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Due to INCESSANT and fucking NON-STOP request from @e_sicnarf I am doing a thread on...
MOLDBUGMAN’S TOP 5 WORST FILMS
Yes, Tenet will be featured, but first at #5 is Adam fucking Sandler’s 50 fucking First Dates.
(This thread will be written whilst drunk)
MOLDBUGMAN’S TOP 5 WORST FILMS
Yes, Tenet will be featured, but first at #5 is Adam fucking Sandler’s 50 fucking First Dates.
(This thread will be written whilst drunk)
All of Sandler’s films are the worst films in the world. I couldn’t even do justice to how bad they are. The red letter media guys did a really good job of explaining Sandler’s hook-nosed money-making scam that he’s been getting away with for 20 years.
His films are deliberately shit. They are money-making turd vehicles designed to maximise profit from the dumbest of viewer. Not only are they lowest denominator (hey stupid goyim!) humour but they cram every minute with dollar-grabbing opportunities.
Shylock Sandler stuffs his movies with product placement (typically for shite fast food), then stuffs it with his friends, pays himself a fortune, then makes the film on a shoestring budget and gets gullible cunts who enjoy fart and poo jokes to pay for it.
So why do I hate 50 First Dates so much? I wouldn’t even normally watch a Sandler film. He’s made tons worse films than this one like Jack and Jill that make 50 First Dates look like Citizen Kane.
Personal reasons. I’ve dated seriously three women who had this bullshit as their favourite film of all time.
I once had a beautiful artist Korean girlfriend and we spoke using the mutual third language of Mandarin. When we were dating she described her favourite film along something like the following (she didn’t know the English name so couldn’t just say it):
“Very lovely film. It show love of one man. One man love girl very much. She got memory problem. She cannot remember him, but everyday he work hard to prove his love and make her remember.”
She made it sound like the deepest film in the world.
She made it sound like the deepest film in the world.
Finally she sat me down one day and rather than some soppy Korean drama I realised that it was none other than 50 First Dates! The “deep” and “moving” film she had promised me was nothing other than an Adam Sandler poo comedy. I realised then she was just a fucking pseud.
But that wasn’t the end of it! Two more long term relationships told me that this absolute shit of a film was their favourite film ever! Twice more I was forced to sit through it while they looked with spastic eyes at me hoping I would see the true beauty of this crap.
I have to thank Adam Sandler in a way, as it was only thanks to his awful film that I realised the degenerate shallowness and falsity of many women. That they thought this film was the best film ever saved me thousands in future alimony.
This film speaks volumes about its fans who find it romantic. For me, the film is a fucking horror show. Woman wakes up every day, no memory, and Adam bastard Sandler jumps in and directs her life. It’s kinda cute at first but the conclusion is horrifying.
Feminists should agree. Once Sandler gets his hooks into Drew Barrymore she has no freedom to ever know an alternate reality. Every waking Sandler jumps on her and tells her that he is the most important thing in her life and though she has no memory she should believe him.
It’s the rapiest movie I’ve ever seen. Imagine if it was real. A predatory rapist targeting a woman with 24-hour memory loss and telling her every morning that she loves nobody else but him. She has no choice but to give her life to him.
The ending is actually like something from a horror film. Drew Barrymore, thinking she is still a girl 5 years ago living with her dad, wakes up every morning screaming to find she now lives on a boat in Alaska married to Adam Sandler and with a child. Is that not awful?
A woman whose last memory was driving down a Hawaiian driveway wakes up every moment of her life and has to be reminded that her last 5/10 years were actually hijacked by a Jewish goon and he impregnated her with a child she doesn’t even recall? This is horror!
Like I said - three women whom I have dated told me this was their #1 film. What does this say about women? I will say this about 50 First Dates - it was an early red pill for me and the realisation saved me from a terrible fate. Thank you Shylock Sandler and your shit film.
Can you guess Moldbugman’s #4 worst film of all time?
(Hint: it isn’t Tenet yet)
(Hint: it isn’t Tenet yet)
#4 WORST MOVIE OF ALL TIME
This is a film that none of you have ever even heard about. Luckily for you, I think I’m the only person in the world who has seen this trash so that you don’t have to. Like Christ, I took on the pain and suffering to save YOU.
