Once every year it is time to look back at movies that were so artistically disatrous that they become great pieces of art. This category will over the year fill with potential candidates for that prestigious award
Ladies and Gentlemen, the first Speed Racer of the year nominee has landed!
The future director of Superman: Man of Steel (2012) decided to open the season with a hilarious trainwreck.
Following a number of cliches strung together by a horrible Sweet Dreams cover, the heroine Baby Doll (no, I wish I would be kidding you) ends up in an Asylum, which is naturally run by crooks who do the only reasonable thing and run a brothel with the girls. Baby Doll and a given number of inmates plan to escape from the asylum. Using her imagination to dance (yes seriously) Baby Doll battles Nazis, Dragons and everything that was already shown in the trailer – showing us how much could have gone wrong with Inception.
Before we get into this, here is a quote that summons everything that you can expect from this movie:
Father!
(character goes to old man, turns to other characters)
That’s my father
After being unable to remember the events of July 10th (filed under Twilight) our scientists tried using various methods to make the subjects recreate his impressions of said night, but everything failed. On August 20th we tried a new method. Our leading psychiatrist, Dr. Venkman, was convinced that an event, traumatizing enough would trigger the lost memories out of the subconscious so we can finally understand what terrible things happened on July 10th.
Dr. Venkman assured us, that a shocking enough evening with M. Night Shyamalan’s newest movie “The Last Airbender” would get the job done.
Here is what we could recreate from the insane mumblings:
00:00:00:00
Where am I?
And why the hell am I wearing 3d glasses?
Is it already time for Step-Up 3d or Piranha 3d?
00:00:14:15
Doesn’t look like Piranha… The theatre seems pretty full, so probably a blockbuster.
00:02:08:15
Paramount? Maybe Star Trek 12? That would be awesome…
00:04:08:15
The…
Last…
Airbender?
NOOOOOOOOOO-
00:06:09:19
-OOOOOOOOOO-
00:08:19:19
-OOOOOOOOOO!!!!
00:10:29:19
Hm, after an opening crawl that looked like something from Power Rangers: The Movie, we are in the frozen something, and there is a kid with something on its head, probably important and why are they…. HOLY SHIT! Did that thing just smash the brother of the girl and she didn’t even warn him? What kind of sick relationship is that?
00:13:16:23
I’m Dev Patel, I played the Slumdog Millionaire but that didn’t save me from doing this movie! Now tremble, as I tell you how evil I am… or not, wait they show stuff to the airbender-child-thing to test it… like Lost or was it Buddhism?
00:14:16:19
We need to protect random kid.
Why?
Wouldn’t you protect me as well?
Yeah, cause you’re my sister.
There you have it.
What the… at least try to think of a reason for your characters to follow the main character, that’s just dumb, oh I guess its destiny, kinda like Lost
00:18:19:20
Holy hell… are we seriously treated to another monolog? I mean, come on… how exactly did this guy write the Sixth Sense?
Ah, he probably stole it.
00:23:24:25
I’m not sure if it’s the shitty 3d, but why is SIXTY PERCENT of the goddamn screen filled with the face of the bald kid?
00:24:30:19
Way too sober for this movie.
00:30:21:19
Hey earth benders! You have been held prisoners by two guards, who get beaten up by a teenager, have you ever considered, you know… to like… use the GODDAMN EARTH! I mean, have you never thought of kicking those goddamn people with your earth power? You seriously need a child to point that out?
00:42:19:19
Wow forty minutes until the first montage… nothing gets you going like a montage, maybe we can show the evil guy holding a valuable picture, that’s like showing genuine emotion.
Did anyone read this script before shooting or has M. Night Shylaman lunatic freedom?
00:48:20:10
Look at me! I’m sitting in a cinema, I am watching a movie, I think this movie is not good that’s why I am laughing at the screen – see I’m already starting to talk like a Shyalan character, now the only thing left to do is end my scenes in the middle of
00:50:19:10
Where was I? Maybe I should repeat that I am not amused with this movie because…
00:52:09:10
Stop editing my thoughts M. Night Shymaln!
00:55:10:19
Come on kiddo! You can’t follow the keymaker from Matrix who happens to be the only guy at a HUUUGE temple into said HUUUGE perfectly-suited-for-an-ambush-temple, seriously, don’t you listen to Admiral Ackbar?
01:00:00:00
Admiral Ackbar has seen better traps than that one.
Why is everything blurry again? It’s the second time during the movie – oh wait, that’s actually a storyelement? Why are we even spending time with these characters, I mean seriously?
01:05:10:19
Uh, the Slumdog guy is explaining his motivations, I’m curious, erm o.k. so a random kid knows every detail from his backstory? O.k…. so then something happened some time ago and apparently his father made fun of him, telling him he can fight his sister (probably meaning that he is so weak?) and then…
01:07:08:09
Screw you Shamalan! You can’t justify your characters actions by letting another one tell a boring story until we get so distracted we forget what was happening so that you can just cut to..
01:09:19:09
Captured again or not? Or freed? And why is Patel monologing over his sister and that he is like his mother? Wasn’t the sister the weaker one and his father made fun of him, ah whatever, if I understand the way this movie works then we’ll just cut to
01:12:??:??
