The Hunt For The Worst Movie Of All Time: Desperately Seeking Susan
After watching Death Sentence, a terrible movie starring Kevin Bacon as a father in search of vigilante justice directed by Saw's James Wan, Gabe embarked on The Hunt For The Worst Movie of All Time. This is his sad journey.
[Ed. note: due to a Netflix goof, this week's TWMOAT nominee, Margot at the Wedding, will be next week's TWMOAT nominee. And what was supposed to be next week's nominee will be discussed this week. Important, startling information! But just in case there was any confusion.]
Madonna in 2009 looks like a leather sack stretched tightly over a homemade sculpture of a Velociraptor made out of broken sticks, chicken bones, and Terminator parts. But this was not always the case! She used to be a human woman, with soft skin and actual hair and a face and everything. Those days, of course, are long gone, drifting into the thick smoky haze rising off of the clay pot where she mixed the bat wings and the blood of the innocent in her cursed spell of everlasting life. But you can still catch a glimpse of her, the Madonna that was, in movies like Desperately Seeking Susan. So young! So bad at acting! So what! It's just nice to be reminded that there was a human being under the exoskeleton of desperation and Skynet Patented Real-Flesh Organic Compound. Even monsters used to have dreams!
Desperately Seeking Susan is about (bear with me, this is going to be kind of difficult to explain!) a sassy punk rock chick named Susan (Madonna) who communicates with her would-be-rockstar boyfriend via the Personals Section in the newspaper. Whenever the boyfriend wants to see her, he leaves a "Desperately Seeking Susan" ad in the paper with a time and place to meet. One day, she sees a new ad, so she leaves her New Jersey boyfriend, with whom she has been having a fling, passed out on the bed. But first she steals everything from the room, including a beautiful pair (not a beautiful pair) of earrings! She puts on her signature pyramid coat and goes to meet her boyfriend in New York City! Meanwhile, Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) is a desperate New Jersey housewife who is so bored with her hot tub salesman husband. What she is not bored with is being unhealthily obsessed with the Desperately Seeking Susan cross-country personal ad romance (more on this later). She decides to go to the latest rendezvous and spy on the two lovers, because that is a thing that housewives do. Susan, meanwhile, has put all of her belongings in a locker at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. This is very important, I repeat: Susan has put all of her belongings in a locker at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Susan and her boyfriend meet up at Battery Park while Roberta spies on them, and then the boyfriend immediately has to go, he just wanted to go through a really arcane and borderline-impossible system of communication in order to tell her hello? So Roberta follows Susan. Sure. She follows her into a used clothing store on St. Mark's Place where Susan trades her trademark stupid pyramid jacket that is so stupid but is obviously such an important plot device for a pair of boots. Then Roberta buys her jacket! Because she's kind of a creep!
We are about 15 minutes into the movie.
Back at home, Roberta changes her hair to look more like Susan's and wears the jacket and her husband would be creeped out, because this is creepy, but he's obviously having an affair and doesn't like his wife anyway. Then Roberta finds the Port Authority Bus Terminal locker key in the jacket pocket. Oh no! All of Susan's stuff! MEANWHILE, Susan's New Jersey boyfriend who she robbed and left has been murdered. Something to do with stealing a bunch of ancient Egyptian artifacts. For example, ANCIENT EGYPTIAN EARRINGS? Roberta leaves a Desperately Seeking Susan ad in the personals section of the paper, saying that a stranger wants to meet her to give her back her key. That's really creepy if you think about it! Susan goes to meet her but gets arrested by the police because she is too punk. The bad guy also saw the ad, and he shows up and sees Roberta and thinks she is Susan and tries to attack her to get back the important earrings. But also Susan's boyfriend saw the ad and got jealous/worried, so he called his friend Dez and asked Dez to go check up on her. So Dez rides up and scares the bad guy off, but in doing so Roberta also gets scared and she BUMPS HER HEAD ON A LIGHTPOLE AND NOW SHE HAS AMNESIA AND ALSO SHE DROPS HER PURSE INTO THE RIVER. Oh boy. Dez has never met Susan, and all Roberta has for identification is a locker key for a locker containing all of Susan's stuff. So now Roberta thinks she is Susan. So now everyone is trying to find Susan but also kind of trying to find Roberta who thinks she is Susan but doesn't remember anything. And Dez and Susan/Roberta begin to fall in love, duh. Wacky wacky wacky. Blah blah blah. Eventually the bad guy attacks Susan/Roberta again, but he is scared away by the police and she falls and BUMPS HER HEAD AGAIN, and now she remembers who she is, but she realizes that she was unhappy in her life. Blah blah blah. Wacky wacky wacky. Everything culminates in a New York nightclub during a magic show (you know those MAGIC SHOWS that were so popular in the New York nightlife scene of the '80s) and Roberta leaves her cheating husband, and Dez finds out that Roberta isn't Susan, and Susan reunites with her boyfriend, and the bad guy is hit in the head with a whiskey bottle. Roberta and Dez are going out boyfriend and divorced girlfriend now, and the girls return the NEFERTITI EARRINGS (seriously, that is what they are called) and are heroes (AND FRIENDS!).
