June04

BMN: 88 Minutes

“We see bad movies so that we can truly appreciate the good ones.”
– Someone who (obviously) thinks we’re doing a service.

Bad Movie Night is back in session and how better to start off the season with a movie that was completed in December of 2005, only to be shelved until April of 2008. Couple that with a stupendous rating of 6% on Rotten Tomatoes and you wind up with Al Pacino's latest thriller, “88 Minutes.”

The plot-line is all too familiar – a criminal psychologist puts a killer behind bars, only to be tormented by said killer years later. In this case, the killer (who is in jail on death row) somehow convinces others to do his dirty work and gives Pacino 88 minutes to live.

Crap, I just ruined the film for you. Sorry.

What's worse, this movie had something fundamentally wrong with it – the editors, directors, producers, EVERYBODY, that worked on this film has no concept of time. Honestly. When someone makes a film about someone only having 88 minutes to live, how many minutes do you think they should really have? If it were me, I would go out on a ledge here and suggest they use the full 88 minutes. If you thought like I did (i.e., sanely), you would be wrong.

Luckily, I had my iPod Phone in the theater and we decided to count down the 88 minutes along with the characters in the film. Sure enough, just like a crappy episode of 24, the full 88 minutes never materialized. In fact, they were a full 12 minutes and 36 seconds short. I'm going to demand my money back. That's 12 and a half minutes of Al Pacino thinking he's going to die that I'll NEVER get. Maybe we'll be lucky enough to see that "extra footage" when the DVD is released. HOLD UP!!! I don't have to wait!!! I can already get the DVD in foreign countries!

Forget the fact that the film was shelved for over two years, this isn't wine, it only gets worse as time tick-tocks away. I suppose that when you can't execute the antithesis of your movie for a full 88 minutes, then everything else that sucked is the least of your worries:

• Not creative enough to name a cat? Just call it "kitty."
• Can't find real Asian-American twins? Just get two Asian-American actors and call them twins (most non-Asian people won't know the difference, right?)
• Running out of cat names wasn't enough? Name someone in the film Goober.
• Need a plot device that will progress the story along? Create a technology so you can use a Virgin Mobile phone to break into another cell phone conversation... because THAT'S realistic.
• Need another plot device to progress the story? Hmmm, how about someone who carries around an extra cell phone battery that just happens to fit the phone that Pacino is using?
• If you get in a bind, just do things that don't make sense. Suggestion, drive your car (that has a busted front windshield) away from the crime scene. Then, minutes later, blow it up. Furthering that point, if someone is wanted for two murders, don't arrest them right away. Instead, give them, oh, 10 minutes to solve the case.

When you read reports about a movie getting shelved, and sometimes appearing in foreign countries on DVD, you have to wonder if it's really THAT bad to get shelved in the first place.

In this case, yes, it was. And it only took 1 minute 23 seconds (or 1/88th of the film) to figure that out.

+ original post date: June 4, 2008 07:53 AM
+ categories: Bad Movie Night