When I say that this is the worst movie I have ever seen, I don't mean that in a vague, exaggerated way. I'm not using hyperbole to suggest that it is simply a very bad film. I mean that this film, The Last Request, is without a doubt the very worst of the thousands of films I have seen in my life.
Everything about it is very bad. The script, which is the best thing about it, is awful. It may have worked with a few rewrites, but it feels like they rushed through this to make a film as fast as they could. It's interesting, because during the credits we see that they actually had quite a bit of filmmaking gear on set, more than many low-budget productions, but they still managed to screw everything up.
If I could ask the filmmakers one question it would be whether they purposely made a bad film. There are many examples of films like this that are so ineptly made as to be entertaining, such as The Room and the films of Neil Breen. And people who see those films say that no one could make a film that bad if they tried. But I suppose it's possible, although unlikely, that these filmmakers set out to do just that. If so, bravo. They are geniuses.
But if not, this movie is baffling. It appears they made every wrong decision they could make. I understand that these guys wanted to make a movie and nothing was going to stop them, but it really feels like they rushed through it as quickly as they could. In addition to all the other problems with the movie, the filming and editing both feel very sloppy and lazy. It's as if they didn't even watch their final cut before releasing it. The ADR is the worst I've seen in my life. I don't feel bad for taking this position; they definitely could have made a better film if they'd put in a little more work and tried just a little harder, so they have no one to blame but themselves.
At the very least, you would hope that they would learn something from making this film. But the mistakes they made were so glaringly bad that, even if they'd never made a film before, they should have already known better just from living. And now it seems they've made a second feature and made nearly all the same mistakes again. I will say this, however: their new film 48 Hour Drinking Spree is a comedy. I have watched the first ten minutes of it and, while it still suffers from many of the same mistakes as this film, the jokes at least work half the time, and that's point of a comedy.
As for The Last Request, it is interesting due to the so very inept filmmaking that went into it. It is worth watching for that reason, if you're into that sort of thing. You probably won't learn from their mistakes though, unless you're a filmmaker who is also a toddler.