Wow!
This movie has one of the most complicated and convoluted plots while still feeling like it was written by someone with a third-grade reading comprehension that I have ever seen.
Obviously, when you make a movie this reliant on plot twists there's not a lot of room for actual character development or human emotion. Which is probably fine, because none of the actors are very good in it! Madonna: stiiiiinks. Rosanna Arquette: whatever. Aidan Quinn: the Robert Pattinson of his time. I was surprised to find that Steven Wright was in this. He does not have a very big role, but he is memorable! I read somewhere (in my dreams) that Steven Wright's role in Desperately Seeking Susan paved the way for Todd Barry to be in The Wrestler.
My absolute favorite thing about this movie, of course, is its depiction of a world in which everyone immediately turns to the personals in the newspaper, and reads every single ad. Every day. You could easily see someone trying to remake this today using Craigslist and it would be amazing and I would see it in the movie theater. So stupid. What a stupid, stupid plot device. But it makes me laugh. At one point, Roberta is sitting in a New York park, forelorn and unsure of what to do. Which is when she spots a homeless man sleeping under a newspaper, AND SHE GOES AND READS THE PERSONAL ADS OFF OF A HOMELESS MAN'S FACE. Good thing she does, too, because there is a very important personal ad on there.
This movie also has a lot of great quotes in it, like:
"Nobody named Blackie is sincere."
"You bought a used coat? What are we, poor?"
"I believe some of that stuff is mine. Like the answering machine."
And even more of just being so '80s all over the place it's ridiculous.
These fun guys know what I'm talking about!
And that is the problem, from our point-of-view, or the blessing, from the movie's-point-of-view, with trying to critically deal with a Desperately Seeking Susan. As a kitschy time capsule for a world that no longer exists (pre-9/11), it's simply too silly and mildly-fun-to-watch to be genuinely offensive or insulting the way of, say, an Elizabethtown, or a Dan in Real Life. It's like a holiday, celebrate! Get it? You get it.
Next week: Margot at the Wedding (for real). As always, please leave your suggestions in the comments or in an email. And if you haven't done so already, please consult the Official Rules.
Posted by Gabe at 5:52 PM in The Hunt For The Worst Movie Of All Time
Tags: Aidan Quinn | Desperately Seeking Susan | John Turturro | Laurie Metcalf | Madonna | Rosanna Arquette | Steven Wright
I would like to add "Million Dollar Hotel" and "Mad Love" as two of the Worst movies of all time.
Score = 0
I agree about Mad Love. It really makes no fucking sense.
Score = 2
She's going to get cheez dust all over those nice white gloves.
Score = 34
I love that everything has progressed with the exception of Cheez Doodles. That damn packaging is exactly the same.
Gabe, your description of the current appearance of Madonna is the best thing I've read all day.
Score = 16
If memory serves, I think this is the movie wherein the almost 30-year-old Madonna plays her 16-year-old self in a flashback. Uhhuhyeahright, Madonna. This is the only recollection of this movie that my brain has allowed itself to retain.
If you want to punish yourself with another miserable Madonna movie, I'd recommend Body of Evidence. She sits on Willem Dafoe's face and pours wax on his chest. You just can't wash that out of your memory.
Score = 9
You mean Pavel Datsuk's chest.
Score = -4
Datsyuk*. You may be the King of Kenya, but you're the King of Suck when it comes to spelling underrated and highly skilled Russian hockey players' names.
Score = 7
Your memory does not serve. There is no Madonna flashback in this film.
Score = 2
I just stopped by to submit gossip again. hey, persistence worked for the cult of Last Kiss. (persistence, and holy fuck that movie is so bad)
Score = 0
May I recommend "Revolutionary Road" because it was melodramatic, terrible, and featured Michael Shannon playing a crazy person with a lockjaw voice.
Score = 0
You hate Revolutionary Road too? I thought I was the only one. Sam Mendes should really keep his drama in the theatre.
Score = -1
Somehow abortions as major plots bring out the worst in movies. Go figure.
