JPV PDX

The Things We Lack

I watched the worst movie ever made recently, Richard Chamberlain’s King Solomon’s Mines. My wife has a story about a western she watched as a kid, where the daring cowboy had to leap over/through a brick wall on his horse. You could see the strings pulling the wall apart well in advance of the arrival of any portion of the horse. This was so hilarious to her family that they rewound and replayed about fifteen times, cackling madly all the way.

I think it only takes a quick gander at any of the effects in King Solomon’s Mines to fully understand and participate in the notion of reviewing absurdity. They are so intolerably bad that even if I had seen the movie as a kid I would have walked out pissed. Three years before a boy flew through the air with an alien in the basket of his bike. The least you could do is film the green screen effectively. And before you say that the effects are part of the overall camp: No. Camp has a script. Camp has, dare I say it, a plan in mind. This is just plain awful.

The chasm between the fireworks of expectation and the bitter truth of budgets, and story, and talent are what intrigue me. Just to throw some cross-cultural comparisons into the mix, the Danes are still on top in terms of overall happiness. Probably other factors are in play, but consistently psychologists have stated that the core of the Danish contentedness is that they just didn’t expect much in the first place. I worry about rising expectations all the time, and so must (one presumes) companies like Pixar, who to date have never failed to meet expectations, no matter how ridiculous.

But to openly flaunt badness, that’s just insane. It’s worse: it’s stupid. Surely someone realized what an utter stinkpile this film was? Because if they didn’t there’s no hope for humanity. The capacity to filter was utterly lacking. From the standpoint of aesthetics, it wasn’t the first time. Nor will it be the last…

That’s all. Not trying to be gloomy, just had to say. Bad. Movie.
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One Response to “The Things We Lack”

1. 

   Matt Y.
   July 21, 2009 at 11:42 pm »

   Dude, John Rhys-Davies. Enough said.