STAYING ALIVE

year: 1983

cast: John Travolta, Cynthia Rhodes, Finola Hughes
bad movie rating: ***1/2

This is not a John Travolta film. It belongs entirely to writer/director Sylvester Stallone, rehashing the Rocky storyline of a dimwitted diamond-in-the-rough Italian fighting to survive... only in this case it's a dancer, not a boxer, and unlike Rocky, it's a bad movie. Travolta fights to make it from his former struggling strutter to lead dancer in what's perhaps the gayest Broadway musical ever created (named "Satan's Alley," inspired by Sly's "Paradise Alley"). Playing the character he made famous in "Saturday Night Fever", our man's in great shape, but look too thin, gaunt, strung-out. He charms his way into the bed of a beautiful Broadway star (Finola Hughes) who turns the tables and plays him... and there's an overabundance of Travolta getting his just-deserts: the player being played, played to the hilt while he's using his pretty, gullible girlfriend (Cynthia Rhodes) who can't help but to love the handsome devil. Her love for him is even more annoying than his lust for the femme fatale. And eventually, of course, like Rocky, our hero ends up champion of a game he never thought he'd had a chance in to begin with. Overall, it's terrible fun. Terrible yet fun. Terrible. Fun. Terribly fun. 

BACKDRAFT

title: BACKDRAFT

year: 1991

cast: Kurt Russell, William Baldwin, Robert De Niro

director: Ron Howard

normal movie rating: *

bad movie rating: ****

Ron Howard, former child-star turned overrated film director, throws anything and everything into the pot and ends up creating the worst "blockbuster" ever made, and grandiosely so. While focusing on the lives of two brothers, seasoned fireman Kurt Russell and new-recruit William Baldwin, who lost their firefighting dad years before in an, um, fire, the story really centers on a succession of explosions that kill seemingly random victims like something from a horror movie. There are good guys and bad guys; the good guys are blue collar, the bad guys wear suits (the same as the producers of this movie, most likely). Kurt Russell's acting is so hammy it's hilarious, and every shot of William Baldwin screams: "Aren't I a cutie pie?" Scott Glenn, J.T. Walsh, Rebecca DeMorney and Jennifer Jason Leigh collect a paycheck. Robert DeNiro, as a Merlin-like arson investigator trying to "out think" the fire - treated as a living/breathing vengeful entity - gives Russell a run in the bad acting department, trumped only by Donald Sutherland as a deranged yet helpful incarcerated arsonist (liken to Hannibal Lecter). But it's Ron Howard - attempting to turn every frame into something that'd awe opening night audiences everywhere - who really deserves the blame. Although in making a completely over-the-top disaster, he does succeed, splendidly.

PERFECT

title: PERFECT

year: 1986

cast: John Travolta, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jann Wenner, Laraine Newman, Marilu Henner, Carly Simon, Doug Campbell

normal movie rating: ***

bad movie rating: *****

This movie is perfect. A lean (and somewhat strung-out looking) John Travolta is a writer for Rolling Stone magazine (you know, the one with 90% ads) perched on a controversial, and dangerous, story about a computer mogul accused of drug dealing, and in the meantime centers his periphrial (but soon to be full) attention on "Sports Connection" (i.e. "Sports Erection"), an exercise club/singles hangout where he falls for Jamie Lee Curtis, who runs the best darn aerobics class on earth, and... This movie is perfect. You just have to see it for yourself. Gay men pretending to be straight and straight men seeming oh so gay. Horrible music, hilariously addicting dialog, and Rolling Stone Magazine's Jann Wenner playing himself but with a different name and aware-of-the-camera bad acting that's beyond description. The eighties in all its wonderfully colorful, corny splendor and then some... It's all here, folks. And through the awesome stupidity you'll find yourself amazingly involved in the moronic, sweaty fun. Unfortunately, the last twenty minutes, when Travolta's first story reemerges, turning the neon fluff into courtroom melodrama, things peter out. But no matter, this is an airhead classic you can watch a million times; the epitome of what's called a "guilty pleasure".

THE OTHER SISTER

title: THE OTHER SISTER

year: 1999

cast: Juliette Lewis, Giovanni Ribisi, Diane Keaton, Tom Skerritt

director: Garry Marshall

rating: *

I realize it's politically incorrect to use the term retarded when describing people, so I won't use it to describe the characters played by Juliette Lewis and Giovanni Ribisi, but this movie is totally retarded. The characters, one minute, are barking like dogs and throwing tantrums for no reason, the next minute completely understanding sarcastic inside humor, living in their own apartments and eventually getting married. Garry Marshall made being a hooker a dream for young girls everywhere, just as long as they meet their millionaire Richard Gere. So I guess he's making being "slow" lucrative for... I'm still not sure who this film caters to. But if you like watching over-actors pretending to be... you know... the R word... this is just what the doctor ordered. The side-story involving Lewis' relationship with her uptight conservative mother, Diane Keaton, slows down the unintentional hilarity of this preposterous calamity. And like Leonardo DiCaprio's overrated performance in the horrendous "What's Eating Gilbert Grape", Lewis and Ribisi sound more deaf than anything else. If you want to see an actor portraying a "mentally-challenged" person realistically, W. Earl Brown in THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY takes the prize.

SHOWGIRLS

title: SHOWGIRLS

year: 1995

cast: Elizabeth Berkley, Gina Gershon

normal movie rating: *

bad movie rating: *****

One of the greatest bad movies ever made, this was directed by a bigwig and written by another bigwig (who previously teamed up for "Basic Instinct") and was supposed to be a blockbuster of epic proportions and turned out to be the biggest bomb on the planet, but since has gained a "Springtime for Hitler" like adoration and a gaggle of rabid fans for which I am one. Movie starts out with a tall girl who resembles an ostrich (or llama... or both) who gets picked up by an Elvis impersonator in a raised truck. They go to Vegas and within minutes he steals her stuff, leaving her in Sin City where she promptly meets a black girl who will become her own personal Laverne... or Shirley. Then she gets a job at a dive strip club and not long after becomes a... yep... showgirl in a big-time musical-striptease perhaps even cornier than "Satan's Alley" from STAYING ALIVE. The nudity's about as sexual as an issue of National Geographic; purposely proving that naked girls in a Vegas stripshow are par for the course (and who can argue?). The acting (especially by Berkley) is unintentionally hilarious and the plot is so vapid one can't NOT realize the truly miraculous marvel that is SHOWGIRLS.