#83 Catwoman (2004) (Colin)

After the wonderful movie that is 'The Room', I approached the next film, 'Catwoman', with a sense of cautious optimism.  After all, the movies on this list can't be all that bad, can they?  By the end of the film I had been brought down to earth with such a thump, that from now on every time I fart, I blow my hat off.  So with a groan, a heavy heart and the sense of things going 'back to normal', we turn to the next film on our list:

#83 Catwoman (2004)

Dripping

Catwoman is loosely based on the DC comics character from the Batman series.  This time Catwoman is Patience Phillips, (played by Halle Berry), a graphic designer who works for a beauty cosmetics company called Hedare Beauty.  Head of Hedare Beauty, George Hedare, (Lambert Wilson) and his wife Laurel Hedare, (Sharon Stone) are about to launch a new beauty cream called Beau Line.  Beau Line has some nasty side effects such as extreme aging and disfigurement, which Patience discovers after overhearing Laurel and Dr. Ivan Slavicky, (Peter Wingfield) discussing it.  Patience is found by Laurel's guards and after a short chase is literally flushed out of a water pipe and falls to her death into the sea below.

Patience is brought back to life by a Mau cat called Midnight, whom Patience had earlier rescued from her building.  This gives her cat like powers such as speed, agility and coughing up fur balls. The movie is then a story of Patience as Catwoman, who embarks on a revenge mission over Hedare Beauty.  She kicks the guard's ass who had flushed her out of the water pipe, (yeah!), she kicks the ass of a neighbour who had kept Patience awake all night with their late parties, (erm, yeah!) and she successfully kicks Laurel's ass and stops the launch of Beau Line, (zzzzz, wassat, oh, yeah!).

It concludes with a monologue from Patience about how this is only the start for Catwoman and there is more to follow.  This, I guess, was to leave the film open for a sequel.  Thankfully, as far as I'm aware, this is it and no follow up will ever be made!  You see, one installment of this dire movie was more than enough....

The cast, whilst not dripping with A Listers, does consist of Halle Berry and Sharon Stone.  These two alone should command a decent movie, but both actors appear wooden and stagnant.  Stone especially seems to have caught a touch of the Madonna, not only in looks for the movie, but in delivering half hearted unemotional lines which appear to be read, (badly), from an autocue.  She is not helped by on screen husband, Lambert Wilson who as head of this nasty corporation should come across as a heartless bastard, but actually comes across as an Englishman who tsks quietly in a queue when someone pushes in front off him.

I do not really get Wilson and Stone's characters.  Firstly, George is supposed to be the 'baddie curve ball' in that we are supposed to think throughout the whole movie that he is the evil person pedaling this dangerous chemical, where in actual fact it is Laurel.  I only come to this conclusion because Catwoman seems genuinely surprised when the 'reveal' occurs towards the end.  I for one had gone throughout the entire movie thinking it was Laurel and not really giving George's character much thought.  I am not clever, nor did I guess this brilliantly, it was just done lazily by the director, as if he half wanted to do it, but wasn't sure.

Then there is the chemistry between George and Laurel.  It should be one of sparks, greed and anger as George's constant affairs with younger women should rile Laurel and Laurel's secret plan to oust her husband and to take control should make for one explosive on screen presence.  But it's not, it's really tame.  Stone just acts like a huffy spoilt girl whilst Wilson just plays the stereotypical English bad guy from Hollywood movies, (By jingo, I'm jolly cross and will use my superior use of the English language to bamboozle you).

Wet

Patience's love interest cop, Tom Lone, (Benjamin Bratt), is also rather unremarkable as a supporting actor.  On discovering Patience was Catwoman, it really should have torn his world apart as the woman he 'loved' was the same woman who had allegedly killed George Hadare, (yep we all get put out of our misery).  But it's an irrelevance to him, a slight bump in the road.  Bratt was actually considered to play alongside Sharon Stone in the 'how on earth did this not make our list' Basic Instinct 2.  Stone, however, thought he was not a good enough actor for the movie and blocked this from happening.  In a movie which considered ex-footballer Stan Collymore as an actor, this is a pretty bad insult and speaks volumes.

But what about the 'cat in the room', Halle Berry?  In a movie full of non performances, Berry is there with them.  However, unlike her co-stars, I do not think this is her doing.  I am going to give the benefit of the doubt to her as I firmly believe she never stood a chance.

In the recent Dark Knight franchise, the Batman movies directed by Tim Burton, seem to have been forgotten.  This I think is a mistake as they were brilliant and in many ways I prefer these to the new movies, which, I feel, drag along at times.  The best of the Burton films, for me, was Batman Returns, (1992).

