Batman & Robin [1997]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

It's not often that we end up watching a movie that all of us have seen before, albeit some haven't seen it in so long that the memory of it is pretty faded.

Don't worry. It all comes back with the first whiny line uttered by Chris O'Donnell: "I want a car! Chicks dig the car!" That perfectly sets the tone for a film were Robin is going through some sort of delayed puberty, Batman is a smirking bobblehead played by the surprisingly human George Clooney, Batgirl is Alfred's niece with a lack of British accent and a bike thief, and the two main villains, Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy, don't even bother speaking unless they can work in a stupid pun relating to their villain theme (Bane, sorta villain number three, can thankfully only grunt single words as communication). Although it's not just the acting and script that's terrible. Gotham itself looks like an LSD-nightmare of a city with illogical architecture, rubber icicles, and gangs that wear glow-in-the-dark paint or literally came directly out of Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange." Aside from shaming director Joel Schumacher for reminding us of a good movie we could be watching, we also shouted out his name in exasperation with every unnecessary Dutch angle and shameful cliche line that didn't even have a pun in it.

This movie besmirches the good name of Batman and the name of Batman movies for which we can only be thankful that this movie is mostly bookended by Tim Burton's films and Christopher Nolan's (with the exception of "Batman Forever" which is pretty bad but acceptable in comparison to this one).

Adam's Grandma's Review: "A little too long. I could have taken a nap with that one."

Bucky Larson: Born To Be A Star [2011]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

With a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes and one of the production companies being Happy Madison (Adam Sandler's company) we were preparing ourselves for something truly difficult to behold but, oh, we weren't prepared for something this heinous. If you had told us a week ago that we would watch a movie so painful that it would make us wish we were rewatching "Christmas Vacation 2", we'd probably cry shenanigans. But this movie is all that and so much more.

"Bucky Larson: Born To Be A Star" is a festering boil on the face of cinema. The plot, if you could call the unnecessary compilation of inexplicable Sandler characters and grade-school humor events a plot, is about Bucky, a dumb buck-toothed Iowan, deciding that his destiny is to be in porn after discovering that his parents were famous porn stars in the 70s. He finds a love interest in a waitress at a diner, a psychotic roommate, and that he manages to make a career out of premature ejaculation and his unnaturally small genitalia. That's it. That's the movie. And it's even worse than the description makes it sound. Trust me.

Because this movie has been so panned, we decided to try to make a list of things we actually liked about it and this is what we got:

• The pig in the back of the bus to Hollywood
• The interior of the diner
• Christina Ricci, who tries really, really hard to care about the role and apparently needs money since she decided to be in this
• "Here It Goes Again" by OK Go
• The fact that Jimmy Fallon had a five second cameo because that's probably all they could afford

This movie is just offensive. It's offensive to film, the film industry, people from the upper Midwest, porn actors, waitresses, people who need braces, YouTube, people who enjoy sex, people who enjoy life, and humanity in general. That someone could make this movie, that MANY people could make this movie, should really call into question whether or not there is any good or taste in the world at all. This movie will make you think existential things once it has beaten you into submission and you have moved past being offended and ashamed.

Don't watch this movie. We only got through it on the idea that it was a hurdle to jump.

Summarizing Quotes:

"It was."

"Fuck him. He's getting paid."

"Am I in the fucking Twilight Zone?"

Keith Quotes:

(to his mother) "Don't tell anyone I made you watch this movie. There are laws against elder abuse."

(on almost watching Batman & Robin) "How I long for Chris O'Donnell."

Adam Quote: "You do realize that there's some 13-year-old out there who claims this as his favorite movie, right?"

Adam's Grandma's Review: "Burn it!"

Santa Claus Conquers The Martians [1964]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

The second film we watched last night was the classic "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians." Because the Martian race teaches their children everything they need to know about life right away, the children don't really have a childhood and this longing leads to copious amounts of TV watching. The Martians consult the elder wise man Martain who says he say this coming and, like an ass, didn't warn anyone. He tells them that the children need a Santa-like figure to help them reclaim the childhood they never got. So what's the solution? Kidnap two human children to get some authority on the matter and use them to kidnap Santa Claus. Santa sets up a toy factory on Mars, using the human and Martian children as slave labor, and teaches everyone the true meaning of consumerism. Hooray for Santy Claus! (This happens to be the theme song for the movie and it is soul-deadening). There's also plenty of wacky hijinks involving one of the Martians who particularly hates fun trying to kill Santa and the children or at least ruin their toy factory. Wacky fun.

