This one is pretty magical. Corbin Bernsen as “Dr. Hyde”, Eric Roberts as the tough sheriff, and one of the crappiest dinosaur puppet/models ever captured on film.

If you get the chance to see this on SciFi Network, do yourself a favor and strap in. You’re in for a spectorqular ride.

Not to be undone by her husband, Jennifer Garner delivers a serious piece of spectorqular badness in this rousing epic about I’m not really sure what. This movie takes place a few years after Daredevil where Elektra was killed. Interesting thing is, like Catwoman it completely departs from the comic book universe and goes into crazy uncharted territory.

I was thoroughly confused and bored with this movie and found the special effects to be extremely tired. I also couldn’t figure out which country they were in. Parts looked like Japan, parts looked like Oklahoma. Somehow a Japanese mafia was involved, but all the other actors were American. Don’t bother seeing this movie.

What to watch for if you are stupid enough to watch this:
• Jennifer Garner crying a la Alias. 4 full cries, 2 tears welling up in her eyes
• Jennifer Garner tearing a coat or cape off to reveal less clothing a la Alias. 2 times
• Crazy snake animation that really had no point in the movie.
• No appearance by Ben Affleck. I kept looking for him as the movie was so darned bad.

Ben Kinglsey. SIR Ben Kingsley. He was Gandhi. The man was knighted because he’s such a fine actor. Did he lose a bet? Does someone have pictures of him “with” another species? Is his agent just really, really bad? How the hell did he choose to make this movie? This movie is awful in more ways than I can count.

OK, quick plot outline. Someone has figured out how to make time travel work, Ben Kingsley is the guy who made it profitable. He runs a company that takes high paying customers back in time to hunt dinosaurs. One of them kills a butterfly, and the course of history is changed forever, unless our hero, Edward Burns can go back in time one last time and save the world. Not a terribly novel plot, but not an awful one on which to base a 90 minute movie.

OK, now the bad parts. One of the requirements of a spectorqular film is bad science. I’m not sure this one qualifies, because there’s not bad science, there’s NO science. I mean, I’m no Einstein, and this movie is just asinine. I’ll give a few examples, but this review would be 10 pages if I listed all of them.

First, the dinosaur they kill is one that will die in minutes anyway as its trapped in a swamp, and mere minutes from being consumed in a fiery volcanic eruption, so if they shoot him, it’ll have no effect on future evolution. Fair enough, but won’t the butterfly die in the same explosion, too? And, just how did they find this perfect dinosaur to kill?

Second, they realize something is amiss when they go back to their usual time (they kill the same dinosaur time after time) with another group of customers, and things are different. But if they go back to minutes before the butterfly is killed in the previous jump back, how can things be different?

Lastly, the impact of the dead butterfly in present time doesn’t happen all at once, it happens over time. Huh? And it manifests itself in “time waves” that look like metaphysical tsunamis that physically knock people over. And each successive wave changes more advanced creatures. At first, its just plants, then its bugs, then its mammals, and the last wave is humans. What??

Does anybody read these scripts?

Another criteria for spectorqularity is bad CG. This movie is all about bad CG. I haven’t seen worse CG since the “Money for Nothing” video in the 80s. Seriously, I think I could have made more realistic creatures in Microsoft Paint. And its not just a couple places where you really notice it. It’s the entire movie. Imagine the same amount of CG as “The Phantom Menace”, with the quality of “Driven” and you begin to understand how bad this is. And on top of that, there are obvious blue screen shots all over. Isn’t that technology pretty well mastered by now?

At the end of the day, this is really a 3 cube movie, since for as crappy as it is, it isn’t that much fun. But, because of the horrendous CG, I have to bump it up a cube. I really can’t describe how bad it is. It is the worst CG I have ever seen, and its everywhere. I challenge you to find worse.

Things to watch for:

+ The first two times they show an exterior shot of the Time Safari building, the same cars go by at the same times in the same order. Jesus, all this CG, and they couldn’t even mix up the cars?

+ The cabs that bear a striking similarity to the Johnny Cabs from “Total Recall”

+ The giant, bulletproof, ape-headed lizards that sleep upside down like bats. I’m not kidding, I couldn’t make this stuff up.

Since it’s only opened this weekend, I don’t want to give away too much of the SoaP plot or action, so I’ll just say this — obviously, with a title like Snakes on a Plane and Samuel L. Jackson in the lead role, this movie had Spectorqular written all over that. It was going to get 3-4 cubes without even trying.

But where director David Ellis really takes it to the next level is with his attention to detail. Every action/thriller movie cliche character is involved in some way; if they could have only worked in the Asian actor from Lethal Weapon (the one who electroshock tortures Mel), this movie would play like a perfect tribute to the last 30 years of movie spectorqularity.

The movie’s self-awareness of its own spectorqularity does threaten the fun on occasion — a couple lines of dialogue are a bit too “wink-wink, we’re in on the joke”. But those momentary lapses are always quickly compensated for with a heaping dose of CGI snakes. That’s right people — virtually every snake in the movie is CGI. And that alone, when coupled with the reasons enumerated above, gives Snakes the ultimate in spectorqularity — 5 cubes.

