2006: Basic Instinct 2.

Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) plays the role of temptress and manipulator a second time.

Release Date: Mar. 30, 2006. Running Time: 114 minutes. Written by: Leora Barish, Henry Bean. Based on characters created by: Joe Eszterhas. Producers: Mario Kassar, Andrew G. Vajna, Joel B. Michaels. Director: Michael Caton-Jones.


THE PLOT:

Dr. Michael Glass (David Morrissey) is a London psychiatrist called upon by the police to assess a murder suspect: American novelist Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone). Michael conducts his examination with brisk professionalism and reports to the court that he believes she has a "risk addiction," a compulsion to prove her superiority by putting herself in increasingly dangerous situations. He confirms that this will continue to make her a danger to herself and to others.

Though his testimony is impressive, the case ends up being dismissed due to questions about the evidence collected by Detective Superintendent Washburn (David Thewliss). By all rights, this should be the end of it. Then Catherine walks into Michael's office and announces that she wants him to be her therapist. When she refuses his attempts to refer her to a colleague, he reluctantly accepts her as a patient.

It's a critical time for Michael. He has only recently gotten his career back on track following a bout of depression, kicked off when his patient, George Cheslav, committed murder. Michael's now up for a prestigious academic chair - but it's made clear to him, "No more Cheslavs."

He discovers that sleazy journalist Adam Towers (Hugh Dancy) is digging into the Cheslav incident, while also sleeping with Michael's ex-wife, Denise (Indira Varma). His friend and colleague, Milena (Charlotte Rampling), assures him that he has nothing to worry about. Then Denise calls him in a panic. Adam has been murdered - the first of several corpses closely linked to Michael. The only other common denominator in all the killings? Catherine Tramell...

Dr. Michael Glass (David Morrissey) accepts Catherine as a patient against his better judgment.

CHARACTERS:

Catherine Tramell: While she has about the same screen time as in the 1992 original, she's far less dominant as a presence. The first Basic Instinct carefully presented her in a way that kept viewers uncertain whether she was a killer or just guilty of proximity to crimes. Here, she's treated as a mastermind every time she's so much as mentioned, which makes her manipulations seem more ham-fisted. The original movie was ultimately about her; she was offscreen for long stretches, but she was clearly the movie's dark heart. By contrast, this movie doesn't know what to do with her. I'd go so far as to say that while she was the best part of the original, her scenes are the worst ones in this sequel.

Dr. Michael Glass: Sharon Stone is poorly utilized, but at least she has screen presence. David Morrissey, as the actual main character, barely registers - a surprise, since I've seen Morrissey in other films where he's been quite good. He tries to make something of Michael's control freak tendencies, with tight, practiced movements and a note of anger underneath most of his line deliveries. But it's not enough to make the character come to life, and Michael goes from full control to desperation too abruptly to be convincing. Morrissey also has zero chemistry with Sharon Stone, which destroys any chance the film might have had of working.

Dr. Milena Gardosh: This was certainly just a paycheck role for Charlotte Rampling, but she still swipes every scene she's in as Michael's friend and confidante. It's a stock supporting role ("supportive friend"), but she conveys confidence and good humor, which helps Milena to feel more authentic than Michael as a career psychiatrist. Rampling's performance is easily this film's best, and I can't help but wonder how this might have played had she been the lead (presumably with the sex scenes farmed out to other characters). At the very least, it would make Catherine more formidable by necessity if she had to manipulate someone who actually had their life together.

Roy Washburn: Speaking of good actors livening up stock parts, David Thewlis does his best as the shifty police detective who will stop at nothing to see Catherine convicted. Thewlis was nominated for Worst Supporting Actor, which bewilders me. It's not a well-written role, but the actor is off-kilter enough to be an interesting presence. He even gets one genuinely strong scene, when he owns up to accusations of corruption to Michael: "(The press) was right about me. I put 'em away, whatever it takes. So fine, don't trust me. You know Catherine better than me... Do you trust her?" It's a terrific moment - which makes it all the more a pity that the ending requires Washburn to be an imbecile.

Adam Towers: The journalist whose reports threaten both Catherine's freedom and Michael's career. He's sleeping with Michael's ex-wife, and his past stories have shed light on DS Washburn's misdeeds. He's seedy, but he's also professionally dogged, and his connections to practically every major character should make him interesting. I can imagine a better script modeling itself after Hitchcock's Psycho, making him the apparent lead until he abruptly gets killed, a crime multiple characters have motives for. Instead, he's in two brief, unmemorable scenes before being killed offscreen, and it isn't until much later that we learn that his articles posed threats to Catherine and Washburn, as well as Michael.

Denise Glass: Indira Varma is almost always good, and she makes the character of Michael's unfaithful ex-wife more sympathetic than she might have been. When Michael vents that he knows exactly when her affair with Towers started, she swipes back: "It's a pity you never asked yourself why it started." It's later intimated that she slept with Catherine (the film never confirms whether that's true or a lie)... but since Stone and Varma don't share any scenes, that's just an intangible statement. Oh, and since she's the cheating ex-wife, and since Indira Varma has a lower film and television survival rate than Sean Bean, I don't even think it's a spoiler to say that she doesn't make it to the last reel.

Michael angrily confronts his ex-wife (Indira Varma).

"SAY SOMETHING NICE":

Basic Instinct 2 is a dumb movie, but it is a generally well-acted one, its cast stacked with fine British character actors. David Morrissey can't overcome his poorly scripted role, but the supporting cast salvages several scenes. Charlotte Rampling is the standout, but David Thewliss, Indira Varma, Hugh Dancy, Flora Montgomery, and Heathcote Williams all give much to their underwritten roles. It's also a generally well-made film, and the combination of decent acting and professional execution keeps things watchable and, against all odds, even occasionally engaging.


A SEQUEL NOBODY ASKED FOR:

My first question about Basic Instinct 2, even before I sat down to watch it, was: Why?

It would have been reasonable, and likely profitable, to have released a sequel around 1996 or 1997. But 2006? Almost 15 years after the fact? I wouldn't go so far as to say Basic Instinct had been forgotten, but it was no longer seen as particularly exciting or relevant. Even if the sequel had been good, the audience just wasn't there anymore.

Basic Instinct 2 isn't good, but it takes a while for it to actually become bad. Michael's an immediate loss as a protagonist, but the script does a decent job of establishing his professional life, with multiple scenes showing him interacting with friends, colleagues, and even a pretty love interest (Flora Montgomery). For the first half, the supporting cast just about holds things together.

