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Cinema's 50 greatest flops, follies and failures: part 7
Yes, it's Number One... well, actually, we cheated: our pole-position entry could almost be a whole Top 50 list on its own. Rock on...
Explore the list:
50-41
| 40-31
| 30-21
| 20-11
| 10-6
| 5-2 |
1. The Entire Rock Musical Genre (1964-the present day)
Directed by various
The gift of sound and
vision
You can count the truly successful rock musicals on the
fingers of one hand. On the fingers of one finger, in fact. A finger with ‘A
Hard Day's Night' written on it.
Richard Lester's first film with The Beatles wrote the rulebook for the great pop movie - screaming girls, cheeky chaps, bolshy banter and backstage antics. Then, a year later, their second collaboration ‘Help!' rewrote it to include Technicolor chase scenes, dayglo villainy and scenes filmed in exotic locations for no apparent reason. Guess which template stuck.
Not every rock movie is bad: there's a case to be made for
the likes of ‘Catch Us If You Can', ‘Head' or ‘Slade in Flame'. But even the
half-decent examples are, at root, follies, fuelled by ambition and a misguided
desire to break down the barriers between the artforms, and sunk by boatloads
of cash, drugs and woeful, wilful stupidity.
But the undoubted high-water mark for the rock extravaganza is, of course, the '60s - or rather, that part of the '60s that hung around until about 1977. We're talking ‘Magical Mystery Tour' and ‘Tommy', we're talking ‘The Song Remains the Same' and ‘200 Motels', we're talking ‘Renaldo and Clara' and ‘The Wall' (made in 1982, but let's not kid ourselves, it's a '60s movie). We're talking any situation in which a fully grown man can dress up as a sign of the zodiac, relive his first acid experience, improvise a 15-minute dialogue scene or reconstruct his childhood as a series of lurid, grotesque semi-animated tableaux. The ultimate fusion of ego and extravagance, these movies kept being made despite the fact that pretty much every one of them a) lost money and b) was utter, utter nonsense.
Matters progressed in the '70s and '80s, and suddenly it
wasn't so much about exploring one's inner turmoil as about celebrating one's
happy, carefree, insanely wealthy inner child: ‘The Wiz' sprang from a
half-decent idea – a ghettoised take on The Wizard of Oz with an all-star cast
of Motown legends – but then they got Joel Schumacher in to write the script,
and cast 34-year-old Diana Ross as Dorothy, and the whole thing started to seem
increasingly creepy. But not half as creepy as ‘Moonwalker', which was billed
as coming ‘from the imagination of Michael Jackson', which only gives you half an idea
how freaky this part-baked parade of music videos really is.
Even the Minneapolis
midget Prince, who'd had a rare near-success with leatherbound pubic explosion ‘Purple
Rain' (great songs, dire dialogue) went completely off the rails not once but
twice, with flapper-gangster disaster ‘Under the Cherry Moon' and largely
forgotten weirdo ‘Purple' sequel ‘Graffiti Bridge'. And what the hell Paul
McCartney was thinking with excruciating day-in-the-life industry caper ‘Give
My Regards to Broad Street' is anyone's guess.
And it doesn't end with movies which have actual rock stars in them. There's a whole branch of moviemaking – spearheaded by ‘Hair', and taken up by Andrew Lloyd Webber and his satanic ilk – which took the overblown ideals of the rock movie and took out those pesky stars (unless you count David Essex), resulting in abominations like ‘Jesus Christ Superstar', ‘Godspell' and ‘Absolute Beginners', and an entire generation of kids with a completely twisted idea of what rock music actually is.
And it ain't over yet. Just when you thought the Lloyd-Webber juggernaut had finally ground to a halt, along came the likes of Ben Elton and Bjorn Ulvaeus with a bold new idea, the jukebox musical, and resurrected the whole sorry mess. Now we've got ‘Mamma Mia', we've got ‘We Will Rock You' (movie inevitable), we've got unholy Beatles-based abortion ‘Across the Universe', each of them hell bent on taking the songs you love and deforming them into some grim, slick, daytime-friendly Dave-Lee-Travesty of their former greatness.
Is nothing sacred? Well, if this list has taught us
anything... Not in Hollywood.TH
Explore the list: 50-41
| 40-31
| 30-21
| 20-11
| 10-6
| 5-2 |
Author: Adam Lee Davies, Tom Huddleston, David Jenkins and Anna Smith
User comments on this story
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- Dan said...
- Where's Waterworld????? Posted on Sep 02 2010 23:36
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- Rick said...
- What? No Cutthroat Island? The film that finally sank the corrupt corpse of Caralco gets not a mention? Somebody sweet on Geena Davis? Renny Harlin? Come Onnnnnn! Posted on Sep 01 2010 21:49
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- Rick said...
