MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE
DR. SEUSS' HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS

Another movie year comes to a close and you know what that means? Time for the 2006 installment of my annual Top 10 list. Most critics do ten best lists and ten worst lists; I do a different kind of list devoted to the ten movies that even I as a devoted lover of bad cinema couldn't bring myself to pay to sit through and have no intentions of ever doing otherwise under any circumstances. So without further ado...

THE TOP 10 MOVIES I DIDN'T PAY TO SEE IN 2006 AND, DAMMIT, I PLAN TO KEEP IT THAT WAY

10) MARIE ANTOINETTE
9) THE BENCHWARMERS
8) THE GRUDGE 2
7) JUST MY LUCK
6) THE SHAGGY DOG
5) RV
4) THE PINK PANTHER
3) BIG MOMMA'S HOUSE 2
2) LITTLE MAN
1) LARRY THE CABLE GUY: HEALTH INSPECTOR

Judging by the tagline they'll give anyone a movie too.

Last year I said that 2005 was a banner year for bad comedies. Little did I know that not only would that trend continue into 2006, it would actually get worse. I've always said bad comedies make for the worst type of bad movie because it's almost impossible for something that was intended to be funny but failed miserably to end up being so unfunny that the movie somehow becomes unintentionally funny. Comedies aren't like other genres in that regard. In a year overloaded with comedies that looked to be about as much fun as playing "hide the loofa" with Bea Arthur one movie stood out above all the rest, the one film I found to be most repulsive. We call that film LARRY THE CABLE GUY: HEALTH INSPECTOR. Not only a movie that looked so wretchedly unfunny as to make JERKY BOYS: THE MOVIE look like BORAT by comparison, this one even boasted the most inane title of any film this past year. It's not like it's called JEFF FOXWORTHY: HEALTH INSPECTOR. The star of this film calls himself Larry the Cable Guy. Now he's a health inspector? Does this title mean that he's a cable guy or a health inspector or a cable guy that doubles as a health inspector? I didn't even know Mr. "Git-R-Done" had crossed over to filmdom until I saw the trailer for this cinematic salmonella before something else I saw in the theater a few weeks before it opened. I don't remember what movie I saw it before but I damn sure remember seeing that awful, awful, awful trailer and being mortified. I couldn't believe it was even a real movie. If you've seen the trailer for this abomination then you don't need me to tell you why my reaction to the existence of this film could be summed up in two little words: Jesus wept. My advice to Larry the Cable Guy is to stick to stand-up comedy and voicing animated cars and leave the cinematic abortions masquerading as motion picture comedies to Rob Schneider.

 

UNWANTED: DECK OR ALIVE

 

Yet another Christmas movie designed to remind people that hate Christmas why they do so.

DECK THE HALLS is one of the most unique Christmas movies I've ever seen due to it taking place in some alternate dimension, a mirror universe of some sort, that's somewhat similar to the world as we know it. The movie isn't billed as some extra-dimensional sci-fi holiday flick but it might as well be. DECK THE HALLS takes place in an alternate universe where...

... Danny Devito can win in a speed skating competition.

... Danny Devito has a hot blonde wife and two teen model-looking blonde daughters.

... Matthew Broderick is married to one of the attractive Sex & the City cast members.

... A person said to be heavy in debt can afford to put on a Christmas lights display that would make even Bill Gates envious.

... A guy can put on a monstrous Christmas lights display designed to be seen from outer space that comes complete with blasting Christmas music until four in the morning and everyone in his neighborhood will think it's the greatest thing ever; the one person that doesn't will be branded a villain for feeling so.

... A seemingly sane person trying to get out of a tight parking situation will take directions from an obviously inebriated person.

... Two grown men both considered pillars of the community will begin loudly hooting & hollering at some attractive young women on stage at a family Christmas pageant being attended by most everyone in the town.

... One person can fraudulently forge another person's name in order to sign them to a contract for the purchase of an expensive vehicle and the person whose name has been forged, rather than go to the cops, will make a bet with the forger: If I win the annual ice skating race then you take down your Christmas lights, but if I lose then I'll buy the car.

