An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn

Alan Smithee (Eric Idle), a frustrated director, cannot take his name off his own recut film (his name being the official pseudonym for disowning directors)--so he steals the lone print and flees. It spells out its one joke at the start, then proceeds for 86 painful minutes to...exist. It's hard to see what anyone saw in the premise, and impossible to see how anyone could have thought the finished product would entertain. Totally lacking in wit, insight, or investment by anyone involved.

This movie isn't *completely* bad. There are some good gags - Sylvester Stallone does great ad-libbing - and towards the end it has some very legit critique of police culture. But as a whole, it is a product of the deep soul-sickness of Hollywood, trying to critique its own flaws but being sucked into its own navel in a vortex where everything is a skin-crawling worldview reflecting itself endlessly. I have no idea how anyone involved thought people outside the Hollywood system would like this.

A spectacularly bad film -- incompetent, unfunny, ill-conceived, badly executed, lamely written, and acted by people who look trapped in the headlights.

A waste of time. I can appreciate the one joke the film's premise is based around but that make for about a 10 minute skit not a full length film.

Calling this movie unfunny is like calling Hayden Christensen untalented.

Richard Jeni and Ryan O'Neal are great as scummy guys, and the movie is smarter that most people give it credit for. It's badly-put-together, but it does have quite a few laugh-out-loud moments.