MAJOR SPOILERS

During the Razzie Prevue Night, instead of the schedule showing of The Hottie and the Nottie, which you didn't have to see in order to know the plot (let me just say that the key to finding someone who is truly in love with you is to be dishonest about yourself. . . . er. . . .), the HeadRAZZBerry "changed gears" and showed us this cluster, er, masterwork by the Master of Miasma himself, the man reputed to be the World's Worst Living Director, Uwe Boll. 

Before I begin hurling brickbats at the movie, though, I'd like to talk about Boll's oven, er, oevre.  I've watched four Boll films within a year; I've seen Alone in the Dark and Bloodrayne on the SciFi Channel, I've seen Postal with around a dozen other unfortunate or deluded moviegoers in one of the four theatres it showed, and I saw In The Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale last night (and yes, in response to a question, I did somehow survive).  To sum up Boll's work with a few words, Boll blows. . . . chunks.   For its ambition, good casting and a few more than the one good scene Boll accidentally films for each movie, Postal would be the best.  However, that's like saying cyanide is safer to ingest than hydrochloric acid.  If I had to chose between the two for Worst Picture, I would choose Postal hands down.  If you are a connoisseur of bad films, you must subject yourself to Postal at the soonest inconvenience.  Viewing Postal is such a bad experience, it can never be called "convenient."

ITNOTK starts off with Leelee Sobieski and Ray Liotta fully clothed in bed together (how refreshing, leaving things to our imagination, a return to old values! (sarcasm alert)), with Leelee sweetly telling Ray, "I knew you'd come."  The unintentional double entendres just keep, er, coming throughout the movie. . . .

The HeadRAZZBerry alerted us to another source of amusement.  When magus John Rhys-Davies makes a house call on King Burt Reynolds, Rhys-Davies puts his ear to Reynolds' chest, sniffs his crotch, and then declares that the king has been poisoned.  From that point on, we observed and debated the effectiveness of crotch-sniffing in magic and medicine.  We even observed that this talent for crotch-sniffing can be spiritually transferred upon one's death to the next generation, although they may not immediately apply this useful technique. . . .

Another source of amusement are the battle scenes, where each scene is so blurred or distorted that you cannot tell what is going on (which seemed to be most of the battle scenes) or, when you can tell what is going on, it makes no sense.  Let me give you three examples of the latter.  When you want to catapult fireballs at your opponent, you do not load the catapult with one of your own men and then set them on fire, no matter how fierce and relentless they may be.  When you have an elite corps of tree climbing martial arts fighters, much like you'd find in House of Flying Daggers, you don't have them climb the trees just to drop down into plain sight before the attack.  And a little boy, being pursued by a giant lumbering enemy who every step thunders as he goes, can endlessly evade his pursuer, which means Farmer and Bastian must have bundled up poor Zeph and buried him alive and evil Gallian went along with the deception. . . .

Yes, our hero is Farmer Ted from Sixteen Candles, played expertly by Jason Statham despite some of the worst lines and reasoing Boll and hack screenwriter Doug Taylor put in his mouth.  The reason why Statham's character is called Farmer is because that's what he's called in the videogame, er, because Boll and Taylor were too lazy to come up with a good name, er, because Farmer believes a man is as he does.  Upon reflection, we could have had a lot of fun inserting the line "I'm just a poor farm boy" into Statham's mouth during the bad dialog of any numerous scenes throughout the movie.

Getting back to the battle sequences, another hilarious twist is when Gallian (Ray Liotta) sends thunderstorms and darkness to cover his troops during the last great battle sequence of the movie.  Now, in the books of The Lord of the Ring, Sauron does this because regular goblins do not fight well in sunlight.  But the subhuman beings in ITNOTK, called Krugs, have already proven they could fight slightly less as badly in the sunlight as they can in the dark, so why have them fight in the mud, rain and dark against the humans?  Trying to make things hard for your own army? 

What do we learn?  We learn that dungeons are the best place to try pick up lines.  We learn that tree-dwelling Amazons are capricious about which men they allow through their forest and which men they will simply kill.  We learn that when good men have an evil traitor in their midst, they simply let them go so the traitor may kill them later.  Likewise, when an evil sorcerer captures a good opponent in a spell of flying books, he just sits the good man back on the ground so the good man can slit his throat for the fourth and final time. 

And, of course, we learn about the merits of crotch-sniffing.

And then there's the incredibly bad acting of Shaggy, er, Matthew Lillard as Duke Fallow, the snivelly, treacherous royal nephew.  Some of those facial expressions, not to mention his line readings, are unintentionally hilarious.  It's not that he had bad lines; all the actors had bad lines, but most of the others turned in a good performance despite the bad lines.  Lillard brings the comedy to this stupefying badness when no comedy is called for or even wanted. 

But Lillard is not the only bad actor in the movie.  Now, I can understand why Burt Reynolds is lethargic, half-asleep, headachey and even by appearances drunken during the scenes where he had been poisoned.  However, both before and after these scenes, Reynolds continues to appear as if lethargic, half-asleep, headachey and drunken.  At best I'd accuse him of properly recognizing how deep and long Boll's crap runs and would then almost forgive Reynolds for turning in a likewise performance.

Rating: a generous three out of ten stars.  Razzie noms: Worst Picture, Worst Actor to Ray Liotta (the way he laughed in many of those scenes. . .), Worst Supporting Actor to Burt Reynolds and Matthew Lillard, Worst Supporting Actress to Leelee Sobieski, Worst Screenplay to Doug Taylor, and last but hardly least and in fact most responsible, Worst Director to Uwe Boll.  Do I recommend this?  Only to Uwe Boll fans and to people who love to heckle bad films, and even then, rent it. 

To Jason Statham fans; he does some great fight scenes, but this movie is far, far beneath the talents he showed with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch or the first Transporter. 

A commendation to Claire Forlani for taking what could have been an abysmal female role and actually making something out of it, despite the bad scenes she was given.

Amazing. At the beginning of the year, this movie was the #1 contender to sweep the Razzies. Yet somehow, it has been topped by half a dozen movies. It's kind of a shame, since this one does indeed suck, but it's now overshadowed by "Postal", "Disaster Movie", "Meet Dave", and "Love Guru." 

RESPONSE from Head RAZZberry: Maybe this'll cheer you up -- I've decided that on this year's RAZZIE® Nominating Ballot, we should treat Uwe Boll just like we would any actor who made more than one bad film in a year -- Boll will be lisited for Worst Director with both this and POSTAL after his name (thereby all but guaranteeing Uwe a well-deserved nomination)...