This is a film that none of you have ever even heard about. Luckily for you, I think I’m the only person in the world who has seen this trash so that you don’t have to. Like Christ, I took on the pain and suffering to save YOU.
It’s an obscure 1988 British film that claims to be some kind of dark fantasy and was played regularly on Channel 4 in the 90s on the late night slot.
The film is Paperhouse.
The film is Paperhouse.
If at any moment you feel tempted to track down this film and watch it, please unfollow me and throw yourself in the sea. If you live in a landlocked country, a head in the oven will do. I will describe the plot so you don’t have to watch it.
An annoying precocious brat of a girl has no friends because she is screeching all the time and is whiny and annoying. Her mother, rather than tell her daughter to not act like a cunt, gives her pens and paper to draw instead and bide her time that way.
One day in class she draws a lonely house on a cliff which has a sad little boy looking out of the window. Her teacher rightly reprimands her for wasting time and she throws a hissy fit and runs away from school, falling in a ditch on her way and knocking herself unconscious.
Sadly, she doesn’t die. Instead, she is transported to a the house that she drew which has now become real. Luckily she only drew a lone house in a field and not a spaceship or a city because this film’s cheap budget only stretches to a house and a field.
Inside the house is the boy that she drew. In an astonishing feat of casting, the child actor playing the boy is even more annoying that the girl. He shouts out of the window that he can’t come out because he is sick and his legs cannot move.
The rest of the film sees the brat alternating between the real world and her cheap fantasy world. She adds extra drawings to the picture to help the boy which then appear in the house like toys and crap.
Eventually she discovers that the boy is identical to a real boy who is also a patient of her psychiatrist. They realise that they have been meeting up in the dream world of the house in the field.
The film then gets really bad. Daddy has been missing throughout the film and it is hinted that he was abusive in the past. One day she idly draws him on the paper and OH NOES he becomes a real monster creeping round the paperhouse.
She tries to get rid of the daddy monster by crossing him out with a pencil but OH NOES again this just makes him disfigured and more angry. The rest of the film sees the two kids screaming at each other while they run away from the patriarchy.
This film is awful primarily because of the two child actors. The girl is constantly angry and obnoxiously precocious. She likes to LOUDLY tell her MUMMY that THINGS ARE NOT OK. The boy is forever whining and constantly screaming throughout the film.
The entire film is the equivalent of being stuck on a long-haul economy class flight while being sat next to somebody else’s annoying kids. “STOP IT MARC, IT’S DANGEROUS!” “NO! I WON’T SHUT UP.” All in dreadful posh drama school British accents.
Paperhouse is also one of the cheapest pieces of shit I’ve ever seen. It promises a world of imagination where anything can come true if the girl draws it, but all she draws is a bare house with no furniture in a field. It’s like the dollar store version of Pan’s Labyrinth.
This was easily my worst film for years until the 2000s hit and something even worse came along. It also scared me into thinking I had some kind of psychic power when I told my sister that I hoped the boy actor would die in real life - AND THEN HE ACTUALLY DID!
And yet, as fucking awful as Paperhouse is, there are three films that are even worse! Stay tuned as I get closer and closer to wishing a painful death upon Christopher Nolan.
#3 WORST FILM OF ALL TIME
I would like you to imagine for a moment that you have a beloved old Canadian uncle or family friend. For years, this loveable elderly man has always been there for you, entertaining you when you’re down with his funny jokes and smile.
I would like you to imagine for a moment that you have a beloved old Canadian uncle or family friend. For years, this loveable elderly man has always been there for you, entertaining you when you’re down with his funny jokes and smile.
You love this old Canadian man and you wish him well. He’s brought you much joy over the years and many fond memories. However, one day it all goes wrong. You enter his home and he is nakedly engaging in a Lemon Party with 13 Japanese businessmen and he is the bukkake dessert.
Seeing your beloved old Canadian friend not only covered in Mitsubishi middle manager spunk but actively on all fours licking the balls of a Product Manager from Kyoto, your heart breaks. All those fond memories are instantly destroyed and the world will never be the same again.
