Cutthroat Island
This is the worst movie ever made. From 1980 on. Before then, I hold movies to a slightly different standard. Okay, 1977, because that's when "Star Wars" came out and special effects (good ones, anyway) came in. This movie is bad in so many ways, it's difficult to list them all. But I'm going to try.
1. I watched it on fast-forward (a trick I've recently picked up that can pare even the dullest movies down to their best shavings) and it was still duller than 100-year-old paint.
2. Matthew Modine is not a pirate.
3. Matthew Modine is not a pirate. Nor is he even a believable thief, liar or gadabout, the three roles he is trying to play simultaneously. In short his part seems more forced than it would be if Michael Caine were asked to play Queen Elizabeth II.
4. Frank Langella plays a villain named "Dog", who in this unnecessarily convoluted plot is also Gina Davis' character's uncle. At one point in the film, "Dog" actually utters the phrase, 'This dog shall have his day'. If that does not give you conclusive proof of just how bad this script was, I don't know what would. Mr. Langella plays this as he plays every role I've ever seen him in, from "Masters of the Universe" to "Junior," with the same passion and enthusiasm. He can almost frost this dog turd enough to make it a wedding cake, but well, you still know the difference once you bite in. Oh, and his performance in this makes his role as "Skeletor" look like Jamie Fox playing Ray Charles.
5. Dammnit! I know that Gina Davis and Renny Harlin can do a good action flick together, it was called "The Long Kiss Goodnight" and is still a movie that I give Ron hell for for not going to it in theaters as well as being one of my top ten favorite movies of all time.
6. It holds a Guiness World Record for the biggest box office loss in history. Now, I'm not saying that you can always judge a movie by how much money it makes, but in this case, you can.
7. Every moment that goes by on screen, one wonders how many calls to a divorce lawyer Gina Davis was plotting while delivering her lines with as much grace as she could muster. The script was really, really, really bad.
8. Every pirate piece of nastiness that one can imagine found its way into this flick. Rather, they stumbled their way in. Everything from the monkey (what the hell happened to the ship's parrot, anyway?), to the bumbling sidekicks, to a treasure map split into three pieces, one of which happens to be the tanned skull of Gina Davis' dearly departed dad, to a mysterious island that doesn't show up on any chart.
9. The entire movie, I thought that I was watching a young Orlando Bloom in possibly his first movie role. The kid he plays is the young, inexperienced cabin boy, who through luck and looking out from his comrades, never actually has had to kill anyone. Towards the end of the flick, there's a scene where the only possible outcome for the good guys is for the kid to kill a bad guy. What happens instead? One of the friggin' British soldiers happens to change sides at precisely the right moment to spare the kid the shot. Keep in mind that said soldier has never expressed ANY desire whatsoever to do anything other than follow orders and hang pirates. I smell a last-minute rewrite to keep the tone of the film "light". And on top of all that, it wasn't a little Orlando.
10. If this film were any lighter, it would have blown off the screen. The comedic moments aren't correctly interspersed with the drama, so at the end of it all, one simply feels like one is watching a farce and not a good one at that.
11. This movie has replaced Mortal Kombat: Annihilation as the worst movie I've seen come out since 1980. MK might still slightly rank higher on some points just because I was in a movie theater and couldn't fast-forward. Still, even given those facts, Cutthroat Island is the worst mess of festering pus on the boil of the American action movie experience that I've seen in a long time. Which brings me to yet another point.
12. I cut action movies a lot of slack. I have no doubt that compared to "White Chicks" or (shudder) "Little Man", Cutthroat Island is practically Shakespeare (or "Die Hard") in terms of the entertainment I would get from watching it, however...
13. This movie lost $100 million. That's $100,000,000. More money than me and all of my friends and acquaintances will ever see in all of our long lives. Hell, I once figured out that I could retire and live very well with only $8 million in the bank. I would like to know where that $100 million went, because frankly, the first "Star Wars" movie did far more with far less. For $100 million I expect to see stuff blow up, impossible chases and escapes and general semi-plausible silliness to go along with it.
14. Which brings me to the main problem with the story. Gina Davis just doesn't cut it as a pirate captain. They spend too much of the movie forcing the audience to accept that she IS the captain that she never really gets a chance to BE the captain. It's actually too bad that the producers of Star Trek:Voyager hadn't been consulted. There was never any doubt that Janeway was the captain and one forgot her gender. Yes, Cutthroat Island took place 600 years or so before Star Trek, but my point is that they never really gave Gina Davis' character the kind of inner strength that had been exhibited in strong female characters before. Princess Leia and Ripley are two that come to mind. And Gina Davis and Sigourney Weaver are actually two of the three tallest actresses in Hollywood, so there never should have been a time where one doubted her physical prowess. The problem was that the script (or glaring lack thereof) caused her "being the captain" to be shoved down everyone's, including the audiences' throats.
15. Matthew Modine is still not a pirate, no matter how much he might wish on Tinkerbell's wings for it to be so.
Bottom line: Watch this only under the following conditions.
1. You've just had major surgery and have access to a DVR so that you can fast-forward through the many, many slow scenes. All you have to do to keep up is just watch the screen while it's going and you'll get the plot.
