Mamma Mia (2008)
I like this flick overall. It’s fun, the cinematography by Haris Zambarloukos is gorgeous (he almost exclusively now shoots movies directed by Kenneth Branagh) and I do so love me some ABBA. I got to hand it to director Phyllida LLoyd – who was the director of the original London production of the musical in 1999. She knows the characters, gets decent (non-singing perfromances) from her cast and got plenty of coverage for editor Lesley Walker, who has worked with Terry Gilliam on a number of pictures including “The Fisher King,” “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and “THe Man Who Killed Don Quixote.”
Legit starts with two extraordinary shots that set the location in the Greek isles at night.
And who doesn’t love ABBA??!
Is Pierce Brosnan the most handsome man of all time? He may not be able to sing, but damn I gotta say… he’s good to look at in this movie. Word is, he had no idea what the film was about when he agreed to star! He heard it was with Streep and would be shot in Greece and is quoted as saying he’d have signed on for anything co-starring Streep, describing her as “that gorgeous blonde I fancied terribly in Drama School.”
Man that dubbing with the songs when it comes to matching location shots is… tough. But credit for location shooting. This could have been a nightmare were it all on sound stages (cough, CATS.)
The dubbing in this movie by Seyfried reminds me way too much of a Japanese film from the 1960’s. It’s… so rough.
I’ve never been attracted to Meryl Street as much as I was when watching this. She’s in her hot-mom phrase that Madonna was in around the time she released the “Ray of Light” album and my goodness, does he wild blonde hair and no-frills natural beauty mix with the intoxicating melodies by ABBA in a great way. She’s the real draw here and despite the deck being stacked so against her – mostly due to the broad comedy and the super-awkward additional dialogue recording, she roots this flick in a genuine performance that makes even the more goofy elements work. And by the time she gets to “Winner Takes it All,” I genuinely was wondering if she might have gotten an Oscar nod for this too.
But as good as Streep is, and as much fun as she is having, by God, Christine Baranski is so goddamn awesome in this. She’s made for this kind of role, the older, boozy flirt of a best friend, a role I know she did really well in the 1990’s Cybill Shepard sitcom “Cybill.” Her rendition of “Does Your Mother Know” is one of the less-cringe-inducing performances in the movie and it’s largely because Baranski looks like she’s having a total blast. She’s the missing third member of Absolutely Fabulous and is a classier, perhaps snobbier big sister to Samantha from Sex in the City.
Also, while we’re talking about the core female cast in this film, we need to make mention of the understated Dame Julie Walters who is probably best-known as Mrs. Molly Wasely in the Harry Potter movies. She takes a definite backseat to Streep and Baranski, but also rocks a Siouxie and the Banshees tee and gets centerstage during one of the best ABBA tracks, “Take a Chance on Me.”
Bottom Five Cringiest Moments
My approach to this bottom five was to avoid the top five conundrum we often run into. So instead of listing off five moments I’d never want to be stuck in the middle of from movies that deal and trade in vicarious embarrassment – like “Meet the Parents” or “Step Brothers” – I went for moments that cause unintentional cringe. And, as always, the German’s have a perfect word for what I was trying to capture: fremdschaemen. This is the opposite of the better-known schadenfreude, which means deriving pleasure from the misfortune of others. Here, you’re empathetic to what has to be a humiliating experience for the performers, feeling like you need to avert your eyes from the screen or otherwise hide from whatever is playing out!
What was even more difficult about this bottom five was not visiting either main reviews we’ve done or previous bottom fives, because so often what’s most memorable about bad movies is how much cringe they induce! I could have easily had a list that had “Cats” and “Bratz” on it, or, really, almost anyone from our Bottom Five Performances from a Superstar Actor or our Bottom Five Kids lists.
So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993)
dir. Thomas Schlamme
Somehow the director of this forgotten-about but quite funny 1990’s Mike Myers comedy went on to produce all 90 episodes of the “The West Wing,” but he and Myers take the five-spot on my list for a pair of shockingly awful jokes that open this movie. The opening credits of the movie, set to the super-catchy tune “There She Goes” by The La’s, follows a cup of coffee as it makes its way through an urban bohemian jazz club. The camera appears mounted to the edge of the cup and after weaving through tables and people, it ends up with Myers who grabs it off the tray, revealing it to be a forced-perspective gag: the cup looked huge and it is, in fact, ludicrously oversized. Myers holds it and then says, with FAR too much emphasis and volume, “I believe I ordered the LARGE coffee!” The jokes lands like turd to toilet, but next he turns to co-star Anthony Lapaglia, who is dressed in an absurd get-up and asks with a flat tone “Why are you dressed like Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch?” When I went to see this movie in theaters, I was in a rotten mood, having just had an argument with my girlfriend at the time. These two jokes had me DREADING the rest of this movie, but amazingly, after these two duds, the thing picks up and it remains a movie I really like a lot and revisit every few years.
