Quote from Roger Ebert's review of Walking Tall - the new movie opening with The Rock:
We know Jay is the villain because he has that close-cropped curly peroxided hair that works like a name tag that says "Hi! I'm the Villain!"
Bill McCabe has compiled some other riotous quotes from reviewer's on this, The Rock's attempt to become a serious actor.
My favorite:
Watching "Walking Tall" is an experience akin to watching that guy who tied weather balloons to his lawn chair and ended up floating over LAX. You can't help but wonder how anybody ever thought it was a good idea.Posted by sheila
Like I told Bill, when I saw the preview for this in the theater, I couldn't stop laughing. The only cliche missing was the "they messed...with the WRONG guy" tagline.
Posted by: Emily at April 2, 2004 03:01 PMI know. It looks like it could become a camp classic, actually.
"Why are you stopping me?"
"Your taillights out."
"No, it's not."
The Rock smashes out the taillight. "Now it is."
He does look like the stereotypical rich villain, he may even be so evil he kills his own men.
Speaking of good movie review lines, I remember a one of The Core, which said "the characters are offed according to their level of star power and sexual chemistry.
Posted by: Bill McCabe at April 2, 2004 03:03 PMhahaha
Bill - you and I both have a knack for remembering good quotes from bad movie reviews. For some reason - they all stick in my mind like crazy.
Posted by: red at April 2, 2004 03:04 PMMovie reviews bring so much joy, there's nothing quite like a savagely written one. There was a good one in the Post today, the standout line: "Most inexcusable is the casting of the deservedly obscure Mably, whose performance as the prince is so wooden he should be labeled a fire hazard."
Posted by: Bill McCabe at April 2, 2004 03:10 PMHarry Hatchet pointed to this review of Scooby-Doo: "Where 'Harry Potter' offended some conservative Christians with its apparent endorsement of witchcraft and sorcery, 'Scooby-Doo' threatens to do the same by steadfastly denying the existence of any transcendent dimension.
"In the strictly secular-humanist world of 'Scooby-Doo,' there are no real ghosts, but only humans desperate for attention who disguise themselves as supernatural figures."
"The secular-humanist world of 'Scooby-Doo'." I bet you never thought you'd see *that* sentence.
I had a friend who was genuinely offended over The Craft's depiction of witchcraft.
Posted by: Bill McCabe at April 2, 2004 03:34 PMArmond White of New York Press is the king of movie-review putdowns:
"Kidman’s putty nose is less convincing than Noah Taylor’s 'Max' makeup (which made him look more like Prince than Hitler)."
Posted by: Stephen Silver at April 2, 2004 03:54 PMI haven't seen the mivie incarnation of Sccoby Doo, thank God, and plan to keep it that way, but I understand that the editing process was a choice between keeping appeals to teen and preteen grossout humor and putting in more "adult" innuendo, including the longstanding questions about Fred and Velma's sexual orientations. They went with the former, obviously.
Posted by: Dave J at April 2, 2004 04:10 PMMy confusion on this whole issue is this:
Am I insane or wasn't Scooby Doo the first kind of a failure?
Am I out of touch?
I thought it was a bomb. So why on earth would they make a second?
The previews for it were toe-cringingly embarrassing.
Posted by: red at April 2, 2004 04:20 PMIt stank, but it wasn't a bomb. It did $153,288,182.
To illustrate the horrifc taste of the movie going public, Master and Commander only made $93,557,809.
Posted by: Bill McCabe at April 2, 2004 04:44 PMThe first Scooby-Doo came out when Spirited Away did...all the best critics said one was crap and the other was a masterpiece..guess which one Mr. and Mrs. Middle America (with their rotten progeny) flocked to?????...Also... Sheil remember when i made u get The Rock's autograph for my friend X-tina??? You are a serious trouper!!!
Posted by: Mitchell at April 2, 2004 05:50 PMOh my God, I had blocked out my humiliating moment with The Rock. Leaning my cleavage into his face to try to charm him into giving me an autograph. An autograph I did NOT WANT TO SEEK. Hilarious. He was BARELY gracious.
Cashel still talks about Spirited Away
Posted by: red at April 3, 2004 02:09 PMMovie critics get to do snarky putdowns, which nobody else in the mainstream media can. Best one I ever saw was the Chicago Sun-Times review of Biodome. The two lead characters made the reviewer "long for the comic genius of such pairings as Garth and Wayne, Bill and Ted and Beavis and Butthead."
Another good one was the Chicago Reader's New Years edition many years ago. "There were many contenders for worst film of the year, but all of them pale before Food of the Gods."