... I feel compelled to mention Danny Devito winning that ice skating race again.

There's much, much, much, much, much, much, much more where that came from. Just about every other scene in the movie has something happen that makes you question wonder what planet these people are from. Even when there isn't something blowing your mind in that aspect you get stuff that also blows your mind from the other aspects of bad filmmaking. Need a few more examples?

Danny Devito's character is supposed to be this great salesman just starting a new job at a big-time car dealership. His co-workers decide to pull a rib by betting him that he can't sell a car to this old man shown looking over a vehicle on the lot. Devito takes the bet and heads out to talk to the guy while the others begin laughing amongst themselves because what Devito doesn't know is that the old man is actually the dealership's owner. Devito prances back in and says he's off to draw up the paperwork for the sale. The stunned co-workers look on as the old man follows him in and bewilderedly says, "I just bought one of my own cars." Ha! Ha! Not funny! You know what makes it even more not funny? The amount of time that passed from when Devito went out to talk to the guy to when he came back in to announce he'd made the sale: less than 20 seconds. Not only was the joke lame to begin with, the filmmakers didn't even give it any plausible amount of time for it to play out. Not even the greatest car salesman on earth could talk his own boss into buying one of his own car's in the amount of time it takes to say "Hello" and introduce yourself.

Matthew Broderick's home keeps experiencing unexplained power surges and he's positive it's due to Devito tapping into their electricity to help power his massive Christmas lights display. Sure enough, Devito is shown running an extension chord from Broderick's house to his under the snow. The only reason Broderick didn't actually see him hooking it up was because Devito fell down in the snow when Broderick peered outside at the time. He won't find out for sure until much later when he stumbles over the cable. He'll then get all up in Devito's face going on about how he knew it all along but just couldn't prove it until now. You're 100% positive that your neighbor is stealing your electricity but never bothered to just go outside, walk around to the side of your house, and check to see if someone had some big hulking extension cables plugged into your power box?

Ironically, I too considered electrocuting myself in order to get away from this movie.

How about when Broderick gets taken for a destructive ride through town by the runaway horse & sleigh in Devito's front yard? It ends with the sleigh going through the ice. Instead of calling for an ambulance or Fire & Rescue, his family just loaded his nearly dead from hypothermia body up in the back of their SUV to take him to the hospital so that he can wake up naked in a sleeping bag with a naked Danny Devito rubbing up against him to generate life-saving body heat and scream for a desperate laugh.

I swear the Earth this movie takes place on may look and sounds and feel an awful lot like the Earth you and I live on but the way people act and react to things, clearly this movie is not taking place on our Earth. I figure we live on Earth 1. On Earth 2, Danny Devito & Matthew Broderick would both have goatees and be blatantly evil. On Earth 3, Devito would be a seven-foot Adonis and Broderick a super masculine Marlboro Man type. Therefore my best guestimate would be that DECK THE HALLS is taking place on Earth 4 where everything is kinda, sorta, almost identical to our Earth but not quite.

It seems that every year there has to be at least one truly rancid excuse for a family Christmas movie that's so wretched even Jesus would hate it. I usually go out of my way to avoid such films. I've always said that bad comedies are the worst kind of bad movie because it's hard to mine unintentional comedy from stuff that was meant to be intentionally funny. Make that lousy comedy a big screen Hollywood Christmas flick, which means it comes with an automatic layer of insincere sentimental sap, and you have the recipe for insufferable film badness. I usually try to skip such intolerable unfunny holiday fare. I've skipped all of the SANTA CLAUSE films. Last year I sidestepped both CHRISTMAS WITH THE KRANKS and whatever the hell that was with Ben Affleck and Tony Soprano. The last such Christmas flick I subjected myself to in a movie theater was Ron Howard/Jim Carrey's DR. SEUSS' HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS. I'm amazed I even still celebrate Christmas after suffering through that yuletide atrocity.

"I'm supposed to be married to him? Oh, hell no!"

