Tuesday, March 03, 2015

Announcing the Sad Singers On Screen playlist for this year's Bad Movie Month

It may feel a bit early to be talking about a blog project that won't take place until the summer, but inspiration struck me like lightning this weekend and I felt the need to share my plans for Bad Movie Month as soon as may be.

For those of you unfamiliar with BMM, every August at LRG, I highlight bad films once a week, usually on Fridays. I tend to go with a theme for each batch of cinematic sorrow and this year's sticking point focuses on singers turned actors, a.k.a. Sad Singers On Screen.

At least two of these movies, I haven't seen before but their reputation as terrible times to be had precedes them and I'm actually eager to experience the awfulness first hand. The first of these new viewings for me is From Justin to Kelly, the 2003 pairing of the first major American Idol contestants in a "let's-go-to-the-beach-blanket-bingo!" kind of flick.

 This movie was such a mind numbing torture to watch that it won a special award from the Razzies, Worst Musical of Our First 25 Years. With that kind of distinction, you can see why I'd want to check this musical monstrosity out:


Next up is a Madonna movie because you really can't do something like this right without including her. She's had her share of hits and misses, the latter making the choice of just one rather difficult to say the least.

However, I decided to go with Who's That Girl from 1987. In this supposedly wacky caper movie, Madonna teams up with uptight Griffin Dunne as they flee from various bad guys after a mysterious key that she brought back with her from prison.

Along the way, Madonna attempts to be convincingly goofy and charming(guess which one of those she does best), falls in love with Dunne's nervous nelly character and hangs out with a cougar. Why a cougar, you ask? Well, someone thought that was enough to make Madonna appear to be a classic screwball comedienne but all it did was look screwy:


Representing the fellas, we have "Marky" Mark Wahlberg playing an obsessed boyfriend in the 1996 thriller Fear. There's actually a good number of decent actors in this one, from Reese Witherspoon as the damsel in distress,  Alyssa Milano as her best gal pal,William Peterson as the protective dad and Amy Brennan as the unsuspecting step mom.

Despite the movie being a moderate success at the box office, it was still as odd as a cod, with Wahlberg's character showing his devotion by carving his beloved's name into his chest, killing off potential rivals and stalking her father, whose car becomes a victim of Marky Mark's rampage. The Oedipal overtones of this flick are practically breathable:




Last up and most likely least is Crossroads, the Britney Spears teen road trip extravaganza from 2002. I haven't seen this one, so along with FJTK, this will be quite the cinematic revelation, I'm sure.

Much like Fear, Crossroads has some good talent lined up with Zoe Saldana and Taryn Manning as Britney's traveling companions while Dan Ackroyd plays her father and Kim Cattrall as her long lost mother. Hard to imagine Ackroyd and Cattrall hooking up in any universe but that's probably not the strangest thing about this movie.

One big future talent listed here is Shonda Rhimes as the screenwriter. Yes, the Queen of Thursday Night TV has this giddy girl quest on her resume, folks. Shonda Rhimes earned a Worst Screenplay nomination from the Razzies awards for her literary effort here, along with Our Miss Britney who won Best Worst Actress and one of her tunes for the soundtrack getting Worst Song(that "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet A Woman" earworm). Yeah, this should be wickedly awful fun:


So, that is our Bad Movie Month line-up for 2015. Still to be announced is "Sister's Choice", where my sis Stephanie celebrates her birthday that month by picking one bad movie for me to watch and write about(she doesn't have to go along with my Sad Singers theme, so her selection could be rather interesting). This upcoming set of singer helmed stinkers promises to be tough going yet I suspect none of them will climb up to the low heights of a classic bomb like Cool As Ice:


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