- Interesting to see two David Lynch films here. If you think "Fire" is dark, you should see "Eraserhead". And where's everyone's favourite dog, "Howard the Duck"? Posted on Aug 23 2010 10:35
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- Theresa said...
- I was surprised that Hugh Hudson's "Revolution" didn't make the list! Posted on Aug 04 2010 09:39
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- James said...
- Doubt that the compiler of this list has seen Hedwig. I don't understand why White Dog is getting so much stick! I thought it was fantastic! Posted on Aug 02 2010 01:50
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- Craigganmore said...
- And where did Titanic go? The most 'titanic' of all follies, it threatened the career of DiCaprio - how many good films has he had to make since making that turkey before finally convincing people he's actually quite a good actor? Cameron labelled as frenetic, self indulgent nutjob and the rest of the cast scraping around for supporting roles in good but insignificant films for the rest of their careers. Folly doesn't get much more follyish than this. Posted on Aug 01 2010 10:17
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- MarcDom7 said...
- Methinks the people complaining about their favorite movies being on this list completely missed the point. These films aren't necessarily bad. They are, by the article's definition, flops, follies and failures, which includes great movies that could also be too ambitious for normal human consumption or brilliant movies that simply couldn't connect. Maybe read the article before you flame, people. Posted on Jul 29 2010 02:37
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- James said...
- I don't agree with the top spot at all. Jesus Christ Superstar is fantastic, Rocky Horror is fantastic, Hair is good and Spinal Tap and Hedwig are simply AMAZING! Posted on Jul 28 2010 01:20
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- Arthur Jefferson said...
- Exceptional writing, and courage, provokes debate; hence, I applaud the author(s)--circumventing a safety net--for drawing acerbic reactions and fanboy ire. My translation of "folly" may be applied to BONNIE SCOTLAND, what with Hal Roach subverting a Laurel and Hardy comedy with pointless re-editing (plot intrusions that are still unresolved). I'm impassioned with L&H's Roach classics; I'm outraged that their work is now exiled to trivia competitions. Those "babes in the woods" are the catalysts for my BA degree (a term paper on BIG BUSINESS). Posted on Jul 27 2010 07:56
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- Felipe said...
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I can sort of understand your choice of putting the rock genre in the no 1 time slot, since it has, in fact, produced many bad movies. But I can also list 5 fantastic rock-based films (I could do 10, but I'm lazy) which can basically redeem the whole list:
1. School of Rock (hands-down, the undeniable proof that Jack Black is a comic genius)
2. Still Crazy
3. This Is Spinal Tap
4. Rolling Stones: Shine a Light (and the best line ever said by a director-turned-"actor"... "we cannot burn Mick Jagger")
5. Hedwig & The Angry Inch
Oh... and "across the universe" is a beautiful homage to the poetry in Beatles' songs... watched it in a cinema full of Beatles fans and everybody sang the songs and loved it. Posted on Jul 27 2010 07:46 - Report as inappropriate
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- Raffy said...
- Confused about the #1. What about movies like "Velvet Goldmine" (and, to a lesser extent, "I'm Not Here")? Or "Hedwig & The Angry Inch"? I'd argue that those are great rock musicals. Posted on Jul 27 2010 07:38
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- RickDVD said...
- The Great Dictator is one classic film. If it's so bad, how come it's in the IMDB and AFI top 100 films? Sure, the subject matter isn't too good for some people, but it was my father's favorite movie and he was part Jewish and had a tattoo on his arm, which wasn't for cosmetic reasons. Posted on Jul 27 2010 05:16
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- laurie b. said...
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The list was interesting but your #1 had me screaming cop-out. I would have been happier seeing one movie in that place, even if it was a choice that I disagreed with.
Dismissing an entire genre only reflects the bias of the authors. "Spinal Tap" is an incredibly funny film, and yet you guys probably just dissed the genre from which it derives its humor. Posted on Jul 27 2010 04:43 - Report as inappropriate
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- Alex Stockwell said...
- I'm not sure if 200 Motels belongs here; it's hard to believe it lost anybody any money, considering it looks like it cost about a grand to make. Posted on Jul 27 2010 02:07
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- director101 said...
- I'll agree with most of the comments the author makes, but I'd like to point out (having recently watched the movie) that "White Dog" flopped largely because it's a terrible movie. MOW-level production values, tin-ear dialogue, scenery-chewing leads, an unbelievable romance and scenes of "dog training" that are painful (and wrong-headed). Fuller was a talented director, but you could never prove it with "White Dog" .... Posted on Jul 27 2010 00:55
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