Chat Room (2002) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, ZERO STARS

The Chatroom
ZERO STARS/**** Image D Sound B-
starring Brian Hooks, Darryl Bronson, Christopher Richards, Troy Winbush
screenplay by Barry Bowles & Carl Washington
directed by Barry Bowles

by Walter Chaw A feature-length episode of “What’s Happening!!” minus the nuance and sophistication of that late lamented blaxploitation garbage, Chat Room shares with the Seventies sitcom an unholy diner-hangin’ trinity of fat one, dumb one, and the one with whom we’re supposed to identify. Following this trio of miscreants during an online booty call, Chat Room begins with a You’ve Got Mail sequence of the guys “chatting” in the titular chatrooms edited together so hopelessly as to suggest, oh so hilariously, that these horny dudes are actually talking to each other.

The Wash (2001) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
starring Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, George Wallace
written and directed by D.J. Pooh

by Walter Chaw A bit of free advice: if you undertake a drinking game in which the trigger word is “n***a” while watching D.J. Pooh’s The Wash, you’re probably going to die. Another word to the wise: if you don’t imbibe lethal doses of some variety of libation while watching The Wash, you’re probably going to die regardless. The only sensible way to approach The Wash is, apparently, with rubber gloves and one of those plastic bags dispensed at public walking trails.

Corky Romano (2001) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DVD, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C
starring Chris Kattan, Peter Falk, Peter Berg, Roger Fan
screenplay by David Garrett & Jason Ward
directed by Rob Pritts

by Walter Chaw There’s an apocryphal tale from the set of John Sturges’s The Magnificent Seven concerning Steve McQueen consistently upstaging Yul Brynner until the bald-pated thespian, fresh off his Oscar for The King and I, threatened to take off his hat during McQueen’s scenes. An amusing anecdote about Hollywood egos and the urge to steal the limelight, it enters into a discussion of the abominable Corky Romano because a very curious thing happens in the film to its star, Chris Kattan.

Not Another Teen Movie (2001) [Special Edition] – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Teen, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras B+
starring Chyler Leigh, Chris Evans, Jaime Pressly, Deon Richmond
screenplay by Mike G. Bender & Adam Jay Epstein & Andrew Jacobson and Phil Beauman & Buddy Johnson
directed by Joel Gallen

by Walter Chaw The first thing one notices about Joel Gallen’s Not Another Teen Movie is that it appears to have been shot on 16mm stock off the back of someone’s truck–grainy and shaky, it’s easily the cheapest-looking major studio release of the year. After a brief prologue in which our heroine Janey Briggs (Chyler Leigh, whose character’s name appears to spoof “Jason Biggs,” the star of American Pie–that’s as clever as the film gets) is caught by her entire extended family and clergy en flagrante with a giant mechanized dildo, the second thing one notices about Not Another Teen Movie is that it has no sense of timing, no sense of shame, and no reason for being.

Sexual Predator (2001) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image C- Sound C+
starring Angie Everhart, Richard Grieco, Kevin Fry, Elizabeth Barondes
screenplay by Ed Silverstein
directed by Robert Angelo

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Lacking the camp quality of Zandalee and the sleazy titillation of Wild Orchid, Robert Angelo’s neo-Zalman King/soft-porn/direct-to-video abomination Sexual Predator (a.k.a. Last Cry) is full of Richard Grieco moments like the one where he fondles straight razors, huskily droning, “This, this is my favourite,” as well as Angie Everhart showcasing her newfound, Mamie Van Doren-esque compulsion to get naked. It is a purported psychosexual thriller that establishes Grieco as the new Mickey Rourke and Everhart as the new Shannon Tweed while simultaneously verifying that both actors have given up.

Dragstrip Girl (1994) – DVD

Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Romance, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image D Sound D
starring Raymond Cruz, Mark Dacascos, Natasha Gregson Wagner, Traci Lords
screenplay by Jerome Gary
directed by Mary Lambert

by Walter Chaw Unspeakably horrendous, Showtime’s excruciating Dragstrip Girl finds its way to home video eight years after its initial airing. There is nothing to recommend this film save perhaps a quarter of a Traci Lords breast glimpsed briefly from behind. It’s appalling in every conceivable measure of quality, from acting to screenplay to direction to editing; the only thing that kept me going is the ghoulish realization that the lovely Natasha Gregson Wagner (who is an exquisitely bad actress) now has a period drag-racing movie just like her mom Natalie Wood. (They even share the same costume in a particularly tasteless homage.) I can only think that Dragstrip Girl is getting a video release now because the surprise success of star Mark Dacascos’s Brotherhood of the Wolf might sucker a few people into renting the benighted thing. That avaricious, spur-of-the-moment thinking explains why the film’s DVD transfer is so awful, but it doesn’t explain why Dragstrip Girl itself is, too.