That was exactly how I felt when I witnessed a cinematic affront to mankind similar to that salaryman gangbang scene.
No, the friendly Canadian uncle wasn’t @bmarchant3. It was Leslie Nielsen.
And the film was 2001: A Space Travesty.
No, the friendly Canadian uncle wasn’t @bmarchant3. It was Leslie Nielsen.
And the film was 2001: A Space Travesty.
I grew up as a big fan of Leslie. I loved Airplane. I loved all the Naked Gun films. I had a VHS of Police Squad that I would watch over and over. I even had his golf video. I loved Leslie Nielsen. And then he did this to me.
I was 20 when I watched 2001: A Space Travesty and my remaining childhood innocence died right there too. I felt betrayed by Leslie; just like if I had trusted him for years but he one day got me drunk and anally raped me down a sordid back alley and gave me $20 not to tell.
I remember well why I watched it. It was a grey stormy night and my friend was over. We couldn’t go out. He had bought two pirated DVDs from a dodgy Chinese man and brought them over. One was 2001 and the other was K-PAX with the predatory Kevin Spacey.
We ended up watching both films and both were bad, but K-PAX was like Citizen Kane in comparison to 2001. We threw K-PAX out of the window after watching it but 2001 we stubbed out cigarettes on it and then melted it over a fire - pissing on the charred remains.
The Chinese pirates had fucked up the English on the DVD cover and it proclaimed that is was Naked Gun 4 in Space. Then underneath it said it was the real 2001 A Space Odyssey. I wish it had been Odyssey. The real 2001 A Space Odyssey has more laughs in it then this crap.
You know you’re in trouble when the first few minutes of the film are full of the worst possible kind of joke. A string of crude space puns.
Take a look for yourself.
Take a look for yourself.
“The universe was filled with white dwarfs” - cue a white midget - “moons arose” - show a man’s anus floating over Earth - “and hideous aliens appeared” - cut to a shot of Michael Jackson.
One of the early jokes doesn’t even make sense. “Constellations filled the night sky: Libra (shows the scales), Sagittarius (shows the archer), Stifficus (shows a penis).
Stifficus? They couldn’t even make a Virgo joke. They just made up an imaginary penis sign.
Stifficus? They couldn’t even make a Virgo joke. They just made up an imaginary penis sign.
When we get into the film proper we are introduced to Leslie Nielsen as Detective Richard “Dick” Dix. Yes, it’s a double dick joke. Leslie was 75 when he made this and looks it, which makes the scenes where young women throw themselves constantly at him slightly awkward.
The film is a disjointed mess. It feels like several different films cut up and stitched together. There’s barely any space-related action to be seen; most of the film involve a plot to replace Bill Clinton and takes place in a theatre. There’s no focus or consistency.
Leslie was a master of deadpan humour and playing it straight amidst surreal situations: that’s why he was selected for Airplane which was his first comedy role after a career of straight roles. But in 2001 he mugs and grimaces for the camera like a Down’s Syndrome on acid.
I hate this film for two reasons. First, it marked the transformation of spoof films from the witty creations of Airplane and Top Secret to the crude and scattergun abortions that came later like Meet the Spartans and Epic Movie.
I know that Scary Movie came out slightly before 2001 and the change began there, but I saw 2001 first so that was the change for me. Parody films became bad. Crude infantile humour that just threw in pop culture references in replacement of well-crafted jokes and sight gags.
Films like Airplane worked because they were focused. They knew the tropes of their target material and knew how to play with them. They actually contain a love for the material they were spoofing. After 2001 though this reverence is lost.
Compare to Meet the Spartans where instead of it just being a spoof of the film 300 you are also treated to pair parodies of Deal or No Deal, Ghost Rider, Ugly Betty and Transformers. 2001 and Scary Movie started this trend.
Secondly, it was just awful to see Leslie Nielsen in this. You can either view his role here cynically as just a cash-grab for the money, or with sympathy and feel sad to him reduced to starring in such shit. Neither leaves you feeling good about the world.
These kind of films could only have happened at the time they did. The makers were creatively bankrupt, there was nothing left to copy any longer but parodies of parodies, and DVDs had appeared so these films could be marketing to unfussy stoners at home who would buy this junk.