Around the midpoint, most of these characters disappear. They don't get killed off - They just stop being in the movie. Flora Montgomery's Michelle flirts with Michael, then sleeps with him to deliver the movie's first sex scene... after which she's barely even mentioned again and is never seen. The noxious Dr. Gerst (Heathcote Williams) holds a coveted academic chair over Michael's head, taunting him with it... but he and the job stop being seen or mentioned after about the 60-minute mark. I wouldn't be surprised if some editing wasn't done to keep the film under two hours (thus maximizing showings) once it became clear that it just wasn't working.

Dr. Gerst (Heathcote Williams) shows off his art collection
to Michael and his trusted colleague, Milena (Charlotte Rampling).

MESSY STRUCTURE AND A SENSE OF LIFELESSNESS:

Story structure is a major problem. Michael's primary motivation seems to be to protect his career, which is under threat because of his past mistakes. However, it takes far too long for the film to make clear that his career even is threatened.

Everything about the first half hour reinforces Michael as someone both respected and successful. He has a spacious office, and he's treated with outright deference by police and court officials. The first mentions of Cheslav see both Milena and his ex-wife affirming that he did nothing wrong and has nothing to worry about. It's only a full hour in, after Gerst warns him, "No more Cheslavs," that we get a sense that this incident actually harmed him.

I also couldn't buy into Michael accepting Catherine as a patient. His first impulse is to refuse, and he even writes a referral to Milena. When she waves that off, insisting that she won't "shop around," there's no reason for him not to just shrug his shoulders and say, "Bye, then." Yes, we're eventually given a better explanation. But his decision also needs to work in the moment - and for me at least, it doesn't.

Around the midpoint, there stops being any sense of events building. Stuff happens, followed by more stuff that happens, and a lot of it doesn't seem particularly connected. The film seems to be aware of the problem, but its way of dealing with it is to dump out a ream of exposition in the final scene. If the story actually worked, we wouldn't need a, "Here's how the crimes were done" sequence, complete with flashbacks. Even this blatant attempt to force the whole thing together falls flat, as there's still one murder that just doesn't fit.

Finally, while it's well shot, the sequel lacks the visual panache of Paul Verhoeven's original. Verhoeven invested the 1992 film with kinetic energy, his camera frequently moving in visually interesting ways. The sequel is mostly static, scenes cutting between setups. The camera barely moves and, when it does, the movements are purely standard pans. A few of the visuals are eye-catching - but the static nature of them contributes to a sense of lifelessness.

As does the emptiness of the locations. The streets and sidewalks are all but empty, even at mid-day. When I've visited London, I've found it to be teeming with people, to the point that I've almost felt claustrophobic. This had a $70 million budget. Surely they could have afforded enough extras to at least suggest the foot traffic you'd see in reality?

Detective Superintendent Washburn (David Thewliss) interrogates Catherine.

THE OTHER NOMINEES:

Bloodrayne: The first Razzie nominated picture from infamous German director Uwe Boll. I haven't seen it, as I value my time too much to waste it on the works of Uwe Boll, but I feel comfortable in guessing that it's worse than Basic Instinct 2 (probably much worse). I suppose that actually giving the Razzie to an Uwe Boll film would be cheating.

Lady in the Water: The little residual acclaim still clinging to writer/director M. Night Shyamalan ran out with this contemporary fable, in which the residents of a Philadelphia apartment complex protect a mermaid (Bryce Dallas Howard) from fairy tale-like creatures. It's simultaneously pretentious and silly, which is not a good combination, though it benefits from a good cast that includes Paul Giamatti, Jeffrey Wright, Bob Balaban, and Jared Harris.

Little Man: A Wayans Brothers movie, directed by Keenan Ivory Wayans and written by him and his brothers. Marlon Wayans is a dwarf criminal who poses as a baby to pull off a heist, only to be "adopted" by clueless Shawn Wayans. I haven't seen it, and I'd frankly be more likely to waste my time watching Bloodrayne.

The Wicker Man: Director Neil LaBute's dreadful remake of Robin Hardy's eerie 1973 classic. In place of the original's slow burn, this version offers up Nicolas Cage, going full Nicolas Cage as he runs around, eyes bugging out of their sockets and shrieking while creating fuel for decades of Internet memes involving bees and bear costumes. The original's ending is horrific, haunting, and memorable; the remake's is unintentionally hilarious.

Though The Wicker Man is probably less bad than either Little Man or Bloodrayne, I think it should have been the winner. It's not just bad; it's memorably bad, enduring in the filmgoing consciousness and marking the moment Cage transformed from respected actor to... well, Nicolas Cage. By contrast, Basic Instinct 2 is an unremarkable, mediocre would-be thriller that's just sort of "there."


OVERALL:

I've seen far worse movies than Basic Instinct 2. Its biggest fault is that it's so unmemorable. The original film might have been trashy, but it was alive. The sequel arrives as a dead husk of two-dimensional characters and muddled plotting. A fine supporting cast makes a decent stab at keeping it afloat; but in the end, the film can't help but sink into the mire of its own mediocrity.


Rating: Turkey.

Worst Picture - 2005: Dirty Love
Worst Picture - 2007: I Know Who Killed Me (not yet reviewed)

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2005: Dirty Love.

Rebecca (Jenny McCarthy) visits a psychic.

Release Date: Sept. 23, 2005. Running Time: 91 minutes. Written by: Jenny McCarthy. Producers (takes deep breath): John Mallory Asher, B. J. Davis, Rod Hamilton, Kimberley Kates, Michael Manassen, Jenny McCarthy, Trent Walford. Director: John Mallory Asher.


THE PLOT:

Would-be photographer Rebecca Sommers (Jenny McCarthy) is completely, absolutely in love with her boyfriend, Richard (Victor Webster). She is certain that she has found "The One."

Then she comes home to discover him in bed with another woman.

After a massive emotional breakdown, a psychic (Kathy Griffin) informs her that she must learn "many lessons" before finding her "white pony." Which is only slightly more helpful than her friend Carrie (Kam Heskin), who sets her up to accompany her on a double date with the nebbishy producers of a movie she's auditioned for.

That date ends badly (and messily), but this is only the beginning of Rebecca's odyssey. She searches for one normal guy to date and make Richard jealous, but every man she meets is a pervert or a lunatic - or, in the case of one stage magician (Guillermo Diaz), both at the same time.

