WARNING!!!
These previews contain vital
plot information and other potentially movie-spoiling stuff!
If you don't want to know, read no further!
AN ALAN SMITHEE FILM
Written by Joe Eszterhas. Directed by Alan Smithee (ho ho ho, how wackily ironic). Starring Eric Idle, Ryan O'Neal, Coolio, Richard Jeni. As themselves: Sylvester Stallone, Whoopi Goldberg, Jackie Chan, Larry King, Billy Bob Thornton, Robert Evans, Robert Shapiro, and of course, how could it be any other way, an appearance by the man himself - Joe Eszterhas.
This isn't a review. It's an apology. I'd promised for months to review this screenplay and never got around to it. Why didn't I get around to it? Because I'd only read half the script. And I didn't want to lambaste any writer's efforts without giving their work a full and complete reading. So I procrastinated. Then I put it off. Then I kinda forgot about it. Then I remembered it... and I procrastinated some more. All because I couldn't possibly bring myself to read another stinkin' word!
Eric Idle having a
flashback to when he was involved
in good ensemble comedy.
"Always look on the bright si-ide of life..."
I've read bad scripts in my life. Believe me, I started in this business when teen sex comedies were all the rage, and was asked to rewrite plenty of hideous garbage (I seem to recall a teen sex comedy set in a cooking school...). You think the teen sex comedies that got made were bad? You shoulda seen the stuff they couldn't get financing for! LOSIN' IT starts to look like AMERICAN GRAFFITI. And I still couldn't force myself to finish AN ALAN SMITHEE FILM. Is it the worst half-script I've ever read? In a word? Hell yeah. It's the most amateurish attempt at comedy writing I've ever seen. It's boring, it's repetitive, it's stupid... and it doesn't contain any one thing that can even be remotely considered funny. But who knows? Maybe the second half is great.
Who better to make a
cameo in media whore Ezsterhas' film?
Media whore Larry King, who else?
The plot? Who cares? Eszterhas didn't seem to. It's about a director who, after filming a huge $200 million-plus action film goes nutty and steals the negative. And it's about how Hollywood power players deal with it. See, it's like a satire on Hollywood's greed and shallowness and lack of talent - written by Joe Eszterhas. Irony rears its ugly head once again. You wanna see this basic idea fleshed out by a filmmaker who knows what's funny about Hollywood and human nature, and knows how to write comedy? Watch Blake Edwards' S.O.B. It's not a perfect film, either - but compared to SMITHEE it's friggin' CITIZEN KANE.
Just as I didn't want to read it, I don't want to write about it. It's terrible, okay? Beyond terrible. If I didn't know it was written by a man who'd been successfully involved in the movie business for years I'd have assumed it was written by some film student from the Des Moines School of Cinema who was basing his stupid in-jokes on stuff he'd heard in internet chat rooms. I thought Eszterhas' dramas were bad until I read his attempt at comedy. Suddenly another in his endless rehashes of JAGGED EDGE doesn't seem so bad. And if that doesn't tell you what a worthless piece of crap this script is, I don't know what will.
But hey, like I said, maybe the second half really picks up.
MY PROGNOSIS? It'll die the death it so richly deserves.
AND THE CRITICS SAY...
VARIETY: "One of the industry's longest-standing in-jokes has been turned into one of its more elaborate home movies in AN ALAN SMITHEE FILM - BURN HOLLYWOOD BURN, a caustic but under-funny "expose" of the venality of the motion picture business... But the documentary-like structure and extreme insider nature mitigate general audience appeal, and the heavy-handed humor brands this as only a curiosity even for buffs... Watching the resulting film is the equivalent of having your ribs poked for an hour-and-a-half by a prankster most of whose jokes are only funny to himself...Nearly every scene is a snippet existing for the sake of one arcane point, or even a one-liner, usually a lame one."
ROGER EBERT: "AN ALAN SMITHEE FILM - BURN HOLLYWOOD BURN is a spectacularly bad film - incompetent, unfunny, ill-conceived, badly executed, lamely written, and acted by people who look trapped in the headlights... Eszterhas is sometimes a good writer, but this time he has had a complete lapse of judgment... Have you ever been to one of those office parties where the PR department has put together a tribute to a retiring boss? That's how this film plays. It has no proper story line. No dramatic scenes... In taking his name off this film, Arthur Hiller has wisely distanced himself from the disaster, but on the basis of what's on the screen I cannot, frankly, imagine any version of this film that I would want to see. The only way to save this film would be to trim 86 minutes."
WHILE THE PUBLIC SAYS...
... While the public says, "Huh? What?". Even though it's in (very) limited release, I can't find it mentioned anywhere in Variety's list of the weeks top 50 grossing films. Well whaddaya know? There is a God!
Hunt and peck to return to
the Script Review Archives!
This page hosted by 
Get your own Free
Home Page!