Films like 2001 A Space Travesty are the gravestones of Western culture. An artistic deadend when there are no new ideas and even postmodern irony is tired and worn out. Unfunny re-enactments that were bad at the time and don’t even make sense a few years later.
It’s bizarre to watch films like 2001 & Meet the Spartans as they don’t even make sense a few years after their creation when the pop culture references have passed. They have nothing in them to last into the future. Future generations will study them and be clueless about them.
Thank you Leslie Nielsen for all the wonderful films you made. Thank you for the tears of laughter I have had thanks to your acting. But goddamn you for taking on those dozen Japanese cocks and making this fucking mess. I weep for our loss.
Next up: THE 2ND WORST FILM OF ALL TIME.
Come on up, Tenet. This is your moment to shine!
Come on up, Tenet. This is your moment to shine!
Most film directors get better with experience. They start off on humble student projects then get better as they put more film reel behind them. Christopher Nolan is the exception to the rule having started out with his best film (Memento) and sinking into decline ever since.
Tenet not only proves the point that Nolan has been making gradually worse and worse movies, but it is such a spectacular disaster of a movie that it is almost an admirable feat in itself.
Hopes were high for Tenet. It was the first movie to be shown in 2020 when things started to open up again after COVID lockdowns. It was gonna be the film that would save Hollywood and the film industry. Instead, it has probably killed it. Thanks Chris! https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/oct/06/tenet-didnt-just-fail-to-save-cinema-it-may-well-have-killed-it-for-good
Tenet has been Nolan’s worst performing film since The Prestige. Due to its poor performance studios remain reluctant to put their films on the big screen (putting Moviebob into a depressed coma). We must thank Nolan for ridding us of Marvel movies.
Why is Tenet so bad? I could probably write a thesis on the topic analysing each and every aspect of the film and discussing why it is terrible in every single way. To stop this becoming a 7,628 long Tweet thread I’ll try to keep it to the most glaring flaws.
I would begin by introducing the plot to Tenet but in this instance I’m at a loss where to begin. The plot makes no sense whatsoever. This isn’t because it’s a complex film like Primer or Mulholland Drive, it’s because it is just poorly made garbage.
Let me try. Tenet begins with the main character - Black Man - thwarting a plot to blow up a Ukrainian theatre. He dies, but somehow survives, and next thing he’s on a boat being told to investigate something called Tenet by someone I still don’t know who was.
Black Man goes somewhere and gets shown some magic bullets that fly backwards. Apparently they are magic time travelling reverse bullets from the future. Then he goes to meet Michael Caine and you get a close up of his 80 year old mouth chewing a steak and the scenery.
Caine then tells Black Man to meet Woman. For some reason Black Man needs to get her help, I don’t know why. Woman has an art picture in a vault in Norway so Black Man agrees to get the picture by crashing a plane into Oslo International Airport.
After destroying Norway, Black Man heads to Italy to meet Woman again but instead meets her husband Evil Russian. Evil Russian is the world’s richest man and you know he’s bad because he is Russian and beats his wife. He tells Black Man to go to Estonia. I don’t know why.
Black Man and Evil Russian get involved in an explosive Estonian car chase because I don’t know why. Then they both enter a magic room where Evil Russian shoots woman, a bunch of soldiers from the future arrive, and time starts flowing backwards. I don’t know why.
After some exposition, Black Man is told that Evil Russian wants to destroy the world because he has cancer or something. They all travel back in time to when ER had his last date with Woman and shoot him. Oh, at the same time they launch an attack on a Siberian military base.
There’s a big fight in Siberia and Black Man retrieves the MacGuffin. I still don’t know what it was. Then he parks his car outside an English school and shoots an Indian Woman who he had met in India previously. I still don’t know who she was.
The End. Cut to the credits.
The End. Cut to the credits.
That’s my best attempt to describe the plot. If you think I’m being racist by describing the main character as Black Man rather than his name then you’re wrong: Nolan didn’t bother to give him a name. He’s listed in the credits as “Protagonist”. This is epic trolling.
