Putting on the Brits for Bad Movie Month

It's become a tradition here at LRG to make August the home of Bad Movie Month,  where each week, I highlight a "why did I spend my money on this?" flick to see just how badly it failed.

Our theme this year is "Badly Done,Brits!",featuring some of my favorite English actors and sadly, I'm doubling down on a true personal favorite, Colin Firth.

Mind you, he is and was one of the best Mr. Darcys to be found in a Pride and Prejudice adaptation, not to mention an engaging talent in other films from The King's Speech to Kingsmen. However, he has made his fair share of cinematic clunkers and that includes both of the Bridget Jones sequels.

Bridget Jones:The Edge of Reason is actually based on a second book about the title character by Helen Fielding(which the third movie both is and is not, which I'll get to shortly) yet most of the movie simply tries to rehash what audiences liked in the original movie.

It completely abandons the plot threads that were based on Jane Austen's Persuasion from the source material, settling for slapstick of all sorts from Bridget tumbling down a ski slope to Mark Darcy and Daniel Cleaver reprising their fight outdoors in a public fountain(which is soggy in more ways than one). I do happen to own this movie but rarely watch it,except of course to do my blogger duty by reliving this sad story slump:

After that, I'll be checking out the fresh hell of Bridget Jones's Baby, which has a pretty complicated set-up before the cameras started to roll.

The studio had been trying for years to get a third movie going but with no agreement on script but did agree not to use Helen Fielding's third Bridget book, Mad About the Boy, because(spoiler alert 1) she kills off Mark Darcy, a decision that many fans were decidedly against.

Well, the movie (spoiler alert 2) kills off Hugh Grant's character instead and has Bridget getting pregnant and having to figure whether her former love Mark or new American romance Jack(yes, that's McDreamy himself!) is the father. Weirdly enough, Fielding wrote a fourth book called Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries where(spoiler alert 3), Daniel Cleaver is still alive! Quite the alternate reality there,to say the least.

Sure, the movie that they did finally make doesn't sound too horrible at first but the trailer alone gives this turn of events such a textbook sitcom vibe that I might be better off watching that two part episode of Friends where the gang goes to London for Ross' wedding. Even with Emma Thompson on board, I have a bad feeling about this:

Meanwhile, Hugh Grant managed to escape the realm of Bridget Jones yet not another bad romantic comedy. While Did You Hear About the Morgans? was made back in 2009, perhaps this stale story sandwich should have had Grant seriously  reconsider being Daniel Cleaver again a few years later.

He and Sarah Jessica Parker play a New York power couple on the verge of divorce due to Grant's infidelity(insert past scandal joke here). When the Morgans just happen to witness a mob related murder, it's off to Wyoming they go to deal with red state stereotypes!

Yeah, those seem like the good old days at this point but that doesn't excuse this movie from lame "let's fall in love again in this quaint country setting" routines and Hugh exiting, pursued by a bear:

For a bit of the old school, we turn to Michael Caine, whose list of bad movies is as nearly as long as his good ones. To go even further back, I'm signing up for 1979's Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, a disaster movie sequel that has no equal!

Caine plays a tugboat captain who, along with Sally Field and Carl Malden, sets off to salvage the sunken luxury liner while running into another salvage crew run by Telly Savalas looking to loot some plutonium and dealing with ship survivors Peter Boyle,Shirley Knight and Slim Pickens. Yes, this is what they use to call "Love Boat casting" and for good reason.

This movie did so badly that the idea for a third one was shelved(and later became the premise of the Sylvester Stallone movie Daylight!). Michael Caine did make plenty of over the top epics in that era and this promises to be some good old fashioned snarky fun:

An additional movie may be included later, in honor of my sister's birthday that month(we shall see) but I do hope that my fellow British actor fans can find a few laughs to share with this list. As much as we delight in that stiff upper lip, our English gents are not above being caught out in their goofy movie moments there: