Reviewed by Mant
"This summer the Angels are back."
Director McG
Starring Camaron Diaz, Lucy Liu, Drew Barrymore, Demi Moore.
Bad Movie Mecca Keywords: So Bad it Hurts, Commercial, Gratuitous Slow Motion
The Angels are trying to retrieve the Halo rings that encode the identity of all the members of the witness protection program. It's all a plot by fallen Angel Madison Lee (Demi Moore) who wants to prove how good she is, and make lots of money. Its not clear if she wants the Angels involved to take care of them, or is just doing it now its happened. She unleashes Dylan's (Drew Barrymore) psycho ex on the Angels, as it turns out Dillon was in the program, and her real name is Helen Zaz (cue lots of ass jokes). The Angels try to track the rings down, with lots of loud music and slow motion stunts.
Loud music. Slow motion stunts. Neither of these are inherently bad, but massive overuse just makes it painful. I didn't go into the movie expecting much depth, but all three main characters seemed to have been dumbed down from the first movie with fits of giggles, the plot is a mess and nobody I saw the movie with really knew what had happened when it was over.
Some of the fights are OK.
It gave me a such a bad headache I had to lie down afterwards for several hours.
John Cleese as a bemused father to Alex (Lucy Lu) thinking his daughter is a doctor, then a prostitute.
Production values: Well money was spent, plenty of it. The CGI and slow mo is technically fine, even if ill applied. 4
Dialogue and performances: The cast do pretty much what is asked if them, which is mostly little. Only Moore actually gets to emote, in a scene with just her and Charlie via the speaker, and does a pretty good job. Still, the dialog definitely picks up points for overuse of sexual innuendo, it kinda stops being funny after a while. 6
Plot and execution: What a mess, with unresolved subplots, lots of jumping about, and buried under the music and slow mo. 18
Randomness: Largely covered under the What's up with..? above, there was plenty of randomness to go around. 17
Waste of potential: The first movie was good silly fun, this could have at least been as good as that. 12
*
Reviewed by Mant
"A secret experiment. A deadly virus. A fatal mistake "
Director Paul Anderson
Starring Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodrigez
Bad Movie Mecca Keywords: Boring, Pitiful attempts at cool, Gratuitous Slow Motion
The evil Umbrella Corporation has a huge secret laboratory
underneath Raccoon City, where they make evil zombie-making virii (Laugh at our
silly name will they? We'll show them all!). A traitor unleashed the virus, and
the lab's AI, the Red Queen, does her best HAL impersonation by killing everyone
in the base (who wires the AI into the lift emergency brakes anyway?).
The company send in their rent-a-SWAT team to shut the AI down, and don't tell
them about the virus (evil company, remember?). Alice (Jovovich) and some guy
are agents guarding the secret entrance in a big mansion under cover of being
married. Unfortunately they got gassed by knock out gas with memory-affecting
side effects, and can't remember this. They also take some other guy they find
on the mansion premises who claims to be a cop.
The team goes in to shut the AI down, of course it goes wrong, zombies attack,
they have to deal with a traitor - who maybe someone who can't remember that they
are the traitor - a time limit before the base seals off and a badly CGI'd uber-zombie.
Its actually hard to pin down. I mean, rogue AIs, zombies, Kung Fu, it should be good, right? Its not though, it really seems to lack any enthusiasm, the zombies are rather pathetic, at one point a SWAT member is alone in a room literally packed with them, and can crawl and climb away.
Many parts aren't actively done wrong or badly, just not well
It's not terrible, but its not actively enjoyable.
Jovovich's character looking at her wedding ring that says inside "Property of the Umbrella Corporation". OK, its not so subtle, but its like social commentary or something.
Production values: The zombies look OK, although given a long history of good looking (as it were) zombies and low budgets, they should do. The zombie dogs though clearly have their raw 'skin' on top of their coats, not so good. And the CGI uber-zombie looks very, very CGI. 12
Dialogue and performances: Mila Jovovich looks vacant, Michelle Rodrigez scowls, SWAT guys look either competent or horrified. Zombies shamble. 10
Plot and execution: It's pretty contrived, and it's sometimes 'stupid' plot, that is it relies on the characters being stupid sometimes. The 'twists' of the worthless antidote, and being captured by the evil company at the end are badly done, and leave you wondering why you should care about anything. 9
Randomness: Although its not a great story, the film sticks to it, and has little randomness other than contrivances to keep the story together (SWAT team take two amnesiac agents and guy they don't trust with them into a dangerous situation, Red Queen kills everyone in the base to stop the virus getting out, but know they will all get up again as zombies anyway). 8
Waste of potential: Over the years there have been some class zombie films on low budgets, with a big (by zombie movie terms) budget, and a heritage of creepy computer games, this could have rocked. It didn't. Yes it was from a computer game, but Paul Anderson proved with Mortal Kombat you can a least make entertaining movies from them. 17
*
Reviewed by Mant
"A legendary hero. A battle beyond imagination"
Director Gabrielle Beaumont
Starring Marc Singer, Tony Todd, Sandra Hess, Casper Van Dien, David Warner
Bad Movie Mecca Keywords: So bad it hurts, Boring, Huge Lizard.
The evil Lord Agone (David Warner, so literally Evil) has a
problem, he keeps needing to suck out lifeforce from victims to do a Greecian
2000 impression and get his youth back. So he plans to open the tomb of an evil
god, Braxus, since its written that anyone who does will be rewarded with
infinite power. Although it never says who wrote it, and being this god is, well
evil, you'd think Agone would be a bit more careful.
To open the tomb he needs the Eye, a cheap trinket that comes apart, and the
Beastmaster (Singer) and his brother King Tal (Van Dien) each have a part. So he
sends his evil minions to capture the King, and the Beastmater, accompanied by
first Seth (Todd) and later a bunch of others, go off to rescue him. Oh yeah,
and his animals too.
After getting lost and captured, it all ends up with a show down in front of the
tomb. Agone gets the eye and opens the tomb, and as a reward gets possessed by
Braxus, them evil gods and their lack of gratitude. He turns into the fifth
mutant turtle, is mighty and invulnerable, and has to be defeated by having a
light dropped on his head, his eye nicked and being pushed down a hole.
It's cheap, so cheap nobody can afford to stab anyone else, the bad guys can only muster four people at any one time, and the clothing budget went first. It's badly acted too.
The sidekicks. Tony Todd's Seth is vastly cooler than the Beastmaster, and having a staff (his staff of office and kingly adviser no less) as a weapon actually gets to hit people. The other sidekicks are taking it all less seriously, and Lesley-Anne Down as the witch Morgana seems to having much more fun than anyone in a movie this bad has a right to.
Bad. It's not quite painful, at least not all the time, and raises a few smiles unintentionally.
Seth, Most of the scenes with Morgana
Braxus, I mean the guy looks really, really silly. The lack of clothes for everyone.
Production values: The animals are well trained. That's it really. 18
Dialogue and performances: As mentioned Tony Todd and Lesley-Anne Down are better than the movie deserves, and they aren't great. Almost everyone else is painfully wooden. 16
Plot: It's often intensely predictable and its unoriginal. Its pretty consistent, doesn't waste time on subplots, simple and direct. It's just not any good. 16
Randomness: Very little. The guys sticking the mystic smoke releaser in the ground, and relying on Beastmaster to be dumb enough to activate it (despite being told not to). Largely though it knows where it's going, and goes there. 4
Waste of potential: The third Beastmaster film? Let's face it, it was never going to be great. 6