A couple of months ago, in
a post on movie trailers that wandered into upcoming releases, and then descended into amused
Bloodrayne-scorn in the comments, I mentioned the first weekend of the year, and the godawful crap studios were dumping in it. Well, that weekend is here, and it's safe to say most multiplex visitors will be opting for some of the quality movies released back around Xmas time. And, as I quipped last time, that Ebert won't be rushing home from his holiday vacation.
Several of the bad movies appear to have been backed up to later in the year, but we've still got the two crown jewels.
Grandma's Boy, and
Bloodrayne the Movie. Let the fun begin.
Grandma's Boy is an Adam Sandler production, and if that doesn't tell you all you need to know, consider that it's being hidden from critics, and has just
13 reviews so far on RT. Twelve of them are bad, and I feel confident stating that the 92% negative ratio will only increase as more come online.
A sample:
Reviewing Grandma's Boy is an exercise in absurdity. This is not a movie that was meant to be reviewed, or for that matter seen. I would express my outrage that something like this has been produced and released, but that would be a waste of outrage. Instead, I am overcome by a sense of futility: I am not sure what I expected from Grandma's Boy. To be honest, I probably expected something like this. I am not sure if that makes it better or worse.
It is not, in truth, even a movie. It is missing certain basic elements of narrative filmmaking, like for example a narrative. If someone would like to make an argument that Grandma's Boy is an avant-garde work of expressionist genius, I would like to hear it...
There is no movie. There is only the fact that Adam Sandler has cronies, and Adam Sandler gets what he wants.
Moving along to Bloodrayne, it goes Grandma's Boy one better, with 14 reviews, 13 of them bad. And more to come, no doubt.
A sample:
It's tough to pinpoint what's worse about the movie: the performances or the direction. It's strange to watch Boll continually stage sequences he has no idea how to capture properly. In his mind, he's Steven Spielberg; arranging danger and adventure on the screen with clarity and a roaring sense of excitement. However, the tragic reality is that Boll has all the artistic ability of the average 4th grade finger-painter, and his direction is often so clumsy, he should really be embarrassed of his productions. He's a B-list, straight-to-video director with A-list aspirations, and "Bloodrayne" is asphyxiated in the battle between what Boll wants to accomplish and what he's actually capable of.
Better than the reviews, and certainly better than the film is this review/discussion of the preview and a meeting with Uwe Boll, by Harry Knowles. I linked to it in my comments after my initial BloodRayne post, and I'll just quote myself here, to save time.
Amusing sort of review of Bloodrayne by Harry Knowles. The article is more about Uwe Boll's press conference than the film itself, which is a very good thing, since the press conference is funny while the film sucks ass.
To summarize; they started casting 2 weeks before the film, they got major stars who just happened to be in Europe with some free time, they paid them by the day for their shooting, they hired Romanian mafia whores when they needed naked women for some vampire scenes, and there's even a quote of Uwe bagging on Speilberg. An altogether enjoyable piece, and since it's all we have to tide us over until the movie opens and the horrible reviews start rolling in, I say enjoy it.
For our part, Malaya wants to do something fun on Sunday, so perhaps we'll eat out and see a movie.
Munich or
Syriana, perhaps, in a rare viewing of a good movie. Rare for us and our action-heavy tastes, anyway.