I initially planned to skip this one too. However, something about this movie set off my Foydar. Yeah, I said Foydar. You heard of "gaydar?" Foydar is like gaydar only it's what I use to tell me whether or not a movie could potentially be so bad it's entertaining or so bad it should be avoided like a Rosie O'Donnell homemade sex video. DECK THE HALLS set off my Foydar, telling me that I should give it a shot even though it will probably suck hard. So how accurate was my Foydar this time out?

Well, as bad as DECK THE HALLS was - and I assure you it was quite bad - I never felt any real pain watching it, at least not until the last 15 minutes when the holiday schmaltz was unleashed with the voraciousness of a rabid pitbull taking aim at your extremities. But up until then I felt no pain watching the awfully unfunny antics flickering on the screen. I believe the reason I wasn't squirming in my seat as I've done during such past holiday releases gone horribly wrong was due to being in utter amazement at seeing how the world works on Earth 4. There are so many things - big moments and little moments - where people say or do or react in ways that no one in the real world ever would, stuff you cannot ignore just because the movie is supposed to be a lighthearted comedy.

But that astonishment factor aside, the actual humor quotient is non-existent. The jokes in DECK THE HALL fall into one of three categories: jokes with punchlines so obvious that you can see coming from a mile away, jokes that are so not funny that you honestly have to wonder just how acutely aware the people involved in this film both on-screen and off were as to how not funny the material they were working with was, and jokes that don't even make sense. There's one or two awkward dialogue exchanges between Broderick and Devito that I think were meant to be comical but were so obtuse as to make me think, "What was that all about?" There's a crack Devito makes about how the two of them should come up with a series of hand signals in order to understand what the other is really trying to say that is one of the most perplexing attempts at humor I've ever heard.

Matthew Broderick is a hardcore Christmas traditionalist, at least hardcore from a purely secular traditional Christmas standpoint. Jesus' name is only spoken once and it's only to set up a punchline. Still, Broderick is a whore for Christmas set in his ways who likes to think of himself as the town's Mr. Christmas. His wife, social outcast teen daughter, and young son who talks about how he's not accomplished anything with his life yet as if he were a middle aged man undergoing a mid-life crisis all wish dad would lighten up with the "same old, same old" holiday rigidity he forces them all to subscribe to.

Danny Devito has just moved in across the street with his much younger and hotter blonde wife and their two future Paris Hilton's twin teen queen daughters. Despite being much better off than he really has any right to be, Devito still complains of feeling invisible to the world. After hearing his daughters talking about a website called MyEarth where people can look at live satellite images of any neighborhood from space, Devito gets the bright idea to make his mark on the world by putting up a Christmas lights display that can be seen from outer space.

This does not sit well with Broderick, but the town loves Devito and his uber gawdy Christmas light show. Broderick becomes even more incensed as Devito suddenly becomes the town's new go-to guy for all things Christmassy. While the wives bond over the idea of writing a cookbook and the daughters bond, the two Christmas Nazis take turns one-upping the other and eventually the war escalates to fireworks, pratfalls, and miscellaneous felonies. Car doors are torn off and Christmas trees go up in blazes of glory. Broderick uses fireworks to stage an assault on Devito's home and live manger scene camels wage biological warfare on Broderick via camel dung pratfalls and spit takes to the face. It's basically GRUMPY OLD MEN meets HOME ALONE meets NATIONAL LAMPOON'S CHRISTMAS VACATION with all the comedic success of the worst POLICE ACADEMY sequel you've ever seen. This is a comedy so desperate for laughs that it tosses in a town sheriff character that’s rumored to wear women's underwear just so they can have the guy bends over exposing his pink thong buttcrack to the horror of Matthew Broderick.

Most people aren't aware that for the other 364 days of the year Santa Claus runs a Vegas-style Christmas-themed casino out of his workshop atop the North Pole.

"Come to Santa's Casino, where the hostesses are naughty and the slots are always nice!"