Danny Devito's Penguin in Batman Returns was, I think, the best baddie of all the franchises.  The right mixture of pathos, comedy and tragedy, Devito gave an outstanding performance of a confused character with whom the audience, strangely, could connect with.  Then off course there was Michelle Pfeiffer and her portrayal of Catwoman.

Pfeiffer totally nailed the part.  Yes she was sexy in black, but more than that, she had that right mixture of good and evil which Catwoman should have.  As Selina Kyle, she was the meek, downtrodden secretary, as Catwoman, she was the strong, powerful woman intent on getting her own way.  Then there was relationship with Batman both as Selina and Bruce Wayne and as Batman and Catwoman.  Two very different relationships, two very different dynamics and two very good performances from Micheal Keaton and Pfeiffer.

I briefly mentioned when Lone discovers that Patience is in actual fact Catwoman, that it is a non event and really it is.  In fact it's quite cold and emotionless as he discovers her true identity by taking a DNA sample from Patience and comparing it to a DNA sample from Catwoman.  In Batman Returns, the reveal was superb and the lines 'Mistletoe can be deadly if you eat it.  But a kiss can be even deadlier if you mean it' is a standout line from this movie.  I don't think, 'it's a match', quite has the same feel or effect.

Pussy

To compare Batman Returns with Catwoman is unfair and a bit like comparing Citizen Kane to Jersey Shore Shark Attack, but it is relevant due to the use of the Catwoman character.  What made Batman Returns so good was Batman's relationship with Catwoman.  He admires her 'will do what she likes' attitude, understands how she feels after being betrayed but at the same time can not stand by and watch her do all this because he still firmly has his beliefs of what is right and wrong.  It works because there was a lot going on between them. When you then take one character out of this and make a movie based solely on her, it was always going to be a more shallow, two-dimensional and unfulfilling experience.

Catwoman is just not a strong enough character to hold her own movie.  And her alter-ego Patience, is not a strong enough character for the audience to care for.  In fact, before Patience becomes Catwoman, we don't really get to learn a lot about her character apart from the fact she is a graphic designer, unlucky in love and does not like her job.  Well whoopty fucking doo, so what?  Who cares?  She is not particularly engaging and her death at only 20 minutes into the movie is one of mild consequence.  In fact her death comes far too early in the movie and we have not had time to 'like' the character.  It feels like you've just been told that the bloke who lives at no. 29, who you've only seen at a distance once in your life, has an ingrown toenail.

This non-empathy carries on when she takes on her boss, roughs up the neighbours who hold the late night parties and gets revenge on her killer.  You just don't care.  Nor do we care too much about where she lives as for some strange reason, the movie makers decided to take her out of Gotham City and place her in Salt Lake City.  This probably explains why there is no atmosphere throughout the whole movie as gone is the dark, Gothic, comic book scenes and it's all been replaced with, well normal.  Warner Bros should have given the movie the tagline: 'A normal woman in a normal city has a rather unremarkable adventure'.  Hmm, that would have got my juices flowing.

With a poor script, setting and a weak character to begin with, Catwoman truly is an unremarkable and dull movie.  It is a poor man's The Crow which we do not need as The Crow 2 did that already.  As a cat owner, I must confess that I would rather watch my own cats having a shit than watch this movie ever again.  This has the added benefit that the fetid, putrid stench that they produce from their bottoms will still be fresher than the stink that surrounds this movie!  Catwoman needs to be buried deep within the proverbial litter tray and should never see the light of day again.

But I'll leave the final word on this movie to the star herself, Halle Berry.  In 2005, Berry won a Golden Razzie for 'Worst Actress Of The Year' for her role as Catwoman and famously turned up in person to accept it.  Her speech was a parody of her 2002 Oscar speech and she even brought the Oscar onto stage with her when accepting the award.  It really is brilliant and fair play to Berry for turning up and being a good sport.  I've linked it below if you would like to hear the whole speech, (and it is funny), but to me, Catwoman is summed up within the following 2 extracts from her acceptance speech:

"First of all, I want to thank Warner Brothers. Thank you for putting me in a piece of shit, god-awful movie... It was just what my career needed"

and

"I'd like to thank the co-stars, because for me to make a really bad performance, I also need really bad actors working with me..."

