Appeared in print: Nov. 27, 1998
Oh, what a harvest bounty, pilgrims!This year’s feast of Hollywood turkeys has a stellar guest list. Brad Pitt, Bruce Willis, Michael Keaton, Andy Garcia and the Spice Girls, to name a few, are gnawing on the paltry pickings of Tinseltown’s foulest offerings.
Here are my top 10 gobblers of 1998:
“Meet Joe Black”: Talk about a blind date from hell! Meet Brad Pitt playing Death as a peanut butter-loving, girl-chasing know-it-all. The wryly named antihero haunts mogul Anthony Hopkins and plays kissy-face with the doomed industrialist’s daughter, Claire Forlani. For nearly three hours! Director Martin Brest stretches every scene until the audience is at its breaking point. You might actually have to be a necrophiliac to love this movie. Even Brest fell asleep at the New York premiere.
“Lost in Space”: Danger, Will Hurt! Your career could be going the way of the title. This attempt at Space Family Robinson sees Hurt steering his spaceship into very earthly criticism. Wooden acting couldn’t counterbalance the $70-million-plus budget, while the special effects looked uncannily akin to the shelves at Toys “R” Us. As for the film potential of “Friends” actor Matt LeBlanc, let’s just say that he won’t be quitting his day job any time soon …
“Spice World”: Was it only last January that there were five Spice Girls? The prefab five (now four, since Ginger’s bizarre metamorphosis into a latter-day Mother Teresa) followed those famed Liverpudlians, The Beatles, trying to immortalize their Special Spiciness on celluloid. Alas, the gals didn’t have the “Help!”of genius director Richard Lester. Despite entertaining cameo appearances from Elton John, Roger Moore, Richard E. Grant and others, there was no plot, no acting; in short, no point.
“Soldier”: Kurt Russell, who advised you to bulk up like Schwarzenegger and play a nearly speechless, thoroughly charmless, behaviorally altered fighting machine in the not-too-distant future? Grunting does not become you. Male midlife is a hard thing to cope with – especially when mate Goldie Hawn remains horrifyingly perky, a female Dorian Gray. My advice? Change agents. Now!
“Mercury Rising”: Of all the many kids-in-peril thrillers (think every other John Grisham adaptation), this Bruce Willis vehicle is the most shameless. Renegade G-man Willis must protect an autistic code cracker – boy actor Miko Hughes – from dimpled National Security Agency demon Alec Baldwin. As much as we love Baldwin when he’s naughty (”The Juror,” “Glengarry Glen Ross”), can we really justify letting him drag a handicapped child through hell in his jammies for the sake of entertainment? Apparently not. Grossing only $27.9 million, “Rising” was strictly mercury poisoning at the box office.
“Desperate Measures”: Yet another kiddie-in-peril thriller, my least-favorite genre (it’s the mom in me). Detective dad Andy Garcia’s son has cancer. Genius serial killer Michael Keaton is the boy’s only marrow match. When Garcia springs Keaton from high-security prison, the killer escapes and takes more lives than the one he can save. By comparison on this point alone, it’s the lowbrow criminal equivalent of “Saving Private Ryan.” Keaton, for this you left “Batman”?
“Baseketball”: “South Park” rude boys Trey Parker and Matt Stone leapt out from behind their crass cable ‘toon alter egos in “BASEketball.” They struck out and fouled. They didn’t know how to play the big-screen game, which involves a minimum of plot but plenty of characterization and direction. What more can I say about a comedy where the high point was veteran uglyman Ernest Borgnine choking on a hot dog?
“An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn”: No one likes a sore winner. Embittered multimillion-dollar screenwriter Joe Eszterhas has been a whore to Hollywood for years, pandering to its, er, Baser Instincts. We thought he had reached a new low with “Showgirls,” but, noooo. He had to cry foul at the Hollywood machine, writing a leaden mockumentary full of mean-spirited players moaning over the conflict between art and commerce, as if evil producers had forced Joe to write “Jade.” Listen, Eszterhas: Take the money and run – or write better material.
“A Night at the Roxbury”: The worst of the recent “Saturday Night Live” cast member movies proves that anything can be sold in a pitch meeting if the expense account is right. On TV, Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan have a series of thankfully fleeting, one-joke sketches about two head-bobbing brothers whose only goal in life is to crack the club scene and score, score, score. Crass, materialistic and shallow, “Roxbury” is about as entertaining as watching one of those dashboard pups nodding for 90 minutes.
“Kurt and Courtney”: Brit Nick Broomfield has profiled serial killer Aileen Wuornos and Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss. This year, he ambushed Courtney Love in a documentary that made populist documentarian Michael Moore (”Roger and Me”) look like a pillar of objectivity. Trying to frame the Hole singer for hubby Kurt Cobain’s shotgun suicide, Broomfield prompts Love’s father and former boyfriend to badmouth her (says the latter, “Courtney, you’re not good in bed”). Meanwhile, the worst anyone says about heroin-addicted papa Cobain is that he wasn’t much of a housecleaner. Is it any wonder Love hates this film?