Lake Placid - Part 1
January 14th 2008 01:50
Lake Placid, a movie so bad that it's good... good in a bad way that is.
It’s another lovely week and another movie has been plucked fresh from the big bucket of crap. This week we’ll be looking at a movie involving yet another gigantic killer reptile. You gotta love those reptilian clichés in movies people so overly used and so poorly executed. This one is no exception and joins Anaconda and Curse of the Komodo in being very bad movies involving a big bad killer reptile.
This week’s movie up for execution is Lake Placid. Now let’s get one thing straight people if you’re going to make a movie about a gigantic crocodile in the middle of a huge lake one would expect it to be a pretty dark and gruesome movie. They got the gruesome part of the movie right with a bunch of blood and gore but for the film being dark, it was far from it. That being said let’s look at this movie’s genre:
A COMEDY-HORROR FOR ALL AGES!!!
A horror that incorporates Disney-style humor. Smells like the making of a great heap of crap for a film.
Now you might think I am crazy labeling a horror movie as a family comedy but just hear me about before you start jumping to conclusions. Let me give you a quick overview about this movie. This movie is about a huge lake in a town that discovers it has a gigantic crocodile that starts killing people who start swimming out in the middle of the lake. You have your town sheriffs and crocodile experts trying to stop it.
Now it sounds like it has some potential to be a pretty good movie. If it was executed right I believe it could have been up there with Jaws as being a great horror movie involving a deadly animal. Don’t worry Bucket Heads of course they were going to screw this movie up big time. They dropped the ball and they couldn’t pick it back up because the ball was one of those porcelain ones that shatter into thousands of pieces. That’s why it’s not a good idea to play basketball or soccer with a porcelain balls since the game will end pretty much in the first second of play.
Anyway going back to the movie.
The movie started off as a horror in normal fashion. We have a boat in the lake, mysterious music, a man gets attacked and has half of his body ripped off. It had me interested that’s for sure so I continued to watch. From here it went completely down here. I don’t know what the director was thinking or the writer who wrote this crap was high on at the time but someone thought it would be a great idea to add in childish humor one would find in a Disney comedy.
How you say? About thirty minutes or so into the movie we get introduced to this character called Professor Hector Cyr and he is extremely horny. This is where the movie starts to go downhill very fast. He and the sheriff start fighting with each other straight away hurling the most stupid insults at each other like ‘fatty’, ‘fatso’ and ‘tubby’. The last time I heard insults like these I was in year two. If they are adults and they really want to insult each other why not go for things that adults would call each other like ‘Fat f***’, ‘Fat sack of s***’ or ‘Fatty fatty fat fat’? I’m surprised that ‘fatty boomba’ wasn’t used.
These type of insults continue throughout the movie and later on there are some pretty weird ones that come out of that Hector’s mouth. I’ll be mentioning a few of those when it’s time for me to do quotes. Along with the insults we get stupid slapstick comedy one would commonly find in kid’s movies. For example, the team are setting up traps all over the lake to capture the crocodile and naturally some idiot person is going to be the one getting caught. In this case it’s the sheriff getting caught in that professor’s traps. He falls into a hole, gets hang up by a rope from a tree, pretty much if you can think of the most typical trap to set up he gets caught in it.
It’s not funny seeing this sort of thing that is meant to be a horror movie. The other characters are straight up annoying when they are trying to be funny, or are trying to come off as funny by the way they act. There is only one character that is funny in this movie and that is Mrs. Bickerman, who is played by Betty White from the Golden Girls. I’m not going to write down what she says but it is priceless and had me in stitches for a few minutes.
A big problem that many people had with this movie, including me, is how they tried to make a horror movie into a comedy. I don’t know why one would attempt to do this but it was executed very poorly. It started off as a good horror movie but when comedy was introduced early it ruined it completely. The comedy was bad which made the horror start turning bad. It really had me confused honestly. I didn’t know if this movie was a horror or a comedy in the end.
I’m not the only person who had trouble with this. A few people who have seen this that I spoke to agreed with me that they didn’t know if this should have been a horror or comedy. I looked up some information on the movie, and it was labeled a horror-comedy which explains why it sucked so much. It seemed a lot of people had a problem with the genre of the movie which is way it received a good amount of negativity from critics. If you’re going to make a movie about a gigantic crocodile that’s terrorizing a lake please just stick to it and don’t venture out into a comedy for kids.
We’ve just begun our assault Bucket Heads. Come back tomorrow and I will share with you some things that I learnt about crocodiles from watching this fantastically crap movie. You’ll be surprised to what Hollywood can teach you.
Now that I think about it you really shouldn’t play rugby, football, tennis, baseball or any ball sport with a porcelain ball. Tee hee hee, ball sport, that sounded dirty. Maybe they should have added THAT in the movie.
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Comment by Cibbuano
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Comment by KylieW
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And Betty White was fabulous!
Comment by Wayne F
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I totally agree with you Kylie on Betty White. She was so damn funny in this movie I think she actually saved it!
Comment by JohnDoe
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The comedy was self aware, the performances enjoyably OTT fitting the genre. My favourite part when the second croc is blown away in 2 seconds showing just how contrived these films usually are.
Sure it's silly and childish, but i think that was always the plan before cameras rolled, i don't think another "Jaws" was on the cards...there just seems to be a knowledge of the genre that worked for me with the way its satire worked...A guilty pleasure, agreed not a great film though.
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however I don't watch these films for their artistic merit.
I watch them to play victim bingo.
Comment by Wayne F
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Damo, I would watch this movie for Betty White's performance. I think she saved the movie and her lines are the greatest I've heard in a movie.
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Comment by Wayne F
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This film offers a cheap laugh Arnold, as in just one laugh hehe.
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Oh no, I'm a cushion hugger from way back!
Goodness knows what constructive and insightful comments I will be able to offer you and your blog, but I just thought I would pop in to day G'day!
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