The defining moment of the movie for me came during an exchange between Broderick and his movie wife after they're both shown in bed wide awake from being tormented by the blinding lights coming through the windows and the blasting Christmas music coming from across the street. Broderick pitches a fit, the wife tells him, "I'm not happy about it either, but you did provoke him," or something along those lines. I forget exactly how she said it but what she said left me dumbstruck. What a bitch! It's her husband's fault that the next door neighbor is a Yuletide douchebag? I wouldn't have blamed Broderick if he'd responded by throwing her out a window and strangling her with some Christmas lights. Where's Ike Turner when you need him?

The worst moment: Devito and Broderick are at the town's winter festival where the wives have ordered the two to try and patch things up. They momentarily bond when three young women in sexy Santa's helpers attire - what the MEAN GIRLS were wearing in the "Jingle Bell Rock" scene but with hoods so you can't initially see their faces - take the stage and begin dancing with their back to the audience. Devito and Broderick both turn into full blown lecherous old men right in front of every single person in town, repeatedly yelling "Who's your daddy?" Do I even have to tell you who the three girls on stage turn out to be? This is what I mean by punchlines so obvious you'd have time to knit'em a sweater and have a nice cup of hot chocolate waiting for it to arrive.

I do think there were a couple of ways this movie could have worked (at least to some degree). They could have made Broderick had been a Ned Flanders-type Christian and Devito more of a Homer Simpson-esque clod. If Broderick had been a person that hated Christmas and Devito the opposite, perhaps they could have poked fun at the whole "War on Christmas" that Fox News Channel loves to hype up. Whatever else they could have done, they should have made at least one of them more of a flat out villain instead of making both unlikable clods that we're still supposed to care about. Devito is his usual obnoxious self until it comes time for a scene where we're supposed to see that he really just wants to do something noticeable with his life and doesn't mean to be a dick. Broderick is sort of the opposite and even he appeared to be confused at times as to how to play the role in certain scenes. All of it is moot since there isn't anything even remotely funny about their characters or their antics.

Of course, being a Christmas flick, the ending has to get all heartfelt. Now here's where the film turns painful - painfully insincere. Their wives and family get fed up with the two of them and hole up in a motel across town. Their feud comes to an abrupt end when both come to realize that Christmas doesn't mean anything to them without their families. Devito has dismantled his lights display, which the two of them then use to craft a pathway of Christmas lights and assorted themed decorations leading across town from outside the motel room door all the way to Devito's stoop, both men inside with a full Christmas dinner awaiting them made from the recipes in the wives' cookbook. The message rings hollow, like when the host of the police chase video TV show tells you how the footage you're watching could help save your life instead of just admitting that they're showing it for purely voyeuristic thrills. And logistically, wouldn't they have greatly inconvenienced the town by blocking off walkways and roads with this tacky pathway to holiday joy?

Apparently the townsfolk didn't care seeing as how the entire town then shows up on Christmas Eve to help redecorate Devito's home so that it can finally be bright enough to be seen from space. Christmas Eve, forget about all the homeless in need of food or shelter, all the sick or impoverished children in need of some holiday cheer; forget all the charity work or stuff you could be doing with your own family - dammit, the holiday hobbit needs you to help boost his self esteem!

DECK THE HALLS, more like DRECK THE HALLS, is almost, but not quite, laughably bad. The word "turkey" most definitely applies. There are times where it teeters into that LEONARD PART 6 level of badness, that level of movie badness where you honestly cannot believe what you are watching was made by actual human beings like yourself. It has that sense of "What planet were the makers of this movie from?" My guess would be Earth 4.

And in the race to determine who's movie career is going downhill faster, it's Devito by a nose!

I think Danny Devito either knew all along or came to the realization after seeing the finished film as to just how stupefying the movie. That would explain why he felt compelled to show up drunk on The View just to promote the movie. Have you seen that footage? He sat there next to Barbera Walters and hailed DECK THE HALLS as a great film. That level of denial or dementia - he had to have been totally plastered to say such a thing with a straight face.

Amazingly, there's actually now a lawsuit pending over this film too. Someone actually wants credit for having the idea for this turkey stolen by the studio. Would you want credit for this? I watched the damn thing; don't I get some compensation too?

