Welcome to week 250 of the Sunday “Bad” Movies. It’s been a long and bumpy road over the past
250 weeks with changes in the blog, changes in my life, and a hell of a lot of
bad movie watching. This post is going
to be a hybrid post that might feel long.
That’s okay. This is week 250, so
let’s celebrate.
There will be three parts to this post. First, I will be going over what has changed
since the beginning of the Sunday “Bad” Movies and how that got us to week
250. After that, I will write about the
three movies that were watched for this week’s post. Finally, we’ll look to the future to see what
will come up in the next 25 posts and possibly beyond that. There’s a lot to cover, so we should get
started.
The Past
The Sunday “Bad” Movies began in late 2012, but we must go
back to 2009 for its inception. The seed
for my blossoming love of bad movies came from the friends I made in university. Yes.
The people I knew face-to-face exposed me to some of the bad stuff I
would see. Sure, I had seen bad movies
before. I saw Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo when it was first released on
DVD. But this time in university was
when I began to seek bad movies out because they were bad.
It all began with The
Room. As we finished up our first
term as engineering students, one of my friends gave me a copy and told me to
watch it during our break. I remember
sitting in my living room back home, eating Chinese food, and watching it alone. At first, I thought it was softcore
porn. There were multiple sex scenes
early on that made it awkward when anybody walked into the room. I didn’t love the movie at first, but
something clicked inside me.
I saw bad movies here and there throughout the years after
that. There was the time I went to a
theater to see The Room. I watched movies like Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever and Strippers
vs. Werewolves. These movies
entertained me partially because they were bad and partially because of their
pure entertainment value. It wasn’t an
ironic entertainment. They were just
plain fun.
Fast forward to early 2012.
I was now living with these friends.
We were still in engineering, which was a demanding program. 90% of our time was spent in the classroom or
at home doing more engineering schoolwork.
We would use the other 10% of our time to unwind on Friday or Saturday
nights by eating ice cream cake and watching bad movies. They would typically be double features,
usually decided by my findings.
Sometimes we’d be watching movies by The Asylum. Other times, a friend would offer me a free
all-you-can-eat pasta meal if we watched The
Human Centipede. As long as it was a
bad movie that we could have a good time with, we were set. That term ended up being my final term in
engineering, even though I received my best marks. That’s another story for another time,
though.
Skip ahead to later that year, when I had dropped out of
school and gained full time employment at a minimum wage job. I was trying to figure out what to do with my
life. I liked writing and movies so I
decided I would do more writing about them.
My other blog had been up for over a year and I hadn’t really found
focus with it. I was writing whatever I
was writing. There were a couple of post
series on there. Why not add another one? I decided that my perspective of appreciation
for bad movies as teaching tools as well as entertainment would be a good basis.
The first post for the Sunday “Bad” Movies was about Starcrash and whether “so bad it’s good”
is a thing. There were a few differences
at the beginning of the blog series. Starcrash was voted as the first movie I
would watch in a poll. I would choose
three movies each week, poll people that I knew on Twitter about what to watch,
and then quickly watch the movie and write about it at the end of the
week. That would last eight weeks.
This would shift the Sunday “Bad” Movies into the next
stage, which would last about eight more weeks. I dropped the polling and thought “Forget
about that. I’ll just use whatever bad movie I see.” That’s when I saw things like Ed, Freelancers,
and the Death Race movies. It was just whatever I saw that was considered
bad. This quickly became overwhelming
and, since I was just writing reviews, boring.
I like to write various topics depending on how I feel when I watch a
movie. Sometimes, I’ll review it. If it’s a newer movie or if I don’t have too
much time to come up with anything elaborate, that’s what I tend to do. The overwhelming part came from the fact that
I was watching more bad movies than I could keep up with in terms of writing. So, I organized myself.
Week 16 comes up whenever I look back on the Sunday “Bad”
Movies. It was the week where I began
scheduling what I would watch. It was
the week where I began searching for suggestions to get movies that weren’t
just laying around my house. And, most
importantly, it was the week when I decided I would write whatever I wanted. If I wanted to write a review, I would. If I wanted to use the movie as a springboard
to write about The Asylum, WWE Films, or any other topic, I would. And with that mentality, I pushed forward.