Score = -2
ie 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days
Score = -1
Even though everyone seems to be downgrading the sentiment, I thought Revolutionary Road was the worst movie I saw last year - an utterly tedious, humorless 2+ hours of horrible people yelling at each other for reasons no one in the audience cared about.
Score = 2
I'm not sure the book is any better (after reading that shiptile, no way I'm watching the movie).
Score = 0
shiptile. i'm just saying
Score = 0
"Tiptoes" starring Matthew McConaughey and Gary Oldman as twin brothers (but Gary Oldman is a dwarf) should really be in the top 5 running for The Worst Movie of All Time. Kate Beckinsale plays the love interest. It's ridiculously dramatic and incomprehensible, as well as totally and completely offensive.
Score = -1
You must be this tall to read the previous discussion:
http://videogum.com/archives/trailer/holy-shit-tiptoes_066862.html
Score = 25
Ohhh. Yes. My brain had erased its knowledge of this movie's existence. Gabe, please watch it so I don't have to.
Score = 0
i'm still holding out for city of angels.
Score = 21
Seconded!
Score = 5
Absolutely! Awful, awful movie...
Score = 4
"the haunting of molly hartley" and "Heathers". both awful. possibly the worst.
Score = -52
I'll believe you on your first pick...but Heathers? Motherfuckin' HEATHERS?! I think you need to go outside and think about what you've done.
Score = 39
Molly Hartley was barely a movie (more of an 80 minute series of noises and muted colors) and Heathers? Seriously?
Score = 6
Didn't realize people felt so strongly about Heathers. Even if it is a cult classic, I thought it laughable, for the wrong reasons. And whether it is objectively good or not, it would give plenty of material for Gabe to work with.
Score = -16
WOW! For real? Heathers is probably one of the best teen comedies ever made! Do not touch that shit!
Score = 0
I nominate Breakfast at TIffany's. It hasn't aged well,has Andy Rooney in an extremely stereotypical rascist role and is full of WTF moments.
Score = -17
Andy.....Rooney........wait what?
Score = 17
It's Mickey Rooney, and everyone knows that that's one of the most ridiculously racist things committed to film ever. But the rest of the movie is tolerable at worst, and besides, it's too classic for consideration on the Hunt.
Score = 8
The KKK was racist. Hitler was racist. Mickey Rooney is just someone you don't think is funny in that part. So let's be careful with our words. Plus, it's a great movie.
And without it, no Deep Blue Something. (Google it, kids!)
Score = -6
No, I would say yellowface is pretty fuckin' racist. It was a racist portrayal of an Asian character by a white actor. But otherwise, great movie.
Score = 6
Yay, we agree on most things!
Score = -1
I'll take Mickey Rooney to block, Wink!
Yes, that hasn't aged well at all..
Score = 3
Yes!! I've been campaigning (you know. by thinking hard at my computer) for Breakfast at Tiffanys for ages. That and IN THE LAND OF WOMEN, fucking hell.
Score = -2
Oh my GOD In The Land Of Women. I watched about 45 minutes of it and had to turn it off because Jesus Christ it was so bad.
Score = 2
I'm voting you up for the fuck of it because I too hate B at T's. She's a selfish, spoiled asshole but she's white and pretty so we should feel bad for her because she grew up poor. Makes sense!
Score = 0
no. You're not supposed to feel sorry for her. She's wretched, but you don't have to like her to like the movie. In fact, the rest of it works better if you treat her like the child she is. That's the way Edwards directed it.
Score = 6
Uh, you may have missed the part where she is a terrified and lonely hooker who has adopted the persona of a glamorous movie star to stave off her attacks of chronic depression.
It really is a good movie but I will shut up about it now because I will shut up.
Gabe, watch Nell!
Score = 11
10,000 BC
Score = 6
I again nominate Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist on the simple fact it is what Michael Cera has chosen to do instead of the Arrested Development movie (he's begrudgingly on board now, but wasn't then).
Score = 6
So you're nominating it to be one of the worst ever because he didn't make a movie that hasn't been made yet anyway and that he will, as of now, make?
Score = 24
Yes. That and it was a bad movie, it's basically another carbon copy faux-indie twee movie with stupid drawings on the movie poster, a "meaningful" soundtrack and characters acting awkward. Cera being in that over committing to the AD movie is just terrible icing on the awful cake.
Score = 8
But what are hipster indie teens gonna watch and make out to? It's not like Cameron Crowe's making "Singles II" anytime soon. Also The Forgotten, for pete's sake!
Score = 3
Someone else finally took up my campaign for The Forgotten! Thanks, Sen. Remember Gabe, this movie contains Julianne Moore, aliens(!) with mind control technology, and McNulty!
