Every so often I partake in the viewing of some of the worst disasters in cinema in an attempt to determine whether or not they truly deserve their awful reputation, some aren’t too bad but most are sickening. I call this Bad Movie Night.
Grading works in three categories: Not So Bad (Highest) – Pretty Bad (Middle) – Truly Bad (Lowest)
For the first Bad Movie Night Review – “Bending The Rules” (2012)
The tragic career ending injury of Adam Copeland (WWE Superstar Edge) led to perhaps one of the most tragic pieces of cinema ever produced. Of course I am talking about Bending The Rules.
In this monumental wishing well of wasted ideas and lost potential, we see some relatively well-known stars, the aforementioned Adam Copeland (WWE), Jamie Kennedy (Scream), Jessica Walter (Arrested Development) & Phillip Baker Hall (Modern Family) doing their very best to add comedic substance to a script that has very little.
Now I think about it, it does not really have very much of anything, while the dialogue is admittedly okay at times, the films general narrative seems lost, failing to follow a plot and failing even more so to establish any real themes.
Everything starts off promising when we meet Nick Blades (Copeland), a somewhat renegade police officer operating out of New Orleans, the character is interesting and Copeland is the perfect fit for the zany detective. We then go on to meet the second central character of this film, lawyer Theo Gold, portrayed by Hollywood down-and-out and former Razzie Award nominee Jamie Kennedy.
Theo (Kennedy) has fallen on hard times with family, and work troubles as he tries to get Blades prosecuted for “Bending The Rules” too much in his position of authority. He is then victimized by his wife and angry police alike.
This is where the understandable narrative for this film ends. Somehow Blades and Gold end up working together, in order to find a stolen car and perhaps solve another mystery? I don’t know, honestly, it was not clear.
Throughout the course of this film the storyline becomes even more unclear with a ridiculously ludicrous and completely unexplainable plot twist regarding the previously mentioned stolen car. There is an impactful death scene in which Theo Gold’s father, played by Phillip Baker Hall passes away, there is emotion here, but most of it is taken away by the fact that the characters are not developed enough for us as the audience to truly feel their pain.
The acting is as good as it can be with the horrific and unstructured material that the performers were given to work with, aside from the truly repugnant and cringe-worthy performance of Jennifer Esposito as female police officer Garcia. Her acting is so bad that it would make low-budget 70’s porn look like The Shawshank Redemption in comparison.
So, in summary, this was a film that had a few likeable characters, and some genuinely funny moments but was let down by an honestly abysmal script. Adding to a long list of WWE Studios train wrecks, that attempt, and fail to present themselves as movies.
I give this car wreck (see the film and you’ll get that pun):
VERDICT – Truly Bad
And that’s generous.
ThePowerReviews 