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Sunday, May 11, 2008

No, Speed Racer, No!


There is nothing like a movie bombing when a studio has dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into its production. There is something about failure that it highly entertaining to me. Calling a movie a piece of crap, and seeing it as an utter catasrophe is often better than it being a success like Iron Man. Whether its Waterworld, Gigli, Howard the Duck, Battlefield Earth, Catwomen, or Electra, when Hollywood makes a turkey I laugh. Well, the latest disaster that will cause heads to roll on Monday, is Speedracer. The movie cost over 100 million to make and is projected to gross just over 20 million. The first 8 minutes was released to get people interested and apparently it came across worse than David The Gnome at a prison movie day showing. The movie looked like a cartoon made with crayons aimed at five year olds. Some reviews were actually good though, others accused Chim-Chim of writing the script. Box Office Mojo gave it a B-, and Movie Crypt.com said the Wachowski brothers delivered a movie that should be number one at the box office. From what I understand the movie is not really as bad as the 20 million makes it seem. It is very stylized and quite entertaining. I would have much rathered this movie to be terrible. It is way better when a movie flops AND critics have a verbal field day describing how bad the movie is. Have no fear, there are bad reviews for this movie. Here are some of my favorite:

"An extravagant, pathetic pageant"; "All in all, I'm pretty sure Hunter S. Thompson had hallucinations better than this."; "The brutal sensory overload is coupled with a plot that starves the brain, a recycling of the silliness of the TV show unleavened by any saving hint of postmodern irony." ; "Imagine if the pod race in Star Wars Episode I was as bad as everyone said it was, and took itself twice as seriously, and went on for more than two hours."; "The race for worst movie of 2008 starts here. Go Speed Racer GO!"

Now this movie may not be as bad as people are making it out to be, but we can only hope that it is. There is no worry though, I understand that the new Indiana Jones movie will make Speedracer look like Citizen Kane. Aint it Cool News has said this is "the Indiana Jones movie you were dreading." I think critics are already writing down caustic one liners in anticipation for this calamity.

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