Black Man not only lacks a name, he lacks personality too. I had no idea throughout the film as to what his motivations were, what his background was, his likes and fears, anything. He just goes with the flow of the film unquestioningly. He’s also a Mary Sue who can do anything.
None of the other characters are any better. Evil Russian is Evil and Russian. Woman speaks in a posh accent cos she’s British and exists so that Evil Russian has somebody to beat up. Robert Pattinson is also in the film but after 150 minutes I still didn’t know who he was.
If the plot outline above sounds incomprehensible, try sitting through that when the dialogue is inaudible and there’s thunderous music dubbed over all the exposition. It’s so loud my cinema seat was shaking at time and I thought I was having an epileptic fit.
You can’t understand a word in this film. The best bits are when the Russians speak Russian so you get English subtitles. This is how Tenet goes for over 2 hours:
“We gotta (inaudible) to Estonia (mutter mutter) to help (inaudible) because (BOOM BOOM EXPLOSION NOISE), got it?”
“We gotta (inaudible) to Estonia (mutter mutter) to help (inaudible) because (BOOM BOOM EXPLOSION NOISE), got it?”
I’m tempted to believe that Nolan deliberately made the soundtrack inaudible to give the film an appearance of complexity in order to cover up how ridiculous the plot is. Several times in the movie characters say “Don’t try to understand it” and urge you to shut the fuck up.
Every time I heard a character spout that line I just imagined Nolan stood behind me screaming “Stop thinking! Keep watching!” and then filling the room with the sound of a thousand moons exploding to distract me from whatever shit is going to happen next.
About 2/3 through the film I gave up trying to understand this mess and just started laughing at every nonsensical spectacle that continued to take place before me. It still didn’t help. This film is long and I still had another 50 minutes to sit through.
There isn’t even any humour in the film to lighten up the shitshow. It’s just endless, relentless, navel-gazing action and unintelligible exposition with Black Man, Woman and Evil Russian all looking equally miserable to be starring in this fucking disaster.
I only have two explanations as to how Tenet is so astonishingly inept. The first is that this was a cynical cash-grab. Nolan knew he could put out any old rubbish since people were eager to return to the cinema and he could count on their goodwill to want to “save” the industry.
So he put out the worst film he could make, filled it full of exotic locations to placate the lockdowned normies, then laughed and laughed like a maniac when Warner Bros wrote him a cheque for committing this plague onto film.
However, I’m more inclined to go with my second theory which was that Nolan has just become an inflated egotistical windbag whose fame has gone to his head and nobody dares to tell him that his creative output has been on the decline since The Dark Knight.
The relationship between Warner Bros Studios and Christopher Nolan has become like if Jeff Bezos showed millions of dollars on a retarded chimpanzee and then heaped praise on the monkey every time it stuck a twig in its own shit.
Film makes no sense? Wooden acting? Inaudible dialogue and a soundtrack that deafens people? Obviously nobody dares tell Nolan because he’s been getting more and more self-indulgent in these atrocities since Inception.
Whichever explanation you prefer, it makes no difference to Nolan. He knew he could have put out 150 minutes of a bottle of glue sitting on a table and the film critics at Rotten Tomatoes would still give it 10/10 in a cronyist attempt to save cinema.
But their ploy didn’t work! The film tanked despite critics pretending that it was a masterpiece and Moviebob remains deprived of another Wonder Woman or Black Widow movie to masturbate over. The theatres are still mostly closed or only showing little art house films.
So, for singlehandedly destroying Hollywood in 2020, Tenet does have one redeeming feature - thus saving it from the ignominy of claiming the title of worst film of all time.
The official Moldbugman Worst Film Ever is quite different from the other 4 movies on this list because it is not just bad, but actually the most evil film I’ve ever had the misfortune to view. Stay tuned to find out!
(Chris Nolan style orchestral music to close out the review)
(Chris Nolan style orchestral music to close out the review)
If you take a look at the previous four entries on this list, you’ll see that with the exception of Paperhouse that I mostly disliked for its precocious child actors, my dislike for the other three stems from their inherent cynicism.
