Worst of the Worst: #54, Harry and Max

One of my least favorite type of movies is the one which deals solely with expository dialogue. There is no action, just a series of scenes between two characters -- sometimes the same two, sometimes a mix-and-match of the ensemble -- where they talk and talk and talk. The brilliance of FX's new show, Louie, has shown me that I can stand that style in short bursts so long as the dialogue is poignant and funny. Where the dialogue is poorly-written, as it is in this movie, or the plot is non-existant or confusing, as it is in this movie? Really hard for me to watch. When the barely-existant plot deals with two characters having erotic sexual exploration? Ugh. This specific movie deals with two pop stars who explore their feelings for each other through some sexual adventures and a lot of talk. Harry and Max should not be on this list because a) it was only released in one theater and made less than $15,000, and b) it is more boring than really bad. The acting is mostly not awful. So, Harry and Max is bad, but it is less horrible and more creepy.

Oh, right, did I mention that one of the pop stars is 21 and the other is 16? The part when you learn that they first had sex when the younger was 14? Or that the younger had a crush on the older since they were 7? Yikes. It made for an especially creepy part where the older goes to visit a 40-year-old former teacher of the younger who had also had relations with them. And the older pop star had no qualms in telling people about the relationship, which made the movie seem surreal in its inability to deal with the taboo of the subject, leading to a part where one of the older star's ex-lovers confronts them about why they don't understand that incest is so wrong.

Oh, right, I forgot to mention that the two pop stars were siblings? There have been a scary number of incest themes on this list so far (frankly, one is a scary number when it comes to that), but this one dealt wholly with incest and was therefore the creepiest. I'm not one to get offended, but I also don't think a movie can deal so flippantly with incestual pedophelia.

So by the time I tell you that both siblings are boys, the gay part of the movie really means nothing. It could be heterosexual incestual pedophelia and it would still be just as creepy. Unless you're Aaron and Nick Carter or Donnie and Mark Wahlberg watching it. Then, you might be extra weirded out.

Worst of the Worst: #40, Down to You

Down to You begins the second half of my quest to watch the one hundred worst movies of the last decade, according to Rotten Tomatoes. It is a poignant tale of two mentally-challenged students at a New York college who fall in love in spite of their obvious cognitive deficiencies. Their facial expressions and reactions to other people are good facsimiles of how a highly-functioning adult may act. They speak in cliches and cheesy monologues and, while their grammar is weak at times, they somehow manage to get their point across and socialize with others. They document the ups and downs of their relationship and even though some details are glossed over, one has to be impressed with how they have overcome their massive disabilities to lead normal, if relatively empty, lives.

The characters in Down to You aren't actually mentally-challenged. They're just written that way.

Freddie Prinze, Jr., and Julia Stiles star as two college students who narrate their hit-and-miss relationship. Their narrations are delivered in some of the worst monologues ever put on screen. When they are together, they speak in some of the most stilted dialogue ever put on screen. Not only is the writing bad, but the editing and direction are also very weak. Dialogue consists of a series of back-and-forth close-ups that don't last the right amount of time. Scenes end a second or two too late. To add to the other problems, the acting is pretty awful. Even with recognizable co-stars such as Rosario Dawson, Ashton Kutcher, and Selma Blair, I couldn't believe what I was seeing on the screen. Not even Henry Winkler can save the movie. Not even Henry Winkler!

All of this adds to the movie being funny bad. Actually, it's not just funny bad, it's possibly the funniest-baddest movie I've seen on the list to date. I laughed and laughed out loud as I watched the crap unfold. I yelled at the screen. I asked questions out loud about things that didn't make sense (for instance, Freddie Prinze tries to kill himself by drinking shampoo in his studio apartment where he lives alone, but ambulances come to get him immediately). In short, I just had a lot of freaking fun watching this movie.

Writer/director Kris Isacsson made his feature film debut with this one and has gone on to direct only direct-to-TV movies afterwards (including Husband for Hire, which had the scene of Mario Lopez dancing shirtless that was played so often on The Soup). He should be lauded for taking a movie that could have been simply inane or boring and turning it into a film that screams of schadenfreude-laden entertainment. Whether you like nonsensical side plots regarding budding porn actors or mullets or you like romantic scenes that are so creepy that they are legally prohibited from handing out candy on Halloween or you just plain enjoy seeing Freddie Prinze and Julia Stiles unload fake facial expression after fake facial expression, there is something for you in this movie. Down to You, a movie with a title that makes absolutely no sense until you hear some random song during the end credits. Such an abject failure that I am seriously considering buying it on DVD. Bravo, Mr. Isacsson. Bravo.

Worst of the Worst: #73, Gigli

For the last seven years, there has been one word that has stood for epically bad cinema: "Gigli." It was a movie that was pretty much doomed from the start because of all of the tabloid craze around the relationship between its two stars, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. To top it off, people revelled in how horrible the movie apparently was. Word of mouth led the film to be dropped from 97% of its theaters by the third week. All of its theaters in the UK dropped it after one week. It made only around $3.7 million in its opening weekend and ended up at just over $6 million total. It cost $54 million to make. Lopez made $12 million and Affleck $12.5 million. It remains the most celebrated flop in recent memory. So, with all that, how could it possibly live down to my expectations?

I know that I generally hate Affleck as an actor and, with the exception of Out of Sight, absolutely hate Lopez. The former tries to put on a tough guy New York mobster accent that sounds ridiculous even when little bits of Boston aren't creeping in, while the latter is not historically awful but not really good either. I could have easily predicted that they would have little chemistry. Of course, as the movie includes a sex scene that has less romance than anything in Basic Instinct. I didn't know going in that Al Pacino had a cameo, but had I known, I could have predicted that he would overact. Even hearing that it was a romantic comedy that is rumored to have been edited to remove a lot of violence and dark content, I could have guessed that I would find it boring. Still bad, but not bad enough to even touch my expectations.

The plot deals with Affleck as Larry Gigli, a low-level gangster who manages to screw things up all the time. When he is asked to perform a tricky job, his boss sends a lesbian gangster to help him. Hilarity and poorly-acted sexual tension ensue. What I could have never anticipated was what that tricky job entails and therein lies what turns the movie from merely bad to purely abysmal.

In order to help in a court case, Gigli is asked to kidnap the brother of a Federal attorney. Said brother is played by Justin Bartha, most famous for being Doug, the groom in The Hangover. Said brother played by Justin Bartha is mentally challenged. Boom. This calls for a quote from Tropic Thunder that I don't have to bother quoting. Bartha plays the mentally challenged brother in a performance that ranks somewhere between "Johnny Knoxville faking being challenged in The Ringer" and "bad impersonation of Rain Man for an Epic Movie-type movie." The concept behind said performance is so misguided, so impossibly stupid, that it propels the film into history. As if that isn't bad enough, the whole conceit leads to an ending that involves a poorly-played fully mentally challenged character dancing on the set of Baywatch. I'm not only not joking; I'm not doing the ending justice. It is one of the worst endings I've ever seen of any movie. Off the top of my head, it's Glitter and Gigli. That's it. That's the list.

Bartha has gone on to some fame in The Hangover (and in the National Treasure series). Lopez will likely be a judge on American Idol and be fairly competent at that. Affleck has become a very good director and his new movie, The Town, looks fantastic. Good for all of them. This movie is a tedious and infamous piece of garbage. It is a fitting movie to hit my halfway milestone. Fifty movies down, fifty to go.