And if any of you have been wondering as to whether or not the success of the show Lost will translate into better big screen movie roles for the show's cats, the guy that plays Hurley shows up a couple times as a random townsperson. He should start interpreting the numbers when it comes to accepting the movie roles his agent offers him. Don't open the hatch, dude.

 

Is there a cheat code that makes this movie not suck?

I confess that I'm not all that familiar with the video games DOA: DEAD OR ALIVE is based on. I think I played it once; couldn't tell you the name of a single game character or what the game's plot is. I did have a friend who became a little too obsessed with digital breasts and actually bought that "Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball" Xbox game that came out years ago. I remember the insipid commercials for that game that portrayed male gamers as such sex-starved losers that even jiggling computer generated boobs were all it would take to reduce them to being salivating idiots reacting as if they'd never actually seen a beautiful real-life woman before let alone a pixilated one. Then I went over to my friend's apartment and saw that he had bought the game and was flabbergasted to say the least. There was no denying that he bought this game solely because of the CGI jiggle factor, but then he turned around and tried to insist to me that the game was actually pretty good. I knew otherwise. Sadly, that commercial wasn't entirely inaccurate.

Now there's a DOA: DEAD OR ALIVE movie and it's been made with the same mentality as those commercials. Defenders of this film will argue this is a "check your brain at the door" sort of guilt pleasure movie. That's what I went in expecting but came away amazed as to how a cheesy, sexy, over-the-top, b-action movie could turn out so bland. Yeah, we get plenty of beautiful women displaying a good deal of Maxim Magazine quality flesh, so much so, especially early on, that I eventually became numb to it. Yeah, there's plenty of Hong Kong stylized martial arts fight scenes yet none of the fights are particularly memorable; most are fairly run-of-the-mill knock-offs of stuff done better in HERO and HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS. What does that leave you with? Plot? Dialogue? Characters? Yeah, right!

DOA: DEAD OR ALIVE plays like Uwe Boll and Andy Sidaris got together to make a tame PG-13 kung fu jigglefest with all the idiocy of Jean Claude Van Damme's STREET FIGHTER movie combined with the excessive music video styling and even greater insipidness of those CHARLIE'S ANGELS movies. This is usually the sort of guilty pleasure movie I can get behind - not this time. While DOA: DEAD OR ALIVE isn't nearly as terrible as either the STREET FIGHTER or, especially, the CHARLIE'S ANGELS movies and do possess a few moments where you see what might have been, the overall stupidity proves more a detriment to the fun and it's all lacking that element of charm a mindlessly idiotic film of this sort desperately needs. That the story is crap, the dialogue lousy, the fight choreography is stuff you've seen before done with more ingenuity to it, and the scantily clad women, gorgeous as they may, are actually overexposed causes DOA to live up to the other meaning of its titular acronym.

I fully expected DOA: DEAD OR ALIVE to be mindless fluff but I guess I just expected a bit more creativity to the inane fluff shot with stylishly empty camera tricks given that the man behind the lens was Corey Yuen, a Hong Kong director no stranger to making mindless yet entertaining action flicks, some of which are overly stylized martial arts movies based around beautiful women in various states of undress. Ever see SO CLOSE, a less obnoxious Hong Kong variation on the CHARLIE'S ANGELS' films that Yuen did back in 2002? If so, then you know that Yuen could have made something out of a premise even as flimsy as this if he'd been allowed to. He is, after all, the same man that made the THE TRANSPORTER and the greatest motion picture in the history of motion pictures - NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER. His heart just didn't seem into this one. At least it's well paced. It may not be very good but it keeps moving.

The annual super exclusive DOA tournament has invited top fighters from around the world to come to DOA Island to compete. The invitation arrives in the form of a high tech blade thingamajig that comes flying in from off-camera after the characters being introduced at the beginning of the movie finish engaging in some sort of fisticuffs, as if there's some magical, unseen third party lurking somewhere off-camera - regardless of whether its the middle of the ocean, a Japanese jungle, or while someone is speeding down a busy street - waiting to toss them their invitation. It appears the Deus Ex Machina also runs a messenger service on the side.

