Maximum Overdrive (1986)

Stephen King has long been considered one of the premier names in horror literature. But the movie adaptations of his books have always been hit or miss. Mostly miss, to be honest. For every one like The Shawshank Redemption, there have been five like Pet Sematary Two. There's some, though, that weren't bad, just mediocre. One was Maximum Overdrive, an adaptation of King's 1973 short story "Trucks." But while the movie is average at best, it's memorable in that it marks the one and only directorial effort by King himself.

As the movie begins, we learn that Earth passed through the tail of a rogue comet on June 19, 1987, where it would remain for just over a week. However, the negative effects of this astrological anomaly are felt almost immediately. Machines of all types — vehicles, appliances, vending machines, even things as mundane as hair dryers, toys, and Walkmen — have become sentient, all of them flying into an anti-human homicidal frenzy.

In the town of Willamette, North Carolina, a group of murderous 18-wheelers have trapped a small handful of survivors inside a roadside truck stop. When the trucks, communicating via Morse code through their horns, demand to be refueled, the humans come to the horrific realization that the machines wish to enslave them. Billy Robinson (Emilio Estevez), the truck stop's fry cook, tries rallying the survivors. Armed with a cache of weapons his boss kept hidden in the diner's basement, Billy begins formulating a plan to lead them to safety. But with the prevalence of machinery, where would they go that would be safe?

Maximum Overdrive is one of those movies that boasts an awesome concept yet leaves a lot to be desired. I don't want to call it a bad movie per se, but it's just kinda average at best. It's a movie that, if placed in the hands of a writer and director with more experience, would have been awesome.

I still can't believe that Stephen King actually made this movie. I guess he figured if people were going to do movie versions of his work, he might as well join the party and see what all the fuss was about. It's obvious that he'd never made a movie before, as his experience as both a director and a screenwriter shows. His direction isn't that bad, but it feels rough around the edges. He tends to use some of the same camera moves, angles, and techniques over and over, a repetition that gets tiring after a while. (His overuse of that really bad knockoff of the shower music from Psycho doesn't help things either.)

There are a few moments where King shows a little brilliance, though. Specifically, I mean the opening sequence on the bridge and the scene where the soda machine kills the Little League coach. Both of those scenes are awesome, King making the most of them. It's a shame the rest of the movie couldn't be like that, though.

King's script isn't much better. The short story the movie was based on was just that: short. It's roughly ten or fifteen pages long. There was no way King (or anyone else) could turn it into a feature-length movie without a ton of padding or extra material, and that's exactly what happened. The problem is that there's still not enough to carry a 97-minute running time. It just runs out of gas (no pun intended) after a certain point.

It's just really tedious. The lame characters, the stupid dialogue, the scenes that don't go anywhere; they'll just wear you out. Maximum Overdrive would have been a lot more effective as an episode of a horror anthology TV show. It's too late to change that now, but if somebody wants to resurrect Tales from the Crypt or Masters of Horror, a remake of Maximum Overdrive could make for a great episode. But for all of King's successes as a novelist, a screenwriter he is not.

And then there's the cast, which is a bit on the disappointing side. Playing the lead role is Emilio Estevez, whose performance isn't too bad. The role isn't a very strong one, and Estevez doesn't seem to be trying very hard, but at least he's watchable. That's more than I can say for some of the other people in the cast is forgettable. Only a few actors are even worth mentioning at all. One of them is the late Pat Hingle, who is wasted playing such a crummy character. What sucks about Hingle's performance is that he's clearly the wrong guy to be playing a sleazy redneck. If the writing had been a bit better, he wouldn't have been so bad.

And how about Yeardley Smith? She's most famous as the voice of Lisa Simpson, but before The Simpsons had ever been featured on The Tracey Ullman Show, she appeared in Maximum Overdrive. And I honestly wish she hadn't because Smith is terrible. She's nothing short of awful, with the most annoying voice to ever come out of anyone's mouth. Smith can't say more than one syllable without it sounding like a screeching cat, and the fact that her character spends pretty much every scene whining and complaining, it only gets worse as the movie progresses. She's right up there with Dropo from Santa Claus Conquers the Martians on my list of characters who make me want to climb into the movie and strangle them.

