The "I'm amazed at how terrible this is" thread

[mr3urious]

I don't think even kids would enjoy this puddle of cat pee, as it looks incredibly dull and confusing even for a talking animal movie. I'm starting to get more respect for Garfield, Air Buddies, and even Russell Madness, which is really scary.

Want a good movie with a talking cat? Try 1978's The Cat from Outer Space. Or better yet Homeward Bound.

His freaking mouth that only moves when it's convenient is worse animated than a Health Hotline Kneebrace commercial. Why have his mouth even move? Look carefully, his mouth comes out above his top lip (or whatever that mouth like muzzle thing on a cat's mouth is). WOW! And it doesn't so much move as pulsate.

And Duffy's sound quality, dear God! Why does the cat have to sound like he's speaking in a bathroom?

 

[Drtooth]

I don't think even kids would enjoy this puddle of cat pee, as it looks incredibly dull and confusing even for a talking animal movie. I'm starting to get more respect for Garfield, Air Buddies, and even Russell Madness, which is really scary.

Talking Animal Movies are a low bar. They're made almost exclusively for the 5 years and younger set, and that's a product of a fleeting demographic. Their audience didn't see the previous glut of them, and they're actually new and wide eyed, so they don't care that they recycle the same buttsniffing jokes in each film. They're not good movies, of course, no matter what they do, but there's a reason they keep getting made. And rushing them, to home video streamlines the process. They're inevitably going to be bought (or streamed) to shut preschoolers up for 90 minutes.

All I can say about "A TALKING Cat?!?!?!?!" is...it exists? I think? It's somehow a thing someone said was a story that needed to be told? But the thing that gets to me is, no matter how bland and unwatchable for anyone that's been out of diapers for more than a year, these things have at least some level of whimsy and or relatability. The talking cat in the movie doesn't offer anything but "hey, there's a cat there and he can say things" to a film that's just...dreadful. It's like a homemade pilot for a sitcom that's too awful for anyone to greenlight. It's almost as if someone made a terrible made for TV movie script that didn't make sense or fill up the run time and tossed a cat in it. There's no effort on the part of anyone here.

 

[mr3urious]

After watching Mr. Enter's "Top 20 Worst Opening Themes" video, I thought I'd post some of these terrible cartoon theme songs.

Boy, the Twizzlers mouth sure has fallen on hard times lately. Captain Planet did not need any "hipping up" especially in a manner this painful, using phrases like "Mega Mac Daddy" and the like. The wah-wah trumpets and Morse code rhythm really add to the gratingness of the whole thing.

Fun fact: The rapping mouth is the voice of Fred Schneider, the lead singer of The B-52's. Guess all that "Love Shack" money wasn't enough to pay the bills.

This is the Garfield & Friends rap from the last season on CBS, with a rapper who doesn't sound talented at his job at all. Just be glad that foreign viewers and DVD owners were spared this incoherent, lazy mess in favor of good ol' "We're Ready to Party".

The English version of the Rurouni Kenshin theme "Freckles" isn't awful lyrically or instrumentally -- it's pretty accurately translated from Japanese, for one. But did they have to go with such a shrill, tone-deaf little girl to sing it? She really seems to struggle with the high notes especially.

 

[Drtooth]

Here's one I don't care for.

To be honest, the music is actually catchy, the singers have talent, the visuals are good. The lyrics are... lousy. "He's Felix! Felix as a Baby! Baby Felix" sounds like something from an improvised dialogue Justin Roiland cartoon. The Japanese version tends to be smoother, plus I have no idea what they're saying. To be fair, the English dub of all the music in that series has just about the worst and laziest lyrics out there. It's a real shame the song got so mangled due just to bad lyrics. "If you need something bad, he'll reach into his Baby Magic Bag." That...that doesn't even work as a cop out rhyme.

That said, I'm actually the opposite. I'm all about great theme songs for not that great shows.