Other slight adjustments during the first year were that I
would cover multiple movies within a franchise on the tens, I would rewatch one
of the movies for the year anniversary, and I tried to put a major bad movie
every 25 weeks. Hence why The Room was week 25 and the first two Baby Geniuses movies were week 50.
Week 55 saw a bonus post for Monster in the Closet. It
was my tribute to Paul Walker who had recently died. For whatever reason, I decided to include the
movie as one of the Sunday “Bad” Movies, even though it wasn’t an official
post. I decided sometime after that that
I would not do another bonus post that I included as an official “bad” movie. The inclusion of Monster in the Closet is a decision I still regret, though I needed
to write that post because of what Paul Walker meant to me. It’s not the most well written post either.
There was a quick blip around week 71 where I tried
something different with the Sunday “Bad” Movies. I thought I would format the posts to add
consistency. I quickly decided that it
would a terrible idea and went back to my old way of doing things before editing
and releasing that post and the next (the only two that I had formatted). This was also around the same time that I
decided that I should have a backlog of posts.
It was a safety cushion in case I ever couldn’t get the work done for
the post. This backlog worked until I
went back to school.
Speaking of which, I’m back in school now. In the winter of 2016, I decided I would go
to school for broadcasting, with my goal being to get into the film industry
with some knowledge of TV and radio. I
began in fall 2016, which has given me less time to focus on these posts. I’ve still managed to get them done, and my
writing has improved enough that the quality tends to be better than in earlier
posts. That’s something, and there’s a
reason for it.
Over the 250 weeks, I’ve written more than 250 posts for the
Sunday “Bad” Movies. At one point, I
moved the Sunday “Bad” Movies from my other blog to one of its own. I thought about expanding it out, but that
never happened. Through the 250 weeks,
I’ve written bonus posts. I’ve been
continually writing on my other blog and writing reviews for a horror
website. There has been a lot of writing
going on.
One other thing that helped was that I read On Writing… by Stephen King. The book didn’t make my vocabulary
better. I still use the same words that
I have always used. I’m not a
sophisticated writer. I write how I
would talk. Common words are my specialty. What the book did was teach me about the
importance of editing. I was lacking
that in my writing. It taught me that
sometimes, things need to be cut. There
are parts of my writing that I might like, but if they’re irrelevant to what
I’m writing or if they’re too repetitive, they should be removed. Trim the fat, in other words.
All of that stuff brings be to where I am right now, the
Thursday night before the week 250 post is to be uploaded to the Sunday “Bad”
Movies blog. I no longer have the
backlog to protect me. I’m 1700 words
into the post and still have two more sections to write. If I hadn’t had so much writing experience,
I’d be afraid right now. I’m not. I’m confident that this will get done. I haven’t missed a deadline for the bad
movies posts in five years. I’m not
going to start now. That’s why I’m
moving onto the next section.
The Present
As part of the week 250 nostalgia, I revisited a franchise
that has grown since first being covered.
It is one of the worst franchises in movie history. The first post covered the two movies that
began this bad movie juggernaut. Now I
shall write about the third, fourth, and fifth installments that were released
between 2013 and 2015.
Baby Geniuses and Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 came out in
the early 2000s and quickly earned a reputation as two of the worst movies ever
made. Nobody thought the franchise would
survive past that point. Then a
television series was made, for some reason that is completely lost on me. Twelve episodes were produced about a spy
team of babies that would find stolen items and save the world from bad
guys. The episodes were compiled into
three movies with four episodes each for American audiences.
Baby Geniuses and the
Mystery of the Crown Jewels kicked things off. It introduced the key players. Bob Bobbins (Rob Bruner) and his wife Betty
(Jaime Andrews) ran a secret baby spy team consisting of their son Skip (Finn
and Reid Predeger), and his three friends Gabi (Alyssa and Kaitlyn Brown),
Alfred (Justin and Ethan Coach), and Jordan (Kaylee and Ryley Sudduth). Bob’s niece Kylie (Skyler Shaye), returning
from Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2,
was one of the babies’ handlers alongside Holden Hammersmith (Casey Graf). Together, the team worked to take down Big
Baby (Asher and Brenden Farmer) and his father, Beauregard Burger (Andy
Pandini). The team also encountered a
bunch of taxi drivers who seemed very familiar (all played by Jon Voight).