And all the while, best friend John (Eddie Kay Thomas) offers emotional support while wishing he could get himself to express his own feelings for Rebecca...

John (Eddie Kaye Thomas) attempts to cheer Rebecca up,
while hiding his own feelings for her.

CHARACTERS:

Rebecca: She's supposedly a photographer, but she never shows the slightest interest in photography. Given McCarthy's general presence and the way her character dresses, it would make more sense for Rebecca to be a struggling actress. John at one point says that she teaches him to be a better person just by being his friend, and I wonder what he's talking about. All we see, across the interminable 90 minutes of this movie, is Rebecca feeling sorry for herself - when she's not trying to make her ex-boyfriend jealous, that is. The character doesn't seem to have any ambition beyond "new boyfriend," and that about sums up her personality, so it's hard to summon up much sympathy.

John: I hope Eddie Kaye Thomas fired his agent. First Freddy Got Fingered and now this? All he needed was an appearance in The Love Guru to complete the "worst comedies of the 2000s" hat trick. Thomas gets a few chuckles with reactions, such as when he stares up at a very tall woman who becomes inexplicably obsessed with him, but John doesn't have any more personality than Rebecca. I don't even know what he does for a living; all we ever learn about him is that he's in love with her but can't make himself say so.

Michelle: Carmen Electra's character is memorable... mainly because she spends the movie talking in exaggerated, stereotypical "black speak," as if she saw 1980's Airplane! and took the line, "I speak jive," as a personal challenge. At one point, a minor character actually stops to check: "You know you're white, right?" And... yeah, that's about all that's going on with her, though I suppose Electra gets a modicum of credit for taking her character's sole personality trait and running with it.

Richard: Rebecca's ex-boyfriend, a male model who keeps a life-sized underwear ad of himself prominently displayed in his home. He's vain enough that, after parking, he pauses to admire his own face in his side-view mirror. Rebecca's attempts to make him jealous continuously backfire, with her catching his attention just in time for him to see her in one humiliation after another, all of which he merrily laughs at.

Carrie: Rebecca's actress friend. Or should I say, "actress" friend. We glimpse Carrie's line readings at an audition, and they are truly horrible. The squeaky, little-girl voice that she uses could just about shatter glass, and she mostly dresses as if she's preparing for either a very specialized type of film or for midnight on Hollywood Boulevard. Kam Heskin's performance is deeply awful, bad enough to make the rest of the cast look good by comparison - and unfortunately, she's on screen quite a lot.

Rebecca's opening breakdown. It isn't funny,
but at least Jenny McCarthy's going for it.

"SAY SOMETHING NICE":

Jenny McCarthy's performance is fearless. Don't get me wrong, her acting is terrible. But she seems not only willing, but downright eager to abandon any semblance of dignity, and I can't help but have a certain respect for that.

After a brief prologue, the film opens with Rebecca having an extended, over-the-top breakdown on the street. She repeats, "Oh, my God!" multiple times in increasingly shrill tones, contorts her face, then squats like she's about to go to the bathroom with her clothes on. From there, she accosts prostitutes and a homeless man, all of whom respond perfectly rationally: by backing away from the crazy lady.

In the right hands, this willingness to go all-out could have led to some good comedy. Unfortunately, the director is John Mallory Asher, McCarthy's then-husband, whose directorial credits... well, let's just say that it's entirely possible that Dirty Love does not represent his worst movie.

Rebecca attempts to avoid her ex noticing her in a grocery store.

THOUGHTS:

Dirty Love is cheap, crass, and gross. None of these are disqualifying traits for a comedy. There's Something About Mary more or less pioneered the late 1990s/early 2000 gross-out comedy, and it stands up as a pretty good movie.

No, Dirty Love has a bigger problem - It isn't funny.

I laughed exactly once in the entire movie. When an emotionally anguished Rebecca orders a sundae, the sympathetic clerk delivers a veritable Everest of ice cream to her. The moment works because it actually suits the scene, and the movie contents itself with presenting the visual, with no commentary beyond a silent double-take by Eddie Kaye Thomas. Given what passes for humor in the rest of the film, I can only assume this bit was improvised by the crew.

The gags revolve heavily around bodily excretions. Rebecca's least bad date ends with her getting vomited on while her ex-boyfriend watches and laughs. Later "jokes" see her getting sudden menstrual bleeding in a grocery store, which involves her sitting in a lake of her own blood; I'm pretty sure that much blood calls for an ambulance, not a Maxi pad. Multiple gags involve objects inserted into people's butts, because butts are apparently inherently hilarious. Precisely none of this is funny.

Now, sometimes an uneven comedy can just about skate by if the plot is well-structured. This script, the sole screenwriting credit by star Jenny McCarthy, barely has a plot. What passes for an emotional core is the non-relationship between Rebecca and John. John is first introduced sticking up for Rebecca to her ex-boyfriend, something that happens before we establish either his friendship with Rebecca or his unspoken feelings for her. John and Rebecca don't share even a second of screentime until almost a full third of the way into the movie.

Not that Rebecca is best off with John. This isn't a person who's ready for any relationship. She doesn't need "a nice guy," she needs to become halfway comfortable in her own skin. Had the film moved in that direction, it might at least have had a decent message buried underneath this miserable, mirthless odyssey. But even as surface-level an insight as that is beyond this picture.

John confronts Richard (Victor Webster) over his treatment of Rebecca.
This happens before John and Rebecca share any screentime.

THE OTHER NOMINEES:

Deuce Bigalow: European Gigalo: I sort of liked the first Deuce Bigalow, which was surprisingly sweet-natured for a film starring Rob Schneider, who I usually find to be the comedy equivalent of severe underarm odor. The sequel is more what I'd expect: crude and unfunny in a vaguely mean-spirited way. To the extent that it's remembered at all, it's mainly for Schneider throwing a hissy fit at an early negative review, mocking the critic for not having a Pulitzer Prize. This prompted Roger Ebert to step in to deliver his own review: Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks."

The Dukes of Hazzard: Bigscreen update of the late '70s/early '80s television hit. I watched the old show as a child, because approximately everyone of my generation did, but it's a piece best left to the past. I haven't seen the movie. I'm sure it's bad, but I doubt it's as bad as Dirty Love.

House of Wax: In-name-only remake of the 1953 Vincent Price thriller. The 1953 version is a well-structured film that holds up surprisingly well, with or without the (excellent) 3D effects. The remake is a mediocre slasher film, but it's no worse than any other mediocre slasher picture and probably doesn't belong on this list.

