Michael Johnson LETTER FROM LONDON

B MOVIES: 2004     At left, a "brainless" movie. At right, a "mindless" movie.

Year-end movie criticism:
Where pith meets dross

 

By MICHAEL JOHNSON
of TheColumnists.com

Every end-of-year holiday period in London they pad the television schedule with films that most of us have never heard of. Scanning the schedule makes me wonder how so many obviously ill-conceived Hollywood projects pass the scrutiny of the money men.

London’s Sunday Times does it best, unleashing its critics on movies that never should have been made. Nowhere but in the holiday listings do you see so much cinematic garbage collected in one place. The people who write these one-liners deserve credit for their conciseness. And for watching these movies they deserve a medal.

It’s a critic’s field day, a chance to exercise real linguistic pungency. And the listings present a special challenge, for there isn’t much space to play with. This is where pith meets dross.

A sampling of 50 of the Sunday Times’s comments tell the story:

"Heavyweights": Tiresome
"I’ll Be Home for Christmas": Lightweight
"Urban Legends- Final Cut": Mediocre slasher
"Burn, Hollywood, Burn": Dire
"Three Days": Uninspiring
"The Next Best Thing": Begins badly and goes downhill
"The Fast and the Furious": Brainless
"Rules of Obsession": Flimsy melodrama
"Black Beauty": Lame
"Halloween III": Mindless
"Manhunt-Search for the Nightstalker": Cheap
"My Old Friend Joe": Odd
"Death Train": Brainless action adventure
"Annie": Sickly sweet
"Wisdom of Crocodiles": Strange
"Dead Silent": Stiff
"The Hearse": Idiotic
"Police Academy 5": Excruciatingly bad
"Fled": Senseless
"Holiday in the Sun": Flaky
"Harry and the Hendersons": Mush
"Wishbone’s Dog Days of the West": Dire
"Prince Valiant": Kitsch
"Father of the Bride 2": Schmaltzy
"Footloose": Toe-tappingly corny
"I Love Trouble": Old fashioned romcom
"Storm": Average
"Murder by Night": Lacklustre
"The Invisible Man": Flimsy
"Russkies": Implausible
"Holiday Affair": Poor
"102 Dalmatians": Witless sequel
"Little Women": Flimsy drama
"Graveyard Shift": Deserves quick burial
"Yentl": Drab
"The Man Who Sued God": Flaccid
"Max Keeble’s Big Movie": Tiresome
"Home Alone 2": A waste
"Major League 2-Back to the Minors": Abysmal
"St. Patrick--the Irish Legend": Blarney
"Only the Lonely": Plodding
"Money Talks": Tedious
"Mayday": Leaden
"Hotel De Love": Twee romcom
"The Right Connections": Annoying
"The Sign of Four": Awful
"I’m Not Rappaport": Uninspired
"Cabin Boy": A stinker
"Victim of Beauty": Boring
"Illegal in Blue": Slow

©2005 by Michael Johnson.

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