A good deal of my warning signs come from movie posters, so some readers may take me to task for judging a book by its cover. Well, as George Bernard Shaw pointed out, "You don't need to eat a whole egg to know that it's rotten." Besides, judging a book by its cover is often very effective.
That being said, here are some more warning signs to keep watch for:
The point
Mutually pointing co-stars is a rare, but strong red flag. It's a sign that the stars themselves feel awkward and embarrassed about the film and whether they know it or not, it's a reflexive motion to deflect blame for what a pile of dung the movie really is. The bad comedy face says "Sorry about this!" while the point says "Hey, he's in this too! It's not all my fault!"
It's a quick attempt to show chemistry between the wackily mismatched leads. It shows hilarious camaraderie and silliness. It shows that the movie sucks.
Example I: Wagons East! That's a deadly poster. A 2007 statistical analysis by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and MIT shows that 98.7 per cent of points are accompanied by bad comedy faces, a deadly fusion of lame stabs at hilarity. I need not even include the Rottentomatoes rating for Wagons East! Because there's an even stronger indication of how bad this movie is. John Candy, a fun comic actor who nonetheless starred in many, many shit movies only did this movie out of contractual obligation. Forced into the role, took the only graceful alternative: he DIED. Yes, this movie is so awful that even a non-discriminating actor like John Candy was too embarrassed to finish it and continue life with a name forever associated with this disaster.
But just to add insult to injury, here's the tomatometer rating for Wagons East!: Zero
Did you catch that? ZERO.
Also note: exclamation points in the title? Stay away!
Example II: Showtime. From a marketing standpoint, this may be the worst movie poster of all time. It's got two bad comedy faces, the double-point, Robert de Niro and Eddie Murphy, one black guy and one white guy obviously exasperated with each other and the brutally lame and uncreative tagline of "Lights. Camera. Aggravation." There are so many bad comedy conventions in this one poster that it's hard to think up a good simile for how much you should avoid this movie. I'm thinking along the lines of a naked Gilbert Gottfried throwing water balloons filled with diarrhea.Robert de Niro showed the world his great comedy chops in Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers, where he alternated between "looking constipated" and saying "Focker" a lot. Simply put, he can't do comedy. Eddie Murphy is hit-and-miss at best, but he's mostly miss since the mid-1990s. Buddy-cop comedies are torturously overdone and wisecracking interracial buddy comedies are among the worst genres of all time.
Showtime's tomatometer rating: 24 per cent.
Example III: What Happens in Vegas. The headliners are one charmless dolt and one gorgeous airhead. The trailer shows the gorgeous dolt in her underwear, so we know the filmmakers know what their big asset is. So here you've got the dolt - knowing many people will not pay to see him - pointing, essentially saying, "Yeah, but she's in this too! Doesn't THAT make you want to come?" Not a good sign.
What Happens in Vegas on the Tomatometer: 28 per cent.
Jim Carrey
The Truman Show was simultaneously a very good and absolutely awful movie. It's good in the respect that it's well, good. It's bad because it gave Jim Carrey the idea that he's actually a good actor and it gave him a taste of Oscar glory he's been gunning for ever since. That's not to say he was bad in The Truman Show; it's more like he made like F. Murray Abraham in Amadeus – somehow the stars aligned just right to pull out the one great performance they had in them.
Note that I'm not saying Carrey's one good performance was anywhere near Abraham's. F. Murray Abraham in Amadeus is about as good as acting gets. Jim Carrey in Truman was just about as good as Jim Carrey gets.
Anyhoo, The Truman Show started a shameless Oscar-grab campaign that included ridiculous fare like The Majestic and the amazingly, hilariously, mind-bogglingly awful The Number 23. Interestingly, Carrey has made 11 movies since The Truman Show and you could make a strong argument that he wasn't good in any of them. Yes yes, people love fawning over Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but Carrey? Not so good. He was playing his typical low-key, mournful-eyed, sad-sack role that marks his "serious" work. And if you look at his whole resumé, you could make a good argument that F. Murray Abraham and Jim Carrey have had the same career: a parade of awful movies bookending one good show.
Eddie Murphy (post-1988)
Here's a poster for Eddie Murphy's upcoming disaster Meet Dave. What's great about this is it totally sums up his career since Coming To America. Playing multiple characters and beaming at the audience with an ear-to-ear grin. Fact is, you could take that poster and use it for practically every movie he's ever been in. The only decent movies Murphy has whored himself for since 1988 were the first and second Shrek movies and Dreamgirls. Three movies. In two of those, his face does not appear onscreen. In the third, he's a supporting actor. No coincidence. All his other movies are awful vanity projects designed to show you he's still versatile and hilarious. Yeah great, you can play four characters in one movie. That would be way more impressive if the movie wasn't trash.
There's part two. Possibly more to come.