Son of the Mask: Infamously ill-conceived attempt to make a (too-belated) sequel to The Mask without Jim Carrey. By all accounts, it is wretched, possibly as bad as Dirty Love. It was also made for several times the budget of Dirty Love, which makes me think that it probably deserved the award. A low-budget indie comedy misfiring is standard; a big-budget effects-heavy comedy that's just as bad deserves more scorn.


OVERALL:

Dirty Love is a dreadful movie. It's cheap-looking, often disgusting, and relentlessly unfunny. On the plus side, if you're curious, as of this writing it is free to stream on Tubi (thank you, Tubi, for sparing me from spending any actual money on this offal). But even seeing it free, I can't help but come away wanting a refund.


Rating: Flushable Wipe - Used.

Worst Picture - 2004: Catwoman
Worst Picture - 2006: Basic Instinct 2

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2004: Catwoman.

Catwoman (Halle Berry) prepares to take revenge on the villains who murdered her.

Release Date: July 19, 2004. Running Time: 104 minutes. Screenplay: John Brancato, Michael Ferris, John Rogers. Story: Theresa Rebeck, John Brancato, Michael Ferris. Producers: Denise Di Novi, Edward L. McDonnell. Director: Pitof.


THE PLOT:

Patience Phillips (Halle Berry) is a talented young artist working in the advertising department at Hedare Beauty. Hedare is soon to ship a new skin cream, Beau-Line, with company owner George Hedare (Lambert Wilson) and his wife, aging model Laurel (Sharon Stone), touting it as able to reverse the effects of aging.

Beau-Line, however, has side effects. It's addictive, and its caustic properties will destroy the face of any long-term user who stops using it. While she's dropping off her latest designs, Patience has the misfortune to overhear company scientist Slavicky (Peter Wingfield) telling Laurel all about it. Laurel responds by ordering her guards to kill Patience, which they do by flushing the drain pipe in which she's hiding.

That should be the end of Patience's story... except that she previously befriended a cat, an Egyptian Mau named Midnight who has the power of Egypt Voodoo to bring her back to life. Now Patience has cat-like reflexes and instincts and can see in the dark. After a (too) brief period of adjustment, she leans into her new nature, adopting the persona of "Catwoman" and setting her sights on bringing down the company that killed her.

Villains George and Laurel Hedare (Lambert Wilson, Sharon Stone). At least they embrace the camp.

CHARACTERS:

Patience Phillips/Catwoman: Halle Berry won a Worst Actress Razzie, which she famously accepted in person while poking fun at her own emotional Oscar speech from two years earlier. She really didn't deserve the Razzie. Her performance isn't particularly good, and I truly don't believe in her exaggerated meekness in the first twenty minutes. It is baseline competent, however, which is probably the best that anyone could have done with this part as written.

Laurel Hedare: A sign of the oddness of this script is that it plays as if Laurel's villainy is meant to be a twist. Her introductory scene paints her as more sympathetic than her husband, while George's every scene shows him as a man with zero redeeming qualities. Later, she plays innocent for Catwoman, even promising to dig up evidence to bring down George, and her double-cross is presented as if it's meant to be a surprise. Except for one thing - Less than twenty minutes in, we see her dismissing Slavicky's concerns about the Evil Face Cream ("Holy Beauty Products, Batman!") and then ordering Patience's death! My best guess is that bits of different drafts were pasted together without anyone paying attention to if the dramatic beats actually made any sense.

Det. Tom Lone: The hilariously named cop assigned to the Catwoman case, and per Hollywood regulations, Patience's love interest. As an actor, Benjamin Bratt has usually ranged from serviceable to good, but he's truly awful in this role. His detective is unburdened by either charisma or facial expressions, and his chemistry with Patience wouldn't earn a passing grade in a high school science class. Bratt mostly looks bored, and most of Halle Berry's worst acting comes in her scenes opposite him. Since his character does almost nothing to advance the plot, and the romance doesn't illuminate anything about either character, I think they should have just jettisoned Detective Tom Lone entirely.

George Hedare: I'm going to recycle an observation I made about James Woods's performance in my review of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within: Lambert Wilson's acting amounts to an extended cartoon sneer. George is a miserable excuse for a man. He's domineering to his employees and psychologically cruel to his wife. He cheats with a much younger woman; and when attending a dreadful arty event with her that she (accurately) says she thinks is a "waste of time," he snaps: "Don't... think. Ever. Consider it a condition of our relationship."

Ophelia Powers: Patience gets support from the mysterious Ophelia (Frances Conroy), who reveals what has happened to her long after it should already be painfully obvious, and who drops some exposition about catwomen that makes clear that Patience is just one of multiple such women. So comic book purists can rest secure in the knowledge that Selina Kyle is still out there somewhere; there's even a blink-and-you'll-miss-it photo of Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman. Ophelia urges Patience to embrace her new nature and "be free." Which involves donning an S & M outfit, because nothing says "female empowerment" like jutting your barely-concealed assets straight at the camera.

Sally: Patience's best friend (Alex Borstein), whose entire role basically amounts to lusting after men. Her Beau-Line use seems like a clear setup, particularly when she is hospitalized. I expected her to develop the side effects that were established early on. Instead, all that happens is that Sally takes the opportunity of hospitalization to relentlessly hit on her doctor in a way that's meant to be funny but mainly comes across as creepy.

Patience learns about Catwomen. Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman pictured, presumably
as a reminder that it's entirely possible to tell this type of story well.

"SAY SOMETHING NICE":

A few scenes see Patience slipping in and out of her Catwoman persona, almost as if her personal identity is separate from her new alter ego. When she first goes out as Catwoman, she interrupts a burglary, then steals the jewels herself - only to be appalled at the theft before anonymously returning (most of) the jewels the next day with a note that says, "Sorry." The script never actually makes anything out of the divide between "Patience" and "Catwoman," but these moments hint at it as a concept. Maybe it formed part of an earlier draft, before the script was bludgeoned into the most generic form possible.


"SO... WHAT WERE THEY ON?"

Catwoman follows the "more is more" school of film editing. Even expositional scenes often feature multiple pointless cuts, sometimes between ridiculously similar camera angles, and this tendency gets worse during action sequences. The worst offender is an impromptu basketball game between Patience and Tom. This bit of "action flirting" appears to be borrowed from the laughable playground fight/flirt between Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner in Daredevil. The editing is hyperkinetic, and some shots even switch up the camera lens to add further visual distortion. The Daredevil scene was bad, sure - but at least you could actually see what was happening on screen in that film!

