CaptainAmazing

I remember seeing this one around age 10 and even then both my friend and I knew that he had spent way more than a million dollars pretty quickly. Can’t remember for sure, but I think this might be the one where his brothers straight-up stole his piggy bank and then his dad gave him a lecture on managing his money better. Another tiny thing I remember is that the VHS cover had a quote from a critic saying “If you loved Home Alone, you’ll love Blank Check!” The cliche is supposed to be if you “LIKED X, then you’ll love Y.” Like try and throw a wider net and maybe even imply that it’s better. But maybe even that critic was not willing to lie that much.

I remember liking this movie when i saw it around age 13, but even at that age the ending was so predictable that I saw it coming, and they had to insert a red herring to try and directly throw people off of it. Also weird that RePets are basically a real thing now. Barbara Striesand has had dogs cloned, and police departments are doing it as well.

Probably worth a read now that they’re officially doing this one: https://film.avclub.com/more-tired-than-wired-case-file-60-blues-brothers-200-1798246903 My family rented this one Thanksgiving when I was still a kid. I remember liking it okay, but my parents and visiting extended family who were familiar with the Blues Brothers HATED it.

Also was #1 on Rotten Tomatoes’ 100 worst-reviewed movies of the decade list.

I can see on Google that they were recently working on a tongue-in-cheek sequel, but the only info I can get about it is that it was set to premiere this past Friday. Nothing on how it went. Also, I can't understand why HDTGM hasn't done this movie yet. Would also be a great way for the producers to plug any broader release planned, DVD or otherwise.

Alright, is there a reason they haven't done this one yet? Maybe one of the stars is really powerful and also really sensitive? If nothing else, it needs to be done for the notoriety of the Ebert review. Also, there's a funny story of the writer of both the screenplay and the book it was based on running into Ebert in the wild that's definitely worth a heartwarming read: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/roger-and-me

I swear that the parks must pour money into these things before the movies are out, or at least before they're totally through the "denial" phase of how they were received, and then refuse to eat the costs of replacing them when it's become obvious that it's a mistake. Universal Studios Hollywood also has a very elaborate live Waterworld show, the in-park promos for which still describe as "based on the hit movie," which everyone knows is a lie. That said, the Waterworld park show is supposed to be really good, which is why they've cloned it in their parks in Japan and Singapore. Don't think you can say that for the Newsies one.

I say do it. The one on the Holiday Special is what got me into this podcast in the first place. Draw in more Star Wars fans!

I think I remember reading that this movie basically "outed" Alan Smithee as the go-to fake director name and led to the Director's Guild killing off the practice of using it once and for all.

Yeah, another thing that comes to mind is how they couldn't do a "Second Opinions" segment for Gymkata because Paul couldn't find a single five-star Amazon review of it from someone that didn't love it unironically.

"Weird" is kinda hard to define, but... Manos: The Hands of Fate- was practically made for this show, especially because the daughter of the guy who made it (and has a part in it as a kid) is having a sequel made and would probably love to be on the show. The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure- They should have Nathan Rabin, who runs a site that's basically HDTGM in blog form, be the guest on that episode, since his old column in The AV Club is what made it truly infamous. And the others need no explanation: Movie 43 and Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park

One thing in general that screws up RT scores for HDTGM movies is reviewers giving them scores for being so bad they're good. The Room, for instance, has at least one of these on it's main RT page alone. A thing that RT does that I think is pretty cool is that they'll go back through newspaper archives (presumably only ones posted online), and find contemporary reviews for classic movies, even if they're 70 years old. Often these include almost the only negative ones the site has for the classics. Also, only classic ones tend to really get this treatment, so don't expect to find a lot of contemporary reviews for Hard Ticket to Hawaii or anything.

TBH, I'm more shocked that it was even considered HDTGM material. The movies that they do are usually either notoriously bad or somewhat obscure and terrible, and this one was way more "just not as good as the previous ones in the series, mostly hated by the kind of people who are still whining online nonstop about the Star Wars prequels ruined their childhoods." It's like they confused "notoriously bad" with "notoriously hated."

Almost the only thing I remember about watching “The Big Green” (a rare 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, so probably a good HDTGM candidate once we get some space between it and “Ladybugs”), is that it didn’t have this cool “Kick it Out” song from the trailer. Fun side story: I accidentally erased too much of your post in the quoted part and had to shake my iPhone like an idiot about 20 times to make the first sentence complete, because the undo function made it come back at a rate of one word or space per shake.

I have some vague memory of there being a wave of independent films featuring couples with a huge age difference that peaked around 2007 that this would have been just a touch late to. It was like the industry said “Gay couples aren’t shocking and edgy anymore; how can we keep this trend going instead of actually coming up with something original?” Anyone else remember this trend, or am I just remembering a handful of ads/news items for films I didn’t see and just assuming a trend?