John Q. (2002)

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Denzel Washington, Robert Duvall, Kimberly Elise, Eddie Griffin
screenplay by James Kearns
directed by Nick Cassavetes

by Walter Chaw John Q’s (Denzel Washington) chosen nom de guerre is a tripartite signifier meant to evoke Kafka, Black Muslims, and the everyman (“John Q. Public”). It’s the kind of import-laden affectation that almost always indicates a screenwriter in over his head. It is, in other words, only the first hint that John Q. is going to be the kind of populist bullshit to which Oprah Winfrey will inevitably devote an hour of her terrifying television show. According to the film, though, anyone even approaching the big O’s income bracket is part of The Problem.

Crossroads (2002)

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Music, Romance, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Britney Spears, Zoe Saldana, Anson Mount, Taryn Manning
screenplay by Shonda Rhimes
directed by Tamra Davis

Crossroadsby Walter Chaw Crossroads is appalling and noxious. Consider how it maturely teaches that a young girl’s choice to lose her virginity should be one based on careful consideration, and then has its heroine bed a tattooed ex-con she met five days previous; this is Smooth Talk without recognition of consequences. It stars Lolita mega-tart Britney Spears in her first movie, and the first scene we share with her is in her bedroom as she jumps up and down on the mattress in teeny underwear, quickly followed by a shot of Ms. Spears in tiny pink Victoria’s Secret attire hopping into bed with her dorky lab partner before reconsidering the big leap. We also get shots of Spears in a sleazy Louisiana nightclub, where she finally erases any line left between her act and a strip show, and after that a few weird angles of her posing on the hoods of cars and in motel rooms while clad in towels and bikinis. The only thing separating Crossroads from a Showtime soft porn (it has all the excrescent acting, bad soundtrack, and vaguely suggestive dialogue) is the lack of any actual nudity. Like its star, the film is just a highly inappropriate tease.

The Object of My Affection (1998) – DVD

Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound B
starring Jennifer Aniston, Paul Rudd, Alan Alda, Nigel Hawthorne
screenplay by Wendy Wasserstein, based on the novel by Stephen McCauley
directed by Nicholas Hytner

by Walter Chaw A fascinatingly unpleasant precursor to NBC’s “Will & Grace”, The Object of My Affection details the predominantly platonic friendship between a romantically tortured straight woman, Nina (Jennifer Aniston), and a prototypically sensitive gay man, George (Paul Rudd). The unbearably treacly score by long-time offender George Fenton immediately announces by its very presence (and Fenton’s very participation) that The Object of My Affection is going to be atrocious, and true to form, it’s really atrocious. Yet to say that it’s as predictable as it is sickening in its laziness (there’s a VH1 music video montage in which our odd couple attends a dance class) would be to downplay the actual visceral “wrongness” of the piece, something that has nothing to do with the subject matter.

Collateral Damage (2002)

Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Mexico, Schwarzenegger, Theatrical, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elias Koteas, Francesca Neri, Cliff Curtis
screenplay by David Griffiths & Peter Griffiths
directed by Andrew Davis

by Walter Chaw There is an inexplicable instinct in Hollywood to cast Arnold Schwarzenegger as an everyman when the Austrian Oak has only ever played a pre-Christian barbarian and post-apocalyptic robot convincingly. Perhaps sensing something awry in Arnold playing a mild-mannered Irish fireman named Gordon Brewer, the creators of Collateral Damage have made an effort to portray Schwarzenegger’s character as a comic book superhero–maybe one named “Fire Man.” Brewer irrationally favours the tools of his life-saving trade (a pair of axes and a serendipitously placed sliding pole) over the far more plentiful (and practical) guns, while a cleverly donned white Panama Hat (making Arnie look a little like Leon Redbone crossed with a bratwurst) somehow successfully disguises the 6’2″ goliath from seeking eyes. A pulp caped-crusader comic would at least have the decency to be lurid and exciting, though–all Collateral Damage manages to be is shatteringly dull.