Patience flirts with Detective Lone (Benjamin Bratt) on a basketball court.
Frenetic editing makes this scene almost impossible to actually watch.

THOUGHTS:

Catwoman is a very bad movie. It's stupid. The cast struggles gamely against what they're given - but what they're given are cardboard characters spouting dreadful dialogue. Action scenes are terrible and ludicrously overedited, meaning that what should be the saving grace of a film of this genre is arguably the worst part of it.

Patience is a poor investigator. She has to be led by the nose to every discovery. She only knows that anything is wrong with Hedare because she happens to overhear a conversation by accident. When she breaks into the Hedare residence, she's easily manipulated by Laurel, and Laurel's villain monologue is what tells her where to go to stop the distribution of the Evil Face Cream. If we're meant to see her as capable, let alone some kind of symbol of femal empowerment, then shouldn't she actually find out anything thanks to her own resourcefulness?

All of this said, I did have a bit of fun watching this. Most of the 2000s Razzie winners have been dreary, joyless trudges. Catwoman feels like a throwback to the Worst Pictures of the '80s and '90s, many of which were enjoyable in a cheesy sort of way. I laughed at the horrible dialogue and rolled my eyes at the clichés, but I also genuinely wanted to keep watching if only to hear the delivery of the next leaden gem. Also, whatever else can be said, this movie has energy. Sure, it's the energy of a toddler running around incoherently before face-planting on the carpet - but after the likes of Freddy Got Fingered and Gigli, I'll take it!

Ophelia Powers (Frances Conroy) breaks out her Big Book of Exposition. Because
Patience can figure out literally nothing without someone else telling it to her.

THE OTHER NOMINEES:

Alexander: Oliver Stone's bloated epic about the life of Alexander the Great (Colin Farrell with a bad dye job). Director Oliver Stone clearly made a legitimate effort. He then kept on making it, tinkering even more with this than Coppola did with Apocalypse Now. There are four versions: The 175-minute theatrical cut; the shorter 167-minute director's cut; the 214-minute "Final Cut" that was the real director's cut, honest; and the 207-minute "Ultimate Cut" that is absolutely, positively the one true director's cut. I'll probably watch one of these versions eventually, if only out of curiosity.

Superbabies - Baby Geniuses 2: Out of the nominees, I'd guess that this was the one that actually deserved Worst Picture. By repute, it's even worse than the first Baby Geniuses, which is quite an accomplishment. Sadly, this was the final movie directed by Bob Clark, who in better times had helmed Murder by Decree and A Christmas Story.

Surviving Christmas: Ben Affleck wants to take a vacation over Christmas rather than spending the holiday with family. The horror! I'd wonder if they were copying similarly unfunny Tim Allen starrer Christmas with the Kranks, except both films were released in the same year. Remarkably, this is the worse of the two. At least Kranks's Tim Allen has comic timing, even when he isn't given anything funny to say or do.

White Chicks: Directed by Keenan Ivory Wayans, this film presents Shawn and Marlon Wayons as black, male FBI agents who go undercover as white women. Rather than, you know, sending two female agents. I haven't seen it, but it sounds even stupider than Evil Face Cream, and not in a good way. I'm happy it didn't "win," since I suspect I had a better time with Catwoman than I would have with White Chicks.


OVERALL:

I can't defend Catwoman, which is every bit as bad as its reputation and further suffers from horribly over-edited action scenes. It's a terrible movie, and I wouldn't recommend wasting time with it... unless you're looking for something campy and stupid to make fun of, in which case it might just fit the bill.


Rating: Turkey. For what it's worth, I'd put it at the upper end of that rating.

Worst Picture - 2003: Gigli
Worst Picture - 2005: Dirty Love

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2003: Gigli.

Small-time mob enforcer Larry Gigli (Ben Affleck) is attracted to
his lesbian partner, Ricki (Jennifer Lopez). Hilarity does not ensue.

Release Date: Aug. 1, 2003. Running Time: 116 minutes. Writer: Martin Brest. Producer: Martin Brest, Casey Silver. Director: Martin Brest.


THE PLOT:

Larry Gigli (Ben Affleck) is a small-time enforcer for Louis (Lenny Venito), a low-level Los Angeles mobster. Larry thinks of himself as a tough guy, but he mostly gets menial assignments, such as collecting overdue payments.

It's after one such job that Louis gives him a more challenging assignment: to kidnap Brian (Justin Bartha), the autistic brother of a federal prosecutor who is bringing a case against mob boss Starkman (Al Pacino). Louis sees this as a chance to take some initiative and move up in the organization... assuming Larry can manage not to screw it up.

To make sure Larry doesn't bungle it, he assigns a second enforcer: Ricki (Jennifer Lopez), a beautiful but tough lesbian. Ricki instantly dismisses Larry as every bit the idiot Louis thinks. However, as they work together, babysitting Brian and waiting for further instructions, the unexpected happens - they begin to form an unlikely friendship.

But for Larry, friendship just isn't enough...

Larry and Ricki eat an awkward meal with their kidnap victim, autistic Brian (Justin Bartha).

CHARACTERS:

Larry Gigli: The title character is a man who strives to seem tough but utterly fails to pull it off. If this had been made twenty years later, he'd doubtless refer to himself as an "alpha." We're meant to see his inner decency gradually emerge as he sheds his devotion to that self-image. It's a solid character arc... on paper. Too bad the script's idea of character development is to directly tell the audience this, with little sense of any gradual shift in behavior. "Tell don't show" also applies to Larry's status as a supposed screw up. He's labeled this by Louis and Ricki, but the only real mistake we see him making up to that point is letting his guard down when Ricki shows up and smiles at him. Ben Affleck is terrible here. When he's not directly speaking, he mostly just stares slack-jawed into space waiting for his next line.

Ricki: Jennifer Lopez is marginally better, in that she at least appears to be awake. She fails to convince as a tough girl, though... which is odd, because she was 100% convincing as a tough, smart young woman in Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight just five years earlier. The script does her no favors. As with Larry, we're told that she's tough without ever seeing it. The closest the film comes to showing her doing anything is when she intimidates a group of noisy teenagers. She also doesn't convince as a lesbian, because what we mainly see is her flirting with Ben Affleck from literally her first second of screen time all the way to the end of the movie.

