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Uwe Crap:
Meet the world's worst director…
OF INTEREST
I’ll be the first to admit that I watch a lot of crappy movies (case in point: half of my film reviews), so when I heard that Uwe Boll was voted one of the worst filmmakers of the world, if not the worst filmmaker, I was intrigued. There was no possible way that Boll could lower my already low standards; after all, I come from a generation that has lived to tell about Showgirls and Glitter. Heck, I’ve even watched Troll 2, and that was a hodgepodge of acting, writing, and directing so bad that it turned me off green Jell-O for good.
Granted that I haven’t seen any of Boll’s work and therefore have no position to judge, but it’s hard to ignore the evidence: consistently voted one of the worst films directors of our time, four of Boll’s video game adaptations have landed in the bottom 100-rated films on the Internet Movie Database. And five of Boll’s high-profile films have yet to crack a ten per cent approval rating on Rottentomatoes.com (to put things into perspective, just remember that Meet Dave, the Eddie-Murphy-within-Eddie-Murphy “comedy,” managed to score twenty per cent).
Of course, no one can forget the spectacle that was Alone in the Dark (2005), which is often cited as the rubbish that all filmmakers hold a measuring stick against. Even the mere thought of Tara Reid cast as a scientist is enough to incite anger, and the laughable plot line and action sequences earned a bevy of scorn among critics and fans. Alone in the Dark received a one per cent approval rate from Rottentomatoes.com and 2.2 out of ten on the Internet Movie Database. With a budget of $20 million, the film only managed to gross $5.1 million.
Every director has his off day, but it seems that Boll is having an off decade. House of the Dead (2003), BloodRayne (2006), In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2008) and Postal (2008) have all earned the distinction of being so bad that they’re just bad. But German-born Boll is not about to let a few bad reviews, poor box office grosses, or industry shame stop him from making movies.
And yet Boll is oddly fascinating for a man who sucks at his craft. Using a tax shelter placed in effect to foster revenue for German-made films, Boll is able to attract backers with the assistance of the German government, who doles out a 100 per cent tax deduction for investors. In essence, investors can expect to get away scot-free when Boll’s movies inevitably fail to make a profit. Boll has been so successful and prolific with this shelter that he’s even started his own production company, Boll KG.
The well read Boll holds a doctorate in literature and has penned some of his own books in German, but he can’t seem to keep his temper in check. Known for his outspoken and outlandish ways, his biggest coup is not calling Harry Knowles from Ain’t it Cool News a “retard,” or blasting Michael Bay with the same barb and calling Eli Roth’s movies repetitive drivel, but the series of boxing matches sponsored by the harbinger of good taste, GoldenPalace.com, that took place in September of 2006. Challenging five of his biggest dissenters, Boll went head-to-head with them in “Raging Boll” and managed to knock each opponent out (though it may be a bittersweet victory: we can’t exactly say that print and Internet critics are the most fit or nimble of athletes – I should know). The director who once called Chris Kohler of Wired magazine an “untalented wanna bee filmmaker with no balls” upon receiving a bad review for Postal had made an uneasy truce with his critics by exclaiming at the end of his boxing matches, “I like now the critics...Everybody who was in the ring showed (guts). Nobody dived." Similarly, each critic who was pummeled in the ring held some weird, newfound respect for Boll.
But the same can’t be said of the legions of filmgoers who flood Internet forums with topics like “Who keeps giving this guy money??” and “When Will He STOP?” (I particularly like the emphasis on “stop,” as if this person’s sanity literally hangs in the balance of an Uwe Boll film). “Stop Dr. Uwe Boll,” an online petition, was started when Boll remarked in an interview with FearNet that he would stop making films if one million people agreed. Robert Harvey, the creator of the petition, explains it thusly: “We, the undersigned, respectfully ask that Uwe Boll…stop directing, producing, or taking any part in the creation of feature films…Mr. Boll has repeatedly shown a complete lack of comprehension regarding the videogames he has dragged, kicking and screaming, to the silver screen and his ham-fisted approach to horror has soiled future possibilities for anyone else who may attempt to bring videogames to film.” Strangely enough, Stride Gum has even jumped on the bandwagon, offering a free pack of gum for each person who helps reach the one million mark by May 14 (sadly, no one will be getting that free gum – the petition currently has 297,002 signatures).