The only way to get onto DOA Island is by parachuting down to it from the private jet flying you in. No particular reason why other than it just being a good excuse to give us a musical montage of beautiful people parachuting. Upon landing, the fighters have to reach the main fighting complex before sundown or be disqualified. This isn't necessarily easy given the terrain they have to manage, or, particularly, the multi-story pagoda they have to climb. This requires the three primary female leads to work together in order to climb up, an action sequence straight out of the CHARLIE'S ANGELS movies. There should have been an opening credit that read "Heavily Influenced by McG".

Upon arriving at the DOA resort/compound they then go through a high tech physical where all are secretly injected with nanobots and are issued an Inspector Gadget wristband that informs them of the identity of their opponents. Fights can happen at any place and any time, brackets are determined at random, and the fight doesn't end until one person has been knocked out (or just says that they've had enough). Winners advance, losers just vanish - not literally vanish; we just never see them again. I assume they got removed from the island. If not, then a lot of extraneous characters perished when the good guys blow the place up at the end, or at the very least, got left behind on the remains of the island with no means by which to escape. Either way, sucks to be them.

Jaime Pressly learns the hard way that sex with Kid Rock comes with medical consequences.

The fighting is inter-gender and almost uniformly ridiculous because of it. John Cena's wife from THE MARINE would have been a perfect DOA contestant because she was a gorgeous woman that never looked any worse for wear even after being continuously pummeled by men two-to-three times her size. One fight has Jaime Pressly taking a leaping, thrusting, dropkick to the sternum from a man at least twice her size that sends her crashing backwards through a thick wooden railing and splattering on the ground ten feet below only to see her get up almost immediately and still looking ready for a magazine photoshoot. Fighting mechanics like this work great in a video game where the average fight lasts about 90 seconds (if even that long) and any sense of realism is beside the point. On the other hand, in a motion picture setting, that lack of selling any sort of injury or even looking like they've been hurt in the slightest only conveys how meaningless all the fight scenes are. The drama in the video game comes from whether or not you (the player) can mash enough buttons correctly to defeat the opponent. In a movie, you're not actively participating. You're just the third party. That requires an extra element of drama that video game mechanics applied to cinema fail to provide, especially here. I realize this movie is essentially a live action video game, but still... Watching a guy that makes He-Man look puny punching a waif like Devon Aoki in the face full force with little effect only to get his ass handed to him by her Zhang Ziyi wannabe flippity-do kung fu looks unconvincingly silly.

We're introduced first to Princess Kusumi, played by extraterrestrial-human hybrid Devon Aoki. Someone online once described her as looking like "a Grey with Down Syndrome" and I can't help but chuckle in agreement. She's not ugly; she's just odd looking. Aoki may also be the only woman in Hollywood capable of making fewer facial expressions than Paris Hilton. Given the feudal compound in which she lives and the vast army of samurai stationed outside of it, Princess Kusumi appears to live in 15th century Japan. At least until she busts out the James Bond-style hang-glider backpack that she uses to fly away from her ancestral domain. Princess Kusumi is off to the island-based DOA tournament to learn the whereabouts of her samurai brother who has been missing ever since heading off to compete in last year's DOA tournament.

Confucius says, "That Devon Aoki is one odd looking woman."

Following her is Hayabusa (Kane Kosugi, son of Sho), a fellow samurai, sort of her personal bodyguard, who may or may not have feelings for her, that has either gotten himself invited to participate in DOA somehow or decided to tag along and crash the super secret exclusive tournament and nobody running the show noticed or cared so they just decided to let him compete too.