I did this once before, but let me again sum up my favorite thing about this movie. The premise hinges on the fact that aliens need our children (or something), and thus steal McNulty and Julianne Moore's kids (separately, they're not married) and then wipe the children's existence from everyone on Earth's memory. It just makes sense. But the hilarious part is when Julianne Moore starts to realize what's going on, she convinces McNulty that he once had a kid by TEARING OFF HIS WALLPAPER to reveal THE KID'S FINGERPAINTINGS underneath. Naturally. Because all great space-traveling mind-wiping aliens are felled by their inability to use primer when repainting a house. Seriously, they remove pictures, documents, records, and oh yeah EVERYONE ON EARTH'S MEMORIES, but obviously they didn't know what to do about these fingerpaintings on McNulty's wall, so they just repainted and hoped he wouldn't notice. Foiled again!
Also, the other best part is the movie ends with Julianne Moore destroying the aliens with A MOTHER'S LOVE. Because that is the one thing even alien mind-wiping technology can never destroy. (Kind of sexist, since McNulty presumably would have continued on in wiped-memory bliss without Julianne Moore's devastating wallpaper removal technique. What about a FATHER'S LOVE, The Forgotten?) Like the aliens have destroyed her house and lots of other shit and also traveled through galaxies, but Julianne Moore just keeps yelling "I LOVE MY SON!" at them, and they're like "fuck, she got us."
Love finds a way, Gabe. So find a way to review The Forgotten stat!
Score = 6
You obviously haven't learned the lessons of Harry Potter. A mother's love is pretty much the most powerful thing there is.
Score = 2
I also nominate Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. It was SO BAD. Did anyone actually see it? Terrible. It was like a not good version of Babysitter's Club. Exact same story but with a dumber execution.
Score = -1
I'm astounded that Margot at the Wedding is on this list. That's like putting The Celebration. Is Margot really that despised? I loved it, and I felt I was far from the only one...
Score = -1
I liked it too, Spencer. For which I have been roundly vilified by everyone else who saw it. But I guess I just have a soft spot for movies about really damaged WASPS.
Score = 3
i love the celebration and i'm the one who nominated margot
Score = -1
Somebody is going to make a mint off of remaking this movie with craigslist. Except it'll star Miley Cyrus or Taylor Swift and be aimed at 16-year-olds.
Score = 3
...but the teenage boy characters will still wear jeans as basket-ey as the guys checking out Madonna in the repeating if, because actual jeans for adult men are no longer made in the way that emphasizes the basket. Except when they're worn by pre-teen Disney sexpots pretending to not be selling sex.
Score = 5
Wait... there going to make a movie where a 16 year old girl goes to meet a guy through craigslist? How ROMANTIC! This could be Chris Hansen's only opportunity to make the jump to the big screen. I am pumped
Score = 12
The Chronicles of Riddick
xXx
Van Helsing
Stealth
Pearl Harbor
Score = 2
What a material girl...
Score = -7
I'm gonna have to disagree with including Desperately Seeking Susan. I think it's great 80s cheese.
Score = 9
this made me lol. You really brought it to this Hunt, Gabe.
Score = -3
CHEEZ DOODLES
Score = 0
So disappointed to not see Margot at the Wedding criticized this week, I fucking hate that movie. Until next week.... Oh and AMERICAN DREAMZ needs to be given the Gabe-treatment (TM).
Score = -2
I've actually always loved this movie precisely. How can you go wrong with that kitsch?
A suggestion just occurred to me the other day - 8mm. Nicholas Cage and a snuff film. How can you go wrong?
Score = 10
The first guy's got a big ass, the second a FUPA and the last is stashing a weed bulge. And they're all in the Mike Sever fan club.
Score = 6
Just stopping by for my obligatory bi(tri?)-monthly recommendations of Original Sin and Mister Lonely. Especially Original Sin. Oh god.
Score = 0
Mister Lonely, is that the movie with Diego Luna as a Micheal Jackson impersonator? If so, then that's your own fault for watching that! C'mon dude.
Oh and yeah, I'm still throwing in Beloved.
Score = 2
Two recommendations some might disagree wth; both have Ben Kingsley.
1. The Wackness
2. Transsiberian
Score = 1
I'd like to throw out Never Back Down for the fact that its a wannabe 'Karate Kid' meets 'Roadhouse' minus Pat Morita, Ben Gazara and any sense of awesomeness.
And that its message is conflicted rage is justified as long as you beat up a bigger asshole than yourself.