At least the movie has an awesome soundtrack courtesy of legendary rock band AC/DC. No less than seven of their songs appear in the movie, with their album Who Made Who serving as the movie's soundtrack. You can't go wrong with AC/DC, so if Maximum Overdrive got one thing right, it's the music.

I might sound like I'm really ripping the movie apart, but Maximum Overdrive isn't that bad. It's still an entertaining B-movie. I mean, it's a movie about a bunch of 18-wheelers that come to life and kill people, and it was directed by Stephen King, for crying out loud. The movie isn't going to be good by any means, but it's pure dumb fun. Though I'm only giving it two and a half stars, I will say that if you enjoy cheesy movies from the '80s, you could do worse than Maximum Overdrive. 

Final Rating: **½

Back to the Future Part III (1990)

I've already reviewed Back to the Future and Back to the Future Part II, so where else is there for me to go? The answer is simple: Back to the Future Part III. Filmed back-to-back with Part II and released six months after its predecessor, the third and final chapter in the Back to the Future saga takes much of the trilogy's formula and transplants it into the Old West. Because why only send Marty back or forward in time thirty years like in the first two movies, when you could have him go a hundred years instead? But regardless of my jokes, Part III is a great flick and a fun way to conclude this amazing trilogy.

When we last saw Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox), he watched in horror as a bolt of lightning struck the DeLorean, causing it and Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) to vanish and leaving Marty stranded in 1955. Marty's only clue to what happened arrives in the form of a 70-year-old letter that Doc himself had written and left for him. In the letter, Doc reveals that the lightning bolt sent him to 1885, where the antiquated technology has left him unable to repair the damaged time machine. He has included with his letter a map pointing Marty to where he'd hidden the DeLorean along with detailed instructions on how to fix it using equipment from 1955. But he urges Marty not to come back for him, as he is content to spend the rest of his days in the Old West as Hill Valley's resident blacksmith.

However, a sudden revelation leaves Marty unable to heed Doc's advice. After he and Doc's 1955 counterpart retrieve the DeLorean from the abandoned mine where it had been hidden, Marty stumbles upon Doc's tombstone. He was in 1885, so he was bound to die sometime over the course of seven decades, right? It wouldn't be a problem, but according to the tombstone, Doc died just six days after the letter was written, having been shot and killed by notorious outlaw Buford Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson) over a petty squabble.

Unable to accept that his friend was senselessly murdered, Marty uses the repaired time machine to head back to 1885 and save him. But things get a little hairy when an accident upon his arrival in the past damages the DeLorean's fuel line and leaves the car crippled. With Doc's death looming, they must find a way to somehow get the car up to 88 miles per hour before he meets the business end of a bullet. That is, if Doc doesn't get too distracted by his new girlfriend, local schoolmarm Clara Clayton (Mary Steenburgen).

I've got to admit that Part III isn't my favorite chapter of the trilogy. It's not like it's a bad movie, it's actually pretty good. I just felt that it was too much like the first movie. Look at it like this: Marty goes back in time and meets up with Doc. The duo needs to fix the DeLorean and return to 1985 before something bad happens at the end of the week. Throw in a dance scene and a few other familiar moments and elements, and it's practically the first movie in the Old West.

But hey, it's still a fun flick and a wonderfully grand finale for the trilogy. It helps that, since both sequels were filmed back-to-back, much of the cast and crew were able to return. It just wouldn't be a Back to the Future movie without the usual suspects. This includes Robert Zemeckis, the director that helped steer the franchise towards its iconic status. Zemeckis's work with Part III is just as great as it was on the first two. He has a knack for making movies feel warm and whimsical even in dire scenes, and this movie is no exception. Though the Old West setting creates a far-different Hill Valley that one would be used to, it still feels like the same place thanks to the direction. It is lively, energetic, and all kinds of enjoyable. After growing up with the franchise, I can't imagine anyone else directing these movies. A Back to the Future movie without Robert Zemeckis would just feel wrong.