You know what though? No one gets conquered. I guess the children sort of do but really from the title we were all hoping for some kind of Il Duce Santa Dictator situation and were sorrowfully disappointed.

Adam's Grandma's Review: "Just about slightly better than 'Crazy Fat Ethel 2'."

Crazy Fat Ethel 2 [1987]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

Last night was another double feature since the two movies in question didn't even bother to stretch their running time to the standard hour and a half minimum. The first movie was "Crazy Fat Ethel 2" also known as "Criminally Insane 2". Having not seen "Crazy Fat Ethel" you might think that the plot would be a little hard to follow but thankfully no less than 75% of the movie is flashbacks to the first one. The plot is really just about how Ethel, who is in a mental institution after murdering a bunch of people in a hunger rage, gets sent to a halfway house where, no surprise, she kills everyone in a hunger rage. In fact, the plot can be summed up well with Ethel's first line, a reaction to the pudding cup the hospital gave her for dessert: IT'S TOO LITTLE! There's also an inmate with a fetish for feeling up walls and excessive use of red paint.

Thankfully, instead of leaving the halfway house, Ethel decides to pass herself off as the owner of the house . . . to a cop who she had already spoken to. Still, leaves space open for "Crazy Fat Ethel 3"!

Adam's Grandma's Review: "Waste of time."

REWATCH: The Room [2003]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

What can I say about this masterpiece of bad cinema that hasn't already been said? It's a personal favorite of the Bad Movie Night crew and a few of us have seen it over twenty times. We love it so much that we decided to make viewings of it annual and since we had nothing else in particular set up to watch, we decided now was the time.

What I think captivates so many people about "The Room" is that its production value is surprisingly not terrible like so many other bad movies. The camera work is fine, nothing is particularly badly lit, it isn't edited strangely, and yet everything else is entirely wrong. I think this is why the film has rightfully earned the title of "The 'Citizen Kane' of Bad Movies." From the bad acting, the prime culprit being curiously-accented Tommy Wiseau, the director/writer/producer/lead actor/reanimated corpse, to the long soft-core sex scenes set to snooze-inducing R&B to the offensively anti-feminist script that makes all men and women look like unrepentant assholes to the repetitive conversations, this film is a legend. Just the mention of it makes you want to drink some scotchka (scotch + vodka for those not in the know) with a half Canadian bacon and pineapple and half artichoke and pesto light on the cheese pizza, throw the football around in a tux, and then decorate your living room with pictures of spoons and dishware. If you still need convincing, go to YouTube and look up "The Room flower shop scene" and feast your eyes on one of the most glorious scenes in cinematic history.

I've said enough. But anyway, how's your sex life?

Jingle Cats [1995]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

Our Monday evening was started off with a pre-show: the incomparable "Jingle Cats." Torn directly from the Christmas (and possibly LSD)-influenced mind of a crazy cat lady and featuring the most high-tech effects available in 1995 that you could find in someone's basement, this masterpiece features garland and Santa hat adorned cats singing all your favorite Christmas carols in ear-splitting meows. It somehow manages to be awful but also utterly mesmerizing. Once you get past the initial annoyance of the meowing and the trippy effects, you find yourself slipping into a complacency as you slowly descend into insanity. It's the perfect thing to play on repeat to drive someone to gnawing off their own limbs. We only managed to get through 15 minutes of the full half hour production before we all agreed that we had the gist and could stop.

Then, after we realized that Keith had never heard of the internet's plethora of 10 hour challenges, we followed that up with some much shorter installments of "Nyan Cat", "Leek Spin", "The Mango Song", "The Badger Song", "Narwhals" and "Amazing Horse" to remind us how far internet videos have come and we voted on which were the most tolerable ("Narwhals" and "Amazing Horse") and which were the least ("Nyan Cat" hands down).

Either way, "Jingle Cats" is a piece of history that should be seen by every connoisseur of the internet age.