Deep Water (2000) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Thriller, ZERO STARS

Intrepid
ZERO STARS/**** Image C- Sound C-
starring James Coburn, Costas Mandylor, Finola Hughes, Alex Hyde-White
screenplay by J. Everitt Morley and Keoni Waxman
directed by John Putch

by Walter Chaw A freakish hunk of mismatched celluloid offal that hews together the already ripe (and continuously ripening) corpses of The Poseidon Adventure and Speed II, schlock-meister John Putch’s Deep Water (formerly Intrepid) is so wilfully bad that calling it such would be a self-defeating waste of time. It’s also an appalling waste of time to note that Deep Water rips off The Impostors and Deep Blue Sea, too, while doing next to nothing to justify tonal and thematic shifts that occur with the frequency and severity of Dick Cheney’s heart attacks. The way to approach a criticism of Deep Water is to relate something of my personal experience.

Summer Catch (2001) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance, Sports, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A- Sound B Extras C
starring Freddie Prinze Jr., Courtney Driver, Jessica Biel, Matthew Lillard
screenplay by Kevin Falls and John Gatins
directed by Michael Tollin

by Walter Chaw Summer Catch bulges the already-overcrowded shelves reserved for appalling Freddie Prinze Jr. vehicles that no one saw in theatres and, predictably, no one is renting given a second chance. Determining which of Prinze’s performances and films is the worst is an exercise both diverting and daunting; to that end, I’d have to say that Summer Catch falls squarely in the middle: it’s physically impossible to sit through the whole thing without a lengthy break or some sort of medium-bore narcotic, thus making it inferior to the stolid water-torture of I Know What You Did Last Summer (that film’s relative enjoyability no doubt owing a great deal to Jennifer Love Hewitt’s oft-invoked bustline). Still, it has going for it that it doesn’t cause your eyes and ears to bleed with the consistency and volume of Down to You or Wing Commander.

Backyard Dogs (2000) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Sports, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound C
starring Scott Hamm, Bree Turner, Walter Emanuel Jones, Roger Fan
written and directed by Robert Boris

by Walter Chaw A painfully amateurish reworking of Play It to the Bone set against the turgid, redneck world of backyard wrestling, Robert Boris’s Backyard Dogs is the kind of head-scratcher that makes filmmakers of folks who never realized that making a movie was this easy. See, using the template provided, all you need is a digital camera, a bimbo who doesn’t mind flashing the groceries a couple of times, and a rent-a-script that shows how an already terrible mainstream film might actually be made worse with a little effort. Backyard Dogs is so hideous that with only a little imagination it begins to function as something of a satire of both Kickboxer-type death sports movies and gay pornography. You know you’re in trouble when the highlight of your film is an opening montage comprising real footage of idiots trying to kill one another in their backyards; you know you’re in bigger trouble when the title of your movie comes from an early moment in which a character steps on a pile of dog excrement.

Children of the Living Dead (2001) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Thriller, ZERO STARS, Zombie

ZERO STARS/**** Image D Sound C-
starring Tom Savini, Martin Schiff, Damien Luvara, Jamie McCoy
screenplay by Karen Lee Wolf
directed by Tor A. Ramsey

by Walter Chaw With the appearance of having been shot over a long weekend in someone’s backyard, Children of the Living Dead is a cynical attempt to cash in on George Romero’s zombie trilogy (and The Blair Witch Project) so stale and amateurish that it qualifies as a barely-releasable embarrassment to everyone involved, including gore-legend Tom Savini, who seems to have hit rock bottom in his extended cameo. The film starts just outside of the old house from Romero’s seminal Night of the Living Dead, with rednecks potting zombies in a field–a scene already familiar to fans of Dawn of the Dead, but robbed of all pathos and dread–and continues on through a series of disconnected vignettes that neglect genre imperatives like gore, nudity, and fear plus narrative film prerequisites like story, acting, directing, and script. Children of the Living Dead doesn’t even offer any puerile thrills.

Along for the Ride (2001) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Germany, Romance, ZERO STARS

Forever Lulu
ZERO STARS/**** Image B- Sound B
starring Melanie Griffith, Patrick Swayze, Penelope Ann Miller, Joseph Gordon-Leavitt
written and directed by John Kaye

by Walter Chaw For as bad an actress as Melanie Griffith is (Night Moves and Another Day in Paradise notwithstanding), it’s not entirely her fault that John Kaye’s Forever Lulu (inexplicably renamed Along for the Ride for its DVD release) is unspeakably awful. True, her Betsy-Wetsy kewpie doll elocution and its attendant dead eyes–which wore out their welcome almost the second she trotted them out for an incredulous audience about twenty-six years ago–are in full-bore here, but what makes Along for the Ride, in which she plays the title role, so abominable are such exchanges as this one:

LULU
Did you know that sometimes I ask my pillow late at night, “How much sadness do I have to feel?” And did you know that love is the greatest painkiller and that Marilyn Monroe wore a mask of tragedy over her pubic hair?