I should also take the time to applaud Alan Silvestri for once again contributing an absolutely amazing score for the movie. I know I didn't mention him in my review of Part II, but Silvestri's music for the sequels is fantastic. His score for Part III is particularly good. It has an appropriately Western sound to it, excellently contributing to the feel of the movie.

And not only do Zemeckis and Silvestri come back for Part III, but so does writer Bob Gale. I noted before that the movie feels like a retooled copy of the first one. That's not entirely a bad thing, though, as it lends the movie a sense of familiarity and serves as a way to bring the trilogy full circle. A lot of the franchise's running gags are either brought back or played with, and Gale makes a game effort of tying up the loose ends left over from Part II.

And in all honesty, the Old West setting really changes how the whole "fish out of water" thing is done. Visiting 1955 or 2015 is one thing, but for Marty to be stick a full century in the past? That'd have to be a real mind screw. Gale handles the new setting well, having a blast pointing out anachronisms like the Nike sneakers and ugly '50s-era cowboy getup that he's wearing when he arrives in 1885, and his use of '80s slang after discovering a pie plate he threw at Mad Dog Tannen bears the "Frisbee" name. His jokes continue to be funny, and he once again presents the characters in such a way that you can't help but care about them. Gale's writing is as strong as it was in the first two Back to the Future movies, and it shows.

Last but most certainly not least is the movie's cast. Playing the lead role for the third and final time is Michael J. Fox, who is once again perfect. After seeing Fox play Marty three times, I'm convinced that there's no way Eric Stoltz could have ever topped him. Fox is tremendous, not only as Marty but as Marty's great-great-grandfather Seamus. The Irish accent Fox adopts as Seamus is a bit over the top, but he makes the character endearing. And at least Fox didn't have to dress in drag like he did in Part II's 2015 scenes.

In the role of Doc Brown, Christopher Lloyd is again fantastic. He's made the character so much more than just an actor playing a part, turning Doc into one of the franchise's greatest elements. Lloyd is hilarious as Doc, and the introduction of a love interest into the character's arc gives him a chance to have a little pathos too. He tackles that like a champ, proving that Lloyd can do more than act wacky.

Thomas F. Wilson also returns, playing the great-grandfather of his famous character Biff. Seeing Wilson playing an uncouth, violent cowboy is a lot of fun, though I do miss seeing him as Biff. Though Mad Dog Tannen does get a few funny moments, he's not the humorous character that Biff is, allowing Wilson to try something different. He's great, though, even if I do prefer Biff.

Even Lea Thompson returns, this time not as Marty's mom, but as his great-great-grandmother Maggie. It's weird not seeing her play Lorraine, but Thompson is good in the part, even if it is rather minor. But for all the actors who returned, there's one making her first appearance in the trilogy. Mary Steenburgen plays Clara Clayton, approaching the role in such a way that makes her instantly likable. She and Lloyd have a believable chemistry together, making their scenes that much better.

Watching this movie always makes me a little sad because it's the end of the road for the Back to the Future trilogy. I know that Back to the Future Part IV will never happen, and that any new cinematic adventures bearing the name would come in the form of a remake. But the fact that the franchise concluded with Part III means that the franchise didn't run out of steam after a bunch of lame sequels like some other franchises that shall go unnamed. It lets the fans say goodbye to the characters while they're still at the top of their game. And even if it's not perfect, the movie's still a heck of a watch. So Back to the Future Part III gets three and a half stars, and the whole trilogy gets my seal of approval. If you're one of those poor souls who have yet to see any of the movies, I urge you to track them down and watch them. You won't regret it.

Final Rating: ***½

Back to the Future Part II (1989)

After twenty-five years, two sequels, a Saturday morning cartoon, a couple of video games, and its own theme park ride, I think its safe to say that Back to the Future is firmly entrenched in American pop culture. It was a box office smash when it was released in the summer of 1985, turning its lead actor from a TV star into a movie star in the process. The movie was so popular that Ronald Reagan even quoted some of its dialogue in the 1986 State of the Union Address.

