Great Fun etc: Movie Duds to Avoid

Every Saturday we will be sharing with you our ideas for family movie nights. Movie reviews and fun theme night ideas.

Avoiding Movie Night Flops...
Sometimes you pick a movie thinking it will be good, only to have it flop horribly. Nothing worse than all the family (and any random friends) groaning and complaining about your movie choices.
"Who picked this??!"
"This sucks!"
"Can we turn it off and go watch the paint dry? it would be more exciting..."

Well, we've picked a few flops and watched a few duds in our time. Here's a few of them so you know which DVDs to avoid...

Sheeba (G) *

This movie sucked. It's meant to be a dog movie, but it was more of a lame drama about marriage difficulties. Firstly, it is barely about the dog. Secondly the acting was pathetic. thirdly the story was disjointed, slow-moving and confusing. there were huge gaps of logic and style. And to top it all off, near the end (by which time we were all groaning in pain over the lameness of it all) the dad (a fireman) arrives in the nick of time after an 11-hour drive from New York, sees smoke AGAINST A DARK SKY and rescues his son from a burning building which is meant to be deep in the woods but somehow he parked his ute right by it and just HAPPENED to have his firefighter suit in the back.
The only person who quite liked this movie was Scrag. He said he wanted to have a Sheeba birthday party next time. NO, Scrag. NEXT TIME, MUMMY will pick the movie!!!

KID WATCHABILITY - Arrrgggghhhh!! we had to make our own laughs. Scrag dressed up as a dog (maybe that's why he liked it??)
SCARY BITS - The grown ups keep having flashbacks to 9/11 (the source of all their problems. This is not scary as such, but it would be if you were there.)
GROWNUP WATCHABILITY - TERRIBLE. Painful. Mr G apologised the whole way through for its lameness. I can't believe we watched the whole thing!

Watership Down (G) *

Sadly, this was awful. Mr G also picked this one, having fond memories of it from when he was young. But even though it's meant to be a classic, the animation is poor, the story is grim and confusing - it was the worst one we have watched as a family. Ugh. All ages avoid!

KID WATCHABILITY - They stuck it out but didn't enjoy it.
SCARY BITS - Too many - who rated this a (G)?? Someone who saw cute bunnies on the cover and didn't bother to watch it?? There were some very weird gory bits with rabbits choking to death, rabbit spirits coming back to speak to other rabbits, ugly cruel rabbit generals who clawed other rabbits and tore their ears - we forwarded quite a lot. this was not a feel-good movie at all!
GROWNUP WATCHABILITY - Terrible. I hated it. Needles in my eyes started to sound quite appealing??! Even Mr G admitted it was a bomb, rewatching it 30 years later!

Biggles: Adventures in Time (PG) *

This looked like it might have been a bit of fun what with time travel and World War I and airplane dogfight action. But no. Biggles (1986) was memorable for lots of bad 80's acting and big hair. We gave it ten minutes and then all agreed to dump it. Just couldn't get past the bad acting. And the big hair. Yaaaawwwwwn.

KID WATCHABILITY - Terrible. The worst yet.
SCARY BITS - The bad acting and big hair was enough to give us nightmares for weeks.
GROWNUP WATCHABILITY - Pathetic. I can't even blame Mr G for choosing this one. It was my pick. And it sucked. I should stop giving 80s movies a chance. Really.

Tron (PG) **

Now this one I remembered as being cool from when I was a teenager. We had watched the 2005 sequel (Tron: Legacy) and quite enjoyed it, so I wanted to show the kids one from my glory days. Oh dear. The computer graphics were cutting edge in their day, but this was more bad 80s acting and complicated scripting. It was hard to follow and not nearly half as cool as I remembered. Sadly. Still it's not as bad as the other movies so I give it two stars. I have decided not to pick any more movies from the 80s. They are BANNED from hereon out.

KID WATCHABILITY - OK. A little confusing. Story hard to follow. Some good action/racing scenes but not enough for kids of this day and age.
GROWNUP WATCHABILITY - Disappointing. Mr G didn't even stay in the room for the whole thing. And the end was stupid. Very sudden and not what I remembered at all.

Under the Mountain (PG) *

This was one of my favourite books from when I was 11, a Maurice Gee classic, set right here in Auckland. I was looking forward to sharing this homegrown alien adventure with my two big kids. But about 10 minutes into the movie we had to turn it off. It was just too creepy. So disappointing.

KID WATCHABILITY - NOT FOR KIDS
SCARY BITS - WAY TOO MANY!!!
GROWNUP WATCHABILITY - I watched it later by myself when the kids were in bed and it was just OK. I wish they had doen a better job of bringing this wonderful book to life. It could have been a Kiwi classic. I have a feeling it was a flop.

Here's what our experts have to say about our Movie Flops...

Dash. B. Cool: "None of these movies was cool. Don't watch any of them, that's my advice."

Foxy Fab: "I hated Sheeba because it was supposed to be about a dog but instead it was about a kid and his parents problems. It was just dumb. I hated Biggles because we watched only a couple of minutes of it and it was so dumb we turned it off. Some old movies are really dumb. Tron was OK but a bit boring. Mum said it was cool but it wasn't."

Super Scrag: "I hate Tron because he turned into a TV programme game, the game guys. It was a bit boring because it was very short. I didn't understand the story and what it was about. But I did like Sheeba. Because the shed burned down and the firefighters came. And that's why I liked it."

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