Unwatchable #33: “Glitter”

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 28 May 2009 18:00:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for (the final?) installment of Unwatchable.

Barring a last minute call from the governor, this is the end of the line for Unwatchable here at the Screengrab. We made it two-thirds of the way through the 100 worst movies ever made…but is there any hope of finishing this very important project? The answer may surprise you.

Ladies and gentlemen, Unwatchable lives! Well, sort of. I am barely proud…er, I mean very proud to announce the launch of Unwatchable: The Blog. As soon as I’ve loaded all the links to the existing Unwatchable posts here at the Screengrab, I will resume the countdown at this new blog. But I need your help! Now that Nerve is cutting off the funding for this worthy endeavor, I am reduced to begging you, the Unwatchable reader, for the support to see it through to the bitter end. Sure, I’d do it for free if I could, but these psychiatry bills aren’t going to pay themselves. So if you’ve enjoyed this feature and would like to see more, why not drop a buck or two in the Paypal tip jar over at the new place? Hell, I’ll even accept corporate sponsorship if you have the connections. Exxon’s Unwatchable…it has a nice ring to it, no?

There’s still some unfinished business here at the Screengrab, however, so let’s get right to Glitter, the 2001 musical starring Mariah Carey, who won a Worst Actress Razzie for her performance as fictitious diva Billie Frank. Billie’s rags to riches story is a familiar one, but given the story’s setting in the go-go New York of the ‘80s (not to mention the movie’s reputation as a camp classic), I had reason to hope for some Velveeta-smooth cheesy goodness. Unfortunately, Glitter is more dreary than gooey, and nobody likes dreary cheese.

Billie was raised by her alcoholic, torch-singing mother, until mama had one drink too many and Billie had to go live at the orphanage. At least it was a fun orphanage where Billie met Louise and Roxanne, still her best pals years later when Billie is dancing in a club and catches the eye of would-be music mogul Timothy Walker (Terrence Howard). Walker hires the trio as background vocalists and dancers for his diva project Sylk (Padme Lakshmi), but when he gets a load of Billie’s superior pipes, he turns the volume down on the atrocious lead vocals and faster than you can say Milli Vanilli, Billie’s voice is coming out of Sylk’s mouth.

The ruse doesn’t last long, and soon Billie is discovered by up-and-coming DJ/producer Dice (Max Beesley), who promises Walker $100,000 in exchange for the rights to Billie’s solo career. Backed by Dice’s Casio beats, Billie is soon on her way to superstardom and falling in love with her producer. As played by British-born Beesley, Dice has to rank among the top five worst romantic leads in motion picture history. He’s a sleazy mook in a wife-beater, gold chains and a Ratso Rizzo accent, but we’re supposed to think he’s a tortured artistic soul because he has a marimba in his apartment. Come on, that’s the oldest trick in the book!

Dice never does get around to paying off Walker, which leads to his tragic end just as Billie is mounting the Madison Square Garden stage for the biggest concert of her career. She stops the show for a big, emotional speech about never taking your loved ones for granted, and I suppose this is the moment that secured the Razzie for her. It’s true that she can’t act, but neither could Prince in Purple Rain. He had star quality, though, and you couldn’t take your eyes off him, but the same can’t be said for Carey here. In fact, when her two satellites played by Da Brat and Tia Texada are onscreen, they out-charisma her to such a degree that Carey seems to vanish from the screen…except when she’s decked out in her satin shorts/baseball cap/pigtails ensemble. Then you sort of stare at her like she’s E.T. or something.

Previously on Unwatchable:
34. House of the Dead
35. Santa With Muscles (unseen)
36. Daddy Day Camp
37. Bad Girls from Valley High
38. Chairman of the Board

OK, that’s it! Remember to bookmark the new home of Unwatchable. For updates, you can follow me on Twitter.

Unwatchable #68: “Kazaam”

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

No, loyal Unwatchable readers, you have not missed an installment. Number 69 on the big list of failure is last year’s The Perfect Holiday, which will not be released on DVD until November. We’ll get back to it then, but meanwhile, let’s move on to the 1996 family movie that made you believe in Shaquille O’Neal as a seven-foot-tall rapping genie.

To his credit, Shaq does an admirable job of convincing us that he is, in fact, seven feet tall. Honestly, I would place little of the blame for Kazaam’s failures at the big man’s big feet, even if they are encased in goofy pointy-toed genie shoes for much of the running time. True, his rapping ability is largely a figment of his imagination. But the fact remains that someone in an office somewhere decided it would be a good idea for the genie played by Shaq to rap, and we can hardly blame the amiable giant for going along with the plan. He may not be much of an actor, but he’s got undeniable charisma and I appreciated his willingness to get silly. I don’t think Kobe Bryant would be caught dead in those MC Hammer pants.

With that, I’ve just about run out of good things to say about Kazaam. Some might tell you it’s a clever conceit that the genie, moving on with the times, has abandoned his traditional bottle for a boombox. I am not among them. Anyway, Kazaam is dislodged from his portable stereo home by Max Connor (Francis Capra, later of Veronica Mars), a mild troublemaker being raised by a single mom. Max gets the traditional three wishes, but he can’t wish for “ethereal” things like a second chance for his estranged father, only material things like a room full of junk food.

At first Kazaam is eager for Max to get his wishes over with so he can get back to his boombox, but when his sensational rapping takes the clubs by storm (even Da Brat is impressed), the big genie starts to get used to life outside the box. Meanwhile, Max gets to know his dad, who, it turns out, is something of a sleazebag. Especially compared to the heroic firefighter mom is dating. Along the way we keep trying not to notice that this is a movie about a little white kid who owns a big black man, but it’s not easy, especially in the scene where Max yells at Kazaam, “I own you!”

I guess it all works out in the end, although I retain some confusion over how Kazaam transforms himself into a ‘djinn’ who actually can grant ethereal wishes. I must have been distracted by all the rapping. So much rapping. Why so much rapping? Let’s blame director Paul Michael Glaser. You know him best as TV’s Starsky, of course, but don’t overlook his directorial career, which began with Band of the Hand in 1986. The only thing I know about Band of the Hand is the theme song by Bob Dylan, which is actually the most listenable thing Dylan produced in the mid-80s, even if I have no idea how or why he did it. Glaser next directed the oddly prescient Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle The Running Man, followed by the hockey romance The Cutting Edge and the basketball comedy The Air Up There. But even with all of those dubious achievements under his belt, it took Kazaam to kill off his career in feature filmmaking. That alone makes it worth three Maurys. Well, that and the rapping.

Previously on Unwatchable:
70. Epic Movie
71. Gigli
72. Meet the Spartans
73. Fascination
74. You Got Served

The Screengrab : da brat

Unwatchable #33: “Glitter”

Unwatchable #68: “Kazaam”