Cabin Boy (1994) and My Issues with The Golden Raspberry Awards

When I’m scheduling for future Sunday “Bad” Movies, I always ask for suggestions.  They are a way for me to find bad movies that I might not have noticed.  Having the input of various people can broaden the types of movies I watch, allowing me to find hidden gems I might not have known otherwise.  Including suggestions in the movies I choose helped me find some of my favourite bad movies.

This week, I watched Cabin Boy on a suggestion.  The 1994 film was about finishing school graduate Nathanial Mayweather (Chris Elliott) who boarded the wrong boat while trying to get to Hawaii.  The fishing boat was populated by Captain Greybar (Ritch Brinkley), his three workers Paps (James Gammon), Skunk (Brian Doyle-Murray), and Big Teddy (Brion James), and his cabin boy Kenny (Andy Richter).  When Nathanial convinced Kenny to set the fishing boat on course to Hawaii, they ended up going through Hell’s Bucket, a dangerous part of the ocean filled with monsters and mysterious creatures.

When the movie was released, it was critically panned.  It’s not a good movie.  Chris Elliott was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award as the Worst New Star for his performance.  This brings me to what I want to discuss.  Let’s get into the Golden Raspberry Awards.

The Golden Raspberry Awards, commonly called the Razzies, is an awards ceremony meant to celebrate the worst in film.  It was established in 1980 by John J.B. Wilson to honor the worst movies of that year.  The first ceremony was held on March 31^st of the next year.  As of this year, there have been thirty-six ceremonies, including four ceremonies (10^th, 20^th, 25^th, and 30^th) with anniversary specific awards.

On a surface level, I should appreciate the Golden Raspberry Awards for highlighting the worst in cinema.  That’s what I do with the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  I watch bad movies and celebrate what they can do for viewers, filmmakers, and other movies.  In earlier posts, I included Razzie nominations and wins in the notes because people might be interested in that information.  But I’ve grown wary of the awards over the years for various reasons.

The main reason is that The Golden Raspberry Awards have become predictable.  The opinionated side of me wants to say that they are more of a popularity contest than an objective look at bad cinema.  Adam Sandler is a staple of the awards, being nominated for Worst Actor the past five years.  The people associated with the Twilight films have also managed to find an almost permanent spot in the nominations.  The awards have become more about who the general population has deemed bad than who actually is bad.

Adam Sandler, for example, has a snowball effect happening.  He isn’t the performer that he used to be.  I can agree to that.  He had an energy in the 90s when he was on Saturday Night Live and making movies like Billy Madison, Big Daddy, and Happy Gilmore.  That hasn’t been present for nearly a decade.  After making Funny People, a movie that took shots at the kind of movies he had been making, he returned to making that kind of movie.  His movies aren’t necessarily terrible (Jack and Jill aside), but people seem to be heaping the hate all over them because of how unenergetic his performances are.  With each subsequent movie he releases, more people are crying out that he has made the worst abomination to ever happen to cinema.  The hate grows with each of his releases.  Pixels is better than most of his other recent movies.  You wouldn’t know that from the slander it got for simply being an Adam Sandler movie.

To my point of The Razzies being a popularity contest (or unpopularity, depending on how you look at it), this year saw two Worst Picture winners.  Instead of picking between the nominees, they chose to put two movies in the top (or bottom) spot.  Fifty Shades of Grey was one of the most maligned movies for many reasons.  It mostly had to do with the stigma surrounding the subject matter and the book it was based on.  The other movie was Fant4stic, which I covered last week.  They may have been two of the worst movies of the year; however, the concept of Worst Picture is meant to be decisive.  Choosing two movies is indecisive, and only allows for more people to think their claims of worst movie are justified.

But let me take a look at one of the other movies nominated for Worst Picture.  I’ve brought Pixels up already.  Critically, that wasn’t even the worst Adam Sandler movie of the year.  The only reason that it makes the Worst Movies list over The Cobbler is because more people saw it.  Thus, we come to the strongest point for The Razzies being a popularity contest.  All of the movies that get nominated in the big awards are wide release movies.  The few exceptions are movies tacked onto another nomination for a more well-known movie.  The Cobbler was part of Adam Sandler’s nomination for Worst Actor, after Pixels was already credited.  At the 34^th Golden Raspberry awards, Diana was tacked onto a Worst Actress nomination for Naomi Watts beside a nomination for the more well-known Movie 43.

The Golden Raspberries are not afraid to nominate someone for multiple roles in a year, under a single nomination.  Why?  Probably to fit more movies into their awards and get more people interested.  Rather than actually care about quality assurance, they’ll nominate Kelsey Grammer for Worst Supporting Actor and toss all four of his film appearances from 2014 into that nomination.  Is he that bad in The Expendables 3?  Nope.  But they’ll put that into his nomination in the hopes that people who disliked The Expendables 3 will seek out The Razzies.  Plus, nominating him once for everything will leave space for other people to be nominated.