But believe it or not, Back to the Future was originally intended to be a one time deal. No sequels, no franchise, just that one movie. But thanks to a combination of its popularity and some pestering from Universal Studios, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale got the gang back together to do not one, but two sequels to flesh out what would become one of my favorite movie trilogies. But we're only doing one movie at a time, so let's jump into the DeLorean and check out Back to the Future Part II.

As we saw at the end of the first movie, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) managed to fix things in 1955 and returned to a 1985 that was better than the one he'd left. But he's barely gotten settled back in his proper time before Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) pulls up in his time-traveling DeLorean. Doc has just returned from the year 2015, and he's brought bad news back with him. Turns out that both of Marty's kids will get themselves into some really nasty legal trouble, and Marty and Doc have to head to the future to fix it.

Luckily, they are successful in keeping the McFly children out of the mess that sends them to prison. But when they return to 1985, they discover that Hill Valley has become a dystopian hellhole. Thanks to an error in judgment Marty had in 2015, an elderly Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson) was able to briefly steal the time machine and give a teenage version of himself a book compiling fifty years of sports statistics.

Now armed with knowledge of the future, the younger Biff was able to acquire wealth, fame, and power. And to make things worse, this world's version of Doc has been locked in a mental institution, Marty's father was murdered, and Biff is now Marty's stepfather. The only way Marty and Doc can fix this horrifying situation is by going back to 1955 and destroying the book.

I don't think anyone will disagree that the Back to the Future sequels are inferior to the original movie. Nothing they could have done would have topped the first one. But they're still fun and entertaining in their own right. And of the two sequels, Part II has always been my favorite. There's something whimsical about it, something that's always been able to put me in a good mood every time I watch it. I'm not sure I can put my finger on exactly what it is, but who am I to argue with a good time?

Robert Zemeckis returns to the director's chair for both sequels, and his work on Part II is fantastic. The movie looks great, thanks to the combined efforts of the art department, the set designers, ILM's special effects, and Dean Cundey's cinematography. Zemeckis flawlessly puts all of these elements together, while maintaining a steady pace and engrossing atmosphere.

Zemeckis also has a great script to work off of. Written by Bob Gale, the screenplay is full of complexities and talk of paradoxes, along with fun nods to the first movie and a ton of exposition that doesn't factor in until Part III. It's really layered, with so much going on and so much stuff to keep track of. But it never gets convoluted, and anything that does get confusing is eventually explained by the end of Part II or in Part III. The stuff that wasn't paid off until Part III had to be annoying for people who saw the sequels theatrically, though. Nowadays, you can just watch the Part II DVD and immediately transition to the Part III DVD. But there was a six-month period between the theatrical releases of the sequels. It would have been understandable thinking all that leftover exposition was pointless at the time. But I guess that'll happen when you film movies back to back.

But regardless, Gale's writing is not only smart, but it's charming too. The jokes are really funny, and I really liked how over-the-top 2015 was. I know that the whole 2015 thing wasn't completely thought up by Gale, but the fact that it's so out there (and unless something drastic happens in the next five years, so absurdly wrong), that it's always been a source of amusement for me. And even in the hellish alternate 1985, Gale's writing is consistently engaging and entertaining. He makes absolutely certain to keep the story moving and to keep the same energy as the first movie. His script is awesome, and I could probably go on all day singing its praises. But let's move along.

Last on my list is the cast. Nearly everyone from the original movie returns, with a few minor exceptions, and all of them are fantastic. Michael J. Fox once again plays the role of Marty McFly, and he's as good as he was back in 1985. Marty is essentially the backbone of the entire franchise, and I don't know if the franchise would have been as iconic with a lesser actor in the part. But Fox is pitch perfect. He's funny, engaging, and sympathetic, exactly what the character needs.

The same can be said for Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown. Lloyd is awesome in all three movies, and although Part III is really his time to shine, he's great in Part II. Doc is the madcap silliness to Marty's straight man, and Lloyd fills that role excellently.

While most of the supporting characters have less to do than in the first one, Biff Tannen has a beefier role than he had previously. Thomas F. Wilson comes back to the character, and he's awesome throughout the whole movie. Wilson has the most work to do out of the cast, playing Biff in three different time periods as well as Biff's grandson in 2015, and he's amazing from start to finish. He's especially good as Biff's grandson and the "alternate 1985" Biff, practically stealing the whole movie in those scenes.

