Ttaubotneanauayean for your patience this week, as we eased up on the posting in order to tackle our crushing Wired gig. All will resume to normal on Tuesday, after we’ve hit our deadline.
To reward your steadfastness, we’d like to offer up a very special Bad Movie Friday entry: 1989’s Millennium, starring the truly mismatched pair of Kris Kristofferson and Cheryl Ladd. We distinctly remember catching this at our local omniplex as junior-high students; it was one of the first times we ever left a theater and thought to ourselves, “Is it possible that some movies are just a complete waste of time?” Stephen Holden dug the knife in with glee:
Long before Winston Churchill is invoked by a smirking humanoid named Sherman at the conclusion of ”Millennium,” Michael Anderson’s film about time travel has proven itself worthy of admission into the pantheon of movies that are so awful they keep an audience in stitches. The movie is so inept in almost every particular that even its love scenes, when a grimacing Kris Kristofferson mashes his grizzled face against an impassive Cheryl Ladd, are likely to produce giggles.
The nickel-and-dime pyrotechnics consist of unspectacular showers of sparks and billows of phony-looking smoke. When the time travelers enter and leave a scene, they step in and out of an animated blue-and-white funnel of the sort one might expect to see in a cleanser ad.
Poor Cheryl Ladd. The ’80s just weren’t her decade.
Jordan // Mar 5, 2010 at 7:56 pm
Were the 80s a good decade for anyone, fashion-wise? I know I’m terrified that the styles of that era are coming back into fashion.
Brendan I. Koerner // Mar 5, 2010 at 8:11 pm
A 1,000-word reply:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Sylvester_Stallone_%281983%29.jpg
Brian // Mar 5, 2010 at 9:34 pm
Wow. I might have to track this down on DVD. Kris Kristofferson has had a fascinating life. Rhodes Scholar, Army Ranger and Helicopter Pilot, songwriter of some of the best songs Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash recorded, member of the Highwayman country group with Nelson, Cash, and Waylon Jennings, and time traveler.
Brendan I. Koerner // Mar 6, 2010 at 10:17 am
@Brian: Had no idea about Kristofferson’s stellar resume. Rhodes Scholar and Friend of Willie? Wow. But this movie is definitely a low point, believe me. Probably did it to pay some alimony bills.