Score = 1
hey, holiday, celebrate is a madonna lyric! was that on purpose?
Score = 2
You get it.
Score = 6
Armageddon is the worst. And it made a lot of money. And it doesn't star Robin Williams or retards. And it's long and might have been the first Michael Bay movie to feature meteors streaking through buildings.
Score = 3
Spanking the Monkey is the worst movie of all time. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111252/
It's like a vat of bad movie goo that has lived in the back of my brain festering since it's release.
If I could surgically remove it - I would.
Score = -6
The Lake House.... it didn't make any fucking sense.
my mailbox has a time machine and you died, but if i put this letter in the mailbox warning you not to die - right after i found out you've already died, you'll drive up... alive... in a car... because that's how death and time work.
Ebon Moss-Bachrach was in the movie, and even though he's the most attractive man on the planet, i wanted to rip his eyes out of his head for participating in this nonsensical shit fest of a movie.
and Keanu Reeves is as hot and wooden as he ever was, so no surprises there.
Score = 12
Great, now you've ruined the ending. (I'm never going to see The Lake House.)
Score = 12
That's that guy's name? I first saw him in Mona Lisa Smile (Shut up, all of you) and have loved him since. He was the best on that episode of Fringe.
P.S. Gabe, Please to be considering Mona Lisa Smile.
Score = 8
you're all idiots. this movie is hardly the worst of all time. it was of medium quality and actually pretty dang entertaining.
Score = 3
Little Black Book.
Please.
It's garbage!
Score = 8
My nomination starring Brittany Murphy: Uptown Girls
Score = 1
I'm going to nominate Eagle Eye again. It may not be the worst, but it is terrible!
Score = 3
"An Awfully Big Adventure" - I can barely remember what happens because my brain made a decision to file that one under "thing that I should have been blackout drunk for" but I do remember screaming at the screen every time the shot cut because the plot would invariably take a left turn each and every time with absolutely no warning or justification. Woof. A torture to sit though.
Score = 1
1. Is that Zachary Quinto as goth kid #2? (No, obviously it is not.) 2. In 1994 I dreamed that Madonna and I were good friends and that we were shopping for CDs at Blockbuster Music when she whispered into my ear what her next big shocking media-persona-stunt-thing was going to be: having a penis. Then she took her penis out right there in the Blockbuster Music for me to see! And there were Boy Scouts shopping there at the time and they might see it! I was all "Madonna, put your penis away right now!" 3. I nominate "Crash" again.
Score = 24
I thought the same thing about the Goth Kid.
Score = 1
Damn Gabe that was one cold (yet accurate) discription of Madonna. Guess the microbiotic diet isn't doing much for her especially with her attrocious Louis Vuitton ads making an attempt to expose her junk. I once again nominate 'How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.'
Score = 0
Damn Gabe that was one rough (yet accurate) discription of Madonna. Guess the microbiotic diet isn't doing much for her especially with her attrocious Louis Vuitton ads making an attempt to expose her junk. I once again nominate 'How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.'
Score = -8
Michael, with John Travolta as an angel and Andie MacDowell being intolerable.
Score = 19
I just bought that movie on VHS. For a dollar.
John Travolta looked "special" on the cover. And then I watched it only to realize there wasn't really a plot to it....
Score = 1
This movie looks really entertaining.
Also, SILENT HILL.
Score = 0
it almost is, but then they show someone being burned alive... advantage, SILENT HILL!
Score = 2
Mystery Date? All we wanted was a nice fluffy teen comedy to come down after an all night ecstasy bender, and that fucking thing insisted on having some kind of PLOT.
Score = 1
You should do Blood Work, the Clint Eastwood movie. A hideously bad and ridiculous thriller.
Score = 0
How does this qualify for the hunt? It's a cheesy 80s movie which are the best movies.
Score = 12
I think Desperately Seeking Susan didn't deserve to be over-analyzed and bashed like this. Of course it's bad, but it knows it's bad, and it's not hatred-worthy, as, let's say...fucking Crash.
I nominate Cold Mountain, again. And Nell.
Score = 13
If you liked this you'll love Who's That Girl.
Score = 1
ha - i thought gabe forgot about the tiger and was really wondering why it wasn't in the review. then i read your comment krys and thought my god! madonna was in two awful movies that have melded into the same one in my head.
Score = 2
A “Netflix goof” would be a great ingredient for a WMOAT plot
Score = 13
Everybody, everybody -- I have breaking news: Down To You is on Tuesday night on Lifetime Movie Network. Prepare for what is truly one of the worst movies of all time. No "even if others liked it, I hated it" type nonsense, this is truly awful...so enjoy, everybody!
