Siskel & Ebert : Worst of 1996

Worst of 1995.

Is The Ghost and the Darkness really that bad? It's free on Prime and I would like to watch it.

[italic]Striptease[/italic] was horrible. [italic]The Cable Guy[/italic] was good but would have been better had they not compromised on turning it into a goofy teen-friendly PG-13 movie instead of the genuinely dark R-rated comedy it was intended as.

[quote]The Cable Guy was good but would have been better had they not compromised on turning it into a goofy teen-friendly PG-13 movie instead of the genuinely dark R-rated comedy it was intended as.

I think execs just have a kneejerk assumption that a PG-13 film will have a broader audience and make more money an an R film. They don't get that some things really do need to be R in order to hit right. Like I remember Trey Parker and Matt Stone saying that Paramount wanted them to make [italic]South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut[/italic] PG-13, which just shows how little they understood South Park or its audience. I can't imagine what a PG-13 South Park would even be like, or that it would be very funny at all. Pushing all the boundaries is what makes South Park unique. But not all producers/writers/creators are able to push back against the studios like Trey and Matt, so we probably get a lot of PG-13 shit that could have been better rated R.

Most of these are shitty. The Ghost and the Darkness & The Cable Guy are decent, though.

Joe's Apartment is not a bad movie. And it was based on a popular short (series of shorts?) that ran on MTV.

Happy Gilmore is a guilty pleasure of mine. Ben stiller is hilarious “now you will go to sleep or i will put you to sleep.”

[italic]The Ghost and the Darkness[/italic] should have been better, with two stars and great subject matter. It's still worth watching.

I found Striptease mildly amusing. I'd still but it on this list, but it wasn't as bad as some of the others.

As a little kid I really wanted to see Striptease 😄. Idk why because I was already quite the gayling. Maybe just because it wasn’t for kids.

To this day I’ve never seen it.

House Arrest was on HBO constantly in the 90s. I have seen that many times. As a kid, I liked it. I haven’t seen it as an adult, but in retrospect the concept is indeed quite stupid.

R6 that is kind of delightfully weird. I miss 90s MTV.

I miss Siskel and Ebert.

The only movie I've seen from that list is Cable Guy which I hated even though I'm a big Jim Carrey fan. I get the joke, I just didn't find it funny.

There's a fun YT clip of Gene and Roger listing their all-time favorite "guilty pleasure" movies. About half way through the list, they both realize that a big reason why they like some of the crap movies is because they feature scantily clad lovelies like Bo Derek and Daryl Hannah, LOL. They basically come out and say on TV, "We're horny straight guys and we don't care."

I’ve told this story before.....short version.... I was in a preview focus group for The Ghost and the Darkness at Paramount and then chosen for a smaller group critique. The others in the small group ripped the film to threads with specific hateful comments. Rather brutal. Geeze, it’s just a movie. Little did we know that the director, producer VPs and two stars were in the control room......listening. How utterly embarrassing. Boy oh boy, did we get plenty stink eye when we all left.

I watched Daylight on HBOMax a few weeks ago and it's really not that bad. Stallone is...Stallone, but there had to be another worst film that year.

R15 Hmmm, well obviously they should’ve listened.

This is the BEST worst list so far. I like a lot of this movies.

Black Sheep - dumb Sandler esque movie with Farley & Spade. It accomplished what it was going for.

Daylight- I had this on vhs and watched innumerable times. Great action movie.

Fled- never saw this, but remember the trailer and the original theatrical poster is one of the worst I’ve ever seen. Start of the white guy/black guy buddy on the run pics like Money Talks, Bulletproof, Nothing to Lose

Getting Away With Murder- never saw it. 2nd Lowest grosser here. Holocaust war criminal comedy??

Happy Gilmore- classic. It’s been revised by history. Critics didn’t know what to do with Sandler.

High School High- a Jon Lovitz comedy. It’s average but I love him.

House Arrest- great film for kids back then. It is what is. It’s fun.

Jack- weird movie, creepy & sweet. JLo was actually great as the teacher. This is when Robin Williams jumped the shark, even before Patch Adams.

Jingle All the Way- it is what is, but it definitely has a low-rent vibe to it. It suffered from bad direction and cinematography. Arnold and Sinbad are what they are.

Joe’s Apartment- never seen it, always looked gritty and nasty.

Kazaam- dumbass movie, even for kids.

Larger than Life- Bill Murray takes a paycheck.

Last Man Standing- I enjoyed this movie, good vibes and action and Bruce Willis nude.

Little Indian Big City- never saw it, foreign basis of Jungle 2 Jungle.

Mad Dog Time- lowest grosser, never heard of it until now.

Striptease- camp trash without the camp.

The Cable Guy- love this movie. It was the basis for Jim’s later dramatic turns. Should have been darker.

The Ghost and the Darkness- used to be a favorite. It needed better script and direction. Need an extra 10 minutes to flesh out the characters. Plot is thin: build train, Lion problem, kill lion.

Joe's Apartment is a musical. And it was really innovative CGI for it's time. Even for now! If you compare the roaches in that to the ones in CATS you can see how amazing they look. But several of the ideas in the movie induce vomit.

R18 thanks for that summary!

[quote] Little Indian Big City- never saw it, foreign basis of Jungle 2 Jungle.

Me either. Kinda weird to imagine a dubbed foreign film getting a release here. I have seen Jungle 2 Jungle, and it will be making an appearance on the 1997 list!

I like disaster movies and "Daylight" is actually a pretty good one.

Choosing it as one of the year's worst? Were the rest of the 1996 movies that spectacular?

R7, same here.

"The Price is Wrong, bitch!"

R16 there are a few actors they seem to have had a hateboner for. This is at least the third Stallone movie that’s been on the list since 1992.

[quote] Jack- weird movie, creepy & sweet. JLo was actually great as the teacher. This is when Robin Williams jumped the shark, even before Patch Adams.

Maybe the kid friendly version. He was in a lot of good films afterwards and even won an Oscar later on.

R24 yes but this was when he began to lose his commercial appeal. Doubtfire was his peak.