And let's not forget about 'Baby...Secret of the Lost Legend'
by Mark Caro
Chicago Tribune (reg. req'd)
Here's a guess: More people saw Tommy Lee Jones' new movie "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" last weekend than actually pronounced its complete title.
"The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" - just rolls off the tongue, no?
We seem to have entered a golden era of woeful movie titles. Variety columnist Timothy M. Gray recently complained about such 2005 titles as "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants," "The Dying Gaul," "The World's Fastest Indian," "The Upside of Anger," "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio" and "Melquiades Estrada."
In his Entertainment Weekly column last month, Stephen King asked, "Is `The Squid and the Whale' the worst movie title of all time, or is it still a tie between `Chu Chu and the Philly Flash' and `Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things'?"
To answer King's question, you have to define what makes a terrible title.
"The Squid and the Whale" may be awkward and strange for an `80s divorce tale, but at least you remember it.
There's also a yet-to-be-released Josh Hartnett autism drama titled "Mozart and the Whale." Is that any better?
To me, the worst titles are the ones that make no impression at all, like Jones' previous movie, "Man of the House," or "The Man" (last year's Samuel L. Jackson-Eugene Levy would-be comedy). Does the 2005 title "A Lot Like Love" evoke vivid memories? (It was an Ashton Kutcher-Amanda Peet romance.)
Did Kutcher also star in "Just Friends," "Just Married," "Just Like Heaven" or "Kingdom of Heaven"? (The second one.)
I'm convinced that a horrid 1991 Dan Aykroyd-Demi Moore comedy, originally titled "Valkenvania," was renamed "Nothing But Trouble" so that "Valkenvania" wouldn't become a bad punch line like "Ishtar." Who would remember "Nothing But Trouble"?
Moore also co-starred in a 1995 movie that switched from an unattractive title, "The Gaslight Addition," to an eternally bland one, "Now and Then," which came out a year earlier than the Meryl Streep/Liam Neeson thriller "Before and After."
"Must Love Dogs" struck me as a crummy title because the name was its own negative review ("You must love dogs to enjoy this one!"). The same goes for the upcoming Sarah Jessica Parker-Matthew McConaughey comedy "Failure To Launch."
I also can't defend "The Chumscrubber."
So what's the worst title ever?
Is it the ridiculously clumsy "The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill, But Came Down a Mountain" or the inexplicably punctuated "Face/Off"?
Is it one of those annoying compound titles such "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" or the gloriously redundant "Die Hard 2: Die Harder" or "The Neverending Story II: The Next Chapter"?
Is it one of those sound-effects titles such as "SSSSSSS" or "Phfffft!"? (The latter is a 1954 Jack Lemmon-Judy Holliday comedy, by the way.)
Or does another one bug you more?
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OK, so what do you think is the worst movie title ever?