Post by Doomsday on Jan 8, 2019 20:28:08 GMT -5
Gotti (2018)
One of my life mottos is 'Don't learn from your own mistakes, learn from other peoples' mistakes.' Gotti, the now infamous film about the life of famed gangster John Gotti, is one huge mistake, one that can teach any student of film exactly what not to do. There are only two reasons why Gotti showed up on my, or anyones, radar. 1) It received the infamous 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes and 2) it was the subject of one of the best videos that Honest Trailers has ever made. For a movie that tries desperately to be the next popular mob movie it's pretty amazing just how huge of a misfire this came out to be.
While watching Gotti I started thinking of the different ways in which a movie can be bad. The more common way I think is to have an awful idea executed by competent people. When I look back at my list of worst movies I've ever seen I recall The Love Guru, Alexander and The Big Wedding being at the top of my list. Those all had somewhat competent, talented people involved, they were just trying to polish a turd and make it into something good. Gotti on the other hand is a good concept in that it’s a biography on one of the last high profile American Mafia figures, a man with a bloody and violent rise to power. The problem is, well, everything else. There's no competence here. There's no craft or effort to make a manageable film. Every decision here is wrong. The editing is wrong. The pacing is wrong. Even the soundtrack is wrong. One of my favorite parts (if you can call it that) comes about 10 minutes in when Gotti is 'released' from prison in order to kill somebody in a hotel. The whole time the theme from Shaft is playing? Shaft. What? There are several instances that would make even the most novice of moviegoers scratch their heads. Almost the entire movie is made up of individual events that have no bearing on the rest of the movie, they're introduced then completely forgotten about. Unfortunately Honest Trailers already did a pretty fine job going over all the fun ones. And let's not forget about John Travolta. I'm still not sure if he was legitimately good in this or if it was one of the most overblown performances of his career. You can tell he's just so dedicated to bringing Gotti to life, after all doing a biopic on his life was apparently a passion project of his. It's a real shame that this turned out the way it did, not only because it's a joke of a movie but also because John Travolta is probably now the target of some gangster who's a big Gotti fan. It was good knowing you, buddy.
To be completely fair, Gotti isn't a 0% movie. It's certainly not the worst movie I've ever seen and I bet there are other worse films that were released this year. Nutcracker and the Four Realms? Mortal Engines? There's no way those are any better than Gotti. Anyways, Gotti isn't a bad movie because it's based on a bad idea, it was a pretty good idea executed by incompetent people. The end result is a movie that is the most entertaining bad movie I've seen since Nic Cage's Left Behind.
Neverending , this is your next Live Blog. Trust me, you won't be disappointed.
One of my life mottos is 'Don't learn from your own mistakes, learn from other peoples' mistakes.' Gotti, the now infamous film about the life of famed gangster John Gotti, is one huge mistake, one that can teach any student of film exactly what not to do. There are only two reasons why Gotti showed up on my, or anyones, radar. 1) It received the infamous 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes and 2) it was the subject of one of the best videos that Honest Trailers has ever made. For a movie that tries desperately to be the next popular mob movie it's pretty amazing just how huge of a misfire this came out to be.
While watching Gotti I started thinking of the different ways in which a movie can be bad. The more common way I think is to have an awful idea executed by competent people. When I look back at my list of worst movies I've ever seen I recall The Love Guru, Alexander and The Big Wedding being at the top of my list. Those all had somewhat competent, talented people involved, they were just trying to polish a turd and make it into something good. Gotti on the other hand is a good concept in that it’s a biography on one of the last high profile American Mafia figures, a man with a bloody and violent rise to power. The problem is, well, everything else. There's no competence here. There's no craft or effort to make a manageable film. Every decision here is wrong. The editing is wrong. The pacing is wrong. Even the soundtrack is wrong. One of my favorite parts (if you can call it that) comes about 10 minutes in when Gotti is 'released' from prison in order to kill somebody in a hotel. The whole time the theme from Shaft is playing? Shaft. What? There are several instances that would make even the most novice of moviegoers scratch their heads. Almost the entire movie is made up of individual events that have no bearing on the rest of the movie, they're introduced then completely forgotten about. Unfortunately Honest Trailers already did a pretty fine job going over all the fun ones. And let's not forget about John Travolta. I'm still not sure if he was legitimately good in this or if it was one of the most overblown performances of his career. You can tell he's just so dedicated to bringing Gotti to life, after all doing a biopic on his life was apparently a passion project of his. It's a real shame that this turned out the way it did, not only because it's a joke of a movie but also because John Travolta is probably now the target of some gangster who's a big Gotti fan. It was good knowing you, buddy.
To be completely fair, Gotti isn't a 0% movie. It's certainly not the worst movie I've ever seen and I bet there are other worse films that were released this year. Nutcracker and the Four Realms? Mortal Engines? There's no way those are any better than Gotti. Anyways, Gotti isn't a bad movie because it's based on a bad idea, it was a pretty good idea executed by incompetent people. The end result is a movie that is the most entertaining bad movie I've seen since Nic Cage's Left Behind.
Neverending , this is your next Live Blog. Trust me, you won't be disappointed.
