There are good-bad movies (and then there are bad-bad movies)

I’m actually a fan of the bad movie category. You know those movies that are so bad they’re funny? Purposefully bad, purposefully funny. Bad as in: over-the-top, cheesy, obvious.

Take Zoolander, for instance. As far as I’m concerned, the first good-bad movie of its kind (I stand corrected if anyone knows of one before that?) It was hilarious! Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson as clueless but beautiful supermodels competing in walk-offs and doing Blue Steel facial poses. It spawned a whole series of rip-offs that weren’t as funny and featured Will Ferrell, often-star of good-bad movies (Blades of Glory comes to mind, which wasn’t as funny as Zoolander, or as Wedding Crashers — which I think is right up there with the good-bad bests — but was still pretty hilarious).

Will is all over good-bad movies: Anchorman, Semi-Pro and Talladega Nights. Which is why, when I heard he had a new film out co-starring John C Reilly (who is, in general, far more talented than he gets credit for, I think), I was rather excited. The movie is called Step Brothers, and it’s about two adult men who’ve never left their parents’ homes (smacks of Failure to Launch here) and who still act like 12-year-olds. There were some laugh-out-loud funny moments, especially when Will Ferrell sings, and the actors were a well-matched pair. But, as so often happens in good-bad movies, it descended into stupid toilet humour a lot of the time, and sometimes the whole adults-as-kids thing felt too stretched.

You can’t blame them, really. Can you? Is it possible to tell before the film is made if an amusing but ridiculous script will turn into a cult comedy hit, or fall flat, as this did?
There are good-bad movies and there are bad-bad movies. Can anyone tell me how to predict which is which before spending an hour and a half in the cinema?