Before Basic Instinct 2 is even started, you know it’s going to be a mess. When you see the INTERMEDIA title card, it’s just simple odds — with movies like Mindhunters and Alexander on their recent slate of releases, they aren’t exactly on a “winning” streak.

Once the credits are out of the way, BI2 quickly gets down to business — namely, action sequences coupled with Sharon Stone whoring out. In the opening scene of the film, we see her character hauling ass around London in a badass Spyker C8, with a thoroughly drugged-up guy in the passenger seat. Soon after the passenger informs her that he can’t move, she grabs his fingers, licks them a bit, and shoves them down into her general crotchal region. 2 minutes in, and already she’s getting off. It’s like some high-charged adult diaper commercial — only the “activities” that Stone’s middle-aged character are purely sexual (vs. say, playing tennis).

To no one’s shock, Stone’s 100 mph sexual gratification leads to an accident, and her male partner is quickly killed (while she naturally survives unscathed). Soon we’re right back into the same plot from the first Basic Instinct, with Stone being accused of murder and trying to use her wily sexual charms to get out of it. Only, this time around she’s menopausal-aged and no one’s lining up for a direct angle on a crotch shot.

I could tell you more, about the dorky British guy that’s filling Michael Douglas’s role, about the dry British humor they attempt to inject into the proceedings, or any other number of bad decisions — but what’s the point, really? If you didn’t know that a poorly-advised sequel to a 12-year old movie was a bad idea, you’ve probably already either (a) seen and loved Basic Instinct 2 or (b) cannot be talked into seeing the movie, regardless of how bad it might be.

I wish I could say this was a supremely Spectorqular film….but in the end, even with Stone’s utterly unaware performance and the silly twists and turns, it’s still a pretty boring film. That’s why I’m giving it 3 cubes — it’s still pretty stupid and enjoyable on that level, but it could have been much more.

What to watch for:

+ They really, really push this whole “risk addiction” concept. Apparently the film was going to be called “Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction”, but they jettisoned the additional name when it came time to market the film–wisely deducing that the core audience for this film is probably averse to ANY additional reading, even on a movie poster.

+ The reported $30,000 per diem that Sharon Stone got while working on the film. It’s not like you can actually SEE any of it during the movie, but it’s just nice to think about Stone sitting in London, pissing through film investor’s money like it’s water, buying champagne coulees for her and her entire entourage of gay men.

+ Stone’s outfits — the woman doesn’t dress down once in the movie. She literally sleeps in ballgowns and/or hip clubbin’ gear. I’m sure this was part of the contract to (”I am to be clothed in Armani throughout every second of the film, except when I’m naked and slutting out.”)

+ The laughably-phallic 30 St. Mary Axe, or “Gherkin Tower” as it’s more commonly known, which should really be billed directly under Stone — as it easily abosrbs the 2nd most allotment of screentime throughout the film.

+ They manage to squeeze the title of the film (well, “Basic Instincts”) into dialogue. That always earns points for Spectorqularity.

XXX: State of the Union has really nothing to do with the first one except that Samuel L. Jackson is in it. I was at Hollywood Video where they had a 4 for $20 deal and I couldn’t pass this little gem up. Here’s a quick synopsis:

Samuel L. Jackson’s top secret XXX program is infilitrated by some super bad guys with state of the art ludicrous technology. He needs to activate a new XXX since Xander Cage (Vin Diesel’s character) is dead in Bora Bora. He goes to his lieutenant from Kosovo who was wrongly incarcerated… Ice Cube. Ice Cube is a kick-ass Navy Seal who is also from the streets. When they find out the government is after them and Samuel Jackson is killed, he has to turn to his roots on the east side of DC. His roots involve Xhibit in a chop shop!

Not to give the rest of the plot away, but Willem Dafoe is the evil Secretary of Defense trying to take over the country.

Monster Mike tell me what happened in this movie:
- Samuel L. Jackson’s purple car straight out of Trick My Ride.
- 2Pac being quoted and referenced over and over again.
- Burrowing bombs that make a perfect climbing tunnels for soldiers.
- A Cobra prototype that fits on train rails perfectly and can hit 220 mph.
- Xhibit lifting a tank with normal car jacks.

If you get a chance watch this movie, Ice Cube is truly Spectorqular.

Ah the 80’s. Who can forget WKRP and RipTide? Two hot shows in a hot time. Well if you are just lucky enough to have Encore and bored enough to be looking for a bad movie, this one is for you. To start off with, I tuned in late to this movie and only could take about 20 minutes. Here is the gist though:

Loni Anderson is a high powered ad executive.
Perry King is an ad guy trying to make it but hasn’t had a hit in a while.
The two end up in Tahiti together after Loni has this tremendous idea for an ad.
Somehow they end up in love at the end.

What to watch for:
- A hot air balloon ride that is accidental, but people who have never ridden in one know how to operate it to keep it in the air.
- Loni Anderson acting like a smart executive in a 180 from her WKRP role.
- Joel Brooks (an amazing resume) one of the classic character actors from the 80s, 90s and beyond. If this guy doesn’t make the 80s move then maybe the bad hair and music do.

Please don’t watch this movie. Please forget that I did.