What? Ice thingy? Waterbenders? Yeah thanks Captain obvious, you don’t need to make a voiceover to tell us what we are seeing and what the hell is that thing on his shoulder, a tumour? Oh right that’s the CGI-animal from the beginning and why is it not there in the next scene? No more budget?
Hello? By the way, what’s that huge white thing that can fly like the luckdragon from The Neverending Story?
I don’t know about you but it doesn’t look that common even for a place where the Slumdog is terrorizing white people.
01:20:22:24
Allright I get it, those cards were stolen from the library no need to tell me again, please just…
01:22:19:09
We are TOLD that the two side characters no one cares about are in love? And why is the princess not talking, she has said about 10 sentences. And yes the cards were stolen from the library, so we can half another half of a conversation before…
01:23:09:19
If your leader is not recognizing ASHES as a sign of a HUGE army of firewarriors you should plead for reelection.
01:24:25:26
On second thought, if you are a group of WATER benders, with the power to CONTROL WATER and you are unable to wipe out an army of SHIPS coming to you from the sea (you know, that thing with much WATER in it) – then I guess you deserve an incompetent leader.
01:26:29:40
Yin and Yang are two fish? You expect me to buy that?
01:30:40:50
Wow, if my god is so stupid that he turns into a fish and is unable to escape from a sack of cotton then I’ll consider praising Satan as soon as possible. Or become an Atheist, seriously a fish god that dies when you take him out of the water? At least Jesus could walk on the freakin water!
01:31:20:19
Just die already, we had to listen to your boring fountain story, now tell us that this is your purpose (congrats Shamala, you are empathizing a theme that has ruined Lost, you think fate and destiny can help this movie?) and just die, please. Why exactly is nobody bothered by that firewarrior who can create fire (which apparently is a bigger deal than a white six-legged furry flying thing) – I mean the guy was your enemy a minute ago.
01:33:40:50
So if the Airbender controls air, why is he not creating a vacuum to stop the fire and … ah fuck it!
01:34:45:19
“Maybe we could be friends”
Seriously? That’s how you set up the villain who will turn into a good guy in the sequel? O.k. I surrender, M. Night Shalalan, you are truly the master of your craft, now give me more of your drama! Show me pointless Matrix copies! Bring it on!
Oh the princess-chick died somwhere along the plot.Total number of lines in the whole movie: 24 – about 10 of them to explain her background story and 3 to tell us it’s her purpose.
01:40:00:00
Wha……..
01:41:19:19
An ending as subtle as Eragon?
Patient W was brought back to his cell, we are not sure if the experiment succeeded. The only thing he told us after the screening ended was and here we quote:
“M. Night is the greatest poet who ever lived, a craftsman that puts the likes of Jackson and Nolan to shame. The subtle story exceeds everything ever created from Truffaut to Kurosawa – rarely has such a work of Art been created”
Before we locked him into his cell, we could hear a ritual-like song:
M. Night SHALALALA SHAAALALALLA
M. Night SHALALA LAA LA LA LA LA LA
Let’s hope that he will regain his memory soon…
Speed Racer of the Year Award:
Trashometer: 87%
Shocklabyrinth, you have an opponent!
3D…. check
bad acting…. check
floating 3D rabbit with a vagina that spills out black haired girl …. check
Can you tell a movie is bad by the trailer? Should we be prejudiced snobs and condemn a movie based on its advertising?
In the case of Shock Labyrinth 3D I can safely say: If you watch this movie thinking that this will be a good horror movie or at least 2 entertaining hours then you are in for a horrific surprise. Let alone that the movie has 3D in the title and is desperately advertising the 3D gimmick as “the new dimension of horror” or something along that lines, this is probably everything that’s wrong when you are complaining about soulless just for the quick bucks movie making.
The movie starts with your typical horror images we are used after the loads of “the ring” – copies and sequels. The so-called horror is solely based on the belief that people will get automatically scarred by images resembling the ring. So we get a load of “black haired girl” shots to make us shiver… because it’s like totally scary and stuff.
The pace of the movie is atrocious because the producers actually try to create some mystery and it made me miss the silliness of “My Bloody Valentine 3D Digital Cinema Experience” where the makers didn’t even try to put some plot into the movie and let the train wreck happen from the get-go.
But for fans of trashy horror movies this is a goldmine since the last half an hour feels like they wrote four different screenplays accidentally mixed them and forgot to number the pages so they cut it together like they found it. Seriously this movie shifts from Donnie Darko to Fight Club in mere seconds while flavouring every scene with atrocious acting that sets the new standard for bad horror movie acting (previously held by the Saw series).
It also shows that the horror genre is better left untouched by the current 3D craze (something I will probably analyse in near future) since it is more of a distraction from what is going onscreen but in this case it helped hold our attention because it just look so over the top silly. It felt like a little kid with a new toy pointing stuff at us to reassure “Hey this is 3D!!!”
To end the review with the most poignant quote from a friend of mine: I am not sure if I want this thing a second time or never again in my life.
Trashometer: 85%
The bar for the Speedracer award has been set very high with this entry
