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| source// Warner Bros. |
Just because a movie bombs at the box office, that doesn’t make it a bad movie. It could just mean that its budget was too bloated to reasonably expect to fill the money pit back up, or the marketing was lackluster, or the competition was incredibly stiff on opening weekend.
Or yes, maybe it was also a bad movie. Because sometimes the numbers are simply indicative of audiences saying “Thanks, but no thanks, that film appears to be garbage and I’d rather buy a couple of beers at the pub than watch your expensive garbage.”
Still, tucked away beneath all the rightful flops like Gigli and Battlefield Earth is a small collection of movies that, while they didn’t make any money for the studio, should be able to enjoy much better reputations. They may not have been great financial successes, but they’re actually pretty solid, engrossing movies if you don’t let yourself get scared off by the negative box office numbers.
Most of these are likely doomed to remain inextricably tied to their overall gross, but maybeyou could give them a second chance?
10. EuroTrip
Budget: $25 million
Worldwide Gross: $20.8 million
EuroTrip is not what you’d call a smart comedy. It’s also not an original movie by any means, nor is it a wholly subversive or clever movie. It’s not star-studded (unless you count the cameos by Matt Damon, Vinnie Jones, and Fred Armisen). And it’s not a critical darling or even a cult classic.
What EuroTrip is, though, is charming, endlessly quotable, and – yes, dammit – funny. Now, maybe that doesn’t sound like high enough praise to include in a list like this, but when you sit down to watch a teen comedy, that’s literally all you should be expecting.
Instead, it seems critics wanted this to be the next Blazing Saddles or Raising Arizona, deeming it a waste of time just because it didn’t completely revolutionize the genre. And audiences, who were likely apprehensive about seeing a movie that was marketed like a National Lampoon’s throwaway raunch-fest, never gave it a chance.
A lot of people might be tempted to attach the “guilty pleasure” label to EuroTrip, though that would be insulting to such a genuinely hilarious movie. If you can’t enjoy a scene where a couple of teenagers trick themselves into having a pot brownie freakout (complete with anxious stripping and the main character revealing that he watched a gay porno once but didn’t realize it until halfway through because “The girls never came!”) only to discover that the Rastafarian baked goods are totally weed-less… then yeah, maybe this isn’t the comedy you deserve.
9. Dredd
Budget: $50 million
Worldwide Gross: $35.6 million
If the Internet was to be believed back in 2012 when Dredd was released, you were either going to love this movie or find it so revolting that you’d never watch anything else with Karl Urban in it ever again.
Critics tended toward the latter, while audiences decided to wait until it showed up on Netflix to bother checking out the retread of the Sylvester Stallone flick. A lot of them probably wished they’d gotten to the theatre, though, because Dredd was built to be enjoyed on a gigantic screen at full volume and, preferably, in 3D.
Dredd is Dirty Harry dressed up in futuristic clothing and devoid of any moral responsibilities. This is a man who upholds the law with whatever means necessary, and won’t think twice about shooting a criminal in the back as they’re running away from him. It’s a grim, gritty cop movie that also relishes in creating beautifully-executed, extremely gratuitous death scenes that are somehow disturbing and exquisite all the same.
In that way, Dredd is a simple throwback to the ultra-violent action movies of the 80s like Predator and Invasion U.S.A. There doesn’t have to be a preponderance of backstory or some deep, overarching message. There just has to be scene after scene of over-the-top action and ridiculous but satisfying violence. And Dredd has that in spades.
8. Man On The Moon
Budget: $82 million
Worldwide Gross: $47.4 million
For most viewers, Jim Carrey-as-Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon was all a bit confounding: this was a dramatic biopic about a famous anti-comedian that was largely short on laughs. Its contrasting nature was sort of the point, but just like the real life Kaufman, many people were too confused to really enjoy it.
Those who could suspend the need for giggle fits and a conventional structure, however, were treated to one of the best all-around biopics of the 90s.
First of all, it should be stated that Carrey completely nails it in the role of the comedian’s comedian, Andy Kaufman, who was as big of a Hollywood outsider as they come. Carrey deftly recreates all of Kaufman’s career highlights – including a montage of him wrestling women and his famous Mighty Mouse bit on Saturday Night Live – with that squirmy, constantly-evaluating quality that made Kaufman such a rare delight.
