is Timothy Olyphant, the I Am Number Four/Justified star, who plays a sleazy porn producer here. We hope to answer the following questions with today's Bad Movie We Love: 1) Why do we like this scummy flick for oily masturbators? 2) Why is Emile Hirsch such an unconvincing loser? And 3) Most importantly: Why does Mr. Olyphant act like he's still in Scream 2?
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We've slaughtered the likes of James Franco, Annette Bening, Natalie Portman, Nicole Kidman, and Christian Bale with the "Bad Movies We Love" treatment, and this week's Oscar contender up for tickle torture is Mark Ruffalo -- who had a slight part in a very slight movie called 54. Hooray for Mark! Un-hooray for this movie: It takes place at the famous Studio 54 in 1978, but you'll swear it's about dressing up for a glowstick party in 1998 (inside a future IKEA). So get your Andy Warhol wig, your Ryan Phillippe nipples, and your Neve Campbell cry-kisses out of storage. It's time for the Hustle!
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Long before Natalie Portman and Annette Bening battled for Best Actress, they clamored for the title of Most Irrelevant Supporting Character in Tim Burton's schlock-'n-awe alien invasion epic Mars Attacks!. This movie is bad. It knows it's bad. It's $100 million worth of bad. But Burton gets one thing right in this ensemble B-movie throwback: Every time we meet a disposable character (which is often), the movie finds a way to -- get this -- dispose of him. Clever and kind of fun! Let's meet these great dolts.
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Happy Oscar nominations, babies. You got what you wanted, though you have to throw those gold-plated, NSFW Andrew Garfield valentines in the trash. It could be worse. You could be living in 1994, when the Academy honored not Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, or my darling Quiz Show with a Best Picture victory, but a staggering sh*t fortress of offensive "whimsicality" called Forrest Gump. You saw it. It's dumb. Loony. It's got a lot of nerve. But here's a secret you and I share: We're both attracted to bastards, and Forrest Gump's the slimiest john I know. Let's love it.
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Caution: This is not a bad movie. Yes, we're one sentence in, and I've already broken a major Bad Movies We Love rule. Addams Family Values is perfectly cast, hilarious, and the best showcase of Joan Cusack's insanity since she wore clown leper makeup in Working Girl. But Addams Family Values qualifies as a BMWL because it's a freakishly dated '60s sitcom making a go of '90s family fare, an ooky onslaught of puns and one-liners, and a movie so ridiculous that its theme song is the Tag Team opus "Addams Family (Whoomp)." It's a Bad Movie We Love because rational filmmakers would've never let it happen, but somehow this goofy riot prevailed. Thank God.
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Did Nicole Kidman think she was going to simper through award season without the "Bad Movies We Love" treatment? Eyes wide shut, indeed, lambs. Though we're all excited for the million and one laughs of Rabbit Hole (which I keep mistakenly calling The Velveteen Child-Slaying), it can't possibly compare to the fun of Nicole's 1990 quest into NASCAR cinema, Days of Thunder. It stars her nephew Tom Cruise, too.
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Before Ryan Gosling sent blue valentines to the Academy, he sent regular old valentines to the romcom community with The Notebook, this week's addition to the Bad Movies We Love vault. God, this movie. So gooey. So maudlin. And best of all, so medically improbable. If you think this story of memory loss and romance is feasible, then your favorite docudrama of the past 10 years might be 50 First Dates. Erase your common sense and join us for a lovely, super-mocking trip into The Notebook.
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Merry Christmas, medium-sized fockers! I'll avoid yuletide cinema this week (since Alonso Duralde is assuaging your Kris Kringle needs with his "12 Days of Christmas" film series) and commemorate Little Fockers thespian Barbra Streisand's other worst film for today's edition of Bad Movies We Love: A Star is Born. Just like Christ, see. A Star is Born co-stars Kris (Kringle) Kristofferson, Gary (OMG) Busey, and our nervous laughter. Recline in your love-soft easy chairs and enjoy this fresh bearded hell!
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Fine vulpine Stephen Dorff is perfect in Sofia Coppola's new film Somewhere, so it's only right that we revisit his most shameful work for this week's Bad Movie We Love: 1994's S.F.W. No, it doesn't stand for "Safe for Work." Yes, it stands for something just as annoying.
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This week's Bad Movie We Love teems with 2010 Oscar bait and the energy of a billion Gleebasers: It's Newsies, mistah! Jawnalism's finest musical! It's got ink on its fingahs! And Christian Bale's undying shame, too. Yes, Mr. Batman, The Fighter's best supporting actor, starred in Disney's 1992 flop about the newsboy strike of 1899 when he was just 18-years-old. He was joined by fellow Oscar buzzee Robert Duvall, Bill Pullman, kiddie legends like Luke Edwards and David Moscow, and -- mysteriously -- Ann-Margret. Read all about it! Costs a penny, yeh maniac.
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