Sam & Janet

This is, by far, the stupidest movie I have ever seen. I can't imagine how this film won a Best Screenplay award. As a matter of fact, I can't even imagine how this film was ever made. Everything about it - especially the dialogue, plot, and acting - was hokey and juvenile and embarrassing. Nothing about the movie was believable. How many times was it necessary to show Sam shirtless in bed? How many times was it necessary to show Janet staring out at the ocean? Why was Gary Busey in the movie? On the plus side, there were some lovely visuals (those 10 seconds of colored leaves were beautiful) and Oklahoma City looks like a very nice place to visit.

This is one of the worst films I've ever seen. Apparently the guy who made it is some sort of hayseed dj in Oklahoma and promotes it through his radio show. Very predictable, very cheesy. I wish I could say it was manipulative, but that would require some degree of success in changing peoples' emotions. It almost pulls off being so bad it's funny, but in the end it's too bland for that. All I can say is WOW!

I have read many reviews on this movie and all commented how bad it was. It had so many flaws. In the narrative there were too many flaws for a movie in the twenty-first century. The characters were too campy to relate to. The repetitive references to Star Trek had no relationship with the story, nor did it help it what-so-ever. This became distracting. The sound emphasized the floor (OK, for a 1960's B movie, but not in 2002!). While Gary Busy is a great character actor his talent was kept behind a "bar" as a alcoholic reference with intellectualism and philosophy. However, there were two good points, and the reason why I felt hooked into watching a bad feature: the cinematography and editing. Even so, it was out of place with what made it bad. This may be the moral of the story.

Recently I had a chance to view this film in its entirety. It made me speechless for a while. There's nothing cinematic about this film. Every aspect of filmmaking in this film is evil. The story could be told in 20mins max. It drags with hideous dialog and terrible editing. I don't blame the actors for not giving good performances because they had nothing good to work with. It is amazing that there is a film out there that is worse than Spiceworld. Special appearance by Gary Busey...well, he has no point being in this film. It would be the same film without him. Could be better because it's less time for the audience to be tortured. And at one point, the film takes a completely different tone, it feels like you are watching a Wes Craven film. I enjoy bad films personally. I think there are two kinds of bad film. One is so bad it instantly becomes a legendary film, and the other is so bad it needs to be vanished. This film absolutely falls into the latter.

Pretty people were in it. Obviously enough money was spent to give the visuals that "slick" look of a Hollywood movie. A lot of the actors had good voices that were nice to listen to. And the screenplay may have been a good one -- it's just really hard to tell. Ferguson seems like a very good actor and a few others in the film probably are too. However I don't think the director can tell the difference between good acting and "being caught acting." So much of it was so unbelievable and not in a fun or creative and artistic way. It just came out like a tone deaf singer singing what might have been a good song but I can't really tell because the tune was so out of whack and never could detect the melody. I watched almost all of it and nothing ever really seemed to happen and nothing touched me or moved me except some of the acting by Ferguson, who at times reminded me quite a bit of Ann Heche. I do not recommend this movie unless you are studying what makes a bad movie a bad movie. It might be interesting for example to compare this film to something done by, say, Ed Wood.