You don’t have to like the person at the centre of this biopic – in fact, it practically goes out of its way to ensure that you won’t for the most part – but you have to appreciate the exuberance with which Kaufman dedicated himself to finding new ways to deliver comedy, and the commitment with which Carrey embraces that philosophy for the film.
7. Rock Star
Budget: $57 million
Worldwide Gross: $19.3 million
2001’s Rock Star is inspired by the true story of Tim “Ripper” Owens temporarily replacing Rob Halford as the lead singer of Judas Priest. Mark Wahlberg acts as the stand-in for Ripper while fictional band Steel Dragon is subbed in for Priest. Wahlberg’s character is suddenly granted the opportunity to go on tour and record an album with his childhood heroes after slumming it in a tribute band for what seems like forever.
But that’s not the part of the movie that’s interesting. Sure, it’s fun to watch Wahlberg journey through the excesses of the rock star lifestyle for a bit, but eventually the beats of the typical “life on the road” story become predictable.
It’s in the first act, when the films dares not to take itself seriously (even as the main character takes himself way too seriously), that the movie shines. For instance, when two rival tribute bands “get into it” in the parking lot after a Steel Dragon concert. The two bands, one led by Wahlberg and the other by Third-Eye Blind’s Stephen Jenkins, face off as creepy mirror images of each other, all essentially playing adult dress up as their idols.
They trade barbs while questioning each other’s intense knowledge of the Steel Dragon back catalog, with Wahlberg apparently coming away with a victory after chastising Jenkins for having the wrong colors on his replica leather jacket (“The lapels should be blue and there’s no green in the embroidery”). OH SNAP!
Rock Star is fantastic when it relishes in the goofy minutiae. And no matter what, it’s still way better than that godawful Rock of Ages with Tom Cruise.
6. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
Budget: $35 million
Worldwide Gross: $20.5 million
Fans of stupid, nearly-pointless humor will find plenty to like in this spoof of the modern music biopic. No, there’s not a lot of depth in the jokes, and the story is pretty much a note-for-note retread of Walk the Line, but the one thing The Dewey Cox Story accomplishes better than Meet the Spartans or any installment of Scary Movie is add something to movie its spoofing.
Take, for example, the running gag of Dewey becoming addicted to whichever drug happens to be the cool thing at the moment (a frequent trope in music biopics) is heightened by the fact that it’s literally always his drummer “accidentally” introducing him to it, then warning him not to use them while listing all of the benefits of the drug like it’s one of those “What’s your biggest weakness?” questions in a job interview (i.e. “I’m too hardworking.”)
And of course, there’s such an extraordinary collection of cameos that as soon as a joke starts to wear thin, the whole thing is enlivened by the presence of Jack White as Elvis Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Justin Long, and Jason Schwartzman as the Beatles.
It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, certainly, but even those who felt Talladega Nights was too obnoxious would probably be surprised at how well they toned down some of those more unpalatable elements for this one.
5. R.I.P.D.
Budget: $130 million
Worldwide Gross: $78.3 million
Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges are two dead lawmen, who are many, many decades apart in “age”, who are responsible for defending the living world from ne’er-do-well ghosts who refuse to move on to the next realm. It’s equal parts Men In Black and Ghost. (And maybe Ghostbusters, too, if you’re willing to stretch just a little bit.) Also, it’s directed by the same guy behind the surprise action thriller RED.
It’s quite possible that the expectations for R.I.P.D. were far too high to ever satisfy the wide scope of viewers this was hoping to draw. And while certain elements of it fall flat, like the Patrick Swayze-inspired subplot where Reynolds tries to contact his wife from beyond the grave, as a straight-up buddy cop movie this works surprisingly well.
Bridges has been criticized for being too mush-mouthed as the ex-cowboy who struggles to understand modern concepts, and although he’s not exactly up to his True Grit standard, the guy is a goddamn hoot, operating at maximum cantankerousness. Reynolds mostly does his sardonic-with-a-dash-of-charm schtick throughout, which works better than it should with his occasionally lackluster delivery.
All in all, this is a movie based on a comic about undead police officers chasing around various types of ghosts and goblins while tossing off one-liners and acting like dicks to each other. What more do you want from this type of movie??
