John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis work up a sweat together!: Worst movies (Nos. 61-70)

I'll confess right now: There are some guilty pleasures of my own among today's installment of the Worst 80 movies of the 80s. No, not Bolero! I'm talking about Tron, Perfect and Turk 182. But I'm an 80s geek. And there's no vaccination for that. (Not one my HMO will pay for anyway.)

Today's biggest losers: Besides me? That'd be Robin Williams and Diane Keaton, who have two movies each on today's list. (Click here to see movies 71 to 80.)

70. The Good Mother (1988): Diane Keaton, Liam Neeson. Tagline: "Can a court determine how we should live, how we should love, how we should raise our children?" One critic said: "Made with the best of intentions and the worst of screenplays."

69. Turk 182 (1985): Timothy Hutton, Kim Cattrall. Tagline: None found. One critic said: "Turk is trapped in a screenplay that takes this idea and turns it into an insult to the intelligence of the audience."

68. Baby Boom (1987): Diane Keaton, Sam Shepard. Tagline: "J.C. Wiatt, corporate powerhouse, just received an inheritance. And it sucks." One critic said: "If "Baby Boom" were a diaper ... it would be disposable."

67. Club Paradise (1986): Robin Williams, Peter O'Toole. Tagline: "The vacation you'll never forget -- no matter how hard you try." One critic said: "A limp-premise, one-joke affair that offers zero in the laughs department."

66. Bolero (1984): Bo Derek, George Kennedy. Tagline: "An adventure in eXtasy." One critic said: "I didn't clock it, but I'm almost positive there is a thirty-minute stretch between each of Bo's nude scenes; sure, you get a couple of scenes of Olivia d'Abo bathing, but her character is so annoying, and her performance so grating, I would rather have seen her punched in the throat than covered in suds."

65. D.A.R.Y.L. (1985): Mary Beth Hurt, Michael McKean. Tagline: "Becoming human was not part of the plan. Now they want to terminate him." One critic said: "Technological nonsense."

64. King Solomon's Mines (1985): Richard Chamberlain, Sharon Stone. Tagline: "The Adventure of a Lifetime." One critic said: "I don't know whether this was meant to be tongue-in-cheek or daft but that’s how it turned out to me."

63. Tron (1982): Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner. Tagline: "Trapped inside an electronic arena, where love, and escape, do not compute!" One critic said: "Silly and occasionally haphazard storytelling."

62. Dune (1984): Kyle MacLachlan, Sting. Tagline: "You are about to enter a world where the unexpected, the unknown, and the unbelievable meet." One critic said: "A real mess, an incomprehensible, ugly, unstructured, pointless excursion into the murkier realms of one of the most confusing screenplays of all time."

61. Perfect (1985): John Travolta, Jamie Lee Curtis. Tagline: "John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis work up a sweat together!" One critic said: "When you’re thinking of Perfect, the first and last big budget aerobics movie, never has a title been so far from the truth."

Sneak peak for tomorrow: Dudley and Dolph ... not together -- that'd be even worse.

Comments

[Marissa]

I admit I slept through each and every one of the films listed. I'm quite certain Jamie Lee Curtis hangs her head in shame over "Perfect" zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[mattwb72]

At the risk of being redundant I have to voice my outrage. TRON?!?! Are you kidding me???

[ShaddylovesDaddy]

TRON is a great film! What the hell?

[Ren Fisk]

DUNE is nothing more or anything less then eye candy for those who loved the book.

[Dr John]

Perfect was funny...and Jamie Lee looked fine...but yeah...a dogs breakfast. I bet Rolling Stone cringes at that decision

[Christine]

Steve, Although I'm titallated with your credentials, methinks you're too socially competent to uphold the title of computer nerd...

[David Pagano]

Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one to have chimed in about the awesomeness of Tron. Any critic whose comments involve the "weak story" and so forth clearly misses the point of what the movie was/is all about.

As one of the filmmakers said on the DVD features, "No movies was ever made the way Tron was, and no movie will ever be made that way again." How many films can you say that about?

[Mr. B]

Oh no. You did NOT just name Tron as one of the worst 80's movies, did you? I must shake my head in disgust. I wouldn't want to live in a world where there is no Tron. What listener is out there claiming they are stuck in the 80's and is voting for Tron as one of the worst?? Come On!

[Steve Spears]

"Jedi is not a movie you are looking for. These bloggers can go about their business. Move along."

[Greg Williams]

That's why I married a non-computer person...so I can get more time on the intarwebs. Besides, it proved I got out of my mom's house every once in a while.

And don't TELL me "Jedi" (if the 'battle station' remark is an indicator) is on this list...what *ARE* your listeners smoking??? I guess next you'll tell me Gymkata's on this list... :-)

[Steve Spears]

Hey Christine -- I was president of the computer club during my senior year of high school. Does it get any nerdier than that? Are you ready to leave your nerd for this nerd yet? (Of course, I was dethroned by the faculty advisor during a power struggle. But that's another story).

[Steve Spears]

I should have warned you all that there would would some really debatable movies toward the bottom of the list. As each days goes by, you'll begin to see the power of this fully operational battle station.

[Damian P.]

I must have seen 'D.A.R.Y.L.' about fifteen times on cable when I was young. The plot still kind of creeps me out a little.

[Christine]

OK, it's awful, but I love the Good Mother. Young, spry, and lanky Liam Neeson? Wow.

And Steve, I believe you're being facetious about computer nerds, but I'll take a nerd over a jock any day. My man is a computer nerd!

[Bassnote]

I have to be in the "I Like Tron" camp. I thought it was a great story and well done.

[Steve Spears]

Hey, Greg. I agree. I love Tron. It's what got me into computing. That, and all the girls that it attracts, of course.

[Greg Williams]

Sorry, but TRON is one of my favorite movies of all-time. The computer-generated special effects, while a cinematic first, were only used in about 10 mins of film. The rest were backgrounds and animation designed to look like computer effects. If you get the special edition 20th anniversary DVD it tells about how difficult it was to even get the movie off the ground and how (like Star Wars) it almost never made it to theaters. I think it's a much better movie than most of what came out in 82.

The cutting edge effects kept this true to the sci-fi genre when it comes to implementing new ideas or new thoughts or new visions of the future. When you look at it on the grand scale, it was giving light to the blueprint of how the internet operates today. To me it was a truer vision of the future than most sci-fi flicks of the decade, especially in how computers would become part of our lives.

As for Dune, the 2-hour version of the movie leaves out a lot. When you get the 4-hour version, a lot more is defined and explained. I think if they'd left it at 4 hours, it would be more of a respectable film. However, few people would have sat through a 4 hour sci-fi movie.

End of line.

[Jeff in Buffalo, NY]

Hey Guys,

Love the Stuck in the 80s show. Gotta say that Tron and Dune were two of my favorites of the 80s. I'm sure they were fodder for the critics, but for the Sci-Fi fans they made some major steps in movie making.

Tron - The digital effects were cutting edge for the time. The story capitalized on us arcade junkies and computer nerds. A great fantasy flik for me when I was 10 years old.

Dune - I remember this was one of the first movies I saw in THX. Unbelievable sound! A tough story to understand at first, but a Sci-Fi buffet of good stuff.

Well, what Top 10 list doesn't have a good debate going. I would say that most of the movies you true crappers.

Stay Stuck in the 80s