Plot: Alan Smithee (Eric Idle) has just finished an epic Hollywood blockbuster, but after the studio start to interfere and start making major changes to the picture, Smithee steals his movie and goes on the run. The movie we are watching was supposed to be Smithee's film, but is now a documentary about the film, as the film is now stolen. This is not the greatest film in the world, no, this is the tribute!
The documentary follows the studios attempts to recover the movie from Smithee.
Verdict: When the cast list includes Ryan O'Neal, Coolio, Chuck D, Eric Idle, Jackie Chan, Whoopi Goldberg and Sylvester Stallone, you expect a decent movie. Indeed after watching the first 10 minutes, that expectation grows. The 'A' listers ham up their roles fantastically, especially when one of them is clearly not known for their action hero roles (Chan). Goldberg as a cigar chomping, foul mouthed diva is funny and Stallone's willingness to mock himself lend to some laugh out loud moments.
The problem starts after 10 minutes, once Smithee does a runner with his movie. For no reason the movie slows down and moves along as fast as Bernard Manning to the salad bar. Which is run by a Pakistani gentleman. It does not get going and the story is retold and retold over and over by the characters.
I actually zoned out for a good 20 minutes during the movie and I did not miss a single thing. The situation was as it was. It's a bit like, if you miss Hollyoaks for a month it's really easy to get back into as there is no story whatsoever and what little there was, goes nowhere fast. The style of the film is also rather annoying and at times it seems very confused. Basically it's a documentary and the characters speak to the camera with another minute piece of the plot. However, we start off by being told that this IS the story, i.e, it's already happened, that there is a conclusion and this is the story of how we got there. But then it seems to change its mind and now it's a case of, this is the story, it's still happening, join us as we try to resolve this, (no thanks!).
The other problem is that the movie chops and changes between the characters dialogues constantly. It makes the film feel disjointed, muddled and confused. In fact I think the timeline is a bit skew whiff, as the characters talk about a development that just occurred but they are still in the same room, clothes and time of day that they were in before the event had happened. So not only are they talking bollocks but about bollocks they wouldn't even know yet!
They chuck in a little 'comedy' from time to time but to be honest I think it's just to see if we're still awake, (I wasn't). When one piece of dialogue zooms out and we realise the character is having a blowey, I didn't 'LOL', I was just thinking 'at least someone is getting some enjoyment from this movie'.
I will confess, I already have a problem with Eric Idle in that he constantly shuns Monty Python as he feels it's beneath him and he's so much better than that. Well if this is the type of movie he goes for instead, then he must be living in cloud cuckoo land. There was a mocumentary by the BBC recently, 'Holy Flying Circus', in which Eric Idle, (played by Steve Punt), refuses to do anything unless he gets paid a lot of money. All I can say is I can now see how spot on this impression was.
As for the other actors, as I say, Chan, Stallone and Goldberg play their parts well, but the rest of the cast just add filler to what basically is a 22 minute one off TV comedy, stretched over an hour and a half.
Summary: In F1 they have an expression for when their tyres very quickly turn from high quality and grippy to disintegrating useless crap. They call it 'falling off the cliff' and that is exactly what this movie does, but with a Tom Daley double pike with twist for good measure.
Scores:
Boredom 10/10
Falling off cliff 10/10
Overall score 2/10. If it was based on the last 90 minutes it would be a big fat zero!
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