4. The 13th Warrior
Budget: $160 million
Worldwide Gross: $61.7 million
Delayed for more than a year due to poor responses from test screenings, The 13th Warrior had a lot of people, including some of the actors involved, weary of its final product. But even after numerous re-shoots and edits, this movie came out the other end like a more polished version of Conan the Barbarian. And…why is that somehow a bad thing?
Indeed, one of the biggest criticisms lobbed against the Antonio Banderas medieval action thriller, is that it seems trapped in the 80s. But if that’s meant to somehow diminish the brutal action sequences that feature limbs being chopped off and blood spurting out of every major orifice in the human anatomy, then it’s totally unfair to lambast a movie forearning it’s R rating.
Carnage candy is everywhere in this movie, but beneath all the blood and guts is a story of a man seeking to initiate himself into a group of which he seems to be ill-equipped to fit in with. It’s like a less patronizing version of Dances With Wolves.
Banderas plays the part with an air of mystery about him, and moves effortlessly between the battle scenes and the quieter moments with his new comrades. It’s not exactly Gladiator, but it certainly gets the job done.
3. The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
Budget: $30 million
Worldwide Gross: $15 million
Far from the fast-paced gunslinging of other Wild West actioners like Tombstone, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford lives up to its title: it’s incredibly long and it doesn’t concern itself with being particularly snappy.
Some viewers get a little fidgety from the way this character study moseys along for nearly three hours without much in the way of big action spectacles. It’s a quasi-epic, really, one that’s more concerned with the psychology of its characters and the occasional dip into surrealism than it is with aggrandizing the mythical figure of its titular characters.
This is the thinking man’s Western, and it’s just as rewarding to watch Brad Pitt become dangerously wrapped up in paranoia as it would be to watch him in a shootout atop a moving train.
Speaking of Pitt, The Assassination of Jesse James remains one of his most undervalued performances to date, though Casey Affleck is certainly no slouch, either. Their interactions are entrancing, to the point where you have to wonder why these two never got to work more closely in the Ocean’s trilogy.
2. Children Of Men
Budget: $76 million
Worldwide Gross: $70 million
If nothing else, Children of Men excels as an imaginative and adventurous bit of technical filmmaking. There are multiple one-shot tracking shots throughout the movie, but the most iconic (and pivotal to the story) involves an extended car chase that reads like something from a more realistic version of Mad Max: Fury Road.
Children of Men is gloomy as f–k. Every last bit of hope has pretty much been washed out of this dystopian world where widespread human infertility is leading to an all but certain extinction of mankind. All of these horribly depressing “fun facts” are represented visually by the film’s never-ending green and gray color scheme.
Again, this is not a feel-good summer blockbuster, even though it contains its fair share of explosions and gunfights. Despite all those exciting action scenes, Children of Men is much more First Blood than Rambo: First Blood Part II, complete with even more psychological trauma.
1. The Postman
Budget: $80 million
Worldwide Gross: $17.6 million
The words “post-apocalyptic adventure” and “Kevin Costner” might not get many people excited nowadays, but they kept people away like a highly-publicized, violent case of herpes in 1997. Just two years after Waterworld threatened to permanently drown Costner’s career (along with anyone else who was involved in the mammoth disaster), he decided to involve himself in an eerily familiar storyline.
Granted, the specifics of these two movies couldn’t be further apart, but the vague outline was enough to rightfully scare audiences away in droves.
The Postman takes a much more sentimental approach to living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland however, as Costner’s character acts as the living embodiment of hope, an anti-hero that slowly becomes an actual hero as the film progresses. See, Costner finds a long-dead postman’s old mailbag and uniform, and quickly takes to using the relics as part of a con scheme. But as he delivers the old letters, he becomes genuinely affected by people’s reactions to these links to the past.
Sound a bit cheesy? It may be, but that’s what Costner is best at. Still, the bad guys are delightfully over-the-top, the cinematography is top-notch, and the story only appears too grandiose because of its runtime. Really, it’s a simple allegory about restoring hope to a once great nation. But… ya know… using the postal service.
Also, Tom Petty is so incredibly cool in this movie that his few scenes more than make up for any other shortcomings the film might have to offer.
Which other unjustified turkeys belong on this list? Share your picks below in the comments thread.
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