Score = 7
Paul Blart: Mall Cop. The villains ride skateboards and BMX bikes.
Score = 1
I disapprove of 'Margaret' as a contender based on two facts: (1) Nicole Kidman actually seems normal and not robot faced throughout the movie (2) Jack Black plays it straight for once in his pathetic excuse for a film career that doesn't involve Kyle Gass.
Atonement is so much worse.
Score = -3
Jersey Girl (is this even technically a movie?)
And again: SIDEWAYS! I do not care if I am alone in hating it.
Score = 4
Remember though that Kevin Smith stated that Jersey Girl was "not for critics" which I guess is a thing you can do. I guess. Maybe.... Ok seriously, what does that even mean? I bet you'd love to criticize this movie, wouldn't you, you critics. But you can't! It's not for you. hahahaha. So since that makes sense and is logical, and Gabe is obviously a critic, I guess this movie can't get done... It's a crying shame (DO IT!)
Score = 4
Wow. Nicely plagiarized from Penny Arcade. Pretty much word for word.
Score = 4
Augh. I was so looking forward to Margot at the Wedding. Not because I've seen it, think it is the worst, and am looking forward to Gabe tearing it apart, but because I made the mistake of picking it up from the 4 for $20 tables at Blockbuster. Several things led to this disaster: confusing what I'd heard about it with what I'd heard about Rachel Getting Married, thinking that I tend to enjoy what Jack Black is selling despite my better judgement, and the fact that I needed a fourth movie to qualify for the sale. Soon, everyone told me how horrible it was and I noticed that the case said it had the same director as The Squid and the Whale, which I hated. Not only that, but if I accept the likelihood that Margot at the Wedding is a horrible movie, it doesn't seem like the kind that would have an enjoyable horribleness. So, yes. Whether I actually get around to watching this movie or not is in Gabe's hands. Will it sound like a big enough mess to be enjoyable? I'm a busy man, I need answers!
Score = 4
I respectfully disagree, despite Gabe's well structured blargument. "Into the Groove" was on this soundtrack, and it's easily (IMHO) Madonna's best song. So 80's, so good.
Score = 10
SPA KING!
Score = 2
I nominate The Promotion, which despite having Lily Taylor, John C. Reilly and Jenna Fischer in it, is just really terrible and tone deaf and easily mockable. I think it's maybe supposed to be Sean William Scott's serious dramatic movie?
You will thank me (hate me) for the two hours of your life you'll never get back.
Score = 0
Margot At The Wedding was a REALLY good movie. It's certainly not perfect. Nor is it for everybody, but I sincerely can't understand all the hatred directed toward it. I think it's a little much. There was a great performance from Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Interesting supporting performances from Jack Black and John Turturro. The writing is really tight. I understand that watching whiney rich intellectual socialites isn't everybodies thing, but I sincerely think the movie presents REAL characters.
I definitely doesn't deserve the hatred it's recieving. Especially considering that there are INFINITELY worse films to direct your hatred towards.
I'd go as far as to say that Margot At The Wedding is pretty criminally underrated. Certainly better than some of the other crap that passes for "independent" cinema these days (Juno. Little Miss Sunshine). Hell it's better than anything Wes Anderson has released since Royal Tennenbaums (and Noah Baumbach CONSTANTLY gets shit for ripping Wes Anderson off, which is simply NOT the case. If anything I'd say it's the other way around).
I'd suggest using your energy to attack:
The Holiday
Little Miss Sunshine
Or if you're in the mood to attack whiney rich people movies with Jennifer Jason Leigh, go for
The Anniversary Party. It's infinitely more deserving than Margot...or ANYTHING that Noah Baumbach has been involved in (Save Life Aquatic).
Score = 2
Dr. T & the Women. Holy shit, that was an unreasonably awful movie.
Score = 0
i'm sorry if i have already missed it, but has CATWOMAN been suggested. i only saw about 10 seconds on friday and i dont think anything can be as bad as that.
Score = 0
I watched this with a girl that I was dating in junior high. It was the first movie I ever watched with a girl alone in my room on my new VCR (I'm so old, you guys) and I was trying really hard to get to second base with her. Anyway, she wouldn't let me and this movie sucked.
Score = 13
The fact that the movie you were going to write about (Margot at the Wedding) didn't come in, yet you were able to roll with the punches and still have a shitload of material to write about when this movie came just shows how terrible Desperately Seeking Susan is...
On a side note, Netflix must think you're a meth-addicted 45 year old Cat Lady with your movie selections because of the movies you'r watching for the Hunt
Score = 6
This actually made me want to watch this movie!
