"Drive Angry" is an excellent example of this. The first 30 minutes have plenty of funny moments. Many of these revolve around 47-year-old, balding Nic Cage evidently being irresistible to women. His ridiculous badassery reaches its peak when he shoots about ten men while having sex with a woman. Did I mention he is smoking a cigar while doing this? And that he takes a swig of Jack Daniels immediately after the shooting? And that, just before firing, he tells the woman "I never disrobe before a gunfight"?
After that hilarious scene, though, the movie settles down and becomes a standard bad action movie, with plenty of drivin' and shootin'. There are lots of dumb plot twists. But once we've adjusted to the fact that the director went to the Michael Bay School of Filmmaking, it stops being funny and starts getting dull.
"Drive Angry" reflects a troubling trend in movies: films that are terrible, but get a pass because their creators know they are terrible. This is how "Drive Angry" gets a 45% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite being one of the most poorly conceived and executed movies of the year.
Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez have spearheaded this trend with movies like "Grindhouse". Tarantino is so talented that he can take a bad movie premise and elevate it to something greater. But Rodriguez and most of his peers just use the "so bad it's good" excuse to churn out crap. The trend has even extended into music, with awful self-aware acts like LMFAO and Ke$ha.
Sigh. I shouldn't have to make this argument, but here goes. If I draw a stick figure, it's a bad drawing. It doesn't matter if I know the drawing is bad. It's quite possible that the director of "Drive Angry," Patrick Lussier, knew exactly how stupid his movie was when he made it. But that doesn't make his film any better. You can't have your cake and eat it too. And you can't make a bad movie and be celebrated for it.
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