You know what I'm talking about. im talking about those reviews that have lines in them you remember years after reading them. I'm talking about giving an album a half a star. I'm talking about reviews taht are so negative theyre...almost.....funny. Let's hear 'em.
I remember of review in the Washington City Paper of "The Abyss" when it first came out in theaters. I'd love to see if I could find a copy of it online. Another great one was in PC Gamer. They break down the "good and bad" for games. One of the game's good points - It installs into one directory so it's easy to delete. I think it was the first review I ever saw in that mag that gave a game 1 point (out of a possible 10)
Flickville's Ted Durgin reviewing Tomb Raider http://www.artbabyart.com/press_release/tomb_raider.htm
Stephen Whitty on Gigli: "Such an utter wreck of a movie you expect to see it lying on its side somewhere in rural Pennsylvania, with a small gang of engineers circling and a wisp of smoke rising from the caboose."
The Filthy Critic (http://bigempire.com/filthy/) has tons of them. Check out the ones for Glitter and Driven for example.
rottentomatoes.com has them too: Superman IV: "More sluggish than a funeral barge, cheaper than a sale at K mart, it's a nerd, it's a shame, it's "Superman IV."
Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales in his review of the Fox show "Oliver Beene": "Grant Rosenmeyer, the young actor who plays Oliver, is a gruesome tot whose appearance suggests a ventriloquist's dummy that got away (perhaps the famously evil one of 'Dead of Night')."
Sleepy Hollow Desson Howe from the The Washington Post says, "...both sleepy and hollow..." and Tony Anthony from the South Floria Sun-Sentinel says, "While you will rarely read the word 'flat' in any description of Ms. Ricci's screen persona, it applies to her performance here."
Re: Sleepy Hollow Extra points for Desson because he's a football fanatic -- a regular at local watering holes in DC when games are on and he manages and plays on a men's team.
I like the Onion AV Club because they seemingly pick certain movies to review so they can have fun ripping them. This week's review of Good Boy!: http://*#*#*#*#*#ionavclub.com/3939/cinema.html#review5 (er, replace the *#*#*#*#*# with "on") "But because Good Boy!, a tool of oppression disguised as a "comedy for the entire family," was made by humans, the terrier becomes an unwitting pawn in a propaganda film that's every bit as insidious as 2001's neo-fascist, anti-feline dirge Cats & Dogs." "If any future space dogs are looking for evidence of human inferiority, they could do worse than watching this movie."
Roger Ebert is among the best ever in giving great bad reviews. Anybody who really like´s them has got to buy " I Hated, Hated Hated this movie". Pure genius. He was so good, Richard Belzer used his review of North on the Rob Reiner roast. Here are some good ones On Battlefield Earth: ""Battlefield Earth" is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time. It's not merely bad; it's unpleasant in a hostile way." On Fahter´s day: "And what about poor Julia Louis-Dreyfus? She has the thankless role of Crystal's wife. When Crystal and Williams drag the kid into a hotel room for a shower, she misunderstands everything she hears on the phone and thinks her husband is showering with strange men and boys. Later she turns up while he's telephoning her, and he talks into the phone not realizing her answers are coming from right behind him. This will be hilarious to anyone who doesn't know how telephones work. " On "Dice Rules" ""Dice Rules" is one of the most appalling movies I have ever seen. It could not be more damaging to the career of Andrew Dice Clay if it had been made as a documentary by someone who hated him."
On Little Indian Big city ``Little Indian, Big City'' is one of the worst movies ever made. I detested every moronic minute of it. Through a stroke of good luck, the entire third reel of the film was missing the day I saw it. I went back to the screening room two days later, to view the missing reel. It was as bad as the rest, but nothing could have saved this film. As my colleague Gene Siskel observed, ``If the third reel had been the missing footage from Orson Welles' `The Magnificent Ambersons,' this movie still would have sucked.'' On Jaws the Revenge "I believe that the shark wants revenge against Mrs. Brody. I do. I really do believe it. After all, her husband was one of the men who hunted this shark and killed it, blowing it to bits. And what shark wouldn't want revenge against the survivors of the men who killed it? " And on Freddy Got Fingered "This movie doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels. Many years ago, when surrealism was new, Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali made "Un Chien Andalou," a film so shocking that Bunuel filled his pockets with stones to throw at the audience if it attacked him. Green, whose film is in the surrealist tradition, may want to consider the same tactic. The day may come when "Freddy Got Fingered" is seen as a milestone of neo-surrealism. The day may never come when it is seen as funny" And his reviews of Speed Zone, Diary of Forbidden Dreams and especially The Lonely Lady were gems.
I used to review CDs for a paper and I unleashed some pretty brutal ones: I remember reviewing some granola-chomping band's CD: This is a paraphrase (since I can't remember it exactly) of the entire review: Jerry Garcia is dead. The Grateful Dead have disbanded. Get over it.
Tucson Weekly has some good negative reviews. Recent "Duplex" Review: "Ultimately, with Stiller and Barrymore incessantly falling down or getting electrocuted or burned or shot by their own homicidal devices, Duplex pretty much copies the plot of every Road Runner cartoon. So, before deciding to dump your hard-earned (or ruthlessly pilfered) cash on this one, I'd advise you to see if you can sit through nearly two hours of the hapless Coyote making small mushroom clouds as he caroms off rock faces and into a canyons. Now imagine Drew Barrymore throwing up on the Coyote's face. If that turns you on, and your ISP blocks out barrymorebarfingonstiller.com, then your only choice is to see Duplex. God bless you, really."