Anyways, as always Art School Confidential AND Dragonfly. The. Worst.
Score = 5
Yep! DSS is the worst movie of all time! And I say that as someone who is old enough to have seen it when it was first released. I knew then that Madonna was bad news.
Score = -1
Man, perfect summary of why DSS should never have been nominated. To say it's TWMOAT is like saying a hot dog is not cuisine. Uh...DUH.
Score = 4
WILLARD THE CRISPIN GLOVER REMAKE. oh and, you should really consider the next best thing with madonna and rupert everett. let me just run you through the plot: madonna and her best gay friend have sex (WHAT) and then madonna is pregnant, and then they raise the child together, and then it turns out it's not even his child, it's some other dude's, and then they go to court and shit goes DOWN. it makeh no sense.
Score = 1
Well down here in Sydney we have a monthly social club called CMAS (Crap Movie Appreciation Society).
So far we've viewed around 60 movies, and in that were a few that actually destroyed out will to live. Bear in mind that this a a group of people with a high level of tolerance to crap movies. So if a film went too far into crapness even for us, you KNOW it's bad.
The top 5 films that crushed us were:
5 - Barb Wire. OK with Pamela Anderson-Lee you don't expect much. But this went lower than our very low expectations. The film made no sense at all and the opening scene was of Pam doing a topless pole-dance in the rain which failed to relate to the story in any discernible way. The lethal final blow was the sound mix which rendered most of the bad dialogue incomprehensible due to the relentless background noise in each scene.
4 - The Hottie and the Nottie. Paris Hilton. Say no more. Contains the immortal line "a life without orgasms is like a world without flowers".
3 - Catwoman. When you get a Paris Hilton film you don't expect much. But a film with an Academy Award winning actress (Halle Berry) comes with at least some basic expectations. This fails to meet any of them. It is simply awful.
2 - Howard the Duck. Costing an astonishing $37 million of mid-80's money (a HUGE budget for the time) this film is such utter dreck it defies comprehension. I can forgive less than brilliant special effects given the era, but having no story, no acting and an 80's band performance as the finale condemns this piece of garbage to a special place in hell.
1 - Battlefield Earth. A $70 million budget. John Travolta. Forrest Whittaker. Yes, it's Scientology brought to the big screen. And the result was arguably the worst film in history (The Golden Rasberry crowd agreed). Most of the time the plot makes no sense, and when it does it is awful. The $70M seems to have been spent on hiring armies of people to fling buckets of dirt across the screen. Every (and I mean EVERY) shot has the camera at some sort of weird (and highly irritating) tilt. And yes, the 3000 AD human cavemen defeat the evil aliens by attacking them with fully-fuelled harrier jets which they found in an abandoned US military base.
Score = -2
As long as we are on the 80s: On the Right Track, starring Gary Coleman and Norman Fell and some guy with a My-Two-Dads beard. As I recall Coleman plays a homeless kid who can predict winning horses and stuff, but only when he's shining shoes, and then a middle-class white couple takes a shine to him, and there is at least one long speech that has very churchy, Christian-y overtones such that even when I was 8 I wondered, "Was this movie funded all or in part by a misguided but stealthy Evangelical group?"
To this day I wonder, but am too lazy to do a google.
Score = 4
You should end every one of these by creatively destroying the dvd somehow
Score = -2
no, i think netflicks might want their shitty movies back.
Score = 3
Alright I'm going to nominate Home Fries again.
Score = 1
Me and You and Everyone we Know. So so so terrible.
Score = -7
Maybe you have to be as old as Madonna (I am) to appreciate DSS and to have lived in NYC in the '80s (I did), but I can't even imagine not loving DSS. Dissing the campy magic show? That's exactly the sort of thing that would have been featured at the Lizard Lounge in the East Village. DSS is about 8000 times better and more authentic than that crap film After Hours (I don't care if it IS Scorsese; it's CRAP). I used to live around the corner from Love Saves the Day (the store where Madonna's character exchanges her jacket for the boots, themselves almost identical to a pair I had in 1984). Watching that film is like having home movies of my 20s.
For those of us who weren't watching Thundercats out in the suburbs in 1985, this is a fabulous film.
Score = 5
I'd like to nominate Blindness. Simultaneously ridiculous and vile, but neither one in the good way. (The Forgotten was what reminded me of this.. I always thought I liked Julianne Moore, but she's really in a lot of terrible, terrible movies lately.)
Score = 1
If you add a puma and substitute stolen earrings for stolen necklace, isn't this just the plot to Who's That Girl?
Score = 1
I'm going to nominate American Beauty.
