FILM / Captain Canada's Movie Rodeo / March 2023 / Gabriel Ricard
Image © 20th Century Fox
A second viewing of a movie can be shockingly different from the first one. There’s never enough time to rewatch everything, but I do wonder often about certain movies I fucking hated when I saw them, a few years ago, just recently, or whatever the case may be. Was I being fair the first time? Was I just in a shitty mood? I don’t think anyone sets out to make a bad film, and almost everything deserves admirers who see things I don’t, but that’s never going to change the fact that I think some movies are irredeemably awful.
That’s why for this month’s edition of Captain Canada’s Movie Rodeo, I’m going to review five movies I have rated 1-2 stars in the word document where I keep scores for every movie I’ve seen since the first column was published 11 years ago. I’m going to audit my negativity in the form of 5 movies I intensely disliked when I saw them. I’m going to give each film a second viewing, which is not something I normally do for a movie I genuinely recall loathing, and I’m going to see if my feelings from the first time around have changed. It’s not impossible that I’ll feel very different on a second watch.
Now, you’re probably asking yourself, “Why do you have a star rating system for this word doc when you use a letter grade system in the column?” I’m afraid there are no easy answers in this or any other life.
Also, fun fact: Of the 3000+ movies in this word document only 89 have a one-star rating. How’s that for positivity, motherfuckers.
First Family (1980):
My Original Rating: */***** (F-) | My 2nd Chance Rating: F-
Image © Warner Bros. Pictures
You would think a cast as talented as Bob Newhart, Madeline Khan, Rip Torn, Fred Willard, Gilda Radner, and quite a few others, combined with writing and directing credits from the great Buck Henry, would be able to do something better than First Family. I didn’t have high expectations for a film that people seem to either loathe or not remember period, when I finally watched it last year, but it was alarming how quickly this relative obscurity slaughtered even the notion that this would be watchable.
Rarely do I give up on a movie halfway through. I don’t know if I’m proud of that, but like most things in life, you stay with a crap shack of a movie to the bitter fucking end. First Family, a satirical film about an idiot President (the undisputedly great Bob Newhart, playing very poorly against type) and his stunningly repulsive family (wasted performances by Gilda Radner and Madeline Khan), tested my patience as few things have. Not just movies. All things.
First Family is barely a curiosity. I can almost always find some good in any film. This is a low point for virtually everyone involved, and after watching this unsalvageable wreck a second time, I’m starting to regret this idea for the column as a whole.
French Kiss (1995):
My Original Rating: */***** (F+) | My 2nd Chance Rating: C-
Image © 20th Century Fox | PolyGram Filmed Entertainment
I should probably start any review of a Meg Ryan movie by mentioning that I’ve never been a big fan of her work. Some of her characters even go so far as to annoy me to the point where I have a hard time getting into the rest of any given film she’s appeared in. This is why I’m not crazy about When Harry Met Sally (if it makes you feel better, Billy Crystal is even mor exhausting in that).
French Kiss is probably one of the more well-liked movies I’ve given an abysmal rating to. This is an example of a movie where I get that it’s well-made, but the characters just irritate too damn much to care. It’s not confusing to me that people enjoy this film about a jilted woman (Meg Ryan) who meets a French con artist (Kevin Kline, who I generally like a lot) on her way to Paris. I’ve just never had the same experience over the couple of times I’ve seen this.
My rewatch for this column proved to be mildly surprising. While French Kiss still gets on my nerves with its characters, I wasn’t as bothered by them because I was already starting from a pretty firm place of loathing them. I guess there was nowhere to go but up, and the dialog made me laugh more than it has in the past.
Man Trouble (1992):
My Original Rating: */***** (F+) | My 2nd Chance Rating: D+
Image © 20th Century Fox
It’s almost mystifying that a movie with Jack Nicholson, Ellen Barkin, Harry Dean Stanton, and Beverly D’Angelo in the cast, directed by Bob Rafelson and written by Carole Eastman (Five Easy Pieces), could be almost sadistic in its failure to connect on any possible level. It gets close to feeling intentional more than once. The idea that people would go to the trouble to create a movie so bad it causes vague emotional unease is of course ridiculous, but as I sat through a fairly agonizing second round with Man Trouble, the thought nonetheless occurred to me.
Man Trouble has been largely lost to time at this point. Good. As far as I’m concerned, not even Jack Nicholson or Bob Rafelson (or both, since the two men collaborated numerous times) completists need to waste their time here. The general madness of this story, which tries and fails to be a compelling dark romantic comedy, made it a wee bit more entertaining for the second viewing, but not by much. I’m sure this movie has its fans, and I genuinely wish I was one of them.
The Haunting (1999):
My Original Rating: **/***** | My 2nd Chance Rating: C-
Image © DreamWorks Pictures
I like a cheesy 90s horror movie as much as anyone, but The Haunting has always been a hard sell for me. The 2nd adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s classic novel strives to go in its own direction from that of the 1963 film version from director Robert Wise. Even as I watched this again for the purposes of this column, I still wish they had just not bothered at all.
My dislike of The Haunting comes down to tone and cast. I despise everyone I meet, with the sole exception of Lilli Taylor as a young woman whose circumstances compel her to participate in an insomnia study led by Dr. David Morrow (Liam Neeson, who is shockingly insufferable here). There’s nothing scary in this film, of course, but there’s also nothing that’s even very enjoyable or fun.
I’m aware The Haunting is another movie with plenty of admirers. This recent reappraisal kept their opinions in mind, and it’s easy enough for me to see how this could have been more fun for me with a different script and cast. Director Jan de Bont is an all-time great for cinematographers, and he’s directed some fun shit in the past (Speed). It just doesn’t click for me here, making the mass of energy and enthusiasm another tiring component to this very tiring film.
A Cure for Wellness (2016):
My Original Rating: **/***** | My 2nd Chance Rating: B-
Image © 20th Century Fox
We can only hope A Cure for Wellness is not going to be the last time Gore Verbinski directs something. I saw the film in theaters with a decent level of anticipation that I was in for a weird ride. What I got instead was a frustrating experience with uneven performances, a plot that struck me then as pretentious, and a pacing that rarely made sense for anything I was watching on the screen. The visuals and allusions to a Lovecraftian nightmare pulling the strings of this entire universe notwithstanding, A Cure for Wellness was a missed opportunity in my thin book.
The second viewing then proved to be a pleasant surprise. Expectations are tricky for a movie. They’re impossible to ignore, but they can also create a standard the end result of the actual film cannot hope to live up to. I had different expectations this time, and I found myself appreciating the movie’s efforts to remain entertaining without sacrificing a fascinating mystery in a truly unsettling locale. I’m still not a big fan of the ending, but A Cure for Wellness reminds me that I should be more receptive to what the film wants to show me, as opposed to what I think it should show me.
There’s also value in giving movies another try. It doesn’t always work out, and I realize time is often too short to spend watching something you didn’t like the first time around, but it’s fun to challenge your opinions whenever possible. Even for a forgettable 2016 psychological horror movie.
Gabriel Ricard writes, edits, and occasionally acts. His books Love and Quarters and Bondage Night are available through Moran Press, in addition to A Ludicrous Split (Alien Buddha Press) and Clouds of Hungry Dogs (Kleft Jaw Press). He is also a writer, performer, and producer with Belligerent Prom Queen Productions. He lives on a horrible place called Long Island.