I have to admit that when the guest an episode or two ago admitted to falling asleep while attempting to watch the movie, it was kind of funny, cutesy, and a nice subtle dig at the movie itself, although in the back of my mind I thought it was also kind of tacky that she didn't bother to go back and actually watch the movie that would be the main subject of the podcast she was appearing on. This week the "joke" of sleeping through it was worn out. So much of what Tig did wrong was just having unlucky timing. There might also be something in there about her not being "cutesy" enough to get away with it like that earlier guest was. It happening two episodes in a row is pretty bad. They should probably just make a side mention to the guests when they first agree to go on to please rewatch anything they sleep through. I'm really missing June.

Bump because it's premiered and is about to be released: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Skyline#Release

Bump because this is the worst movie I've ever seen. Saw it about age 12 and knew it was terrible then. I'm forever flabbergasted by how it lost so much money and did so badly, but still got a sequel. (Just saw something about home video sales?) Then after that one did even worse, whoever was behind it got a few episodes of a TV show made, without getting it picked up. I guess I'm not surprised at all that they've made a bunch more direct-to-DVD movies. Also the Second Opinions would be amazing. The IMDB reviews for the later sequels have people giving it 10/10 and insisting things like the critics were literally bribed by the studios to give it bad reviews in order to help other movies somehow.

The reviews said this was billed as the WTF "Weekend at Bernie's staring kids," but pretty much drops that to become nothing but teen-girl wish fulfillment for the majority of the movie. Sounds awful, but could go either way as to how well it would work for this podcast.

It sounds like someone took one of the key problems with My Stepmother is an Alien and decided to turn that up to 11. I didn't see this movie as a kid, but I remember seeing a TV spot for it where the kid brings her to his class. As if teaching, he announces, "THIS is a woman!," like no one in the class has ever seen a woman before. She then pulls down the top part of her top, to reveal her bra, teaching them...nothing, really. Maybe what a bra looks like? Of course, they couldn't show boobs on TV or in a family movie, which embodies the whole problem with the movie. I looked up this movie on Wikipedia and learned that someone wrote this script on spec (without a guarantee of getting paid), and it got picked up for a record $1.1 million. Instead of a normal review, Roger Ebert imagined what the conversation between the studio execs who greenlit it must have been like. I learned other HDTGM-worthy moments like how apparently the kids are all 11 and know what sex is, so it has to come up with another convoluted reason for them to need to see what boobs look like. Also the main kid is required to give a presentation that ends up as the one I already mentioned, but he makes sure the teacher isn't watching, which defeats the purpose of giving it.

Here's a thought: Would the show still "work" with a non-narrative movie? United Passions sounds like one of the worst movies and biggest bombs released in the last decade. For anyone who doesn't remember: It was basically FIFA congratulating itself for 110 minutes...and it was released in North America just as the FIFA corruption scandal was breaking. And much of it was on how much of an anti-corruption crusader the current FIFA president was. In the US, it had an opening weekend of $918. Not, $918k. $918. It had a worldwide gross of $200,000 on a $25 million budget. And that's using the most favorable numbers for both. It has a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 1 out of 100 on Metacritic.

Yeah, I think you're right. I dunno how I got it into my head the Incubus was nu-metal, other than that it was from around the time that genre was big. There's plenty of other nu-metal-heavy movies out there, although I can't think of any right now.

One that I think sums up a lot of the ones listed in this thread: Things that were once extremely trendy. Not actors or movie tropes, more like outside cultural things that were big at the time. They're generally a sign that they were desperate to appear "hip," possibly because their movie had little else to offer. Rapping in a film that's not about rap, breakdancing (Ghoulies), nu-metal (Stealth), parkour, etc.

For the US: Glowing review is from a single obscure radio/TV station, website, or even a Twitter account. Sometimes this is (intentionally) written in font too small to read. There's also the mysterious ones where the review is credited to someone at a TV network that has no known reviewer, i.e. " 'IT'S THE BEST FILM OF THE YEAR!" -John Smith, FOX-TV." Who is he? Someone who does reviews on a local FOX affiliate somewhere? Someone who does reviews for the handful of stations owned and operated by FOX? Some random person who works for FOX TV and happened to like it, or maybe it's a FOX film? Speaking of which, 100 bonus points if the "reviewer" is in any way connected to the film. I've seen spectacular "reviews" that were from the movie's Twitter account, and there's a notorious case where Rolling Stone financed one of those American Pie direct-to-DVD sequels and also provided all of the great review snippets for it's commercials.