Boll has taken things in stride, already lining up several other film projects (we can all rejoice – one will be a sequel to BloodRayne II: Deliverance, and the other a sequel to Alone in the Dark), and sending Internet forums alight with talks of adapting Metal Gear Solid and World of Warcraft to the big screen (thankfully, the creators of both projects adamantly deny these rumours).
Still, I was skeptical about all the flak that Boll has received in the past couple of years for his work. Surely someone so dedicated to filmmaking and driven by his art would have some redeeming qualities. But sadly, the answer seems to be no. Taking on a Boll film, I chose what I assumed would be the least offensive: In The Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. The movie poster offered me the romantic idea of a time of noble knights and chaste princesses, not to mention Jason Stratham looking all foxy with a furrowed brow, though that could have less to do with the art cover and more to do with his worry about his career. Plus, the movie had received a solid 3.8 on the Internet Movie Database, a full point more than BloodRayne. Surely that had to count for something.
But after the first five minutes, I had my answer. It’s not so much that Boll’s direction is abominable, or that he can’t elicit the appropriate mood in the story (though he kind of fails at both), but that he often miscasts his films, thus dooming the project from the start. He may have learned his lesson with Alone in the Dark – in fact, BloodRayne managed to nab Michael Madsen and Ben Kingsley in starring roles – but that doesn’t mean that In The Name of the King, with big names like Ray Liotta, Jason Stratham, John Rhys-Davies, Burt Reynolds, and Ron Perlman (who currently stars in a much better movie, Hellboy 2), survives the casting couch. In fact, the mere sight of Burt Reynolds as the King, and Ray Liotta as a maniacally cartoonish villain who speaks with a slight Brooklyn accent, is enough to incite giggles rather than awe.
Then there’s the script, penned by Doug Taylor. Admittedly, it’s hard to write any dialogue for a movie based on a video game, but his scriptwriting skills leave much to be desired. In a nutshell, Taylor tries to convey to the audience, through clunky dialogue, that a dark force has descended upon the kingdom, and only one man, known as The Farmer (Stratham) can save his fair land. Instead of a straightforward epic story, we get a hastily edited movie that borrows heavily from Ghost, Gladiator, Lord of the Rings, and what I can only imagine was too many viewings of The Matrix. In one scene, Solana (Claire Forlani) is menaced by Gallian (Liotta). “If you can bleed, you can die,” she says, to which Gallian replies, “Perhaps I can, but I won't.” And in another scene, Solana tries to soften her husband, The Farmer, by whispering, “Tell me something nice…tell me that you love me,” to which he mumbles, “You know” (replace this with “ditto” and you’ve got your Ghost reference of the night). And in yet another scene, Solana asks her brother where her son is. “Is he with my parents?” she asks, and her brother replies, “Yes…but they are dead.” I bet Solana is pretty tired of setting these men up for their one-line retorts.
Halfway through the film, I had to wonder: What does an Uwe Boll script look like? I mean, besides the ill-advised dialogue and bad jokes? For instance, would there be a line that read, “And then The Farmer is engulfed by the book shackles, thereby rendering him immobile”? Or, “Cue the Asian ninjas, who fight the Krugs as they advance”?
And so many other countless questions: Why is Farmer the only British person in the film? Did they really make fitted armour in the medieval age? What is up with the Asian ninjas? Can you really kill someone with a boomerang? Can the action sequences get any cheesier than they already are? In what depths of hell did Boll wander upon to find Matthew Lillard so that he could be cast as the King’s spoiled nephew? And what is up with the Asian ninjas?
In The Name of the King is like 300 without the energy, the campiness, the special effects, and the painted-on abs. The editing is disjointed, often jumping from one scene to the next without proper transition (in a pivotal scene, The Farmer is frantically searching for his son, and in the next, he’s suddenly digging a grave for his son’s body). Any redeeming qualities the film may have, which I’m hard-pressed to find, are quickly washed away as each scene grows exponentially worse. To say that Boll has failed to maximize any possibilities the film may have had is an understatement.
But then again, Boll seems forthrightly aware of his capabilities and limitations. In an interview, he says, "Let's be realistic, what is House of the Dead? House of the Dead is a brainless shooter, where you shoot zombies into pieces. So what are you expecting from the movie, Schindler's List?” It’s a perfect argument for a man so allergic to criticism that his only solution is to beat the crap out of his naysayers – because we all know the correlation between filmmaking and boxing – so that they’ll stop. Sadly, it’ll take a lot more than just online petitions and organized violence for anyone to forget the rubbish that Boll delivers. ¤ C.Ho.