The first compilation movie, which consisted of the first
four episodes of the series, followed the babies as they travelled to England,
France, Italy, and Germany in pursuit of Big Baby. He had stolen the crown jewels from London so
that he could grow to an extremely large size.
Three things stood out to make Baby Geniuses and the Mystery of the Crown Jewels feel like the
worst movie in the entire franchise.
One: it was extremely repetitive.
The episodes all had the same story until the end of the fourth. It felt like there was no progression. Big Baby and his father would steal something
from a museum. The baby team would
travel there, talk to another baby, and look for clues. They ended up at Beauregard’s burger
restaurant. Then they would confront Big
Baby and his father, who would escape.
Nothing built and you just went through the motions. Two: it suffered from the whole baby talk
issue that all Baby Geniuses movies
have. They tried to make the babies look
like they were speaking and it looked unnatural. The dialogue that the babies spoke was also
ridiculous, as though they were stereotypical teenage characters. Three: Jon Voight. What was he doing with the prosthetics? It seems like he can’t look like himself in
family movies. He always makes himself
look fake through prosthetics. It would
get worse in the following movies, but was still noticeably bad here.
Baby Geniuses and the
Treasures of Egypt was an improvement over the previous movie in some ways
while other parts got mind-bogglingly worse.
The same issues with talking babies arose. The personalities and visuals with the babies
were off-putting. The story was better
by having less repetition. At one point,
in probably the highlight of the three movie, twelve episode series, the bad
guys infiltrated the base under the daycare.
But then there was Jon Voight.
His costumes got more racist as he disguised himself as Chinese and
Egyptian characters. Nobody making the
series thought that there was anything wrong with it.
Baby Geniuses and the
Treasures of Egypt saw the babies once again going after Big Baby, who was
trying to gain the power of flight. They
went to China, India, and Egypt during their greenscreen travels. Oh yeah.
I failed to mention the greenscreen.
It was at its worst in the fourth Baby
Geniuses movie. For the outdoor
scenes, the characters would be in front of a greenscreened image of the
places. It got so bad that, at one
point, even the rickshaw that they were riding on was a part of the greenscreen
image behind them. Clearly, the series
was made on a low enough budget that they could only have a few sets. They couldn’t pay for location shooting.
Baby Geniuses and the
Space Baby saw Jon Voight become the main villain as Big Baby and Beauregard
Burger became informants. Moriarty,
Voight’s character, was a master criminal who had been using Big Baby as a
decoy so that he could take control of the universe. The final step in his plan was to capture the
Space Baby. The baby spies were on his trail
the whole time because Space Baby had been stealing pieces of technology to fix
his spaceship.
The third and final compilation movie was stronger than what
had come before it. Moriarty had come on
the scene as the new guy. His plans were
bigger. There was a Hannibal and Clarice
sort of relationship between the babies and Big Baby. Space Baby was also a nice addition in that
he was stealing things not to cause trouble but only to use as repair
blueprints. He brought everything back
once he had replicated it. These things
didn’t make the movie good. They only
helped to make it more bearable.
It was tough to sit through three more Baby Geniuses movies. Out of
the five movies, none of them were entertaining. They ranged from bad to nearly
unbearable. For some reason, the
franchise has kept going. It survived
the critical lashing and audience disgust to outlast many other, more popular
properties.
If there’s a silver lining to all of this, it’s that the Baby Geniuses movies are behind me. I don’t need to watch any more of them. Unless more come out, that is. I can instead look forward to what is coming
up for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.
The Future
The Sunday “Bad” Movies are an ever-changing series of blog
posts about bad movies. They might
change slightly over time, whether it’s from the quality of my writing slowly
getting better, or from where I find movies to watch. Sometimes the schedule gets changed because movie
availability, or something comes up that feels more relevant. School changed things so that I wouldn’t have
as much time to focus on the blog, but I made sure things got done.
As of right now, I have most of the next 25 weeks planned
out. The one that isn’t planned yet is
the 5 year anniversary, coming at the beginning of December. I’ll rewatch one movie from the fifth year of
the Sunday “Bad” Movies and write about it again. It could be one of the Baby Geniuses movies if you guys want to torture me. I do these posts every year. I’ve ended up with The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure, Winter’s Tale, Mac and Me,
and Jingle All the Way getting rewatches
and new posts. What could it be this
year? We’ll find out in two months.
