Boxing Helena

I’ve had a good couple of weeks. I read one of the dullest books in existence (definitely on par with the first ten chapters of Jane Eyre) and then I go ahead and watch one of the stupidest films ever made.

So the first clue that this film was going to be terrible was probably hidden somewhere in the fact that it has been discontinued in the UK since 1995 (having only been released in ’93). In fact, the only place you can now purchase this ridiculous film is on Ebay. From Korea.

I just thought it might be terrible in a good way.

Another clue would be that this film was recommended by one of the girls in my Dad’s office. I guess it really serves me right considering that their desert island top 3 choices are: ‘Bridget Jones’, ‘Atonement’ and...and actually I stopped listening after that killer choice. Their version of the synopsis?

“It’s about a guy who’s obsessed with a girl so he cuts all her limbs off so she can’t leave.”

It sounds suspiciously like ‘Audition’ but I figure an English take on the subject might be quite interesting. The official synopsis:

So the actual film...

Positives:

There were none. Not one. I kind of want you to watch it to try and find a positive, I really do. And the thing is I honestly wanted to like this movie, since my Dad and Jon both thought it was so super terrible, but there was nothing. Mediocre-at-best sets, shoddy camera work and a shitty script. They didn't cock up the dubbing, I suppose.

Negatives:

The male lead was very disappointing. Ugly, bad body / hair / teeth etc. He was no David Duchovny, no he was not.

Nobody could act. Not one person.

The accents. Oh my God. I don’t know who, if anyone, was genuinely British and who was actually American since all the accents were faker than Katie Price’s tits. I’m writing this as a separate point to ‘bad acting’ just to emphasise how incredibly weak both were.

Another thing that made me cringe every time it reared its totally unnecessary little head was the overly obvious imagery surrounding the title. This included: caged birds, a marble Venus statue with no arms and the man (by the end of the film I still didn’t care to remember his name) writing ‘Helena’ on a piece of paper and then drawing rectangles around it. Ooh, symbolic. Fucking hell, it was like one of those shitty poems they made you analyse at GCSE. Only worse.

I also couldn’t work out the genre of this film. It could have gone down the horror route and been a gore film to rival ‘The Devil’s Rejects’ or attempted to be slightly scarier and rip-off one of those late 80’s / early 90’s-style American thrillers; it even had the potential to be classified as a porno with a storyline if they’d tried really hard. But no. It just didn’t fit into any category other than pure, unadulterated shit because they couldn’t commit to one and do it well. Sometimes it bordered on comedy, but thinking about it – I wasted 103 minutes on that film and that just isn’t funny. I have QueryDefs to figure out and program before Tuesday.

I could have ignored all of this though. I could have forgiven all the crappiness and found something encouraging to say (in addition to the superb dubbing) about what I hope was Jennifer Chamber Lynch’s last attempt at directing a feature, had it not been for the abominable finale. The finale where Mr Ugly found out that it was all just a dream.

Sweet merciful fuck I haven’t wanted to write a letter of complaint so badly since a plus-size woman won America’s Next Top Model.

There really was little point to writing all this but I just had to let you know that this is the most catastrophic attempt at making a film of all time and is closely followed by ‘The X-Files 2’ and Bam Margera’s ‘Haggard’.

And in case you were wondering: The Bodyguard won the other day.