Warning: getimagesize(http://www.regrettablesincerity.com/wp-content/themes/magazine-basic/uploads/regrett_header.gif): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 406 Not Acceptable in /home/regret5/public_html/wp-content/themes/magazine-basic/functions.php on line 112

Arlington Road is the worst movie ever made

By Adam Lippe

arlington-road-409If Arlington Road were just badly acted (and Joan Cusack, Jeff Bridges, Hope Davis, and especially Tim Robbins give it their best effort to make us believe they are untalented), poorly thought out (the screenplay is beyond simplistic and idiotic, wouldn’t it be easier just to set up clichés and not follow through with them, why do all of the characters all have to be so stupid, and largest of all, why does Robbins need to go through any of the phony niceties, moving into the neighborhood, block parties, burning his child!, etc., couldn’t he have just simply delivered the bomb himself if all it involved was getting a van in front of a building), and sloppily directed (why did he cut to the tailpipe, what’s with the dumb cheap shocks, the pay phone, what’s with that ridiculous sequence on the army base, etc.), it would simply be a shoddy movie, easily dismissed and forgotten. But the problem is all about tone. The movie believes itself to be so smart and mysterious, which it certainly isn’t, that it comes off as smug, arrogant, and snarky. It’s the kind of thing that turns a movie watching experience from simply mocking and ridicule to anger and seething hatred. What I really object is to the outright contempt for the audience and the assumption that the viewer will be stupid not to notice anything that isn’t spoon-fed. Since each plot twist is telegraphed at least 20 minutes in advance, but the movie pretends like it’s re-inventing the wheel, we’re left with the fumes of smugness, sputtering along, as you wait for the writer to catch up. At least Ehren Kruger proved who he really was in his follow-up scripts, for the terrible Reindeer Games and Scream 3, and not just lucky to have written the worst movie ever made.

The ending is ripped off completely from a Warren Beatty movie from the 70’s called The Parallax View (which I’m not a fan of anyway, not because of the ending, though). To me, it’s the worst part of the film, because not only does it not make a lick of sense (how certain characters know exactly how random passerbys are going to react over and over, how deeply dumb is it for a huge plan by supposed professionals rely entirely on how Bridges reacts, how can Robbins assume that he will beaten up just enough not to be unconscious and not be tied up or restrained), its deeply cynical belief that it would be really cool to have a downbeat ending (because there was a sale on ripping off 70’s movies?), thinking that the audience wasn’t expecting it and wouldn’t it be ironic considering the statements made earlier in the movie by the main character?

iconicon
Buy Arlington Road on Blu-ray DVD
icon

1 comment on “Arlington Road is the worst movie ever made”

  1. As far as I was concerned, the Jeff Bridges character was spiralling down into paranoid schizophrenia and persecuting an innocent man. Of course, since it was a Hollywood movie, I knew that his suspicions would turn out to be true, because they always do. Just once I would like the hero everyone thinks is crazy to actually turn out to be crazy. It would be so refreshing.

Leave a comment

Now on DVD and Blu-Ray

Roadracers

By Adam Lippe

Whenever there’s a genre parody or ode to a specific era of films, such as Black Dynamite’s mocking of Blaxploitation films or Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, the second half of Grindhouse, the danger is that the film might fall into the trap of either being condescending without any particular insight, or so faithful that it becomes the very flawed thing it is emulating.

Black Dynamite has nothing new to say about Blaxploitation films, it just does a decent job of copying what an inept [...]


Veegie Awards

Winner: BEST ONLINE FILM CRITIC, 2010 National Veegie Awards (Vegan Themed Entertainment)

Nominee: BEST NEW PRODUCT, 2011 National Veegie Awards: The Vegan Condom

Recent Comments

Archive

Featured Quote (written by me)

On Cold Fish:

Though the 16 year old me described the 1994 weepie Angie, starring Geena Davis as a Brooklyn mother raising her new baby alone, as “maudlin and melodramatic,” Roger Ebert, during his TV review, referring to the multitude of soap-operaish problems piling up on the titular character, suggested that it was only in Hollywood where Angie would get a happy ending. “If they made this movie in France, Angie would have shot herself.”

Well Cold Fish was made in Japan, where Angie would have shot herself and that would have been the happy ending.