Exactly!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-7s_yeQuDg

#84 The Room (2003) (Colin)

Oh hai! When I came up with our bad movie list, one thing I hoped to find were movies so mind-numbingly, pant wettingly, goddamn awful, that they become genius, brilliant and unmissable.  I've liked some movies on this list so far, such as Bio-dome / Glen or Glenda.  Some I have genuinely enjoyed, such as Street Fighter or Ecks vs Sever.  However 16 films in and Plan 9 is the only movie for me, that has really managed to fit this category.  And then came movie 17.........

#84 The Room

The Room is written by, directed by and stars Tommy Wiseau.  He probably did the catering as well, but one thing is certain, it is most definitely his baby.  He is totally responsible for this movie and so takes all the blame or credit.  And that is the problem with this movie, I can not decide if the man was a total genius or a complete idiot!

The Room is a story about a banker, (cockney rhyming slang), called Johnny, (played by Wiseau) and his relationship with 'soon to be wife' Lisa, (Juliette Danielle).  Lisa has fallen out of love with Johnny and starts an affair with his best friend, Mark, (Greg Sestero).  The film focuses on Johnny and Mark's relationship, which is very close, almost brotherly, (they share everything, CDs, Video Games, Moo-moos) Mark's relationship with Lisa and his ultimate betrayal towards Johnny.  At the end of the movie Johnny discovers the affair and is thrown into despair and a downward spiral which culminates in a 'dramatic' ending, (which I won't spoil for once as I would quite like you, dear reader, to watch it).

So, where do we begin?  It really is difficult to dissect this film, but by Jiminy I'll give it a go.  Let's start with Sex, (I mean talking about it in the movie, that was not a proposition).

During the first 30 mins, Lisa is not shagging someone for around 30 seconds.  First she bangs Johnny in a prolonged and physically impossible act of passion.  Impossible in that Lisa's vagina appears to be in the middle of her torso, either that or Wiseau is a very blessed fella indeed!  This is quickly followed by part 2, which really is just the first 'love' scene but re-edited, (seriously it is, if you want it closely and for the benefit of this blog I've watched it very closely, you will notice that they have mixed in scenes from the first shagfest).  Then, with barely time to read the script, (luckily for her there wasn't much anyway), she's off again with Mark.  And on again.   And off.  I think you get the picture.

Now I'm all for a bit of ahem during a movie or TV show, (I suspect Game of Thrones would not be quite as popular otherwise), but these sex scenes are just so blooming unsexy.  Forgiving Lisa's wandering axe wound for a second, each boinking scene has a soft rock track over the top of it.  It's a bit like banging away whilst Magic FM is on in the background and there is nothing to spoil the mood more than Bon Jovi whilst on the job.  The whole feel of all this slap and tickle is one of a very cheap soft porn film shown on Channel 5 late at night.  Even the most horny young bloke, whose pant elastic would ping off when sitting on a warm bus seat, would find it hard to get a lob on.  After watching this, making love to the missus would be a bit like playing snooker with a rope.

Whilst we are on Lisa, (and many men probably were), unfortunately her lack of clothes matches her lack of acting skills.  She is so incredibly wooden and the fact that this stands out in a movie which basically contains 2x4s, is some feat.  She delivers lines as if she is reading them straight of a fag packet, (for our American reader's fag means cigarettes in the UK.  You may have an image I did not intend at this point).  This is well illustrated with her conversations with her mother.

It's fair to say Lisa's relationship with her mother, Claudette, (Carolyn Minnott), is about as far apart as her legs.  This is off course hard to tell with her full range of emotions on show, but is best supported by the line:

Lisa mum: 'I got the results of the test back. I definitely have breast cancer'

Lisa's response?  Wooden and muttering something about modern medicine.  She hardly flinches, certainly doesn't break down in tears and doesn't even looked shocked.  Claudette might as well have mentioned that The Range has a 2 for 1 offer on cushions!  However, I'm being a bit harsh, maybe she was right to brush this off, after all, with over an hour of the movie left, Claudette's breast cancer is never mentioned again.  We end up in a sub 'plot' dead end, with no resolution.

This happens again with an argument between 2 characters Denny, (Philip Haldiman) and Chris-R, (Dan Janjigian).  Denny is the youngest out of Johnny's group of friends and is still at college.  On the rooftop of the apartment block where Johnny lives, a scene develops where he is being held at gunpoint by Chris-R demanding that Denny pays back the money for the drugs.  This is quite an intense scene broken by the arrival of Johnny and Mark who of manage to wrestle with Chris-R and take him away.  So why was Denny borrowing money from Chris-R?  What happened to Chris-R?  Did he exact revenge?  Was Denny actually on drugs himself?  Well, I would not know because this story is also never revisited or concluded!

