Unfortunately, this is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. One can find that hard to believe when you have a power packed cast like Tom Cruise, Kurt Russell, and Cameron Diaz along with director Cameron Crowe at the helm. To tell you what I thought of this movie while watching would be too graphic to display, but this is a painful movie to watch.
I love anthology movies and I’m usually open to low budget horror movies because you never know when you might come across a gem, so I checked this one out unbiased. Boy, was I in for something. First, the movie begins with a badly computer animated flaming skull (how original) who speaks in a deep voice talking about creepy tales and something else. In this atrocity, we meet two hapless guys on the road in the middle of the woods driving to a “Middle of the woods” party. They get a flat tire after nearly running over a young woman named Natalie (Jamie Lynn Sigler) and she begs them to give her a ride.
They have to await a tow truck and run into a park ranger (Dave Johansen) who begins telling them three tales. (It gives them an excuse to be in the setting) and they meet Natalie in the middle of the road (They’re a bit suspicious but never ask where her car is or where she’s going) and they meet Ranger Bill who invites them in the forest to tell the stories. The first story is hilarious as we see badly edited scenes of a dentist torturing a patient in a mental asylum. He then breaks free from his restraints made out of rope (Why? Who knows) and jams a scalpel into his head. Four years later he’s now a janitor who gets bullied by four football players. These guys are boneheaded jocks who blurt out insults like “He’s such a penile implant.”
They chase him into the forest to kill him and he begins knocking them off one by one. The second one has these three boneheaded obnoxious bikers who drive a car who see a Native American buy coffee in the restaurant. He carries around a magical sack which no one asks about and he leaves after they insult him. They follow him home and watch as he smokes some killer weed. He begins hallucinating in a badly animated sequence as snakes wrap around him and he sees wolves. They strangle him to death and decide to take his drugs. They soon begin hallucinating and discover he’s not exactly dead. I found this story to be so bad it was painful. The third one is least terrible but is still very annoying as we have this whiny girl and her boyfriend kissing in a car and the girl, for some reason, begins telling of how her insane grandmother lived in their house until she died.
So they decide not to do the funky monkey and she goes home to her friend. She decides she wants to invite them back and play a joke on them. So, the boyfriends come over they drink and talk for a long time and they blindfold the boyfriends leading them around the house. One by one the guys get killed by an unknown person and the friend gets killed. The entire trilogy of idiocy ends with a hilarious and annoying final scene that left me dumbstruck. I usually love anthology movies but this one is utterly unwatchable.
Leelee Sobieski (Joyride, Eyes Wide Shut) plays Ruby, a problematic teen who often takes her parents for granted and has a bad relationship with her brother Rhett. But one night while attempting to sneak into her house, she discovers that her parents have died in a car crash. They then come under the guardianship of what seem like the perfect couple, the Glasses, their neighbors. But what seems to be a perfect life at first turns out to be more than Ruby bargained for. Leelee Sobieski hams it up as the misguided teen / heroine who discovers her new foster parents plot early within the movie.
Okay, I’ll admit it. I’ve never read the entire Lord of the Rings series, but I am a casual fan. I’m in the midst of reading “The Hobbit”, which is of course the prequel to “The Lord of the Rings” Series, and I’ve seen the Ralph Bakshi Cartoon version of the series which is good, but not all great. But when I saw this, I was in for some ride. The movie begins by telling the story of Bilbo Baggins, who went on a journey to retrieve the ring and returns to Hobbiton, then it tells the story of the nine rings and how they came to get under the possession of the elf kings, humans, and dwarves. But then we hear about the evil tyrant, Sauron who created his own ring on “Mount Doom”. A ring more powerful then them all. A ring so powerful that it could corrupt even the most purest of souls.
It’s a shame that a film with such talent and imagery behind it ended up being ultimately a waste of time and effort. For a film marketed to children, I was shocked how utterly suggestive it tended to be, but beyond that, there’s really nothing worth remembering. With forgettable characters, and performances, it’s a waste. For a movie marketed to kids and advertised practically non-stop it’s a shame it can’t be considered even interesting children’s entertainment. Not to mention the lackluster and incredibly dull musical score.
There’s really only one way to summarize my sheer hatred for what is possibly one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. And it’s through a list.
1. The lighting is incredibly amateur with darkness where it should be light, and light where is should be dark. It seems a monkey lit the entire movie and most of the time the director doesn’t know how to set the mood.
The laugh factor is very low in this. I’ll explain the plot crunch to you. Two dudes get slammed the night before, and wake up the next morning hung over. They then realize that their car is missing and now must go on a quest to find the car… There weren’t as much laughs as I suspected there would be. I was hoping to be in tears, yet only found myself lightly chuckle at a few parts. Ashton Kutcher is likeable in this, as he is in “That 70’s Show”. He does a good job.