How...how did an awesome premise with an epic opening like that turn into such a mediocre cartoon?

and of course, there's no denying even if you hate this show, the original opening was amazing.

I really hate the crappy "American Idiot" soundalike (used for the show years after that song was even relevant). Then again, I actually dig the show's first season when it had some mark talent behind it (like Chris Savino). The lame theme pretty much signals the rest of the show's downhill slalom of lousiness.

 

[Drtooth]

Okay... uh... Berenstain Bears never were much for video games. There was that...odd one for Sega Genesis and some GBC "Xtreme Sports with the Berenstain Bears" thing that's probably as good as it sounds. But there's no denying that this is one of the weakest video games I've ever seen...

Berenstain Bears, the Arcade Game.

Un...be...lievable... simply wretched. Could you imagine walking into a video arcade in 1984 and seeing this...

Even the side art is anemic.

Now, even if the Roms are corrupted and only show those colors, the best the thing could have looked like was on this flyer.

To give you a hint of what's wrong with this very primitive looking game, 1983 brought us...

and this...

And 1984 brought us this creepy thing...

Which is technically impressive.

There was no excuse of "The Berenstain Bears flop around in the dark" looking worse than an Atari port of itself.

 

[Drtooth]

Benny Boy from the Oddity Archive has once again dug up some terrible cover albums in his latest video.

Sure, those are what they are, and here's the full version of the horrid cover of "Rock of Ages"

But what really stuck out to me is the Mini-Pops album. I can never ever criticize the KidzBop albums for censoring the heck out of the original songs (though... "Cake by the Ocean"?! Really?!) as the Minipops sing unaltered versions of the songs. Including "Turning Japanese." A song that the authors deny is about something I can't speak about here, but trust me, if you believe that song is about...that, having kids sing it is... pretty disturbing stuff. Think Maeby and Michael Bluth singing "Afternoon Delight" levels of inappropro.

Yeah.

 

[mr3urious]

Kidz Bop at least makes an attempt to clean up the songs (most of the time). Minipops doesn't even try.

 

[Drtooth]

And again, something I can never complain about again.

Make no mistake. There's unfortunately a reason Kidsbop exists, and that's so conservative mothers in expensive suburbs (usually the kind with the suffix "ington") can have their precious little sheltered woogies listen to the top 40 hits without having to bring up anything their fellow school goers already know and make jokes about in the cafeteria so they can come off as "cool moms," rather than a bunch of uptight parents that want to ban Twinkies from existing or something. Alternately, so Radio Disney has something besides their own pop stars (assuming Radio Disney still exists).

This gets me into the thing that bugs the crap out of me with the Chipmunks. They seem to have G rated lyrics, censoring certain concepts, but inconsistently. Their version of "Whip it" makes the change "Scrath Your Mother's Back" for some reason, the "School's Out for Summer" replaces "School's Been Blown to pieces" (a line Mr. Bumpy had noooo problem with, mind you) to "School's Ancient History." Yet, Time Warp keeps the lyrics intact. Especially the "voyeuristic intentions" bit. Odd.

 

[mr3urious]

Here's something I remember first seeing back in the early years of Youtube: the closing credits of an old Canadian educational show that ran from 1966 to 1983, and is remembered for its very horridly composed, nightmare-inducing theme.

And I've seen wonders done with analog synthesizers around this time. This, on the other hand, is so off-key and out of sync that it's a wonder Canadian college students still tuned in every morning.

 

[Drtooth]

UGH. I have the strangest feeling I saw that when my local PBS had those terrible filler shows from Canada in the middle of the day, but that could be false memory. But that looks exactly like it's from the time it was made. Just...bleeeeehhhh.

Oddly enough, I found this in the video mix following that video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?RD3fShrzDMIyY&v=y8Y1jbL1aEE

Just... uh... was this the inspiration for Dr. Strange's trippy visuals? Because...that's some batcrap insane bad trip stuff right there.