Brian: Justin Bartha plays the autistic young man Larry kidnaps... and yes, he's awful, but I don't see how he could have not been. The script's research into autism seems to have consisted of whatever Martin Brest remembered from whenever he watched Rain Man. "Discount Rain Man" pretty much describes both character and performance, only with the "comedy" additions of an overactive libido and Tourette's Syndrome to justify him bursting out swearing at random intervals. Making Brian a triple threat: terminally unfunny while also being inaccurate and insulting as a representation of most people with autism and most people with Tourette's.

Detective Jacobellis: Christopher Walken drops by for exactly one scene as... well, Christopher Walken. I don't know whether he actually goes off script, but I'd bet on it when he rants about alien abductions in the middle of dropping exposition about Brian's brother. He also pauses every so often to stare piercingly at Ben Affleck. I think the intent is that he's trying to rattle Gigli into revealing something, but Walken plays it more as if he's wondering what Affleck's eyeballs taste like. Then he whoops about Marie Callender pies sitting on top of foreheads (?) before leaving both apartment and movie just as abruptly as he came in. I think it's the oddest Christopher Walken performance I've seen - and I've seen both cuts of Wild Side.

Starkman: Al Pacino also appears for a single scene, presumably as a favor to the director who finally delivered him his long-sought Oscar. Both he and Walken ended up nominated for Worst Supporting Actor Razzies. Unlike Walken, Pacino doesn't deserve that. It's definitely an over-the-top "21st century Pacino" performance, with him mixing exaggerated mannerisms and shouted threats. But it's also the movie's best scene, with Pacino convincingly injecting a hint of menace that's sadly absent from the rest.

An overacting Al Pacino provides the movie with its single best scene.

"SAY SOMETHING NICE":

Gigli has a passable opening. The film fades in on Larry Gigli amiably chatting. At first, we think he's just narrating his thoughts. Then we see that he's actually speaking... to a man he has tied and placed into a machine in a laundromat. It's dumb - Larry didn't even bother to lock the door, so a customer wanders in during this - but it sets a tone that mixes comedy with the threat of violence. If the rest of the movie had managed to sustain this tone, then I doubt it would be forming a part of this review series.


THE UNKINDEST CUT:

This is famously not the movie director Martin Brest wanted to make. The studio rejected his 160 minute cut of the film, probably fearful of a repeat of Brest's financially unsuccessful Meet Joe Black (a film that I liked, though I won't deny that it was bloated).

The execs seized control, demanding five weeks of extensive reshoots that transformed Gigli from an edgy crime caper into a mainstream romantic comedy, the better to capitalize on the (frankly inexplicable) tabloid fascination with the romance between co-stars Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. In a 2023 interview with Variety, Brest observed that "the entire context of the film was upended, (and) the original intention was pretty much obliterated."

To be clear, I doubt that Brest's version would have been a good movie. Affleck at this point in his career wasn't a substantial enough screen presence to carry it over the rough edges, and the bones of a good picture simply are not present in the idiotic plot. That said, Brest's cut almost certainly would have been less bad. The summary I read of the original, darker final Act sounds much better than the ending the film got; and given how badly the movie flopped, the reshoots amounted to throwing more money onto the funeral pyre.

That said, I have no idea what possessed Brest to deliver a 160-minute cut in the first place. Never mind that his contract only gave him final cut up to 130 minutes, essentially enabling the studio to take it away from him... at more than forty minutes less than that, the theatrical cut feels incredibly sluggish. I can't speak to Brest's cut, but I'm pretty sure you could knock 15 minutes off the theatrical version without it even being noticeable.

The opening scene, one of the few bits where Ben Affleck manages a facial expression.

THOUGHTS:

"It's turkey time! Gobble-gobble!"
-Jennifer Lopez pauses to review Gigli in the midst of acting in it.

I'm a little disappointed.

Gigli is almost as infamous as a bad movie as Battlefield Earth, with titles like "one of the worst movies ever made" attached to it regularly. Battlefield was a spectacular mess, so bad on every level that it was actually kind of compelling to watch. By contrast, Gigli is... an ordinary bad movie.

I'm not trying to defend Gigli. It's dumb and, what's worse, it's dull. A weak crime plot seems to have been bizarrely welded to an even weaker relationship comedy. The two leads are unconvincing, and the film's attempted ruminations on human sexuality have less insight than the ramblings of a stoned and horny undergraduate.

But that's all it is: an ill-conceived, poorly scripted movie that's bad in ways tons of movies are bad. It's not even bad enough to be funny except for a couple of bizarre moments (Christopher Walken; "gobble-gobble"). For the most part, it's just kind of... there.

Christopher Walken pops up for an extremely weird cameo.

OTHER MUSINGS:

"Just kind of there" is a fair summation of Gigli's plot progression, in that the plot doesn't so much progress as sit there.

As I stated earlier, the bones of a good picture aren't here, but this movie doesn't even use the scant opportunities at its disposal. Larry's meant to be a screw-up, but his kidnapping of Brian goes about as smoothly and easily as possible. Why not have him make a mess of it and only barely get away with his target? It would be a better scene, potentially creating the mix of comedy and suspense that made the director's '80s films so enjoyable. It would also explain exactly why Louis assigns Ricki after that. As it stands, I have no idea why he didn't just turn to her in the first place.

The hassle-free initial kidnapping is pretty much how every would-be complication goes. After Christopher Walken comes by and lets Larry know that he's kidnapped the brother of a federal prosecutor, Larry and Ricki take Brian out of the apartment to go... um, be visible in public, I guess. Why not have Walken's detective staking out the place, with them having to stumble around the area to escape without him noticing. It would require Walken for all of a handful of additional shots, and it would show the anti-heroes having to be clever to get around him.

Also, why do they leave the apartment at all? It's not as if they go somewhere else, even though taking refuge at Ricki's place might open up both dramatic and comedic possibilities. If they did that, then the film could engage a bit with its half-hearted attempt to study the spectrum of sexuality by showing Ricki's circle of friends But no. Larry and Ricki just sort of drive around a bit, being so worried about the federal prosecutor that they and Brian have lunch at an outdoor, public area (!), all before dropping in on Larry's mother (Lainie Kazan in a brief, unfunny cameo) before... returning to the very apartment they just fled. Well, that was exciting.

