Guardian tips for spotting a bad film

[Quincey]

Some tips from Stuart Heritage.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2017/jul/03/the-house-film-flop-mariah-carey-will-ferrell-amy-poehler

How do you spot a bad film?

Personally when I go to the cinema most of the trailers seem to be for really crap films.

[Glebe]

Sub-90-minute running time.

That's a bit presumptuous. Review embargos are normally not a good sign, granted.

[Monsieur Verdoux]

I was just about the mention the 'running time' point. That seemed completely spurious to me. Running time is no indication of anything at all whatsoever. A great many very good recent comedy films dip under the 90-minute mark. Also, the suggestion that a running time of beyond two hours means that there will be some 'hubris' present in the film is more an indication of the attention span of the writer than anything else.

Amusing how many people in the comments section immediately rushed to post the same joke about Will Ferrell being an indicator without checking if anybody had made it first.

[Blumf]

When you start seeing ads for the film that have members of the public saying how great the film is.

Although, by that point it's usually clear the film is a stinker and it's just a last ditch attempt by the producers.

[BlodwynPig]

Well I for one LOVE it

[greenman]

I was just about the mention the 'running time' point. That seemed completely spurious to me. Running time is no indication of anything at all whatsoever. A great many very good recent comedy films dip under the 90-minute mark. Also, the suggestion that a running time of beyond two hours means that there will be some 'hubris' present in the film is more an indication of the attention span of the writer than anything else.

Amusing how many people in the comments section immediately rushed to post the same joke about Will Ferrell being an indicator without checking if anybody had made it first.

The original Men in Black for years was also for years talked up as a classic example of a blockbuster that benefited from a short runtime not overstaying its welcome. What you could say perhaps is that a shorter runtime tends to often hint at a non franchise film as your having to tie into less existing material/mythology and that tends to make box office success less certain.

Not entirely sure I agree with troubled productions either, I actually think a big fault with a lot of modern blockbusters is just how fast everything happens, writing and shooting have been compressed into shorter and shorter periods to get product to market at the preffered point yet something like Lord of the Rings had endless rewrites and reshoots.

[Wet Blanket]

When it's promoted as being from the 'producer' of some hit film, but not the director or writer.

Any pull quote from ain't it cool news on the poster.

It's not the mark of a bad film but it makes me laugh when the trailers to foreign films don't contain any dialogue, so they can fool the unwise into buying a ticket.

[Bhazor]

No tits on the cover.

[greenman]

When it's promoted as being from the 'producer' of some hit film, but not the director or writer.

Any pull quote from ain't it cool news on the poster.

It's not the mark of a bad film but it makes me laugh when the trailers to foreign films don't contain any dialogue, so they can fool the unwise into buying a ticket.

You have District 9 to counter the first though, that was promoted with Peter Jacksons name as producer.

[Stoneage Dinosaurs]

Probably it being advertised on the side of a bus. Although there's always exceptions - There's Probably No God (2009) was an absolute smash

[Gulftastic]

If the same person's name appears more then three times in the opening credits.

[thecuriousorange]

When it's promoted as being from the 'producer' of some hit film, but not the director or writer.

Even more cheeky is "Acclaimed famous auteur 'presents' this film they didn't direct but hopefully nobody reads past the big name at the top and the title."

[Blumf]

What is the minimal requirement for a 'Presents' credit? Is it just an extra big thumbs up (cheque's in the post)?

[hewantstolurkatad]

The actual details of the run time are fairly on point imo.

Comedies rarely should exceed 90 minutes, but mainstream ones generally go 15 minutes over that these days. Blockbuster types that exceed two hours usually either seem to have no grasp of effective time management (Michael Bay), or have a load of stuff that's more about marketing the series than servicing the film.

[Bingo Fury]

When it's promoted as being from the 'producer' of some hit film, but not the director or writer.

Any pull quote from ain't it cool news on the poster.

It's not the mark of a bad film but it makes me laugh when the trailers to foreign films don't contain any dialogue, so they can fool the unwise into buying a ticket.

"From the special effects team that brought you ..." was the most desperate I've ever seen.

[Brundle-Fly]

"Based on a true story" sets alarm bells ringing.

[Icehaven]

"Based on a true story" sets alarm bells ringing.

And inspired by real events, translation; we used a real story and real people as that's more promoteable, but we can also put words in mouths and ramp the drama, salaciousness and body count up by about 500% and no one can sue or demand any credit or money because it's not actually about them, just inspired by them.

[Ignatius_S]

The actual details of the run time are fairly on point imo.

Comedies rarely should exceed 90 minutes, but mainstream ones generally go 15 minutes over that these days...

I would disagree with that.