Yet there is one thing that outweighs everything when it comes to the lack of credibility for The Golden Raspberry Awards.  Besides their big awards for worst in acting, directing, and in general, the people behind the awards like to make joke categories and joke nominations.  For last year’s crop of movies, the nominees for Worst Screen Combo included Kevin James and his glued on mustache or Segway in Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2.  That is not a serious nomination.  That is the awards forcing Paul Blart into a category that it should not be in.  (Okay, maybe it should be in there for the daughter and her love interest. That’s not the point.)  That category used to be called Worst Screen Couple, which would get rid of joke nominations like that.  For the 28^th Golden Raspberry Awards, there was a category called Worst Excuse for a Horror Movie.  They’re just jumping on people moaning about how bad the genre was doing.  They did the same thing three years later with 3-D movies.

Turn your attention to 1995 now.  The Golden Raspberry Awards held their 15^th ceremony, celebrating the worst of 1994.  The category that Cabin Boy was nominated in was Worst New Star.  Here are the nominees.  Chris Elliott has his first starring role.  Anna Nicole Smith won for her second movie role ever.  Chris Isaak and Shaquille O’Neal were both nominated for whatever movie they were in.  Then there was Jim Carrey.  He had been in movies for a few years, mostly in supporting roles.  His starring roles all started coming around in 1994.  Thing is, they are all respected comedic performances now.  You’ve got The Mask, Ace Ventura, and Dumb and Dumber.  He was nominated for all three movies, none of which deserved a nomination.  Which brings me to…

The Golden Raspberry Awards are like the Academy Awards in a sense because they are fairly irrelevant a few years down the line.  The movies that are nominated are movies that might initially get a bad reputation (good in the case of the Oscars) and be popular at the time, but won’t have a lasting effect on cinema or will be seen differently later on.  For an example of a movie that won’t have a lasting effect, the 26^th Golden Raspberry Awards had a Worst Picture of Dirty Love.  Because I write about bad movies on a weekly basis, I’ve heard of this movie.  How many other people have?  It’s not a movie that has stayed in the cultural mindset.  However, when you look at some of the other nominees, you see Son of the Mask, and Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo.  These two movies have stood the test of time as bad movies and have held an influence over movies.  Then there is the whole nominating a movie or performance, only to have it be respected in later years.  In the first ever Golden Raspberry Awards, Shelley Duvall was nominated as Worst Actress for The Shining.  This was a role that she would later be respected for in a movie that would be seen as a masterpiece.  Stanley Kubrick was nominated for Worst Director as well.  Things change.  Opinions change.

For all of these reasons, I have become opposed to The Golden Raspberry Awards.  Though I am of the mindset that bad movies might be more important in making good movies than good movies are, I’d rather make note of that in a more legitimate way.  Making jokes and not taking the awards show seriously is a disservice to bad movies, good movies, and movie audiences.  The Golden Raspberries make a mockery of awards shows while masquerading as one to be treated with respect.  They should earn the respect with a thoughtful analyzation of bad movies rather than being a bandwagon jumping awards mess.

Now for the real question.  I haven’t written much about Cabin Boy, even though it is this week’s movie.  Did it deserve the nomination that it got for Worst New Star?  I don’t know.  Chris Elliott wasn’t all that bad.  It was his role that was bad.  The character was an insufferable ass.  But Chris Elliott performed that role well enough.  Had the writing of the movie been better, making his character a more likeable goofball, we probably wouldn’t even be talking about it.  There were good ideas in the movie marred by shoddy writing.

Cabin Boy is a suggestion that I do not regret watching.  Like many predecessors in the Sunday “Bad” Movies, it has a unique spin to it that makes it a worthwhile watch.  It justifies why I take suggestions.  They give me interesting movies that I otherwise would not have watched (in most cases).  They broaden my viewing spectre and fill some of my blind spots.  I will always be thankful to the people who suggest movies.  Thank you.

I’m also thankful to the people who read my notes:

• Cabin Boy was suggested by @ImPABLO_i_WRITE, who has frequently been a supporter of the Sunday “Bad” Movies.
• Mike Starr was in Cabin Boy.  He was also in Baby’s Day Out.
• Cabin Boy featured Ann Magnuson, who was also in Glitter.
• Some of the more interesting suggestions I’ve had, based on the movies being different than most, are Attack of the Super Monsters, Monster Brawl, Robo Vampire, and Science Crazed.
• I mentioned Fant4stic in the post.
• How do you feel about The Golden Raspberries?  How do you feel about Cabin Boy?  How do you feel about The Shining getting nominated as a bad movie?  There is a comments section below if you want to discuss any of this.
• If you have a bad movie that you think I should watch for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, feel free to drop that title into the comments below.  You can also tell me on Twitter if that is your prerogative.
• Sometimes when I’m watching bad movies, I use my snapchat (jurassicgriffin) to share my experience.  Go ahead and follow that account if you want to see clips from bad movies.
• Next week I’ll be watching Catwoman for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, in honour of the release of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.  Halle Berry in a poorly made leather sexy suit that I didn’t really like.  My thoughts will go up next week.  See you then.