I love Back to the Future Part II. It's a great movie that never gets boring or unfunny. The movie is a fine sequel that, while not equal to the original movie, advances the Back to the Future saga and builds upon the world created by the first movie. It actually makes the first movie better. So even if it's not the best movie out there, it's still a successful one. And on my usual scale, Back to the Future Part II gets three and a half stars, leaning towards four. And if I don't get my hoverboard by 2015, I'm gonna be pissed.

Final Rating: ***½

Back to the Future (1985)

Science fiction is a very broad genre. It can encompass a great many things, from global disasters to alien invasions to robots. But of all the different sub-genres, one of my favorites is time travel. I'm a sucker for a time travel story, as long as it's pulled off right. And in 1985, one of the best time travel stories ever told hit theaters. Produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Robert Zemeckis, Back to the Future combined comedy and sci-fi in what is one of my favorite movies of the '80s.

Welcome to Hill Valley, California. Among the town's citizens is Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox), a high school student with dreams of becoming a rock star. But unfortunately, things haven't really been working out his way. His band is rejected at a big audition for being "just too darn loud," he can't get ahead at school, and worst of all, his family sucks. His siblings are living dead-end lives, his mother (Lea Thompson) is an alcoholic, and his dad (Crispin Glover) is a loser who even in adulthood is still tormented by his high school bully, Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson).

Little does Marty know that he's about to embark on the adventure of his life. He gets a call from his best friend, local scientist "Doc" Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd), who asks Marty to meet him at the local mall in the middle of the night. When he arrives, Doc unveils his latest invention: a DeLorean he's converted into a plutonium-powered time machine. Just where do you get plutonium? You steal it from some terrorists who think you're using it to make them a bomb, naturally. How else would you score a cache of plutonium?

His initial experiment — sending his dog one minute into the future — is a success. But immediately thereafter, the terrorists (having finally figured out they've been conned) arrive and shoot Doc dead. Marty jumps into the DeLorean and escapes, accidentally activating the time machine and sending himself back to 1955 in the process. And thanks to having used up all the plutonium during his trip, he's stranded there.

Marty naturally seeks out the only person who can help him, a Doc Brown that is thirty years younger. He manages to convince an initially disbelieving Doc he's from the future by explaining how the time machine was conceived, something only Doc himself would've known in 1955, but he's unable to help. Doc understandably doesn't have any plutonium just lying around in his lab. 

Doc does say something that gives Marty an idea, however, when he explains that the only thing that could even remotely duplicate the necessary electrical charge would be a bolt of lightning. But thanks to his knowledge of the town's history, Marty reveals that they can exploit the lightning that will strike Hill Valley's courthouse seven days later. So all they have to do is find a way to funnel the lightning into the DeLorean by the end of the week.

It'll be an interesting week, however. Marty accidentally prevented his parents from meeting for the first time mere hours after his arrival in 1955, subsequently causing his teenage mother to fall head over heels in love with him instead. This creates a ripple effect that is slowly erasing he and his siblings from existence. To rectify this, Marty must ensure that his parents meet and fall in love before he goes back to the future.

It's weird thinking that Back to the Future is now twenty-five years old. Seriously, 2010 marks Back to the Future's 25th anniversary. The franchise has been such an indelible part of pop culture for so long that I never really considered how long it's been around until the dates were staring me in the face. A lot of it is because of just how timeless the original movie is. It never feels dated or old, and remains as funny and as entertaining as it was two and a half decades ago. The movie hasn't aged one bit, and to tell you the truth, I have no problems calling Back to the Future a true classic.

Piloting this ship is director Robert Zemeckis, who had just made a name for himself with the success of Romancing the Stone a year prior. Zemeckis's direction here is stellar, maintaining a sense of wonder and whimsy throughout the movie's entirety. He keeps the movie's energy going strong, and never once lets it grow tiresome or wear out its welcome. It's evident that Zemeckis knew exactly what he was doing behind the camera, and though he never gets flashy in his efforts, he has crafted an awe-inspiring piece of cinema.

