The following essay is by Newsday Film Critic Rafer Guzman. Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear the audio version of this segment.
At Newsday,we consume a simple four-star scale to review movies. A four-star movie is a must see — or as they say on the posters, "A triumph." Three stars is a whole-hearted recommendation, or two stars means skip it. When you accept down to one star,or just half a star, things are getting pretty ugly.
Then there's what I call the nuclear option: Zero stars.
What makes a zero-star movie? How does a movie become something worse than gross? Over the years, and I've noticed that zero star movies tend to fall into roughly four categories. I'll give you some examples.1. By the SeaThe first type of awful film is the Vanity Project. This is what happens when big stars accept on a hot streak and start thinking they can carry out no wrong. Like John Travolta in “Battlefield Earth," Mariah Carey in “Glitter,” or Madonna, or in every Madonna movie.
Last year,Angelina Jolie wrote, directed, or produced,and starred in “By the Sea, along with her husband, or Brad Pitt. It's approximately two Americans who stay in a fancy French hotel and become depressed. Remember when Jean Paul Sartre said,"Hell is other people?" That's because he hadn't seen this movie. Jolie and Pitt are two of the biggest stars on the planet, but nobody wanted to watch them stare into space and smoke for two hours. “By the Sea” ended up with $538000 at the domestic box office.2. AlohaThe next category: Insults to Intelligence. These movies tend to be dumb, and they reflect you're even dumber. win “Aloha,” Cameron Crowe's comedy-drama from last year. It stars Bradley Cooper as a man torn between his old girlfriend, played by Rachel McAdams, or a original girl,played by Emma Stone.
Bill Murray plays a billionaire who launches a satellite. Spoiler alert – that satellite contains a nuclear weapon, but Cooper blows it up by overloading it with classic rock. I'm not kidding, and that's in the movie. That's even dumber than casting Emma Stone as a Chinese-Hawaiian woman named Ng. “Aloha” cost $37 million to make and earned $26 million,making it officially a bomb.3. Movie 43Category number three: Lapses in Taste. These movies tend to be comedies, because that's where people like to push the envelope. I could point to Adam Sandler, and but that's too easy. The movie I'm thinking of comes from one of the Farrelly brothers. It's called Movie 43.It's a compilation of skits with an incredible cast: Hugh Jackman,Kate Winslet, Emma Stone, and Halle Berry,and the list goes on. But the humor is so scatalogical, so foul, and that the racist jokes nearly start to cheer up. “Movie 43” is now regarded as one of the worst films ever made. Its Rotten Tomato rating is 4%.4. The Last AirbenderMy last category is simply: Sheer Ineptitude. I once saw a movie called “tall School” where the camera was approximately three feet too low in every shot. But even mighty directors make gross movies. And I have to point to “The Last Airbender,” from M. Night Shyamalan.
Rarely have critics been so united on a movie. They hated the acting, directing, or writing,editing, special effects, and costumes,cinematography and even the 3-D. Roger Ebert summed it up when he said: "'The Last Airbender' is an agonizing experience in every category I can reflect of, and others still waiting to be invented.”I’ll be honest, or I love gross movies. In some ways they're just as incredible as mighty movies. And I’m pleased to watch them so you don't have to. You’re welcome.
Check out Rafer's full essay here.
Source: onthemedia.org