One reason is perhaps dependent on taste but I know that a lot of my favourite films, which happen to be comedies, are a fair bit longer than 90 minutes. Off the top of my head, here are ten of my favourite comedy films in no particular order:

The Philadelphia Story
Black Cat, White Cat
Some Like It Hot
Monsieur Hulot's Holiday
Arsenic and Old Lace
I'm All Right Jack
Kind Hearts and Coronets
Lord Love a Duck
Duck Soup
Fraternally Yours
It's a Gift

Only the last three are 90 minutes or under (or rather quite a bit under) – but as I say, this is dependent on taste.

The other reason is in my experience, films that are overlong and which could do with significant trimming don't tend to be comedies. That's not to say some comedies couldn't have a little taken out of them to improve them, but padding out running times isn't a chief issue.

[Ignatius_S]

Even more cheeky is "Acclaimed famous auteur 'presents' this film they didn't direct but hopefully nobody reads past the big name at the top and the title."

Although I would agree with the overall point, don't think that Hostel is the best example as so much of the promotion and marketing at the time was pushing that it was a new film by Eli Roth - due to Cabin Fever, he was very much hot property.

[Bazooka]

From the team that brought you Keith Chegwin's Naked Jungle

[Sambob]

If you see boobs in the first 5 minutes of a horror film you know it's going to be shit, although to be fair, most horror films are shit.

Any film with a poster featuring two people stood back to back 'tutting' at each other.

Any film with a poster featuring a rating or review from Cosmopolitan or Loaded.

Any film that's been 'influenced' by the Scientologists (Nicholas Cage I'm looking at you).

[marquis_de_sad]

Five stars, Paul Ross.

[imitationleather]

There seemed to be an awful period about five years ago where every major serious film gunning for an Oscar appeared to feel it had to be 150-180 minutes.

It is when I seriously fell out of love with going to the cinema.

[BritishHobo]

The runtime is a good point with The House though. Everything the article says about a good time in the edit suite rings through its 88 minutes. There are so many aspects of the film that you can tell have been cut down from something else, plot points that must have led somewhere more substantial, great comedy actors who are basically relegated to extra status because of scenes that must have been cut.

[thecuriousorange]

If you see a DVD for something with a collection of actors who are really, really famous, like the level of Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, Michael Caine, Robert de Niro etc all together but you haven't heard of the film itself, heed those alarm bells and leave the charity shop.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Made after 2000, stars De Niro.

[holyzombiejesus]

They should do a Guardian Tips for Spotting a Bad Article.

1. It is written by Stuart Heritage.

[BlodwynPig]

If the same person's name appears more then three times in the opening credits.

The Dogs (2015)?

[hewantstolurkatad]

I would disagree with that.

One reason is perhaps dependent on taste but I know that a lot of my favourite films, which happen to be comedies, are a fair bit longer than 90 minutes. Off the top of my head, here are ten of my favourite comedy films in no particular order:

The Philadelphia Story
Black Cat, White Cat
Some Like It Hot
Monsieur Hulot's Holiday
Arsenic and Old Lace
I'm All Right Jack
Kind Hearts and Coronets
Lord Love a Duck
Duck Soup
Fraternally Yours
It's a Gift

Only the last three are 90 minutes or under (or rather quite a bit under) – but as I say, this is dependent on taste.

The other reason is in my experience, films that are overlong and which could do with significant trimming don't tend to be comedies. That's not to say some comedies couldn't have a little taken out of them to improve them, but padding out running times isn't a chief issue.

All but one of those are over 50 years old, and the majority seems to sway towards being before television was even around. The place film occupied in that period of time is pretty drastically different to where it has come to occupy. What was the main rival to comedy films back then? Theatre? Radio?

Initially film would've still had big benefits like budgets to match people's ideas, a more developed medium for assembling productions, and not having the oppressive demands of 40 episode seasons. But as television matured it became an increasingly more natural home for most comedic talents; production qualities went up, season lengths went down, they became a lot more effective at assembling writing teams, and most importantly, you had a lot more room to play with an idea.
With that in mind, comedy films have had to adapt to differentiate, often to their detriment, the clearest way to doing that being a clear narrative (as opposed to your constant resets you tend to get on television) regardless of whether it suits their strengths. It's pretty hard to find comedy films nowadays that don't stumble considerably with the wrap up where the plot just leaves too much shit to resolve.

Although all that being said, countries that tend to culturally favour longer films (i.e. most of Asia) tend to knock out longer comedies that are okay to this day. I'm really quite heavily talking about mainstream comedies from the west tbh.



I've long since lost whatever point I was trying to make here btw, sorry

[Twit 2]

If the Guardian like it.