2. Be bored out of your ever-loving mind.
3. Be going through painkiller withdrawal, where anything to numb the pain is welcome, even a frosted dog turd like this.
1. I watched it on fast-forward (a trick I've recently picked up that can pare even the dullest movies down to their best shavings) and it was still duller than 100-year-old paint.
2. Matthew Modine is not a pirate.
3. Matthew Modine is not a pirate. Nor is he even a believable thief, liar or gadabout, the three roles he is trying to play simultaneously. In short his part seems more forced than it would be if Michael Caine were asked to play Queen Elizabeth II.
4. Frank Langella plays a villain named "Dog", who in this unnecessarily convoluted plot is also Gina Davis' character's uncle. At one point in the film, "Dog" actually utters the phrase, 'This dog shall have his day'. If that does not give you conclusive proof of just how bad this script was, I don't know what would. Mr. Langella plays this as he plays every role I've ever seen him in, from "Masters of the Universe" to "Junior," with the same passion and enthusiasm. He can almost frost this dog turd enough to make it a wedding cake, but well, you still know the difference once you bite in. Oh, and his performance in this makes his role as "Skeletor" look like Jamie Fox playing Ray Charles.
5. Dammnit! I know that Gina Davis and Renny Harlin can do a good action flick together, it was called "The Long Kiss Goodnight" and is still a movie that I give Ron hell for for not going to it in theaters as well as being one of my top ten favorite movies of all time.
6. It holds a Guiness World Record for the biggest box office loss in history. Now, I'm not saying that you can always judge a movie by how much money it makes, but in this case, you can.
7. Every moment that goes by on screen, one wonders how many calls to a divorce lawyer Gina Davis was plotting while delivering her lines with as much grace as she could muster. The script was really, really, really bad.
8. Every pirate piece of nastiness that one can imagine found its way into this flick. Rather, they stumbled their way in. Everything from the monkey (what the hell happened to the ship's parrot, anyway?), to the bumbling sidekicks, to a treasure map split into three pieces, one of which happens to be the tanned skull of Gina Davis' dearly departed dad, to a mysterious island that doesn't show up on any chart.
9. The entire movie, I thought that I was watching a young Orlando Bloom in possibly his first movie role. The kid he plays is the young, inexperienced cabin boy, who through luck and looking out from his comrades, never actually has had to kill anyone. Towards the end of the flick, there's a scene where the only possible outcome for the good guys is for the kid to kill a bad guy. What happens instead? One of the friggin' British soldiers happens to change sides at precisely the right moment to spare the kid the shot. Keep in mind that said soldier has never expressed ANY desire whatsoever to do anything other than follow orders and hang pirates. I smell a last-minute rewrite to keep the tone of the film "light". And on top of all that, it wasn't a little Orlando.
10. If this film were any lighter, it would have blown off the screen. The comedic moments aren't correctly interspersed with the drama, so at the end of it all, one simply feels like one is watching a farce and not a good one at that.
11. This movie has replaced Mortal Kombat: Annihilation as the worst movie I've seen come out since 1980. MK might still slightly rank higher on some points just because I was in a movie theater and couldn't fast-forward. Still, even given those facts, Cutthroat Island is the worst mess of festering pus on the boil of the American action movie experience that I've seen in a long time. Which brings me to yet another point.
12. I cut action movies a lot of slack. I have no doubt that compared to "White Chicks" or (shudder) "Little Man", Cutthroat Island is practically Shakespeare (or "Die Hard") in terms of the entertainment I would get from watching it, however...
13. This movie lost $100 million. That's $100,000,000. More money than me and all of my friends and acquaintances will ever see in all of our long lives. Hell, I once figured out that I could retire and live very well with only $8 million in the bank. I would like to know where that $100 million went, because frankly, the first "Star Wars" movie did far more with far less. For $100 million I expect to see stuff blow up, impossible chases and escapes and general semi-plausible silliness to go along with it.
14. Which brings me to the main problem with the story. Gina Davis just doesn't cut it as a pirate captain. They spend too much of the movie forcing the audience to accept that she IS the captain that she never really gets a chance to BE the captain. It's actually too bad that the producers of Star Trek:Voyager hadn't been consulted. There was never any doubt that Janeway was the captain and one forgot her gender. Yes, Cutthroat Island took place 600 years or so before Star Trek, but my point is that they never really gave Gina Davis' character the kind of inner strength that had been exhibited in strong female characters before. Princess Leia and Ripley are two that come to mind. And Gina Davis and Sigourney Weaver are actually two of the three tallest actresses in Hollywood, so there never should have been a time where one doubted her physical prowess. The problem was that the script (or glaring lack thereof) caused her "being the captain" to be shoved down everyone's, including the audiences' throats.
15. Matthew Modine is still not a pirate, no matter how much he might wish on Tinkerbell's wings for it to be so.
Bottom line: Watch this only under the following conditions.
1. You've just had major surgery and have access to a DVR so that you can fast-forward through the many, many slow scenes. All you have to do to keep up is just watch the screen while it's going and you'll get the plot.
2. Be bored out of your ever-loving mind.
3. Be going through painkiller withdrawal, where anything to numb the pain is welcome, even a frosted dog turd like this.