My favourite sub plot which never gets explained or finished is the disappearance of Mark's beard, which he proudly displays for 3/4 of the movie, but which goes walkies.  All I can think is that Mark's beard had a better agent than Mark and managed to negotiate a way out of the movie.

So why didn't Wiseau edit these scenes out?  They make no difference to the plot, play no relevance to the characters and make the movie look messy and rushed.  This is when I start to wonder if Wiseau means any of this, whether everything in the movie has a purpose.  Deliberate or accidental?  It really is a toss up (probably by Lisa).

Wiseau filmed this on SD and HD film as he did not understand the difference between both formats.  How then, we ended up with the VHS chewed up by the dog version, I have no idea.  The editing is poor, the sets are only slightly more wooden than the acting and the audio constantly goes out of sync with the actors mouths.  This is probably because of Wiseau's accent which may have led to many dubbings.  His accent is hard to place, he's American, raised in France, but sounds like he's Dutch, with a Swedish accent?!?!

Putting himself in the lead role, may have been a mistake, or a masterpiece!  He garbles his way through scenes, pronouncing words incorrectly, using pitch at the wrong parts in sentences and spending large parts of the movie sounding like a stoned Spaniard, (or German, it really is hard to tell). But without doubt it does not really matter what he says as the script is truly terrible.  But this is what probably makes the difference between crap movie and movie so crap, it becomes good. Why?  Because it is just so damn quotable!

Eagle eyed readers would have spotted that I begun this blog with, 'Oh hai!', in fact I have been driving my nearest and dearest up the wall by saying 'Oh hai!' to everyone.  This comes from Johnny who, it seems, says 'Oh hi', (distorted to Oh hai! by the accent) in every scene including one particularly hilarious scene in which Johnny is having a rant after being accused of hitting Lisa and halfway through this rant Mark walks into shot.....

(Shouting) 'I did not hit her, it's not true, it's bullshit, I did not hit her, I did not.  (Quietly) Oh hai Mark!'

The 180 degrees is fantastic, a joy to watch and makes me laugh just typing it again.  The next best 'Oh hai' after this is to a dog in a flower shop, 'Oh hai doggie'.  Priceless!

Then there is his insult to another friend, Peter and later Mark in which he calls them chicken!  This is followed by Johnny flapping his arms and shouting, 'cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep!'.  I can not do this justice by writing it down, no matter how hard I try to explain it.  It really is one of those, 'you have to see it', moments.

In fact, I could quote large quantities of the movie and I'm sure I could hear Wes sniggering, but to others it may just sound weird.  For example, 'do you want pizza?  I already ordered pizza'.  Now seriously I'm tittering at a) getting the word tit in my blog and b) the quote, but I bet 99% of you are thinking, 'what on earth is he chattering about?'.  So I ask you, please watch this movie as you may find this funny when you see the context it's used in.  In fact, the link below takes you to some quotes from the movie, read them before, watch the movie and then re-read them.  Hopefully you will then see what I am trying to say.

http://ohhaitommywiseau.tumblr.com/post/7268411501/tomtrager-over-15-quotes-from-tommy-wiseaus

If you don't find the quotes funny, well, how would you like to see grown men, in tuxedos, throwing an American Football at each other from about 6 inches apart?  No?  Do you like spotting mistakes in movies then?  You can't possible see them all, there just is not enough time, but you could for example wonder why Johnny's relationship with Lisa goes from 5 to 7 years in the space of half an hour, how a 45 minute tape cassette is going to record the entire next day's conversation and more importantly why does Johnny take the tape out of the portable tape deck player he used to tape the conversation downstairs to play it on another portable tape deck player upstairs?

In conclusion, I love this movie.  Did Wiseau mean this to be so horrendously bad it becomes good?  I do not know, I suspect not but in the end it does not matter.  What he has produced is an hilarious masterpiece showing that bad writing, bad acting and a bad script can equal success.  I think this movie appeals to the student in me.  The one who likes quoting things to others whilst the vast majority of people have no clue what I am on about.  I think this is also why this film is so popular with others.  Popular?  That's right, popular, because unknown to me before I started to watch this movie, The Room has a large cult following.

In the US fans go to midnight showings dressed as their favourite characters and quote large chunks of the movie at the silver screen.  Wiseau himself often turns up to these screenings and if you are a fan of the film, this must be a fantastic experience.  In the UK at the Prince Charles Cinema in London this is shown monthly!  It is now firmly on my must do list and if after watching the movie you are also interested in going, let me know.  We could order pizza......

