Tuesday 8 March 2011

You trying to mug me off Son?

The last decade or so has seen the birth of an almost entirely new genre of film, the film so rubbish it's somehow brilliant. The shining beacon of this genre has to be for me Snakes on a Plane, as a film idea it is absolutely terrible. The scripting is awful and cliched, the acting is hackneyed and amateur at best (Except Sir Samuel of L obviously), one of the snakes even has crocodile teeth at one point. The film should go down as one of the worst films ever made yet for some unfathomable reason it's watched and enjoyed/endured the world over. Perhaps its the car crash acting or poorly directed action sequences but somewhere, somehow the film has an endearing charm to it. It is funny, regardless of whether it is meant to be or not.

I'm not for one minute suggesting that the 'brilliantly awful' or 'awfully brilliant' movie genre is something that hasn't existed for decades, there are of course countless B-movie horror sci-fi offerings from the sixties and seventies. The horror genre in particular is littered with these film, truth be told there are probably more of them than there are actually good horror movies. Teeth, Dead Snow, Spit on your Grave, Resident Evil's 1-4 and all Saw sequels just off the top of my head could all fit into that category, along with anything with ...Of The Dead in it's title.

This generation of movies has given rise to a group of actors that seem to specialize in this field of movies. So who is the biggest 'awfully brilliant' actor? Many might suggest the aforementioned Mr. Jackson but I would disagree. Jackson has done his fair share of bad movies make no mistake but he has also starred in a number of genuinely good films as well, Pulp Fiction, Unthinkable and the 51st State just to name a few. No, the actor I think is the 'daddy' of this genre is Danny Dyer. This is a man who has made a plethora of terribly funny films but (other than some may argue The Business) never been in a properly good film. In fact some of the films he has been in are so bad that Dyer is the only redeeming feature, which when you consider that Dyer is not a great actor in fact all of his characters are pretty much the same person, says all you need to know about these films.

In the last two weeks a couple of friends and I have spent our Fridays watching Danny Dyer movies purely because they epitomize this awful brilliance. After watching The Last Seven we decided it wasn't very good as it didn't have enough Danny Dyer in it for our liking. During this process which shall continue this Friday with Severance and Basement we have concocted the Danny Dyer Drinking Game. Rules are you must following;

every time Dyer looks vacantly at the floor,
every time Dyer or another character uses cockney rhyming slang,
every time Dyer or another character says muppet, mug or drops the C-bomb,
every time Dyer gets punched in the face or acts in a way deemed wimpish,
you must down your whole drink every time Dyer says 'What else was I gonna do?' or slaps a woman.

Try watching Football Factory or Devil's Playground and playing along.
After all, what else are you gonna do?

1 comment:

  1. See also Sharktopus. It is literally the best worst film I have ever seen. TV's Eric Roberts and everything.

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