OK, I couldn't make it to NN this year, and wanted to cheer myself up, so I dug up an old email that I sent out to family & friends several years ago, consisting of a collection of review snippets for the horrible remake of "Rollerball" made in 2002.
Suffice it to say that it was, by most accounts, a pretty bad movie.
In the comments, feel free to post your own stories about the Worst Movie you've ever seen. The rules: First, no outright porn. Second, since there are so many utter-crap straight-to-video "sequels", it has to have had at least a brief theatrical run before going to video.
"This re-do is so dumb and so exploitative in its violence that, ironically, it becomes everything that the rather clumsy original was railing against."
-- Jeff Vice, DESERET NEWS, SALT LAKE CITY
"The editing is chaotic, the photography grainy and badly focused, the writing unintentionally hilarious, the direction unfocused, the performances as wooden."
-- Lawrence Toppman, CHARLOTTE OBSERVER
"Problem is, we have no idea what in creation is going on."
-- Tor Thorsen, REEL.COM
"Laughably, irredeemably awful."
-- Jonathan Taylor, CITYSEARCH
"With this new Rollerball, sense and sensibility have been overrun by what can only be characterized as robotic sentiment."
-- Gene Seymour, NEWSDAY
"By the end, you just don't care whether that cold-hearted snake Petrovich (that would be Reno) gets his comeuppance. Just bring on the Battle Bots, please!"
-- Steven Rea, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
"About as enjoyable, I would imagine, as searching for a quarter in a giant pile of elephant feces...positively dreadful."
-- Dustin Putman, THEMOVIEBOY.COM
"Dreadful acting, confusing action cinematography, choppy editing and embarrassing dialogue, with the added bonus of a plot almost as dumb as that of the original film."
-- Connie Ogle, MIAMI HERALD
"McTiernan tries to bury the idiocy of his high-tech Gladiator under flashy editing and unexplained rock-star cameos."
-- Sean Means, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
"Composed almost entirely of smash cuts and camera gimmickry, it makes most rock videos look like Ingmar Bergman dramas."
-- Terry Lawson, DETROIT FREE PRESS
"When the trailers for the film tell you... the big, astonishing twist, you end up spending the first 45 minutes of the movie wondering when the damn movie is going to start."
-- MaryAnn Johanson, FLICK FILOSOPHER
"A limply acted, inane orgy of bloodletting."
-- Chris Hewitt, ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS
"Rollerball IS as bad as you think, and worse than you can imagine."
-- Gary Thompson, PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS
"Disjointed, puerile and ugly-looking to boot...a visual, as well as a narrative, wreck."
-- Frank Swietek, ONE GUY'S OPINION
"Klein, charming in comedies like American Pie and dead-on in Election, delivers one of the saddest action hero performances ever witnessed."
-- Norm Schrager, FILMCRITIC.COM
"They should have called it Gutterball."
-- Mark Rahner, SEATTLE TIMES
"If you're a WWF fan, or you related to the people who watched the robots getting butchered in A.I., you'll probably like Rollerball."
-- Jon Popick, PLANET SICK-BOY
"McTiernan and the talent-deprived buffoons who wrote the remake took away the futurism and stripped most of the social satire from this cautionary tale."
-- Roger Moore, ORLANDO SENTINEL
"A lot like the imaginary sport it projects onto the screen -- loud, violent and mindless."
-- Tom Maurstad, DALLAS MORNING NEWS
"A movie of such rank stupidity and appalling taste that it would almost seem impermeable to analysis, much less critique."
-- Shawn Levy, OREGONIAN
"What do you get when you cross an MGM cult film with costumes from a World Wrestling Federation garage sale and an editor with a short attention span?"
-- Valerie Kuklenski, DAILY NEWS LOS ANGELES
"This flick feels like a turd that nobody ever bothered to clean off the floor and just ended up getting stinkier and stinkier and stinkier."
-- JoBlo, JOBLO'S MOVIE EMPORIUM
"Successfully creates for the viewer the feeling of being trapped inside a video arcade going at full tilt, a thrilling prospect for 14-year-old boys, no doubt, though it's hard to imagine anyone else enjoying it."
