Why Do People Love to Hate Uwe Boll?

Posted on March 27, 2017 at 2:57 pm

In Epic Fail: Bad Art, Viral Fame, and the History of the Worst Thing Ever, Mark O’Connell writes perceptively about our fascination with truly awful works of art and the people who create them. I first learned of the Dunning-Kruger effect (the less capable people are, the worse they are at estimating their ability) from that book.

Any discussion of the worst movie directors of all time will include Ed Wood, of course, and Tommy Wiseau. Both have had films made about them that are vastly better than the films they made. But on the Mount Rushmore of bad movie directors one cannot overlook Uwe Boll, who has completed his 30th film, which he says is his last. Vanity Fair has a great feature about him. Describing the angry short film he posted on YouTube declaring that he was quitting the industry: “At the time of writing, the video has more than 1.6 million views on YouTube. Some commentators have suggested, not unreasonably, that it’s Boll’s best work.”

About “Bloodrayne,” like many of Boll’s films, based on a video game:

Cast and crew members have denounced the films. “BloodRayne was an abomination,” said BloodRayne star Michael Madsen. “It’s a horrifying and preposterous movie.” Willam Belli, who acted in and had a co-writing credit on “Blubberella,” compared viewing the finished product to “watching a car accident with clowns.”

Boll has always been better at raising the money for making a movie (hence the reliance on pre-sold brands) than in actually making it. A script supervisor points out that the job is rather difficult when there is no actual script to supervise. And yet, we can’t help feeling a grudging admiration for Boll’s determination despite universal opprobrium.

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Happy Birthday to The Worst Director Ever

Posted on June 23, 2009 at 12:00 pm

Uwe Boll is now pretty much universally considered the worst movie director alive, if not the worst ever. Not only are five of his films in the IMDB’s all-time worst 100 list (a record), but Boll has inspired a petition begging him to stop making movies. Like Ed Wood and other legendarily awful directors, Boll is better at raising money to make movies than at making them. He licenses a pre-sold brand, a video game, and then makes a completely incompetent movie about it. About his film “Alone in the Dark,” I wrote ” Reid delivers her lines as though she is calling for another round of Mai Tais for the house.”

I have to admit, I got a kick out of the corporate governance element of his commentary, and this short film (brief crude language) is much more entertaining than Boll’s movies.

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Directors

Hot Weekend — Cold Opens

Posted on August 28, 2008 at 8:00 am

When a studio is fairly certain it will not get a single good review it simply refuses to let the critics get a look before the release date. That’s called a “cold open.” Usually, movies that open cold are based on video games and/or very graphic horror films and/or directed by the legendary Uwe Boll (generally considered the worst director currently working in movies), and/or directed by Tyler Perry (no idea why this is because I really like his movies), and/or a very dumb generic gross-out comedy, especially of the “Scary Movie,” “Date Movie,” “Epic Movie,” etc. franchise.
And traditionally, Labor Day weekend is the worst weekend of the year for movies, when the studios release films that they have no expectations for whatsoever.
Thus, we have three cold opens this weekend. One is the action film “Babylon A.D.” with Vin Diesel. The last film by this director was “Gothika,” which gave rise to my well-known “Gothika rule” (if a movie has a mind-numbingly horrible ending I will give it away to anyone who sends me an email). Even he is telling people not to see this movie.

“I’m very unhappy with the film,” Mathieu Kassovitz tells amctv.com. “The script wasn’t respected. Bad producers, bad partners. It was a terrible experience…” hile he was attracted to the material’s dense geopolitical themes, Fox, the studio co-financing the movie, only wanted “pure violence and stupidity … Parts of the movie are like a bad episode of 24.” He tells the website that Fox “made everything difficult from A to Z.”

The other two movies opening this week are comedies. “Disaster Movie” is from the people who gave us “Date Movie” and “Epic Movie.” They have yet to give us “Good Movie.” I feel confident in saying that Josh Levin’s Slate review of a previous film in this tired franchise is vastly more entertaining than any of their movies. And then there’s “College.” Its poster features a kid throwing up in a toilet. Enough said.
Now would be a good time to enjoy those last summer swims and barbecues, do some back-to-school shopping, catch up on some of the big releases you might have missed or see your favorites a second time — and get ready for the fall. In September alone we have the new Tyler Perry, the new DeNiro/Pacino movie, “Igor” with John Cusack, and the new Coen brothers movie, starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt. I can’t wait!