Also following Kusumi is lavender-haired lady ninja Ayane (Natassia Malthe, "Typhoid Mary" in ELEKTRA and Kristanna Loken's replacement in the upcoming BLOODRAYNE 2), who was in love with Kusumi's brother and is really pissed off at her for reasons that really boil down to just it being a good excuse to get her on the island without having her in the tournament so that she can occasionally pop up to have a skirmish with Kusumi until it's time for her to help come to the rescue at the end. Malthe is, for my money at least, the most beautiful woman in the cast and yet she's also the most criminally underused here right down to diplaying the least amount of skin. Her pointless Ayane character could have been written out of the film without it having any real impact on the proceedings. Malthe's Ayane is also the only female in the cast who isn't required to play her role with a Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling mentality.

Trying to perform pap smears in the ninja world always proves to be an arduous challenge.

Then there's Tina Armstrong, played by Jaime Pressly, a women's professional wrestler. I don't know what the point of labeling her a pro wrestler is given that all she does is the same style of wire fu everyone else in the movie does. There's a scene late into the movie where Tina will enter a lavish room and start talking about how this is the kind of place she'd live in if she were rich. I found that dialogue rather odd given that her character is introduced sunbathing on the deck of her own private yacht complete with her own personal butler/captain. Pro wrestling clearly pays better than I realized, enough so to afford ones own yacht but not enough to afford a lavish apartment - figure that one out. Her island agenda is simply to win the DOA tournament and its $10 million prize money. Things for her are complicated by a wise-cracking, muscled-up homeboy with a bizarre hairstyle who's constantly hitting on her in both senses of the word and the fact that her pro wrestler father has also been invited to compete in the tournament. Daddy is played by real-life wrestler Kevin Nash, who hams it up as a "Hulk Hogan meets American Chopper." Personally, I think "Macho Man" Randy Savage would have been a much better choice. I'm sure Kevin Nash would love it if he could ever get Jaime Pressly called him "daddy," just not in a father-daughter scenario.

Then there's Christie Allen, a beautiful international thief played by Australian model/singer/actress Holly Valance. Christie is a perfect example of what I meant when I said the T&A aspect become numbing. Holly Valance is gorgeous woman, no question about it, but she spends virtually the entire movie in bra & panties or a bikini and it doesn't take long until you've grown accustomed to seeing her in various stages of undress. I was left wondering what, if anything else, she had to offer. The answer: not much. You can't really blame the actresses too much due to the overall lameness of the slapdash script.

A perfect example of the dimwitted screenplay is Christie's storyline. Like all international thieves, Christie is an expert martial artist, so good she's been invited to compete in this tournament. She's joined on the island by her partner-in-crime/friend with benefits, Maximillian. The two of them are less interested in winning the tournament than they are in finding and robbing the vault containing the $10 million. Finding that vault and cracking its combination will involve Helena Douglas, the babalicious daughter of the scientist that founded the DOA tournament and who just happens to have the vault's code tattooed on her body in code for no particular reason whatsoever. Even the way Christie & Max determine that the code is tattooed on her is completely inexplicable. A great deal of time will be devoted to Christie & Max trying to get close to her - whether it be by fighting or romantic means - in order to get a look at this encoded tattoo. Did I mention that one of the screenwriters wrote for Pamela Anderson's V.I.P. show? That's exactly what this storyline felt like a plot from an episode of.

Also after Helena (but for purely lustful reasons) is the nerdy computer geek Weatherby, the tech guy whose research and technology has been co-opted by movie's villain for purely insidious means. Weatherby will, of course, turn against the bad guy before it's over and given how he talks you'll wonder why he hadn't done so already.

Now as best as I could put it together, Helena's dad was a brilliant scientist looking to improve mankind through the study of combat fighters. Not 100% sure how that was supposed to work; doesn't matter anyway since he died and the diabolical Donovan took over the project. Donovan's agenda is now roughly the same thing The Riddler set out to do in BATMAN FOREVER, only Donovan's version deals with downloading the fighting skills of the best fighters in the world and then selling the software to equally dangerous third parties willing to pay big bucks for it. You see the fighters have all unknowingly been injected with these nanobots that scan their physiology during combat so that it can all be transported via laser beam into the state-of-the-art sunglasses that somehow endow the wearer with all the super-enhanced fighting skills of all the fighters combined. One major problem with this plan: THEY'RE SUNGLASSES AND SUNGLASSES CAN BE EASILY KNOCKED OFF ONE'S FACE DURING HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT! Remove the sunglasses and the wearer is reduced to their former self. They're meant to be worn during martial arts battling and yet Donovan didn't even think to add some sort of strap that would keep the glasses attached to his head. That's the sort of design flaw that you'd think the supposedly ingenious bad guy would have been prepared for. Take one guess what design flaw ultimately leads to his downfall?