#84 The Room (Wes)

Oh hai reader! It’s that time again where we have another film that I’d never heard of before we started this list. As our viewing of this movie approached and we desperately tried to get a copy of it, we discovered that it’s actually shown quite often at The Prince Charles Cinema in London, billed as “the best worst movie ever made”. There’s actually a documentary about Troll 2 with the name of Best Worst Movie, so that’s a pretty big statement to make. So does The Room live up to this claim?

Johnny (Tommy Wiseau) is a banker who lives with his finacee Lisa (Juliette Danielle). Lisa is unsatisfied with their relationship though and is secretly having an affair with Tommy’s best friend Mark (Greg Sestero). What follows is a story about Johnny’s idyllic life slowly crumbling around him as his relationship falls apart.

This movie is a master class in how not to make a movie. Tommy Wiseau is either an unequivocal genius, or the most inept man to grace Hollywood since Ed Wood. Not only does he star in this movie, but he also directed, produced and wrote it too. So really everything that’s terrible in this movie is down to him. Since this movie has gained notoriety, Wiseau has apparently claimed that it’s supposed to be a dark comedy, but it’s clear to anyone watching this, that Wiseau took this movie very seriously.

As a film about human interaction it seems to have been written by Wilson, the basketball from Castaway. The only humans that can possibly understand less about how to socially interact with other people have been living alone a cave for the past fifty years, with the possible exception of a teenager with an Xbox.

Wiseau just doesn’t seem to have a clue how people talk to each other in real life. Johnny greets everyone he see’s with a perky “oh hai”, including a dog in a flower shop. This may not seem so bad on paper, but when you consider that at one point he does this while he’s in the middle of an angry monolgue defending himself against accusations of beating Lisa, then you start to question how realistic this all is.

But this is only the beginning of the bad dialogue. Actually that’s quite a big understatement. This is without a doubt one of the worst scripted things I have ever encountered. Somebody who speaks English as a second language, and has only learnt how to do that by listening to Katie Price audiobooks couldn’t have written this script any worse. My favourite lines can be seen here and really sum up how unnatural the whole script really is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpfPmvG6CHI

In several hilarious scenes, male bonding is represented by several of the main characters playing catch with an American football as they talk. In one scene they do this whilst all wearing tuxedos in some bizarre mix of Any Given Sunday and Reservoir Dogs. I think these were probably my favourite scenes though, as they are just so utterly bizarre.

The sex scenes between Tommy and Lisa are possibly the least erotic thing you’ll experience since having to kiss your grandmothers hairy cheek at Christmas. They seem to involve Johnny humping some part of Lisa’s body that the penis was never designed to enter. The fact that they happen so often is completely inexplicable. They add nothing to the movie and I can only imagine that Tommy Wiseau is the real life incarnation of Frank Reynolds from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, wanting to put as much sex into a movie as possible.

  

The editing choices in this movie are frankly bizarre. There are scenes in this movie that have absolutely no bearing on anything else. In one scene Denny (Phillip Haldiman) is being threatened by a drug dealer over a debt, until Johnny and Mark chase off the dealer. This is never mentioned afterwards and seems to be put in to add a little drama to the movie.

In another scene in the movie, Johnny and Mark go to a coffee shop, but waits behind two people who have no other bearing in the movie, before he gets served. Has there ever been another movie where you’re forced to queue with the characters while nothing much happens? To make things worse, this queuing actually has no purpose in the story either, as they sit down before they start to talk to each other.

The acting in this movie is so bad that you won’t be surprised to learn that only two of the actors (Robyn Paris and Greg Sestero) in this movie had ever had any experience acting before (outside of bit parts in movies or minor roles in tv shows). Even then Greg Sestero’s only major role was the lead in the straight to video Retro Puppet Master, hardly a shining endorsement.

Tommy Wiseau is probably the worst out of everybody. Is this due to purposeful bad acting or is he really as out of depth as Madonna was in Swept Away? It isn't just that he can't act though, his accent seems to from a country that no other human has ever come from. He often sounds like Jean Claude Van Damme doing an Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonation, whilst speaking through a mouthful of marbles. To make things worse, due to extremely poor editing, Johnnys voice rarely syncs with his mouth and you keep getting the feeling you’re watching a badly streamed tv show online.

All of this however adds up to one of the most hypnotic disasters since The Towering Inferno. This film is bad. I mean really bad. You’ll never quite understand how bad this is until you watch it. The thing is though, I urge you to watch this. If you love bad movies, then this really is a treat to watch. I guarantee you the next day you’ll be greeting everybody with “Oh hai”, and proclaiming that chickens go cheep cheep cheep. The best worst movie? I’m not sure I can support that claim. But second best at the very least.