The Hollywood Career-o-Matic #1

So Rotten Tomatoes keeps track of what critics have to say about movies. It looks at as wide a range of reviewers as possible to attempt 'general critical consensus' about the quality of a movie - ultimately, whatever the reviewer's own rating system, classifying each review merely as a praise or a pan. Valuable resource.

Slate.com has taken that information and used it to chart the 'career trajectories' of directors and actors. I might add more later, but at the moment, here are five of its findings:

Steven Spielberg still, all these years later, carries around a reputation as a maker of user-friendly blockbusters whose successes are more commercial than critical. But Rotten Tomatoes makes a lie of that: Spielberg's critical performance has been as good as anyone's over the past 25 years: only one movie in 17 drops below the 50% mark (Hook, with a sad 26%). At 97%, Schindler's List is an obvious career peak, but Catch Me If You Can is a rather surprising follow-up at a nearly-equal 96%. And how on Earth did Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull get 77%?

James Cameron, by any reasonable standard, probably out-Spielbergs Spielberg by now as a maker of blockbusters. And yet his critical standard is also sky-high, with a 69% for True Lies being his worst performance in the last 25 years. Mind you, he's about as prolific as James Joyce, so perhaps it's tough to make bombs when you're not really making much of anything at all. He tops Schindler's List twice: with Aliens at 100% and with Terminator 2: Judgement Day at 98%.

Ang Lee's chart is remarkably consistent, with only one dip below the 50th percentile - and that's surprisingly not Hulk, which got 61%. Instead, it's Taking Woodstock, with a not-too-shabby 48%. Top of the pack is Sense and Sensibility at 98% and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon at 97%.

Clint Eastwood's been remarkably consistent as a director down the years: 19 films at or above the 50% line, only two below: even those 'bombs' (Absolute Power and Hereafter) are hardly stinkers, at 46% apiece. His career highlight since 1985 is, unsurprisingly, Unforgiven (96%). But Pale Rider, The Bridges of Madison County, Million Dollar Baby and Letters from Iwo Jiwa (whatever that is) all get 90% or more.

Uwe Boll, in a brief five years as a director, has totally reset the bar for 'bad'. Blackwoods, the first one here, scored 11% - and that's a career best. Alone in the Dark gets an impressive 1%. His overall average is less than 6%.

Eddie Murphy Movies Make No Sense at All

Some three years ago I had a blog that I called "Makes No Sense At All", named after the Hüsker Dü song. The point of it was to give me an occasional soap-box from which to give into Andy Rooney tendencies and just grumble and complain about whatever took my fancy. I didn't carry on with it too long, and it was read by, like, a maximum of five people who were not GoogleBots. So since it's just sat there moribund, collecting digital dust down the years. I decided I might as well close down the old blog and syndicate its contents here, in weekly installations. I've eliminated a few blog entries that seem too anachronistic by now, but the blogs that I have included I've not edited at all. So enjoy watching me at my grumpiest... Makes No Sense at All.

Originally published 24 July 2008.

...You’d think I care about Hollywood or something. I really don’t; trust me. In fact, high on my list of Hollywood-related things I don’t care about is Eddie Murphy and everything about him.

Okay; too cruel. Everything about him after, say, 1986. There was a time, no doubt, when Eddie Murphy was brilliant – you know, incisive stand-up, great cocky movie roles, amazing characterizations on “Saturday Night Live”. There was a time when he was one of the funniest guys out there. Okay, okay, there was “Party All the Time” too. But no-one can be perfect.

That was more than 20 years ago. Obviously people can’t keep it going that long. There’s got to bee a cooling of pace, a dulling of the cutting-edge. It doesn’t matter to me that Eddie Murphy’s turned to family comedies. The problem is that he’s turned to absolute garbage family comedies.

Take for instance his current vehicle, Meet Dave. It is, of course, absolute garbage. The fact that I haven’t seen it, seen clips from it or even heard much of anything about it does not affect the fact that I know it to be absolute garbage. I mean, come on…

Playing multiple roles is not always a bad thing. Dr. Strangelove is an amazing movie, and Peter Sellers’s bravura performance gives it wings. Eddie Murphy can play multiple roles because he’s a decent character actor. He did Stevie Wonder and Gumby brilliantly on “Saturday Night Live”. His impersonations of his own family members during his stand-up routines are hilarious and filled with a loving humanity. The man has comedic talent.

But he just doesn’t care. By scouring imdb.com, I can ascertain that Meet Dave is the seventh multiple-role Eddie Murphy vehicle. And, like Norbit before it (which I have seen and truly hated), it is clearly nothing more than a multiple-role Eddie Murphy vehicle. I can’t see it having a profound message, having noteworthy music or supporting actors, being produced by a visionary, using colours or sets in a novel way… the sum total of this film is “Eddie Murphy plays multiple roles!” Again, for the seventh time. Even if the diminishing returns in question diminish imperceptibly slowly, by #7 there can’t be much more than an empty shell left.

And I don’t see why it needs to be that way. Eddie Murphy is truly funny, yet family-friendly, in the Shrek franchise. He hasn’t lost it. But he seems to have lost the desire to do anything really new with himself. So he just churns out the same film over and over again.

The thought that anybody would still be intrigued enough by this to see these movies makes no sense at all.

Adam Sandler's Happy Madison Productions: Ah, the Artistry

Image via Wikipedia

I'm not much of a movie person, but I've just been perusing the 10+ year collected works of Adam Sandler's Happy Madison Productions, and am completely amazed by just how bad, not to mention critically reviled (not always the same thing), the movies tend to be. I've decided, being bored, to look at all of the movies this venerable studio has created, and to look in each case at the Rotten Tomatoes page for it. Recall that Rotten Tomatoes aggregates critics' reviews and tallies what percentage give positive reviews. So a movie with a 50% rating has had as many praises as pans ('praise' is an exaggeration - merely more positive than negative). So a number over 50 can vaguely be considered a critical success, where as a number under 50 can be considered a critical failure. Enter Happy Gilmore...

1. Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo: 23% 
2. Little Nicky: 22% 
3. The Animal: 30% 
4. Joe Dirt: 11% 
5. Mr. Deeds: 22% 
6. The Master of Disguise: 2% 
7. Eight Crazy Nights: 13% 
8. The Hot Chick: 21% 
9. Anger Management: 43% 
10. Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star: 22% 
11. 50 First Dates: 44% 
12. The Longest Yard: 31% 
13. Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo: 10% 
14. Grandma's Boy: 16% 
15. The Benchwarmers: 12% 
16. Click: 32% 
17. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry: 13% 
18. Reign Over Me: 63% 
19. Strange Wilderness: 0% 
20. You Don't Mess with the Zohan: 36% 
21. The House Bunny: 39% 
22. Bedtime Stories: 25% 
23. Paul Blart: Mall Cop: 34% 
24. Funny People: 68% 

It takes, frankly, a serious dedication to crap to pull off a résumé like this. In 24 films, fully two get above 50% in critical acclaim, and both of those are examples of the evident fact that Sandler sticks his company logo on anything he stars in. Actually, these two apparently bear the brand 'Mr. Madison 23', apparently a brand dedicated to Adam Sandler films that aren't crap. So if we discount those two, then in 22 films, the highest acclaim goes to '50 First Dates', which at 56% disapproval is still a bomb. Check out 'Strange Wilderness', a movie for which Rotten Tomatoes was unable to find a single complimentary review.

Adam Sandler, you do have some talent and charm. But it's tough, excepting perhaps Uwe Boll's company (hmmm... I smell follow-up blog entry), to imagine a production studio more critically reviled.

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