Reid About It

I love it when things go wrong. It's just my nature. I especially love to see pre-packaged entertainment go horribly awry. When we spend months talking about how good Lisa Marie Presley's album is going to be, or what a great TV show Heather Graham is going to have, and then those things come and go in a flash, I get a little warm feeling inside me. It's not because I have anything against those artists, I just love to know that marketing is still fallible, and we can see through it to judge things on their own merit.

Movies, especially heavily advertised summer blockbuster types, are a special favorite of mine. When something is hyped up so impossibly large that it can't help but come apart under its own weight, I enjoy trying to pinpoint the moment of collapse. Let's face it, nobody is going to go see "Little Man" or "Seed of Chucky" with any hopes of it changing their lives. It's when movies are made out to be more than they really are that I find it funny.

Here, in no certain order, are some of the most disappointing cinematic experiences I've ever had. Feel free to add to the list.

Matrix 2 + 3 - After The Matrix, I was blown away. I was intrigued, and confused enough that I wanted to know more. Well, after 5 more hours of Matrix, including 52 kung fu fights and 11 million bullets, I'm even dumber than I was before.

Star Wars, any of the new ones - What can I say, I'm not 7 anymore. I see through empty, effects-laden sequences where the actors aren't allowed to be interesting. How much drama can there be in a spaceship crash where you already know all five characters on board are in the next movie?

And for me, the most interesting part of the first series of movies wasn't the whole Jedi Knight cult, or the universal Force, or the farmboy Messiah. It was Han, the lifelong mercenary who finally found something worthy fighting for. In the new three movies, there were no characters who lived outside the lines of good and evil. Nobody ever behaved any differently than they were supposed to.

The good were good, and the evil were evil. Nobody changed sides except the guy you knew was going to. And that made the last movie was just three hours of sitting there, watching the greatest warriors in the galaxy getting killed in a two-minute montage and waiting for Anakin to put on the Darth Vader mask.

Beverly Hills Cop 3 - Okay, I didn't expect that much, but I did figure I'd see a few laughs along the way. Unfortunately, Eddie Murphy had Danza-like script approval, so anything Axel Foley wanted to do, he could do. He reprogrammed computers and fixed security systems, and walked the wires on a ferris wheel to rescue stranded, sick, starving orphans.

At this point, I should admit that it does seem like I don't care for sequels. Yeah, it sure seems that way, doesn't it? As a rule of thumb, the chances of a sequel being worth watching are in inverse proportion to the amount of time between the original and the second chapter. Two movies in three years? Might not suck. Eight years between "Caddyshacks"? Intense suckage ahead.

The Hulk - Special effects are a tricky thing. If they're done too well, they may overpower the movie, as in the Star Wars movies above. If they're done too poorly, they may distract at important parts of the plot.

And if they're done so terribly, horribly, awfully unrealistic that never for one single fleeting moment do you believe that the title character of your movie is real, then they're not really worth much.

The only good thing about how bad the effects were is that it distracted you from noticing how awful the plot was, too.

The Blair Witch Project - AHHHH! OH MY GOD! IT'S STICKS! ANGRY ANGRY STICKS! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! RUN!

Seriously, what the Hell was that? I heard about this movie for weeks, and walked away thinking I saw somebody's sophomore year film school project.

Van Helsing - Again, I didn't expect much. Just a coherent plot and better effects. As a reminder to a long-standing Hollywood tradition, if you have a movie with Frankenstein, the Wolfman, and Dracula in it, it had better star Abbott and Costello.

Napoleon Dynamite - Might have been better had I not heard lines from the movie for months before I finally got around to seeing it. This was a story where every single character was slow, right?

Eyes Wide Shut - This movie was, at least, a big breakthrough in the lucrative world of non-erotic porn.

Twister - Hard to take a movie seriously that has tornadoes that thirst for revenge.

The Bridges Of Madison County - Okay, this one wasn't really marketed at me, I understand. But this movie was taken from the top book in the country, that was number one on the New York Times Best Seller List for three years. It inspired a fanatical loyalty from Robert James Waller's fans.

Then, Hollywood makes a movie where they go out of their way to make the romance real. Meryl Streep gains weight and frumps up, and Clint Eastwood mumbles his lines to the best of his ability, making his declarations of poetic love sound like the grumblings of Philo Beddoe.

It was the kind of everyman romance that made Waller's book resonate with its readers. And it was real. And it wasn't attractive. And it spoiled the magic that existed in the imagination of the book's fans. And it made less money than "Waterworld." Oh, and it ruined the allure of the book, and the style. Waller's later writings weren't even close in sales or acclaim, and now, you can buy "Bridges" on Amazon for a penny.

Constantine - Perhaps I should just expand this list to include most comic book movies, and "Anything Keanu Reeves is in". They took a great character, a Machiavellian anti-hero who plays both sides to balance out the middle, and turned him into...well, Keanu. And speaking of comic book movies...

Watchmen - I know this one isn't even out yet, or written, or cast, or anything. But judging from what I've read, taking the most ground-breaking piece of comic work in the last 40 years and handing the project off to the guy whose only credit is directing the "Dawn Of The Dead" remake isn't a good start.