Sandler films are little more than cash-grabbing algorithms, 2001 A Space Travesty saw the death of the well-made spoof and replaced with straight to DVD cheap references, and Tenet was an incomprehensible film pushed out during a time when it had no other competition.
My choice of first film differs in that I view this film as inherently evil. It’s cynical for sure, but it has a subversive and evil message that the other films lack. You’re probably thinking this is one of the famous “evil” films like A Serbian Film or Salo.
Yet those two examples are deliberately grotesque. They deliver everything they promise and don’t obfuscate. A truly evil film would be seen as a beloved heart-warming film, critically acclaimed by all media, it’s real message either ignored or, even worse, celebrated.
So it is my great pleasure to reveal that my choice for worst film ever made is none other than the 2006 British comedy-drama The History Boys. The most shockingly and blatant pro-pedophile movie ever made, as well as being a truly bad film in its own right.
Americans might not know this film. It started life as a stage play and won a Tony Award for Best Play in 2006. The film followed immediately after. It is written by acclaimed British playwright Alan Bennett. Bennett is a darling of the British cultural world.
His name is known to almost every British person because his series of monologues “Talking Heads” was required reading in British schools for decades. He’s also loudly homosexual and had rectal cancer in 1997 though I’m sure that is entirely unrelated.
Let’s describe the plot, go back to Bennett, and then back to the plot. The History Boys is set in a boys’ grammar school in 1983 Sheffield. For our American friends: Sheffield is a rough and working-class city in Northern England (Yorkshire). This is important to remember.
The film follows 8 students who are taking their A-Level exams and are hoping to enter the elite universities of Oxford or Cambridge. To assist in this endeavour, the school provides them with a special class in history that is taught by “beloved” and “legendary” teacher Hector.
In addition to Hector, the school also assigns a special temporary teacher - Mr Irwin - to give the boys supplementary lessons.
So far, so normal, right?
Just hold on there...
So far, so normal, right?
Just hold on there...
“Beloved” Hector is not only a teacher, but a homosexual and a predatory pedophile. He regularly gets the boys to perform skits in their underwear and then coerces the boys to get rides home on the back of his motorbike where he fondles their penises.
Strangely, nobody sees anything wrong in this. Hector is presented as a lovable eccentric, and the boys all see it as their duty to take it in turns to be groped by Hector. Everybody finds it all rather endearing.
This may be because not only is Hector gay, but all the boys in his class seem to be either gay or homophilic too. They all openly discuss relationships with other boys or their crushes on one another.
The gayest of the boys - the camp and slight Posner - is the only one who Hector never chooses to molest. In class, Posner openly sighs with sadness that all the other boys are getting their dicks rubbed by an elderly obese homosexual but he isn’t.
Posner has other issues too. Not only is he rebuffed by Hector, but he an unrequited crush on his seemingly straight classmate Dakin. Dakin is the most macho of the class and initially starts the film chasing girls from the nearby girls’ school.
But only initially!
But only initially!
Dakin inexplicably develops feelings for new temporary teacher Mr Irwin. He boldly announces this to Irwin by entering his classroom and asking if he would be interested in sucking his cock. Surely, Mr Irwin would be angry at this behaviour and report it?
Nope! You’re wrong! Because Mr Irwin is a secret gay too! They agree to get together that very Sunday for some illicit teacher-student bum sex.
But tragedy strikes. The villain of the movie - the headmaster who is seemingly the only straight man in 1983’s Sheffield - is starting to worry about Hector’s motorcycle groping of the boys. He stops Hector from taking the boys out “for a ride”.
Hector is distraught so Mr Irwin offers to ride his bike with him instead and get his dick rubbed. They happily ride off, waving goodbye to the cheering students, but there’s an accident and Hector dies.
The boys are upset, but all still manage to pass their interviews and all 8 of them are inexplicably accepted into Oxford or Cambridge. They then hold a funeral for Hector where these working-class northerners sing a moving elegy to his gay spirit.
We then are told what all the boys grow up to become. Posner is singled out as the one who truly imbibed Hector’s spirit as he grows up to become a teacher.
“I’ve not touched any of the boys yet,” his older self proclaims, “but I don’t feel happy.”
“I’ve not touched any of the boys yet,” his older self proclaims, “but I don’t feel happy.”