-- Eric Harrison, HOUSTON CHRONICLE
"It is that rare combination of bad writing, bad direction and bad acting -- the trifecta of badness."
-- Eric D. Snider, DAILY HERALD
"It's dull, spiritless, silly and monotonous: an ultra-loud blast of pointless mayhem, going nowhere fast."
-- Michael Wilmington, CHICAGO TRIBUNE
"Say this for the soundtrack, it drowns out the lousy dialogue."
-- Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE
"Derailed by bad writing and possibly also by some of that extensive post-production reworking to aim the film at young males in the throes of their first full flush of testosterone."
-- Kevin Thomas, LOS ANGELES TIMES
"McTiernan's remake may be lighter on its feet -- the sober-minded original was as graceful as a tap-dancing rhino -- but it is just as boring and as obvious."
-- Elvis Mitchell, NEW YORK TIMES
"Not so much a redo of the 1975 sci-fi allegory of the same title as a denial of everything that made that film timely and interesting."
-- Glenn Lovell, SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS
"A remarkable film: Remarkably empty, remarkably noisy, remarkably pleasureless."
-- Mick LaSalle, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
"Jewison's rich and provocative 1975 original has been de-metaphorized, made narrow and pointless, while remaining just as loud and violent."
-- Stephen Hunter, WASHINGTON POST
"Little more than the skin and bones and ear-flaying soundtrack of a dubiously fleshed-out premise that seemed dated 27 years ago."
-- David Hunter, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
"This oddly scrambled new version eventually falls apart so badly you feel embarrassed for the people who made it."
-- Jonathan Foreman, NEW YORK POST
"Despite the technical advances of the past quarter century, the game sequences are as goofy as the first go-round."
-- Rick Groen, GLOBE AND MAIL
"Another reminder that most remakes are accidents waiting to happen."
-- Paul Clinton, BOXOFFICE MAGAZINE
"Its semi-serious story, weighed against its cartoonishly violent game scenes, pull viewers toward conflicting but mutually unfulfilling peak moments."
-- Nick Carter, MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL
"The new film looks as if it were made in 1975, while Jewison's 27-year-old movie seems like up-to-date state-of-the-art."
-- Joe Baltake, SACRAMENTO BEE
"The action makes no sense, the death-metal soundtrack drowns out most of the dialogue and the acting feels half-hearted."
-- Todd Anthony, SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL
"20 years later it's still just as confusing and pointless (and now X-tremely boring, too!)."
-- E! ONLINE
"Seems like the video-game version of the original film -- with all the substance and intelligence dropped out."
-- Jack Garner, ROCHESTER DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE
"A long, violent, expensive and very stupid movie."
-- David Elliott, SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
"What it might look like if Vince McMahon were to direct "Starlight Express" (with all the stage blood, testosterone, and suck such a union implies)."
-- Walter Chaw, FILM FREAK CENTRAL
"...a virtually plotless, flash-bang failure...so devoid of substance it almost defies description."
-- Rob Blackwelder, SPLICEDWIRE
"... a silly, stupid, incoherent mess."
-- Sean Axmaker, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
"An incomprehensible story, lackluster actors, embarrassing acting, and, get this, no villains!"
-- Victoria Alexander, FILMS IN REVIEW
"An incoherent mess, a jumble of footage in search of plot, meaning, rhythm and sense."
-- Roger Ebert, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
"Missing a few key elements: a script, a reason for being and maybe a few Britney Spears ads strategically placed throughout to break up 98 minutes of solid tedium."
-- Mike Clark, USA TODAY
"It had a chance to improve upon the crude and stupid 1975 original, set in a future America. Instead, it's only cruder and stupider."
-- Jay Carr, BOSTON GLOBE
"Rollerball is just plain bad."
-- Marty Mapes, MOVIE HABIT
Tragically, it was directed by the same guy who directed one of the BEST (action) movies ever made, the original DIE HARD. Bizzare.