Legendary movie I only saw once, back in the day when it was released. I remember watching it with mouth wide open, aghast at what I was seeing. It's widely regarded as one of the worst films in history, and in many ways it is, if you consider the quality of the cast, director and budget.
But revisiting it 20 years later after seeing the interesting documentary "Lost Souls" about this car crash of a movie, I didn't find it quite so bad. It's poor, no doubt about it, but it's not tedious and mind numbing in a Battlefield Earth kind of way and nowhere near real dross like Batman & Robin or The Spirit. It's entertaining for many reasons, chief among them being Marlon Brando's blatant trolling of the entire production, insisting on wearing white make up and using buckets instead of hats to keep his head cool. His performance is worth the admission alone.
The rest is worth watching for the implosion of Val Kilmer's career as an A-List actor. Fresh from the success of films like The Doors, Batman Forever and Heat he was apparently extremely arrogant during the making of this film, and he just oozes apathy in every scene he's in. If he truly was as insufferable as he's been accused of in "Lost Souls" then karma certainly paid him a visit here, as his career never recovered from this wreck. Fairuza Balk is decent and tries her best with weak material, Ron Perlman is solid as always, but David Thewlis is miscast, his North England accent and bad teeth detracting from his performance. But those scenes with Brando and the worlds smallest man as his freaky sidekick are pure gold.
The make up effects are decent, and the location is gorgeous. Everything else is terrible. But it's certainly entertaining, even if it for all the wrong reasons.
But revisiting it 20 years later after seeing the interesting documentary "Lost Souls" about this car crash of a movie, I didn't find it quite so bad. It's poor, no doubt about it, but it's not tedious and mind numbing in a Battlefield Earth kind of way and nowhere near real dross like Batman & Robin or The Spirit. It's entertaining for many reasons, chief among them being Marlon Brando's blatant trolling of the entire production, insisting on wearing white make up and using buckets instead of hats to keep his head cool. His performance is worth the admission alone.
The rest is worth watching for the implosion of Val Kilmer's career as an A-List actor. Fresh from the success of films like The Doors, Batman Forever and Heat he was apparently extremely arrogant during the making of this film, and he just oozes apathy in every scene he's in. If he truly was as insufferable as he's been accused of in "Lost Souls" then karma certainly paid him a visit here, as his career never recovered from this wreck. Fairuza Balk is decent and tries her best with weak material, Ron Perlman is solid as always, but David Thewlis is miscast, his North England accent and bad teeth detracting from his performance. But those scenes with Brando and the worlds smallest man as his freaky sidekick are pure gold.
The make up effects are decent, and the location is gorgeous. Everything else is terrible. But it's certainly entertaining, even if it for all the wrong reasons.