horrible movies i love

GUEST COLUMN: Horrible Movies I Love (RAD)

/ Chris Luckett
Photo: TriStar Pictures

Photo: TriStar Pictures

Kevin M. Griffiths

A long, long time ago, there was a wonderful decade called the ‘80s. It was a time of big hair, bright colours, and over-synthesized pop soundtracks. In the middle of this decade, someone in Hollywood had a great idea: ‘Hey, let’s make Rocky for teenagers!’ They did, and called it The Karate Kid.

While it didn’t make all the money in 1984, it did make enough to be the fifth-highest grossing movie of the year. This, no doubt, played a factor when someone then suggested: ‘Hey, let’s make The Karate Kid, but with BMX bikes!’

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GUEST COLUMN: Horrible Movies I Love (Attack of the Clones)

/ Chris Luckett
Photo: Twentieth Century Fox

Photo: Twentieth Century Fox

Kevin M. Griffiths

You’d think it would be quite difficult for me, having grown up wanting to be a Jedi (or a Sith), to admit any Star Wars movie not titled The Phantom Menace is horrible, but the critic in me can’t see much reason to consider Attack of the Clones to be a good movie. What makes me so conflicted about that is how enjoyable the second entry in George Lucas’s “Fun with Lightsabers” trilogy remains.

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GUEST COLUMN: Horrible Movies I Love (The Mighty Ducks)

/ Chris Luckett
Photo: Buena Vista Pictures

Photo: Buena Vista Pictures

Kevin M. Griffiths

The Mighty Ducks is a mightily sloppy movie. It can’t decide whether it wants to be a Bad New Bears for hockey, a Slap Shot for youngsters, or standard, live-action Disney fare. Featuring an atrocious performance from Emilio Estevez, it contains nearly every cliché featured in a sports movie. However, it also contains none of the self-awareness that made a cliché-fest like Dodgeball refreshing.

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GUEST COLUMN: Horrible Movies I Love (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II)

/ Chris Luckett
Photo: New Line Cinema

Photo: New Line Cinema

Kevin M. Griffiths

I love the Ninja Turtles. I love them because they’re dumb, rambunctious, rebellious teenagers who have absolutely no reason to be viewed as heroes or role models. They set a terrible example for just about everything a kid needs to know growing up, and for that, I adore them. I am of the school of thought that it’s good to know what not to do in a situation, and Leo, Don, Mikey, and Raph have always been there for me in that regard. I thought their first movie had moments that transcended moviedom and stuck its toes into filmdom, but that was not the case in 1991 when the Turtles dropped their first unadulterated abomination onto the masses, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze.

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GUEST COLUMN: Horrible Movies I Love (National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon 1)

/ Chris Luckett
Photo: New Line Cinema

Photo: New Line Cinema

Kevin M. Griffiths

It’s a quandary, really. I mean, what makes a movie horrible? If you find a movie horrible, isn’t it only your opinion? Conversely, if you love a movie, how can it be considered horrible? Yet every day, people talk about movies as being “so bad they’re good.” This blurring of the lines between objectivity and subjectivity keeps discourse on movies and film eternally fascinating.

Naturally, this fascination with opinion made compiling and writing this article a stop-and-start process, wrought with frustration. Would I be able to both trash and praise movies that mean something and entertain me, sometimes in spite of themselves? Would I be able to convey my love for these movies adequately while systematically exposing their faults and failures? Would I change my own mind on how I view movies that I claim are bad, yet love?

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