The film then ends with a moving shot of the boys and their teachers standing on the school lawn while the voice of Hector whispers down from Heaven encouraging them to “pass it on”.
Whatever could that mean???
Whatever could that mean???
(As an aside, none of the boys’ parents or families are ever featured or even mentioned in the film. The boys only exist within the setting of their school and the university to which they hope to enter.)
I have not even begun to examine the other elements of the film, but just summarising the plot should be enough to convince you that something is deeply troubling about this film. However, you’d be wrong to think that, you wrongthinker, you.
It’s not just the characters in the film who see nothing wrong with the pedo antics, the entire cultural industry has hailed their acclaim on the play and film. New York mag called it “brilliant and infectious”. It won an Olivier Award in addition to the Tony.
This is not a movie. It is a contrived gay and pedophilic fantasy concocted by Alan Bennett. Bennett was also from working class Yorkshire, attended grammar school, and was later accepted into Oxford where his star rose ever since.
The film is ostensibly set on 1980s Sheffield but there are no references to the 80s in the film other than one song that was used in the soundtrack. Instead, the boys seem to exist within an anachronistic bubble that oddly mirrors the 50s when Bennett would have entered Oxford.
The boys spend their time singing songs from 1940s musicals, reenacting scenes from the 1945 film Brief Encounter, or quoting lines from WH Auden. Not one of them of them ever expresses interest in football, pop music, Star Wars or Atari.
Bennett never even bothered with realism. He just transplanted everything about his own adolescence - the songs, the mannerisms, the homosexuality - and grafted them onto a bunch of northern working class 1980s teenagers.
In fact, the film ONLY works if you view it as a science-fiction film rather than as a drama. This is a parallel universe where everyone in 1983 was gay, was attracted to older men, and popular culture hadn’t changed since 1945. Welcome to Alan Bennett-verse.
There’s a lot more to despise about The History Boys. The film was based on a stage play and immediately reformatted to film... and it shows. The script and acting is theatrical and stilted, better suited to stage than celluloid.
An air of unbearable smugness exists throughout the entire film which at times manifests into downright snobbery. The halls of Oxbridge - where Bennett was privileged enough to enter - are depicted as the only places that matter in the world. Anywhere else is just crass.
The other teachers at the school lament that they “only” entered Durham or Bristol - this still back in a time when university attendance was rare, especially for the northern working class. Yet these boys leapfrog all that and all enter Oxbridge thanks to Hector’s teaching.
And what is that teaching? From what the film portrays it is nothing more than callow and pretentious twaddle. Hector teaches them how to recite lines from outdated musicals and Irwin just gets them to regurgitate trendy dissenting views. There’s no science or mathematics.
This depiction of what is needed to enter the elite is a distortion of Bennett’s outlook on the world. Rather than being a fond look on working class boys that this film pretends to be, it’s instead disparaging them as unfit unless they become moulds of Bennett and his friends.
The film is not funny though it obviously considers itself wildly clever in its little scenes of getting the boys to enact scenes in French and other such pretentious twaddle. The teen actors are precocious and punchable - never lacking in scripted self-awareness.
This film also launched the career of James Corden which is reason enough to place this film in the #1 spot for worst film of all time.
All of the above - the theatrical pretentiousness, the anachronisms, the smugness, the acting - qualify The History Boys as a terrible film. However, it is the film’s portrayal of homosexuality and pedophilia that elevate The History Boys from mere bad to plain evil.
Enough bad movies already. The perfect antidote to this thread is to go and watch some films that are actually good. Take a look at my thread on the works of Terry Gilliam and watch Brazil if you haven’t already.
Thanks for reading. Hope you’re happy now, @e_sicnarf. https://twitter.com/moldbugman/status/1280934218751545344
Thanks for reading. Hope you’re happy now, @e_sicnarf. https://twitter.com/moldbugman/status/1280934218751545344
PS - Excellent article here (from the left) on some of the apologism the media has stated for the underlying glorification of child abuse in The History Boys. Some choice quotes from Bennett himself too. https://www.caitlinvanburen.com/journalism/why-didnt-metoo-tear-down-the-history-boys