Gigli's dumb plot is a setup that leads nowhere. For most of the running time, nothing happens and it just keeps on not happening. Larry and Ricki sort of hang out together, sort-of flirting before Ricki reminds Larry that she's gay, really honest, before directing glances his way and flirting some more.

Much of it plays like a bad sitcom: What if a horny tough guy became roommates with a beautiful lesbian? Except the sitcom would probably have been more entertaining.

Larry bonds with Brian. Since Larry's dull and Brian's annoying, I truly don't care.

THE OTHER NOMINEES:

Gigli was such an instantly notorious flop that it pretty much had a lock on the award.

The Cat in the Hat was probably its only serious competitor for Worst Picture, a live action adaptation of the classic Dr. Seuss book starring Mike Myers as the titular cat. The results were so bad that Seuss's widow halted further live action versions of her husband's work. I haven't seen it, but the handful of clips I've viewed convince me that I should stay far away.

Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle is an odd choice for this list. I haven't seen it, but it didn't review that badly, and though it underperformed expectations, it still managed to eke out a profit. Its disappointing performance did put paid to any further films in the series until the disastrous 2019 reboot.

From Justin to Kelly continued the 2000s trend of the Razzies nominating an attempt by a music star to move to movies. This time it was Kelly Clarkson's turn - though against her wishes and as a result of contractual obligation.

Wikipedia calls Rick de Oliveira's The Real Cancun a "reality film" - essentially, reality TV on the bigscreen. It follows American teens on Spring Break, and it frankly sounds duller than Gigli. No, I haven't watched it. And if a gun was held to my head, I'd sit through The Cat in the Hat before attempting to endure this slop.


OVERALL:

Gigli is a bad movie, but it doesn't live down to its reputation as one of the worst films ever made. Its biggest problem is that it's boring. After a passably competent setup, nothing happens except talk. Very badly-written talk. This persists until about the 90 minute mark, when Al Pacino finally shows up to push the wafer-thin story to its conclusion.

I'd agree with Jennifer Lopez's statement that there are worse movies out there. It's not that Gigli is unwatchable; it's that I can't really think of any good reason to watch it. It's not even bad enough to be fun.


Rating: Turkey.

Worst Picture - 2002: Swept Away
Worst Picture - 2004: Catwoman

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2002: Swept Away.

Adrift at sea on a ruined dinghy... Which is not a bad metaphor for this entire movie.

Release Date: Oct. 11, 2002. Running Time: 89 minutes. Screenplay: Guy Ritchie. Based on: Swept Away... by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August, by Lina Wertmuller. Producer: Matthew Vaughn. Director: Guy Ritchie.


THE PLOT:

Amber Leighton (Madonna) is the wife of pharmaceuticals millionaire Tony (Bruce Greenwood). She is a woman with few redeeming qualities, a petty, foul-tempered chain smoker who is completely unbothered by moral questions. Giuseppe (Adriano Giannini) is a fisherman who is working on the yacht Tony has chartered to take them from Italy to Greece. He despises Amber on sight, and she takes a perverse pleasure in insulting and demeaning him.

One day, Amber demands Giuseppe take her out on a dinghy to visit some caves on a nearby island. Giuseppe and the crew warn her about the weather, but she insists. And since she's paying, Giuseppe is left with no choice but to do it.

Sure enough, a storm hits, and the two end up washed ashore on a deserted island. Since they had drifted far off course, there's no serious hope of rescue... which for Giuseppe, means that the tables have turned. As a fisherman, he is well suited to survive, while Amber has no skills at all. He insists that from now on, she will serve him - or else he will leave her to starve.

Then the unexpected happens, as these two opposites find themselves falling in love...

Giuseppe (Adriano Giannini) and the crew meet their new clients.

CHARACTERS:

Amber: In addition to the film's Worst Picture honors, Madonna took home the Razzie as Worst Actress of 2002. I don't know whether that was deserved, but she is quite bad. She spends the first half being cartoonishly nasty. A better actress might have lent some variety to the deliveries, maybe half-flirting in some of the barbs flung at Giuseppe, maybe being bored and uninterested with her husband... You know, a performance that might be consistent with her character arc. Madonna just snaps all of her insults in the same petulant tone. There's also no transition at all between this and the second half, when she becomes alternately submissive and clingy. It's like a switch just is flipped to make her personality change completely.

Giuseppe: Adriano Giannini, son of the 1974 film's star, Giancarlo Giannini, fares better as the fisherman. He has decent comedic timing, and some of his interactions with the other members of the yacht's crew are amusing. I suspect the actor could do well in other roles, particularly comic ones. Too bad I never believed him in this one. In the original version, Giancarlo Giannini was unkempt with a glint of something like madness in his eyes. You could feel the general class resentment and the very specific anger against this one woman building through the first Act, so that when he released it, you believed his rage. Adriano Giannini looks like... well, like a rich kid who's spent some time at the gym and on the beach. He's never unkempt. Whether working on the ship or fishing on the island, he frequently looks like he's posing for a magazine shoot. He also has no chemistry at all with Madonna, but I'm not inclined to blame him for that.

Tony: Bruce Greenwood manages to give a decent performance as Amber's husband. Unlike her, he shows a surface politeness to the crew, but it's obvious that he looks on them the way a feudal lord looked down upon his peasants. At one point, he solicits an opinion from Giuseppe about his business. He smiles and makes a show of listening as Giuseppe expounds, but his condescension is obvious. He may be "nicer" than Amber, but his attitude is actually more insidious than hers. Too bad he's absent for most of the movie, as I suspect a good script might have been able to do something halfway interesting with his character.

One thing that can be said is that this movie at least looks good.

"SAY SOMETHING NICE":

At least it's pretty.

The one thing that can be reliably said about Guy Ritchie as a filmmaker is that he has a strong visual sense. He's made good movies and absolutely godawful ones, but every one of his films that I've seen has visual polish to spare, and this remains true in Swept Away.

The first Act almost, sort of works, with Ritchie keeping scenes short and snappy and intercutting them for comedic effect. I mentally mocked how over-the-top Madonna's performance (and Amber's behavior) was, but at the same time I was passably engaged, simply because Ritchie kept a sense of energy to the early going.

However, that same style doesn't work in the story's favor once they reach the island. Instead of slowing down to let us get close to the character, Ritchie keeps his sceens short. Multiple montages and Giuseppe fantasizing a Madonna dance number don't so much add energy as push the viewer away from the characters. Still, for a while at least, director Guy Ritchie is able to keep screenwriter Guy Ritchie's dreadful story moving, making the viewing experience a lot less painful than might have been the case.

