Seventh Son
Probably saw more trailers for this movie in the last year than any other. Maybe twice as many. Seemed like every movie I went for half of ever to see included a preview for this one. In all seriousness, I know I started seeing trailers for it in early summer. June or July. Of 2012. The film was originally scheduled to come out in February 2013. Then October 2013. Then February 2014. There were studio mergers, bankruptcies and all kinds of other crap associated with it.
Big buildup for nothing. The mess was never fixed. Should have left this turd in the can and flushed.
Anybody remember Beastmaster? Cheesy old world battle/quest/sorcery flick with crazy witches, weird temples, Rip Torn as Maaax, Dad from Good Times, Mark (Lori's brother) Singer, and naked Tanya Roberts? The dialogue was stilted, clunky and full of mumbo jumbo. The acting was hammy at best. The movie was so horrible it was almost good.
Seventh Son is the Beastmaster for this generation. Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore, Kit Harrington (jon snow) and the guy from the worst of the three Narnia films. Lots of cheesy dialogue delivered badly. A heaping dose of mumbo jumbo and some ridiculous babble about witch talismans, spooks, ghasts, doofleorks, trindlaparkens and a bunch of other shit that didn't make sense. The acting was worse than hammy. The movie was just plain horrible. It never crossed over in the "so bad it's good" territory. It just languished in the so-bad realm until it wobbled to a ridiculous end.
There was no naked Tanya to redeem it. No awesome John Amos bad dialogue. No twin weasels named Kodo and Podo. No rings with eyeballs in them. No seeing-eye hawks. In other words there was none of the goofy campiness that made the awfully bad Beastmaster a classic. Had this film turned up the camp it could have been better. It just wasn't.
I'm rarely looking at my watch in a movie wondering how much longer it can possibly drag on, but I was here. I looked at least three times and half dozed twice.
Bridges couldn't decide if he was channeling Slingblade or Yoda so he settled into a mishmash mouth-full-of-marbles mix of both. I got the sense that he was supposed to be cantakerously lovable and funny. Didn't get there.
Julianne Moore should have to decline her Oscar nomination, retroactively return all of her previous nominations and agree not to appear on screen except in lesbian scenes with Kate Beckinsale or Amanda Seyfried for the next four years. She was that gallingly awful.
Jon (Harrington) Snow was wasted in a five minute opening sequence that was hideously bad in every respect. I suspect that the film was in the can so very long ago that Jon Snow when hired wasn't the phenomenon that Jon Snow is now. Had the directors known who he was going to turn out to be, they might have used him in the main role instead of the kid who got it. He was bad too. Wouldn't have saved the movie having Jon Snow in the lead, but might have been more compelling.
Digimon Honshu (sounds like a Pokemon character) was similarly wasted.
The soundtrack was also fucktacularly bad. Overwrought and intrusive.
Can't think of a single thing this film did right.
The movie was about some quest or something and a witch locked up in a cage who then got pissed when she got out. Old dude used to have wood for her and now wants to put wood (and a match) to her. A bunch of CGI action mixed in with senseless made up words, Yoda and some other hoo doo. And a final scene that wasted the purpose of the entire thing.
NOTE:
Have since learned that this was an adaption of some young adult fantasy book or something. And that it was originally conceived as a vehicle for Jennifer Lawrence and Alex (magic mike) Pettyfer. Wouldn't have mattered. The script was a shit show, the performances by Bridges and Moore sprayed excrement on every frame and the CGI wasn't that special. Dud.