The 2020’s have become the Age of the Reboot, with upcoming remakes ranging from the classic Steve Martin family comedy Father of the Bride to the classic Steve Martin family comedy Cheaper by the Dozen.
But this raises a question: Why does Hollywood insist on remaking movies that already have great versions that anyone can watch at any time, when what they should be doing is atoning for their cinematic sins by taking all of the terrible movies they’ve forced on the public over the years and make them over again. And don’t let them stop until they do it right.
10. From Justin to Kelly (2003)
From the writer of the notorious flop Spice World, and the director of literally nothing you’ve ever seen or want to see, comes a quickie cash grab based on an irresistible premise: American audiences are dumb and will watch any old crap if it stars someone they’ve heard of before.
American Idol winners Justin Guarini and Kelly Clarkson are the movie’s will-they-won’t-they romantic leads with the electric spark of a damp sponge. Unfortunately, it lacked a crucial element that made them so much fun to watch on Idol: Simon Cowell telling them how bad they are.
9. The Wicker Man (2006)
Every generation deserves their version of The Wicker Man. In 2006, Nicolas Cage starred in a remake of the 1973 British horror film of the same name, and while nobody thought it was good, everybody who watched it agreed it was iconic. Featuring Cage at his peak gonzo anything-for-a-buck film-starring spree, he stars as a police officer who lands on an island of lady pagans while in search of his ex-fiance’s daughter. It made “NOT THE BEES!” into the hottest meme of the late 2000s and created a new film genre: “The WTF Is This? Nicolas Cage Movie.”
8. Hitler – Dead or Alive (1942)
Kinda sorta based on a true story, this 1942 WWII propaganda quickie stars actual movie star Ward Bond as the leader of a trio of gangsters who decide to collect on a million dollar bounty on the Austrian leader of the Axis. The film ends with the trio kidnapping Hitler, snipping his mustache which renders him unrecognizable to pursuing German townsfolk who then kill him.
7. Super Mario Bros. (1993)
There is nothing in the movie Super Mario Bros that indicates that anyone on the creative team had ever seen the game beyond the box art before they started shooting it. Instead of killer mushrooms and turtles, there are genetically-modified human/dinosaur hybrids and as King Koopa we got a Dennis Hopper so checked out he’s practically shooting from his trailer. It also features a surprise Whoopi Goldberg cameo, which to this critic’s knowledge has never been explained. This film is an act of tremendous self-loathing by a creative team who all knew they were too smart to make a movie based on a video game about plumbers jumping on turtles.
6. The Ice Pirates (1984)
After Star Wars became the biggest box office hit the world had then seen, some producers learned the lesson that audiences were clamoring for old-fashioned story-telling with groundbreaking special effects and characters you could really root for. Others realized that if you set any old crap in space, enough Skywalker-crazy kids would come see it that you’d make your money back. The Ice Pirates was one of those, and with Star Wars breaking streaming records and Spaceballs 2 allegedly in development, now’s the perfect time to revisit a far less popular galaxy much less far away.
5. Magical Mystery Tour (1967)
The list of movies that have objectively terrible but also produced a killer soundtrack is short, but it would take the collective talents of The Beatles to create a movie that, 54 years later, remains at number one. After the death of their manager Brian Epstein, Paul McCartney conceived a comedy that would let the Beatles just show up in a scene and improvise. The only problem was that while John, Paul, George, and Ringo were the greatest musical creative team in the past 100 years, they were not writers, directors, or most importantly, comedians. What they did have, though, was a can-do spirit and enough money and clout that nobody wanted to say no to them.
4. Mac & Me (1988)
From the director of our number 6 film, The Ice Pirates, comes another ripoff of a super-popular film based on the premise that if little kids liked E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial, then they’d be too dumb to notice that Mac & Me was exactly the same but worse. In this case they were wrong, and adults were also put off by the extensive product placement that included a ridiculous dance sequence set inside a McDonald’s for no good reason. It won two Razzies, for Worst Director and Worst New Star, for Ronald McDonald.
3. Nothing but Trouble (1991)
Nothing But Trouble was a movie very much ahead of its time. A horror-comedy written, directed by, and starring Dan Aykroyd as a gross monster judge who presides over a small town speed trap that catches yuppie jerk Chevy Chase and wife Demi Moore. It’s not funny enough to justify the A-list cast of comedy stars which also includes John Candy who plays a set of twins (brother and sister), but in the hands of a Jordan Peele-type director to bring out the horror elements it could be the scariest movie of the new century.
2. Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
Napoleon Dynamite is about a group of memorably larger-than-life characters who don’t do much. The roles are also performed with a level of energy that feels like the actors were woken out of bed in the middle of the night and given their lines right before the camera began rolling. As a comedy it works alright, but a remake could add jokes, as well as other things most movies have, like a beginning, middle, and ending.
1. Wild Wild West (1999)
A lot of people are still mad at Will Smith over “The Slap,”. We can’t think of a better way to serve his current sentence in Showbiz Jail than having to star in a remake of his own terrible flop, which was itself a remake of a beloved TV Western from the ‘50s. The entire cast, which included Kevin Kline, Selma Hayek, and Sir Kenneth Branagh, are all still available and in some cases extremely available. Plus the film boasts an undeniably epic title song that you not only wouldn’t need to rerecord but also shouldn’t.
Published: Jul 10, 2022 09:03 am