Showgirls (1995)
dir. Paul Verhoeven
Poor Elizabeth Berkley. I could understand WHY she did this movie, and how she wanted to get out from under the shadow of “Saved By the Bell” by doing something risque and adult. And working with Verhoeven, who was riding high after three direct hits with “Robocop,” “Total Recall” and “Basic Instinct?” I mean who wouldn’t think this was the road to earning street-cred and solid box-office? But man, this movie is seedy and fucked-up in ways that really, really are cringe-inducing and look no further than the many sequences where Berkley has to shake her money-maker or, egad, lick a stripper pole to learn just how embarrassed you can feel for a performer. As Nomi Malone, Berkley tries so hard to BE edgy, but… she’s not. And neither is Nomi, who is willing to give it all, just as Berkley is, to be a STAR IN ALL CAPS. At the end of it, Nomi overcomes the evil power players in Las Vegas that threaten to sink her and she heads to Los Angeles. In real life, Berkley’s performance was derided (Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that Berkley displayed “the open-mouthed, vacant-eyed look of an inflatable party doll.”) and she was dropped by her agent. That’s not fair, not is it right, but onscreen you can see the decisions being made and feel her career dying as a result.
Nominated for 13 Golden Raspberry Awards and won a then-record 7 in ’95!
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
dir. Zack Snyder
We kick the Synderverse in the junk a lot around here, and honestly? It deserves every single shot to the cinematic nuts we take at it. God, Batman V. Superman and The Justice League are fucking awful movies, but man… I feel like every time Affleck has to wear the bulky, dumb, eye-glowing batsuit in this flick he dies a little inside. It’s what makes that press-tour video of him with Henry Cavill so goddamn funny: because Affleck cannot hide just how much REGRET he feels for dawning the caul. What’s weird is that he makes a pretty solid Bruce Wayne – he works for that sort of cocky, millionaire playboy-with-a-grudge act. But as a physical vigilante? I’ve always been a fan of Batman, but I never realized how truly dumb the idea is until I saw Affleck in the get-up. When the eyes aren’t glowing, he appears cross-eyed and unable to move, absurd and uncomfortable, and watching him produces those feelings in me EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I don’t blame Affleck, this all falls at the feet of Snyder and the DC brass who trusted him.
Hudson Hawk (1991)
dir. Michael Lehmann
After “Heathers,” screenwriter Daniel Waters and director Michael Lehmann entered the wold of big-budget spectacles with the Bruce Willis-starring action-comedy “Hudson Hawk.” The movie was a complete financial disaster, and while it’s be reappraised by some as a “so-bad-it’s good” flick, nothing clears away the distinct sense of fremdschaemen I recall while watching this movie. Specifically, it’s those notorious singing scenes between Willis and co-star Danny Aiello who, instead of setting timers while conducting time-critical missions, instead sing old-time standards like Bing Crosby’s “Swinging on a Star.” The idea and execution come off as ludicrous and painful to watch, specifically when Aiello has to sing because, goddamn it, he’d be great in a musical and instead he was in this mess, embarrassing himself. Not helping matters any is Willis doing his extra-cocky, overly-confident early 90’s shtick that he thankfully dropped once he worked on things like Death Becomes Her and The Sixth Sense. I like humble Bruce. A lot. But this version was like his Moonlighting character David Addison in overdrive; a starring vehicle that gave his saxophone-playing, party0guy persona Bruno centerstage. Such a shame too, because Lehmann, who started out SOOOO promisingly with “Heathers” never did much else of signficant merit on the big screen.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
dir. James Mangold
Most people would choose Indy’s fourth outing as the most embarrassing, but I’d argue that film, as absurd as it may well be, retains the sense of fun and charm of the original three films. This mess, though, is unlikeable and barely watchable, an uninteresting slog pretty much from start to finish. Mangold doesn’t seem to know how to treat the legacy characters and the ones that are added don’t gel into the universe well, especially Helena Shaw, played superficially by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. The actress, best known as creator and star of her much-praised comedy series “Fleabag” here seems incongruous with the iconic Indiana Jones character and it’s like watching two people who are oil and water forced together for over two hours. It’s JUST. SO. UNCOMFORTABLE as their acting styles don’t match except in that neither, really, appears to care very much about what’s going on. They say lines, Ford with the crankiness he’s pretty much embodied onscreen now for the better part of fifteen years and Waller-Bridge with a kind of detached contempt that may be less her fault and more a problem with the screenplay. By the final third of the thing, you’re being force-fed some time-travel shenanigans and just when you think Indy will die in a way that honors his love of the past – by being literally in ancient Sicily – Helena punches him in the face and BAMMO, we’re back in Modern Day New York City without any real explanation. It’s nice that Indy and Marion reconcile and, I suppose, that the movie didn’t play obvious, but oh, that punch had me grabbing pillows to hide my face behind. It’s nice that Indy and Marion reconcile and, I suppose, that the movie didn’t play obvious, but oh, that punch had me grabbing pillows to hide my face behind.
Kick Two Pick Two: Movie Songs (Part 1)
“Don’t You Forget About Me” – Simple Minds (“The Breakfast Club”)
“What’s Up Danger” – Blackway & Black Cavier (“Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse”)
“In Your Eyes” – Peter Gabriel (“Say Anything”)
“Bohemian Rhapsody” – Queen (“Wayne’s World”)