Now there are two types of Eric Roberts' performances: the type where he chews the scenery with gusto and the sort where he hams it up badly. Here Roberts hams it up badly, causing me to have unpleasant flashbacks to his miscast turn as The Master in that misguided American Doctor Who movie that the Fox Network aired back in the 1990s. He basically plays Donovan like an eccentric music producer with aspirations of being a James Bond villain. There are moments in the film where I thought he might have gotten confused and thought he was playing the Paul Williams role in a remake of PHANTOM ON THE PARADISE with a dash of Robert Evans tossed in for bad measure. Roberts can play this sort of villainous role in his sleep and he does indeed appear to be sleepwalking through this one.

How has this man not found his way into the cast of an Uwe Boll film yet?

I'd dare call Roberts' the worst performance in a movie that features a lot of bad hammy acting but that dishonor belongs to Devon Aoki who instead decided that she didn't need to bother trying to act at all. This is especially troublesome since her character is the main character with the most scenes and the most dialogue yet her performance consists of scenes where she has a blank expression on her face and scenes where she has blank expression on her face but her mouth is shaped in the form of a smile. Watching Aoki and Roberts in one-on-one scenes here is the stuff that acting coaches have nightmares about.

When not fighting in the tournament the characters have nothing else to do other than sitting around and moping, sitting around and doing nothing, wandering around aimlessly, either engaging in or trying to avoid romantic relations, searching for clues to her brother's whereabouts (Kusumi and Hayabusa), getting attacked by an angry female ninja (Kusumi & Ayane), scheming to rob the place (Christie & Max), or engaging in a spirited game of beach volleyball. The beach volleyball montage may very well be the highlight of the film if only because it's probably the most honest scene of the movie. Its pretty girls in bikinis shot in close-up jiggling about while playing volleyball. That is why this movie was made, wasn't it? It goes on for about five minutes, which in all honesty, is about how long this movie should have been.

But if you dug the CHARLIE'S ANGELS movies, Van Damme's STREET FIGHTER, and/or drooled over that DOA beach volleyball video game like the guys shown in its TV ads then DOA: DEAD OR ALIVE will most likely satisfy you, as instantly forgettable as it is. To me, for all the film's many flaws, I can't help but think that if you're going to make a mindless jigglefest about half-naked battling babes then at least have the decency to make it an R-rated movie and give us the actual gratuitous nudity rather than just teasing it for an hour-and-a-half. I mean what's the big deal with watching a movie where Jamie Pressly struts about in a bikini top this much when I can just as easily pop in a copy of POISON IVY: THE NEW SEDUCTION and see every naked inch of her? As shamelessly exploitive as DOA: DEAD OR ALIVE is, I dare say it isn't exploitive enough.

That Paul WS Anderson (MORTAL KOMBAT, RESIDENT EVIL, ALIEN VS. PREDATOR) executive produced the movie along with the same production company responsible for HOUSE OF THE DEAD may help to explain why about 30-minutes in I first began thinking aloud, "This is really dumb," (in a bad way) and didn't stop until the end credits rolled. When your live action movie not starring The Three Stooges starts resorting to using tweeting bird sounds after someone gets hit on the head then you might as well concede that you're just not trying. DOA: DEAD OR ALIVE is a major underachiever, yet another insipid video game movie that fails to deliver the visceral thrill one would get from playing the video game its based on. But it has hot chicks in bikinis so I suspect there will be plenty of guys willing to give it a mulligan for that reason alone. I'll just sit back and wait for Uwe Boll to finally get around to making a RUMBLE ROSES movie.

The end.

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE STREET FIGHTER