CLAIRE
You’re right, I should go talk to Ben.

Glitter (2001)

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Music, Romance, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Mariah Carey, Max Beesley, Eric Benet, Vondie Curtis Hall
screenplay by Kate Lanier and John Wilder
directed by Vondie Curtis Hall

Glitterby Walter Chaw About halfway through Glitter’s bloated running time (105 minutes of unique hell), a foreign video director sagely complains: “The glitter can’t overpower the artist!” The two problems with Glitter are that the glitter does overpower the artist, and that the glitter itself is preposterous, dreary, and dull. Billie (Mariah Carey) is enlisted as the backup singer for an entirely talentless woman, and her voice is hijacked in a Singin’ in the Rain intrigue, natch. But even as I was resigning myself to a customary “VH1 Movies That Rock” piece of dreck about the girl singing behind the curtain getting rewarded for her saintliness on the opening night of a national tour, Dice the DJ (Max Beesley) swoops in and makes Glitter an interracial version of screenwriter Kate Lanier’s own What’s Love Got To Do With It?. Only Glitter‘s Ike is a pretty nice guy, despite his jealousy/management problems, and this Tina is as expressive as a person on a horse’s ration of Thorazine. When Billie told Dice, after some very chaste lovemaking, that she has trouble trusting people, I whispered to the screen, “Honey, you probably shouldn’t start at a guy named ‘Dice’ who sports a large gold pendant that says ‘DICE.'”

Link (1986) – DVD

Posted in1980s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Thriller, UK, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image C+ Sound D+
starring Elisabeth Shue, Terence Stamp, Steven Pinner, Richard Garnett
screenplay by Everett De Roche
directed by Richard Franklin

by Walter Chaw A movie about a murderous orangutan and its bimbo prey being thrust together in a series of increasingly moronic scenarios, Richard Franklin’s excruciating Link is defined by a shot of a computer monitor testing the ability of chimpanzees–and Elisabeth Shue–to identify coloured shapes. (Shue wins, but barely.) The monitor reads: “IQ 43.” I’m afraid that of the three (Franklin, Shue, and the monkey), the only one to whom this number is not being generous is the chimp.

Sweet November (2001) – DVD

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Romance, ZERO STARS

Sweetnovember

ZERO STARS/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras D
starring Keanu Reeves, Charlize Theron, Jason Isaacs, Greg Germann
screenplay by Kurt Voelker, based on the 1968 screenplay by Herman Raucher
directed by Pat O’Connor

by Walter Chaw After Sara Deever (Charlize Theron) and the horribly named Nelson Moss (Keanu Reeves) meet-cute during a test at the DMV, Nelson offers to pay all of Sara’s expenses for a month to compensate for his part in her failure to have her license renewed. Indignant, Sara wonders aloud if Nelson treats all women like hookers. Hippie chick Sara, by the way, has no visible means of support, lives in a giant apartment in San Francisco, and bangs a different rich man for a month every month in some kind of Bull Durham sexual scholarship lottery arrangement. I can only assume that Sara’s specious offense at Norman’s innocuous “implication” is that she’s amazed that it shows.

Love Potion #9 (1992) – DVD

Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Romance, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image D+ Sound C-
starring Tate Donovan, Sandra Bullock, Mary Mara, Dale Midkiff
written and directed by Dale Launer

by Walter Chaw Love Potion #9 is an indescribably bad film that elicits so many feelings of true hatred it should be classified as a post-expressionist nihilist experiment rather than a romantic comedy. It is a gimmick flick based on a novelty song that manages to be worse than the stillbirth of an idea that spawned it. I can only surmise that it's being resurrected now on the DVD format because of the inexplicable fame of Sandra Bullock–a realization that makes me not only want to sleep with the lights on, but also begin to dread the inevitable digital remastering of Religion, Inc..

The Replacements (2000)

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Sports, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Keanu Reeves, Gene Hackman, Brooke Langton, Jack Warden
screenplay by Vincent McKewin
directed by Howard Deutch

by Bill Chambers Did the makers of The Replacements realize that Major League had already been reinvented as a football movie, under the title Necessary Roughness? (So indiscreetly, in fact, that the former’s sunglasses-wearing baseball logo was transmogrified into a sunglasses-wearing football one.) Given how many other motion pictures The Replacements–which, for what it’s worth, appears to have been edited with a blender–openly (and badly) plagiarizes, I’m sure the answer is “yes.” “But,” they’d very possibly tell you, “our movie has Keanu Reeves and Gene Hackman. Theirs had Sinbad and Kathy Ireland.”