Are Bad Movies The Best Movies?

By Rob Christopher in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 15, 2010 3:20PM

"The imminent arrival of actual, calendar-based summer a little more than a week from now means that movie summer has been going on for almost two months," writes A. O. Scott. "And that means it is a perfect time to start complaining about how bad the summer movies are." For sure.

The law of diminishing returns is in greater force this summer than ever before. Each sequel-cum-remake is bigger, noisier, and more expensive than its earlier incarnations. And for what? Who really cares anymore? Action movies are the worse culprits, as Roger Ebert so succinctly puts it in his review of The A-Team: "The movie uses the new style of violent action, which fragments sequences into so many bits and pieces that it's impossible to form any sense of what's happening, or where, or to whom. The actors appear in flash-frames, intercut with shards of CGI and accompanied by loud noises, urgent music and many explosions."

With so-called "good" movies as dull, predictable, and joyless as these, is it any wonder that people are turning to downright bad movies for genuine entertainment? The bizarre runaway success of The Room is a case in point. Its recurring appearance at The Music Box has been only one stop on this truly awful movie's road to success. This weekend The Music Box is hosting the latest bad-movie cult sensation, Birdemic: Shock and Terror. Written, produced, directed, shot, financed, and marketed by James Nguyen, it's an inept Hitchcock homage (complete with a cameo by 'Tippi' Hedren!) with the cheesiest CGI effects this side of Syfy. It's also another a smash hit. If Hollywood keeps producing loud, banal junk (and it will), you can be sure it's not the last.

Birdemic: Shock and Terror has midnight shows on Friday and Saturday, with filmmaker James Nguyen in person. Advance tickets are available.