Zemeckis's direction is made even more epic by Alan Silvestri's absolutely amazing music. The score for Back to the Future is without a doubt some of the best movie music I've ever heard. Hell, it's some of the best music I've heard, period. It's fantastic in every sense of the word, and deserves to be as iconic as the movie itself. And while we're talking music, I have to admit that I love the two songs contributed by Huey Lewis & The News. Yeah, I'll agree that "Back In Time" is inferior to "The Power of Love," but both songs are really catchy and a lot of fun to listen to (and to sing along with). But then, I'm a sucker for Huey Lewis & The News, so any movie that has one of their songs on the soundtrack is okay with me.

And I've gotta admit, the script — written by Zemeckis and co-producer Bob Gale — is great too. While stories about modern people finding themselves stranded in the past date as far back as the publication of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court in 1889, the way that Zemeckis and Gale handle it is what makes Back to the Future stand out. The best part of their script, at least in my eyes, is the characters. Back to the Future has some of the most fun, most entertaining characters I've seen in a movie. Zemeckis and Gale, with help from the actors playing them, make us care about the characters. They make you want to see what happens to them next and hope that everything turns out okay. And when the characters are combined with all those memorable scenes and great lines of dialogue, you end up with a screenplay that becomes one heck of a great movie.

The weird thing about Zemeckis and Gale's script is that it all could have been very different. Find some of the early drafts of the script online, and you'll see what I mean. The time machine wasn't even a DeLorean at first. It was initially a customized refrigerator fueled by Coca-Cola. One draft saw Marty return to 1985 and discovering that rock and roll hadn't been invented yet (and it was up to him to do so). The movie even had an ending where instead of lightning hitting the clock tower, Marty was sent home by the detonation of an atomic bomb at the government's nuclear weapons testing site in Nevada. It boggles my mind knowing that such a classic movie could have been so drastically different from what people have come to know and love over the last two and a half decades. I'm just happy that Zemeckis and Gale arrived upon the final script they ended up working with, because I can't imagine Back to the Future being any different.

But the whole thing would have been shot if it hadn't had a group of actors giving it everything they had. Luckily, Back to the Future features actors who were committed to putting forth the best performances possible. In the lead role is Michael J. Fox, who was still involved his prior claim to fame, the TV show Family Ties, at the time. The summer of 1985 saw the release of his first two big movies, this and Teen Wolf, and Back to the Future especially shows that he was bound to be more than just a TV star. Fox is fantastic here, showing a charm and charisma that really breathes life into Marty McFly. He's funny, likable, and ultimately believable in the role. And to think, the movie almost starred Eric Stoltz instead.

Fox's performance is made better by the awesome supporting cast that backs him up. To tell you the truth, he's nearly overshadowed by some of his costars. One in particular is Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown. Doc himself has become as popular as the franchise, and it's all because of Lloyd's madcap performance. Watching Lloyd play Doc as if his brain operates on a completely different level than everybody else's is a lot of fun. He's probably the most entertaining mad scientist ever captured on film, and I honestly couldn't imagine Back to the Future without him.

That's not to say the rest of the cast isn't great too. Lea Thompson is engaging as Marty's mom, playing her with a simultaneous doe-eyed innocence and understated wild streak. I also really liked Crispin Glover as Marty's dad. I usually enjoy Glover's work anyway, but he's all aces in this one. His exasperated dorkiness makes him very amiable and sympathetic. And as one of the greatest cinematic bullies ever, Thomas F. Wilson is nothing short of awesome. Biff Tannen is one of my favorite movie characters ever, largely due to Wilson's performance. He plays Biff as such an irritating jerk that you can't help but cheer when he finally gets what's coming to him.

It's weird to think that Back to the Future is as old as it is. But age has only made it even more fun and entertaining. The movie is a tremendous experience from start to finish, no doubt about it. I'll even go as far as to say that anyone who calls Back to the Future a bad movie is either an idiot or a liar. It's one heck of a movie that only gets better every time I see it. So yeah, I'm giving Back to the Future the full monty with five stars. If you haven't seen it yet, do yourself a favor and do so now.