Gennarino (Giancarlo Giannini) and Raffaella (Mariangela Melato)
fall in love in Lina Wertmuller's much better 1974 original.

SWEPT AWAY (1974):

I am not the biggest fan of Lina Wertmuller's 1974 Swept Away... by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August. Watching two terrible people brutalize each other first emotionally and then physically isn't my idea of a good time at the movies, and I find the film's political messages to be laid on with a bit of a heavy hand. Beyond that, I've honestly never found much fascination in "stranded on an island" stories, which I find tend to grow tedious once the characters actually get stranded on the island.

Even so, there's no doubting the seriousness of Wertmuller's attempt to explore power differences among classes, sexes, and even political belief systems. The movie is surprisingly complex: Mariangela Melato's Raffaella is a predatory capitalist who abuses her power in the first part of the movie, bullying Giancarlo Giannini's loudly Communist Gennarino. Once they are on the island, the tables turn, with the Communist now abusing his power over the capitalist. Once they fall in love, the film encourages us to like both of them... but then it's revealed that he has a wife and children, and that he's willing to leave them without a thought, revealing his own hypocrisy.

The 1974 film is, in short, a serious movie from a serious filmmaker. The two leads have chemistry both as enemies and as lovers, and I end up fully believing in characters who might have been reduced to tedious class symbols. Oh, and the ending is so perfectly judged that, even though I did a bit of seat shifting in the second half, I still actively applauded the final minutes.

It's also very much a product of its time. I challenge you to watch it and envision a way that a reasonably faithful remake, even if it had been good, could have been accepted by mass audiences in 2002. It was inevitable that the edges would be sanded away, resulting in a vehicle for a pop star that, while helmed by a rising filmmaker, was anything but a serious movie...

Amber and Giuseppe fall in love... and I don't believe it for a second.

OTHER MUSINGS:

Giuseppe (renamed so that Madonna's Amber can dub him "PeePee") is no longer a Communist. Sure, he's appalled when she dismisses the inability of poor people to afford expensive pharmaceuticals, but that just makes him a human being with a functioning sense of empathy. He throws Amber's capitalist defenses in her face once they're on the island, but he doesn't have any politics of his own to replace it with. The closest he comes is some rambling about nature that is so incoherent that it briefly put me on Amber's side when she snarkily called him, "Nature Boy." Oh, and he has no family, which eliminates one of the more interesting turns of the original story.

Though the physical aggressiveness is toned down, it is still present, as is a near-rape, though all of that is now confined to an approximately ten-minute chunk around the middle of the movie. It also no longer convinces. In the original, the older Giannini seemed half crazed when he assaulted Raffaella, with him only barely managing to pull himself back at the last moment. The remake's Giuseppe never seems to be particularly out of control. I admit to being surprised that Guy Ritchie didn't remove all of this - but given that it now feels out of step with the overall movie rather than part and parcel of it, he probably should have taken out all of it.

The overall outline is more or less faithful to the original. The same basic things happen in the same basic order. But the emotion no longer feels genuine, and neither do the characters. It has as little to say as Harrison Ford's middling 1998 comedy, Six Days, Seven Nights, and it manages to be less entertaining. Notably, while Wertmuller's original ran almost two hours, Guy Ritchie's remake can't even fill 90 minutes - and that's with multiple screen time guzzling montages and two musical numbers, one of which is a dream sequence.

Also, while I mentioned this in the "Characters" section, it bears repeating: Madonna and Adriano Giannini have zero screen chemistry, making it essentially impossible to invest in their romance. When the two leads in the original finally made love, there was a sense of real passion and emotion. When these two do the same, it plays out more or less like a television perfume ad.

Amber is reunited with her husband, Tony (Bruce Greenwood).

THE OTHER NOMINEES:

This is another year in which I've only seen one of the nominated movies. Given the movies in question, I doubt I'll remedy that anytime soon.

The Adventures of Pluto Nash. Eddie Murphy's star had been on the wane for a while, but 2002 was probably the worst year of his career, with the release of no less than three flops. I saw both Showtime and I Spy, and those were bad enough that I can't really credit sci-fi action-comedy Pluto Nash being particularly worse. It was more expensive, however, boasting a budget of $100 million, and it didn't even manage to eke back $10 million.

Crossroads. For the second year running, a Razzie nominee spotlighted a young pop star attempting to break into movies. Britney Spears's stab at cinema didn't go any better than Mariah Carey's Glitter the year before, and I suspect very few people even remember that this motion picture exists.

Pinocchio. Italian comedy star Roberto Benigni was still riding the international success of 1997's Life Is Beautiful, which likely explains how this ill-conceived project got off the ground. The movie was reportedly further harmed in the U. S. by a ghastly English dub, but I somehow doubt that a movie casting a 50-year-old man as a child puppet worked terribly well even in the original Italian.

Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones. The only one of 2002's nominees that I've actually seen. Like Episode I, I'm pretty sure it was nominated mainly for its profile. The Anakin/Padme romance is justifiably notorious, with horrible droning dialogue and a romance between co-stars Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman that makes Swept Away's look good by comparison. However, the secondary plot, following Ewan McGregor's Obi Wan as he investigates an attempted assassination, is mostly rather good, as is the action climax. I won't argue against this being a disappointment - prior to The Rise of Skywalker, I'd have rated it as the worst theatrically released Star Wars film, but there's no way it ranks among the worst offerings of any year.

Giuseppe fantasizes a Madonna musical number. Because even Guy Ritchie
can't stay interested in the movie he's actually making.

OVERALL:

2002's Swept Away has some visual polish and a few entertaining moments early on, but it loses what little value it had once the two leads end up stranded on an island. It suffers from a poor central performance by Madonna and a relationship that never convinces, but on its own terms it's neither inept nor unwatchable. It's mostly just boring.

But it's also a direct remake of a far superior movie, and it suffers horribly by comparison. Both the politics and violence are considerably reduced, and the result is the worst of both worlds. Too much has been watered down for anything interesting to survive, but enough is retained to still be uncomfortable viewing - It's just that now it's uncomfortable without a point.

Guy Ritchie really should have just cast his then-wife in a different vanity project, one better suited to both his strengths and hers. A modern musical might have been a better bet.


Rating: Turkey.

Worst Picture - 2001: Freddy Got Fingered
Worst Picture - 2003: Gigli

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