Score = -2
I nominate Brand New World, which is probably the most boring movie I've ever seen, despite Ray Winstone talking to seals and getting a stroke and Guy Pearce not being on the DVD cover?
Score = 0
I'd like to second what klg19 said above. It may all be "80s kitsch" to you kids, but to us old farts it's what our 20s looked like. So you're wrong, it's a terrific movie and a great snapshot of when NYC was a far more vibrant city than it is now.
And don't you dare start snickering at any 70s movies - the hair! the flares! - I was alive then too.
Score = 5
I NOMINATE ELIZABETHTOWN. A HEAP OF GARBAGE WITH A DECENT SOUNDTRACK. THANKS CAMERON CROWE.
Score = -2
Getting back to the movie you talked about in The Hunt, while I remember really liking (loving, even) “Desperately Seeking Susan” when I saw it in the theater a gazillion years ago, I can’t disagree with anything you said in this review. Gabe, that is your magic! Plus, wasn’t Madonna really beautiful once?
And a new nomination would be “Limbo” because it was such a suckfest I couldn’t make it past the halfway mark. Zzzzzz. OH! And add “Miracle Mile” to that – the only end-of-the-world-movie that makes you pray the end comes as quickly as possible kill off all of the moronic characters!
Score = 0
Submitted for your approval, the curious COLOR OF NIGHT (1994)
So bad, it makes super-hot Jane March from THE LOVER (1992) look as un-sexy as Wilford Brimley in a sweaty undershirt, saying "for the win"
Score = 0
nothing is ever as bad as fargo. i was nearly crying from how much it sucked by twenty minutes in. The worst part was, everyone in the sold-out theatre CLAPPED when it ended...I was stunned how my (once) friends raved on and on AND ON about it...and for months, reviewers, too, raved about its brilliance... I felt like I was trapped in some weird horror film, like invasion of the body snatchers or something...was I the only person left in the world who could see this film was beyond obnoxious/condescending/dull/ridiculous and just plain crap? to this day, someone starting in on the wonder of fargo still gives me shudders down my spine...
Score = -2
how is The Room not added in the worst movie list
Score = -1
You have to see it on the big screen.
Score = 0
it's irrational, maybe even perverse to feel this way, but dudes, i LOVE this movie.
Score = 0
Madonna. She's a performer, no?
Score = 0
This movie is amazing. Period. Madonna is awesome when she gets to play herself.
Score = 0
Ps. Love that Pyramid Jacket.
Score = 0
Worst Movie.... Has Southland Tales been done? (I still love you, Buffy)
Score = 0
Desperately Seeking Susan is one of my all time favorite movies! Thank you for reminding me why!
Madonna was so hot when she was 1) young and 2) a healthy weight :)
It totally has about as much plot as an episode of Carmen Sandiego, but the lesbian obsession subtext is indeed pleasing.
80's! Amusing Prostitutes! Hot Tub Commercials! Villainous villains of villainy! Plastic earrings as an important plot point!
And people wonder why i like Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon.
Score = 0
I warned you not to review the movie because it was too cheesy awesome. but did you listen to me? nope. But I'm glad you liked it! It's a stupid, fun movie that isn't trying to be the greatest movie of all time but being what it is: a madonna vehicle with a lil bit of everything.
Score = 0
Feeling Minnesota was the first movie I ever walked out of the theater b/c it was so bad.
Score = 0
I really love Desparately Seeking Susan. It can't count as a bad movie if it's fun to watch, and this one is fun -- it's a bit of a low-rent After Hours. With good people in it.
Have you already watched Girls Just Want to Have Fun? I just saw on TV recently and had my mouth open the entire time -- either yelling at the characters or just in dumbfounded stupefication. Helen Hunt! SJParker! Super, super amazingly bad. But might fall into the so-bad-its-good category.
Score = 0
i actually thought desperately seeking susan was a great movie! it was really funny with a clever twist, and I didn't find the acting to be half-bad. The actors had to respresent somewhat shallow characters, but that doesn't mean they can't act. I also really like madonna and admire her for being such an indivual. These days, individuality to that extent tends to be mocked and labeled wierd. The 80's were a time where individuality was expressed and celebrated.
Score = 0
i actually thought desperately seeking susan was a great movie! it was really funny with a clever twist, and I didn't find the acting to be half-bad. The actors had to respresent somewhat shallow characters, but that doesn't mean they can't act. I also really like madonna and admire her for being such an indivual. These days, individuality to that extent tends to be mocked and labeled wierd. The 80's were a time where individuality was expressed and celebrated.
Score = 0