One thing I did for the next 25 weeks was to revisit a few
franchises that have been covered before.
That’s why I’ll be watching the sequel to A Haunted House as well as Evil
Bong 3, and The Gingerdead Man 2. The Da
Vinci Treasure also made its way back into the schedule after one or two
previous attempted inclusions. That
seems to be the one that always gets bumped when something else works its way
in.
Let’s go back to the fifth anniversary, though. It has been five years since I began the
Sunday “Bad” Movies. There will be a
bonus post or two coming with that. I
don’t want to spoil too much about the posts, but there may be a few leading up
to that point, as well as on the anniversary.
We’ll see how things work out as we approach the date. That will be week 262, so there are twelve
weeks for me to get my crap together.
Beyond those twenty-five weeks, I don’t have anything
planned yet. The Sunday “Bad” Movies are
not ending. It’s just that I don’t plan
out the next twenty-five weeks of the schedule until I’m about fifteen away
from needing it. So the next part of the
schedule won’t get done until right before the anniversary.
There will also be a bonus post going up soon about the Catwoman novelization. It’s not a great post, but it’s about some
stuff in the book that wasn’t in the movie.
That’s the bonus for week 250.
Thanks for sticking around this long, guys and gals who
check out these posts. I doubt many of
you read everything this week. Including
the notes at the end, it’ll probably top out around 3600 words. That’s more than I usually do, though I don’t
believe it’s the longest. But thanks for
reading for 250 weeks or however many you’ve kept up with me. These posts are mostly for me. I need a writing outlet in my life for my
thoughts. They’re for you too, though. You can learn about me or possibly learn
about the movies I watch. So, thanks for
giving that attention to my words and I hope you stick around because there’s
more on the way.
Let’s finish this post off with some notes:
- Here are the movies that were mentioned in this post. Baby Geniuses and Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2. Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo. The Room. Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever. The Human Centipede. Starcrash. Ed. Freelancers. Death Race. Monster in the Closet. The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure. Winter’s Tale. Mac and Me. Jingle All the Way. A Haunted House. Evil Bong. Evil Bong 2: King Bong. The Gingerdead Man. And finally, Catwoman.
- Sean McNamara directed Baby Geniuses and the Mystery of the Crown Jewels, Baby Geniuses and the Treasures of Egypt, and Baby Geniuses and the Space Baby. He was also the director of Bratz:The Movie.
- Jon Voight made his fifth, sixth, and seventh Sunday “Bad” Movies appearances with this week’s three movies. He was also in Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2, Bratz: The Movie, Anaconda, and Getaway.
- Skyler Shaye has now been in five Sunday “Bad” Movies thanks to Baby Geniuses 2 through 5, as well as Bratz: The Movie.
- Twenty-two actors made their Sunday “Bad” Movies debut in Baby Geniuses and the Mystery of the Crown Jewels, and were in the two following Baby Geniuses movies as well. The actors were Jaime Andrews, Kevin T. Bennett, Kyle Bode, Christopher Bones, Alyssa Brown, Kaitlyn Brown, Rob Bruner, Dominic Burgess, Shayna Brooke Chapman, Ethan Coach, Justin Coach, Asher Farmer, Brenden Farmer, Catalina Furra, Casey Graf, Nathan Grzesiak, Andy Pandini, Finn Predeger, Reid Predeger, Kaylee Sudduth, and Ryley Sudduth.
- Three actors were in Baby Geniuses and the Treasures of Egypt as well as Baby Geniuses and the Space Baby. They were Joe King, Gina La Piana, and Tom Okamoto.
- Once it’s up, here’s the post about the Catwoman novelization.
- Have you seen any of the Baby Geniuses movies? How long have you been reading the Sunday “Bad” Movies posts? Are you looking forward to more? Let me know about anything in the comments below, and happy 250.
- Suggestions are always a welcome part of the Sunday “Bad” Movies. If you have any movies that you think I should check out, let me know in the comments below or on my Twitter feed.
- Sometimes I like to put clips of bad movies into my snapchat story. If you’re interested in that, add me. jurassicgriffin
- Next week, we move onto week 251 by bringing Pauly Shore into the Sunday “Bad” Movies once again. Son in Law is coming up in seven days. That should be something. You know you’re going to get some Pauly Shore antics in a Pauly Shore movie. See you then with another post.
