Hey, so remember that movie that came out in January with Halle Berry and Gerard Butler? Hugh Jackman was in it too…and so were Emma Stone and Kate Winslet.
Not ringing any bells? That’s because it was “Movie 43,” the best cast flop of all time.
“Movie 43” was so bad, it received a rating of 4% on RottenTomatoes, with Chicago Sun-Times critic Richard Roeper at rogerebert calling it “the ‘Citizen Kane’ of awful.”
With all the negative hype, you’d think no one would even bother to watch it. Yet not only did 327 customers leave reviews for it on Amazon, 52 of them gave it 5 stars. And I couldn’t find a single unserious review in the lot.
To give those of you who haven’t seen it a brief idea of what it’s like: one subplot has Beezel the animated cartoon cat in love with his owner (Josh Duhamel), to the point of graphic fantasizing. Beezel can’t stand his owner’s girlfriend (Elizabeth Banks), so he runs her over in a truck while shooting her with a shotgun, before convincing a party of children to stab her to death with plastic forks.
As an indie comedy with 16 plotlines, the biggest criticism refuted by these reviews is that it wasn’t funny. To sum it up, as EsotericMonk wrote: Grotesquely Funny & Smart
“…comedy on this level is hard to stomach for the milk toast masses. For those brave enough to look directly into the butt hole of Creation, a wondrous reward of gut clenching cheer awaits.”
Yeah. Or, as Steven Diliberto put it, “A lot of people don't get it. This movie is meant to be sick, it's meant to be offensive, it's meant to be in bad taste.” Of course, he doesn’t mention that it’s also meant to be poorly written, disconnected, and pointlessly awful.
But hey, don’t trust me—watch it on Amazon for $3.99. It could be just your thing. Watch the trailer below, and just be warned: its tagline is “Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.”
Photo Courtesy of Amazon