Once again, the joyous end of the work week spurs Microkhan to dredge up a hilariously negative movie review of yore. This week’s slab of celluloidic infamy is Death to Smoochy, perhaps history’s greatest testament to Robin Williams’s talent for irritation. As depicted in the video above, it also features Ed Norton singing an anti-heroin folk song while dressed as a pink rhino. How director Danny DeVito couldn’t see “box-office poison” written all over this project is anyone’s guess.
The movie’s sole redeeming feature? It gave the opportunity for the great Roger Ebert to spit some serious venom. The lead paragraph of his evisceration:
Only enormously talented people could have made Death to Smoochy. Those with lesser gifts would have lacked the nerve to make a film so bad, so miscalculated, so lacking any connection with any possible audience. To make a film this awful, you have to have enormous ambition and confidence, and dream big dreams.
The film’s finale, Ebert also informs us, involves “a lesbian hit-squad leader with a thick Irish brogue.” We’ll take his word on that.
Jordan // Apr 3, 2009 at 9:36 pm
The look of absolute befuddlement on that woman’s face is perfect.
However, if the film is really as bad as you make it out to be, I’m going to take a stab and say that she falls in love with the pink rhino.
Gramsci // Apr 4, 2009 at 7:55 am
Among the infinite worlds logicians tell us about lies a planet where Jon Stewart’s career never took off after doing this atrocious movie. In our world, I’m sure he has the poster in his office, to remind him to work really really hard to stay in TV.
Brendan I. Koerner // Apr 4, 2009 at 10:41 am
@Gramsci: That’s one of the few planets I have no desire to visit. But I bet Jim Cramer has already asked the Russians if they can fly him there.
Gramsci // Apr 4, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Lol. Yes, because on that planet he’s Treasury Secretary, and Craig Kilborn steers away from political clips so that we might have ever-increasing amount of Zen.
Ninjas and Coincidence // Apr 17, 2009 at 1:31 pm
[…] hey, the title doesn’t lie—no skimping on the ninjas here. If nothing else, it beats Death to Smoochy by a dozen […]