The quality of films in 2002 was no better or worse than it was last year but the quality of bad films seems to have hit an all time low in 2002. Bad movies were rampant but surprisingly a throng of bottom-of the barrel unusual crap seems to ooze off the screen, and there they are:

MASTER OF DISGUISE | Oh my holy God. What kind of backwards alien civilization coughed this movie up? This movie is so bizarre in so many different ways that it’s difficult to describe it in a PG context. Dana Carvey takes leave of his creative instincts channeling Benigni’s waiter persona from La Vita e Bella to
no effect for the role of a disguise meister named Pistachio Diguisy (BWAA-HAAAA-HAAAAA!!!) who inherits his old man’s profession and continually disguises himself as characters from 25 year old movies, Scarface, The Exorcist, Jaws etc. One scene after another is like a twisted burning train wreck that mercifully only clocks in at 72 minutes. The only positive that I can find in this unholy mess, the fact that I didn’t see
Master of Disguise on the same day I saw Benigni’s Pinocchio. I would have needed therapy.

DEATH TO SMOOCHY | It doesn’t take a genius to recognize this as the world’s longest “We Hate Barney” joke. Robin Williams stars as a drug addicted clown out to wreak vengeance on Smoochy, a Barney clone who has replaced him. Danny Devito builds this ultra-violent comedy out of a one joke idea that tries to be in-your -face but comes off like a sucker punch to the gut. Along for the scurrilous ride to Hell are the likes of Robin Williams, Edward Norton and Catherine Keener. It takes talent to make a movie this bad.
 

PINOCCHIO | I’m at a loss for words here, this movie was more creepy than bad. The confounding use of star-studded dubbing didn’t help. Benigni bounces and trouces about the role while the voice of Breckin Meyer spews from his mouth uttering such dubbed ear-scratchers as “What a fantastic day I’m having” and “No!
No!''Look at my nose! I don't like it, I don't like it!” The dubbing isn’t helped by the presence of Jim Belushi as Gepetto or Regis Philbin as the Stromboli. On top of that, Benigni stages the film with cardboard sets and stuffs his entire supporting cast in outfits that would be more at home in Tim Burton’s nightmare world. Benigni is having a great time playing the title character but the viewer finds themselves looking sideways at the sight of a wooden boy with a five o’clock shadow.

HALF PAST DEAD | Making a worst list is always easy when Seagal comes out with a new film. That’s especially true when he plays a native Russian who’s accent disappears two seconds after he tries to use it (I’m still a little ambivalent about that). In the film Seagal (having ballooned enough weight to qualify for a police lineup with Danny Aiello and Jim Belushi) plays a Russian prison inmate named Sasha who teams up with a

fellow inmate played by rap star Ja Rule (whose dialogue consists mostly of "Yo man, Yo dog, Yo checkdisout man, kna'mean main?") to steal a lot of gold that’s hidden somewhere in the prison – or something like that, I dunno. I was distracted by holes in the plot big enough could fly a Saturn rocket through. People are killed and then show up again with no bumps, bruises, injuries or any explanation about why they aren’t dead. Kinda like Seagal’s career.

CROSSROADS | What did we expect from a cross-country road picture featuring Britney Spears? Well if you said a grim, depressing coming-of-age movie that contains such sour elements as teen pregnancy, date rape, infidelity, hitchhiking, robbing the cradle, miscarriages, alcoholism and losing ones virginity then you
probably got exactly what you expected. Britney plays a girl on a cross country journey with friends who are all suffering from at least two of the above listed problems and they all end badly. The subjects are hard and heavy but the dialogue is lightheaded and predictable. This is one of those movies where a teenage girl forks over her diary to her friends and says “Promise not laugh?”. Well, they didn’t, but I did.

EIGHT CRAZY NIGHTS | This movie assaulted audiences on two fronts, first to those of us who finally thought that Sandler was taking his career seriously after the brilliant Punch Drunk Love, the second to families who thought that this was a jolly animated family film. An animated Sandler is a malcontent who is charged by a judge to change in ways in just eight days or else. That affords plenty of opportunities to commit the kinds of acts
that only appeal to those who get their jollies smashing mailboxes. The movie has warm-heartedness grafted onto it to no effect. Eventually though the movie does grow on you . . . like a fungus.

JACKASS: THE MOVIE | Some phenomenons are beyond me and no film sums that up better than Jackass the Movie, a geek show of stupid stunts, self-mutilation and cruel pranks aimed squarely at the easily amused. The movie is a collection of over 40 outtakes of every moronic act of self destruction from
papercuts to alligators. It’s a sad comment on American civilization that the same stunts that pack those “Too Hot For TV” videos have broken out of the direct-to-video market and now make $33,000,000 at the box office. Sadder? The information that this many American moviegoers each spent $8 to see the same stuff they can see on television for free. Ug, I’m moving to Bolivia.

Enough | My choice for the most accurate title of the year. Curvacious J. Lo plays an abused housewife named Slim who, after seven years of being walloped by her no-good husband suddenly decides it might be time to up and leave (which she does, in the middle of the night while he sleeps rather then in the daytime when he’s a work). But before she can leave she has to bulk and so for the next three weeks she goes into training and that’s
when the movie gets wedged somewhere between Rocky and Sleeping With the Enemy. This is one of those movies that finds an abused wife fantasy world where the cops refuse to do anything, the villain is around every turn and the whole thing is settled when she gets to beat up on him for the last 25 minutes of the movie. Everyone has a limit. And this movie crossed mine and kept on going. 

ROLLERBALL | This has my vote at the funniest movie of the year. I knew I was in trouble when the movie had it’s release date pushed back six times. That meant that the executives in charge of it’s release knew what a turd they had and for once I agree. The movie takes place in the future where the focus of the
whole world is a violent sport called Rollerball in which the contestant ride round a track on motorcycles and on rollerblades and try to kill each other. You know disaster is inevitable when you have a motorcycles on a Figure 8 track. I was never sure what the rules of Rollerball were but it hardly matters because a salacious television executive kept changing the rules to get everyone killed to up the rating so he could get a multi-million dollar cable deal. He’s not the brightest bulb in the box because he has collected every superstar player of the game by killing off the competition. What’s he going to do for sweeps?

Scooby-Doo | Far more disappointing than the fact that this movie turned out to be utter crap was the information that better talents like Tim Burton and Mike Myers were attached to the project early in its development. Those attached to the project early on were not assured to have turned this movie into a success but I have to believe that it would have been better then what spews forth in the finished product. Interchangable starlets like Freddy Prinze Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar and Matthew Lillard grind their
way through this half-assed reiteration of the classic TV series that seems stuck between trying to entertain the kiddies and give a druggy wink to those who grew up watching it on television. What passes for credibility in regards to this film? It won an award for “Best Fart”. Who decides that?