Final Rating: ****

The Pest (1997)

When I reviewed Tank Girl last week, I called it a bad movie that I just couldn't bring myself to hate. I didn't realize that I would be reviewing its total opposite so soon, but here I am talking about The Pest. It's a movie so tremendously awful that I have no problem whatsoever hating it. If I could kill it and bury it in a shallow grave out in the desert, I would. I don't know what the makers of The Pest wanted to achieve, but if they wanted to make an unfunny comedy that quite literally wears out its welcome within ninety seconds, then they were successful.

Meet Pestario Vargas (John Leguizamo), a con artist from Miami who is probably the most annoying person anyone will ever meet. So annoying, in fact, that there's a reason everyone calls him just "Pest" beyond it just being the first syllable of his name. When the Scottish mob calls in a $50,000 debt, Pest is stuck trying to quickly come up with the cash.

He is soon thereafter approached by Gustav Shank (Jeffrey Jones), a big game hunter from Germany whose big game of choice is human beings. Looking to add a Latino to his trophy collection, Gustav offers Pest a deal: survive being hunted for 24 hours, and he will be paid 50,000 dollars. Realizing that this would give him the opportunity to get the Scottish mob off his back, Pest agrees, and in that 24-hour period, he has a series of wacky misadventures while trying to stay alive.

There is no denying that The Pest is a very bad movie, but the fact that it's a bad comedy makes it even worse. I don't know what it is about them, but awful movies seem even more awful when they're comedies. Bad comedies are practically intolerable, and The Pest is no exception. It is a complete failure on every possible level. It's such an abysmal waste of time and effort that its mere existence makes me want to weep and then die.

At the helm of this disaster is Paul Miller, a director I've never heard of and probably never will again. His direction has no life, no spark. It's as if Miller simply couldn't be bothered to even try. Even if he knew his movie was a piece of crap, couldn't he have at least made an attempt to care?

But Miller's work is nowhere near as bad as the writing. The script is credited to David Bar Katz from a story by he and John Leguizamo, and if it were me, I'd have probably used a fake name. I can get over it being a cheap ripoff of Richard Connell's 1924 short story "The Most Dangerous Game," because that's been done to death over the years. But it's just dreadful, period. There is not a single worthwhile moment that I can think of. It's juvenile in the worst way, with jokes that are either not funny or just plain offensive. And its protagonist that is so unlikable that you'll wish you could jump into the movie and punch him. Seriously, by the end of the movie, you'll be cheering for Gustav to finally kill Pest. What idiot thought it was a good idea to have a main character that was so irritating? How are we supposed to sympathize with Pest when he's so insufferable that it risks making viewers root for the movie's villain, a Nazi that hunts minorities for sport and is played by a convicted sex offender?

It doesn't help anything that the cast isn't that great either. John Leguizamo plays the title role, and all he did was leave me confused. Leguizamo can be really funny if given the right material, but considering that he helped write this piece of crap, it leaves me wondering just what the hell he was thinking. In all honesty, Leguizamo's performance wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for how poor the script is. With better jokes, he could have made The Pest at least mediocre. But sadly, if the jokes don't work, neither will the person telling them.

The supporting cast doesn't do much to help, but I must confess to liking Jeffrey Jones and Tom McLeister as Gustav and his faithful assistant Leo. They're actually funny in spite of the material they have to work with. But everyone else is forgettable. Edoardo Ballerini is irritating as Gustav's incredibly gay son, while Freddy Rodriguez and Aries Spears, who play Pest's best friends, end up being more annoying than funny. The rest of the cast... meh.

I can sum this review up in six words: "please do not watch The Pest." Really, don't. Do not rent the DVD. Do not download a bootleg of it off the Internet. If you land on it while channel-surfing, change the channel to something else. If someone suggests you watch it them, slap that person. It's a terrible movie that would be better off forgotten. Of course, this review is only helping perpetuate the movie's presence, but I had to warn people about it. The Pest is a bad movie of the worst kind, its only redeeming factor being that it's not longer. It's an unbearingly frustrating movie that I can only give one star. I'd actually give it something in the negative numbers if my ratings scale went that low. It's that bad. 

Final Rating: *