TheRetroCritic

The trailers for Peter Jackson's latest may not have boasted any truly fascinating plot points but at least it looked good and had a decent enough cast, so how bad could it be? Turns out very. Very very bad indeed. In many ways this is a film which was doomed from the start. When the director is miscast, the best you can hope for is a clunky but honorable attempt. After all, this is the guy who brought us horror classics such as  Bad Taste  and  Braindead , fun comedy  The Frighteners  and of course the epic  Lord of the Rings  trilogy. The Lovely Bones is by far the director's worst hour: a complete disaster from start to finish with some of the worst acting I've seen in a long time.  Films like  The Wolfman  or  Precious  may have been overall uneven and clumsy affairs but at least they had some redeeming features about them. This, however, misses the mark on all accounts. The script is loathsome in that it adapts a novel in the dullest, most nonsensical way humanel

Why The King didn't appreciate this will always mistify me. Stanley Kubrick's Stephen King adaptation remains one of the best and most genuinely "haunting" (pun intended and instantly regretted) horror films ever made.   Time hasn't been particularly kind to 70's horror films with the likes of The Omen and The Exorcist now feeling dated and hardly impressive in any way. But right on the cusp of the 80's, The Shining still holds up very well, although it's hard to take Danny speaking to his finger too seriously. At the heart of the film is a towering performance by Jack Nicholson, who can do crazy like no other (yes, Nic Cage is a close second) and joyfully cranks up the loon-o-meter to 11. Shelley Duvall was criticised for being too hysterical throughout but, to be honest, anyone not very good with handling stress would be lost in such a huge setting with a psycho husband running loose and such a weird kid...speaking in crazy voic

Yes Leslie Nielsen was a comedy genius, unfortunately this is one of his darkest hours. Which is not to say he doesn't have his moments but everything around him is so inept that it becomes impossible to appreciate his familiar buffoneries. With some of the most inept directing, writing and editing you're likely to see, complete with about a hundred terrible celebrity impressions and some poor acting all around, you really need to love Mr Nielsen to stand through this mess.   Him and some decent make-up effects here and there just about save this from 1 star ignominy but, in all honesty, 2001 A Space Travesty is almost unwatchable and the last half hour is just noise. Awful but Nielsen, at the very least, does his job relatively well, which is more than I can say for everyone else involved here...