Last issue, I talked about “The Room”, a movie that was so bad it was good. This issue, I’ll be talking about a bad movie that is so bad it makes other bad movies look good.
When I was but a wee lad of 11 living in Thailand, my friends decided that they wanted to go see James Cameron’s “Titanic” (1997) in theatre. Titanic had been setting box office records for a couple years already by this point and was still playing occasionally in theatres. I had already seen it but didn’t mind going again because that movie kicks ass and movie tickets in Thailand are only 2 dollars. My friends, being Thai, could not yet read English very well and when they handed me my ticket, I was trying to remember if Titanic was followed by: “The Legend Goes On”. It wasn’t. What followed was a terrifying experience that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
“Titanic: The Legend Goes On” (2000) is an Italian film which also happens to be an animated musical with Mexican mice and a rapping dog. Just let that sink in for a second… For the benefit of the one person who reads this who doesn’t actually know what the Titanic was (and I wouldn’t dare alienate a single one of my readers), it was a ship built in 1911, that sank on its maiden voyage after hitting an iceberg. 1,517 people died. To put things into perspective, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”, a new film coming out this year starring Tom Hanks, is about the September 11 attacks. Now imagine if that movie had Tom Hanks suddenly burst out into song while surrounded by Mexican mice and Snoop Dogg (a rapping dog). Bad idea. The only person who could ever get away with doing something like that would be Mel Brooks. Remember “Springtime for Hitler” in “The Producers” (1968)?
“Titanic: The Legend Goes On” currently holds a record of 1.3 on IMDB, making it one of the worst movies I have ever seen on that site. And boy, does it earn it. Here is a movie that confounds me. Who in their right mind would ever fund this!? In this film, there is a rich boy named William (and his nanny… wuss) and a poor girl named Angelica (with her two evil stepsisters and evil stepmother “Cinderella!” cough cough) who meet on board the ship and fall in love. Meanwhile, there are some side plots about jewel thieves, a detective who dresses like Sherlock Holmes, the nanny who lost a daughter years ago (could it possibly be Angelica?), and a singer. Oh I almost forgot, there are singing Yiddish and Mexican mice, birds and a rapping dog. A RAPPING DOG! The plot is ripped off and the dialogue is just plain stupid as well as being poorly voice acted (the English dub was just as bad). I can just picture the budget meeting for this movie now:
Director: “It’s going to be so fun! There’s going to be Mexican mice and a rapping dog!”
Studio Head: (has a heart attack and dies)
Director: “I’ll take your silence as a yes!”
I guess I should probably mention that this isn’t the only animated musical about the Titanic. Would you believe me if I told you there was one even worse? In “The Legend of the Titanic” (1999), there is a stupid giant octopus that is tricked by some evil talking sharks to throw an iceberg in front of the Titanic as a part of a scheme by some greedy whale hunters. Once again there are talking mice and a couple who fall in love. Oh and nobody dies in this version. That’s like if Mark Wahlberg was on board one of the planes from “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”. Why are there two of these? We, the human race, have put men on the moon, built skyscrapers that pierced the clouds, designed computer chips almost too small to see, and have canceled out all these great achievements with the creation of these two films. DO NOT watch these movies. Ever.
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