Post 128

WOW....

Kay. So. Let's give new depth and meaning to the concept of "suck," shall we?

One of my roommates is a big fan of Scrubs, and we all watch it with him occasionally. I enjoy it; it's usually at least mildly entertaining, and it's often quite funny. Of course, we all love Dr. Cox best of all. Honestly, the writers responsible for fueling that character's scathing wit are a-mazing, and John McGinley pulls it of so well. This is prime-time television at its finest--and it is fine (though Scrubs isn't really prime-time, I don't suppose).

Anyway, a few days ago, I was wandering about in the library with a few of my roommies, and we saw a movie that had John McGinley on the cover, so we picked it up and brought it home. The movie is called Car 54, Where Are You?

A couple of nights ago, I decided to look it up on Rotten Tomatoes. Do me a favor and just follow this link really quickly; you don't have to stay long, just follow it and take a look at that rating. You ready? CLICK HERE!

Did you see that?? That's hard to do! I mean, sure, Rotten Tomatoes can be pretty brutal sometimes, but a zero percent? How bad must a movie be to get a rating like that?

So then I went to the Internet Movie Database because, ya know, Rotten Tomatoes only had 12 reviews, so maybe it just so happened that only 12 bitter people had the motivation to say anything about it, but at IMDb, it only got two stars out of ten--and that was from more than 2000 votes!

Intrigued, I went over to Amazon to see what people there had said, and it was more of the same, so I have decided to compile some of my favorite reviews and publish them here for your enjoyment:

Courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes

David Mills of the Washington Post called it "a stupid movie. Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid. If you pay money to see it, then you're stupid. I got paid to see it, and I feel stupid." (The full review, which isn't much longer than that, can be found here.)

TV Guide's movie guide said, "[Q]uite simply, it isn't very funny."

Courtesy of IMDb

Terminal Madness said, "I saw this when I was 10 years old and this gave me a stomache ache.... honestly! I'm not kidding. That's how bad it is. Serious."

Other reviews are entitled such things as "This is the worst movie I have ever seen," "THIS MOVIE SUCKED!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!" and "This movie haunts my child hood."

Courtesy of Amazon.com

Larry Cardonick of Philadelphia said that "you'll get more yucks staring at a clock. A stopped one at that. The makers of this mess should be arrested. Avoid at all costs."

J. D Hill of Phoenix called it "Just plain hideously bad," saying that "I probably shouldn't even be acknowledging the existence of this film by giving it a rating."

Donna H. Winchill of Clemson, SC said, "The movie considered to be the worst movie ever is Ed Wood's PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. That movie was more entertaining than this."

But by far my favorite review came from an anonymous Amazon customer who said, "I was given this by a man who cannot read or do simple math. He lives on the end of my block. I drive him places because he does not have a car. He gave it to me because he said, 'this is terrible.' When a man of that social standing says something's terrible, it is. This is horrible."

So there you go: horribly horrible movie, it seems. And it's sitting in our living room--oh how can we resist?

We can't, frankly--or, at least, we couldn't. Three of us sat down together to relentlessly mock the extreme lame-osity that we were sure would ooze from our screen.

We tried; we really did. Please understand me: we tried. But there was just nothing there! This movie is so terrible, it can't be mocked; there's nothing substantial enough to mock! We couldn't ever say things like, "Gee, that joke was, uh--it was pretty funny, huh guys?" because we couldn't identify any jokes! The movie was completely lacking in funny! It was so devoid of entertainment, so comedically deficient--furthermore, the acting was so poor and the writing so incoherent--I say, the movie was so lacking in every possible way that we could find nothing to ridicule! It was like they weren't even trying! We couldn't finish it. We selected a few random scenes, looking for something intriguing, but there was nothing--nothing--there was nothing to be found.

The fact that this movie exists boggles my mind. Where did it come from? Who supported it? What series of tragic head traumas induced its inception? I cannot imagine....

The craziest thing is that there are so many big names in it. The best we can figure is that these people signed a contract that went something like, "I will participate in the production of the worst excuse for cinema ever to be created in exchange for opportunities for greatness elsewhere later on." Seriously, here is a list of famous people who appear in the movie (not that I'm a fan of all these folks; mostly I'm just trying to make a point):

John C. McGinley
David Johansen (think New York Doll who was a ghost in Scrooged)
Fran Dresser
Rosie O'Donnell
Daniel Baldwin
Jeremy Piven
Penn & Teller
The Ramones
Lee Arenberg (in Pirates of the Caribbean, he played the wooden-eyed pirate's buddy)

So--what went wrong here?

I don't know, but, whatever it was, it went terribly, terribly wrong.

Had I watched it all the way through, Car 54, Where Are You? would definitely be the worst movie I've ever seen. As it is, it very well may be the worst I've never seen--and that's probably saying a lot, given the number movies I haven't seen....