Lyssa Beyer

Not too long ago, I took a trip to one of the local Blockbusters here in Eau Claire. During my trip through the older releases, I came across the movie “Fear Dot Com.” Instantly, I was reminded of when I saw the movie with a group of friends my senior year of high school. We realized the movie was so bad that we stopped in the middle of it. It’s safe to say we all came out with a bad taste in our mouths. Also, seeing my best friend cuddling with the girl I kind of liked at the time didn’t help matters either, but that’s another story.

We’ve all seen bad movies from time to time. Sometimes we leave in the middle by pushing the stop button, and sometimes we stay and live through the horror as best as we can. Today, I decided to put the concept of bad movies to the test. I’ve selected four movies in recent years that have either been given terrible reviews by the critics or disliked by much of the public. My goal here will be for me to see how far into the movie I can watch it before I have to turn the thing off.

And now for your enjoyment – or for my own torture, some might say – here are the results of that experiment.

“Battlefield Earth” (2000)
I’m tempted to not even dignify this mess of a movie with a response. All I have to say is think of the worst sci-fi plot you’ve ever seen – a post-apocalyptic world that has John Travolta as a nine-foot alien with dreadlocks? Sounds appetizing, right?

Travolta, a long-time follower of Scientology, sought for many years to adapt this book into a movie, which was written by the religion’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard. Instead, critics called it one of the worst movies ever and I might have to agree here. The actor even hinted at making sequels if this one was successful, as well. Thankfully, it wasn’t.

Total Time: 27 Minutes

“Gigli” (2003)
If any of you remember 2003 at all, millions of Americans were fascinated with the romance between Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez at levels never before seen for any celebrity couple.

Then this thing came out, which centers around Affleck playing a mobster hired to kidnap this disabled kid for his boss. His boss then doesn’t think he can handle watching over him, so he conveniently hires J-Lo to watch after the guy, as well. Aside from the fact that this movie tries to come off as hip when it really isn’t, this almost seems like it was more of a movie forced upon us by anyone who felt these two would instantly bring in an audience.

Not surprisingly, the two actors broke off their engagement not too long after this movie’s release. In the movie, Affleck keeps correcting people’s mispronunciation of his name – and the movie’s title – by saying it “rhymes with ‘really.'” More like “really bad.”

Total Time: I couldn’t tell you. I fell asleep over a half hour in and then only caught various scenes later on. We’ll just say that it didn’t really help the cause any.

“Catwoman” (2004)
What this has anything to do with the Batman character, I don’t know. This movie has Halle Berry playing an aspiring artist who’s working for a cosmetics company. She happens to walk upon a secret meeting where the agency makes some sort of crŠme that deforms women’s faces over time.

The security guards are sent after her and manage to trap her into some sort of pipe that sends her hurling into a nearby lake, where she drowns. Afterwards, several cats approach her, and one apparently only has to breathe on her before she suddenly gets extra-good sensory vision, leaps onto her fire escape to break through her own apartment window, and then falls asleep on her bookshelf before falling several feet down the next morning.

I almost turned it off when Berry started aggressively sniffing the cat nip a weird cat owner threw at her. But, I somehow made it to points where she hissed at dogs barking at her on the street and eating multiple cans of cat food before pushing stop. So much for even seeing her put on the superhero outfit in the first place.

Total Time: 35 minutes

“I Know Who Killed Me” (2007)
Now, it’s not as if horror movies haven’t been known for combining murder, sex and violence in the past. But the way it comes off here is just horribly campy in just about every way. This movie also manages to combine just about every terrible example of amputations, mistaken identity and bad exotic dancing we’d ever see here. In the end, the boredom and cheapness of this movie couldn’t save me from sticking around to solve the mystery of who the killer was and who Lindsay Lohan’s character really was.

Total Time: 45 Minutes

So who wins here? Honestly, I couldn’t tell you as they were all pretty bad in their own way. So maybe I came out the loser as I could’ve been doing other things during these precious few hours in my life.

Tinberg is a senior print journalism major and columnist for The Spectator. “Pop Culture Club” appears every Monday.