The Charge

Every family has its skeletons.

The Case

This is all you need to know: Junior is so bad a film, it makes me wish Arnold Schwarzenegger would show up and have a baby to save the movie

I spent the first twenty minutes scratching my head, trying to figure out why it seemed vaguely English, but somehow vaguely American, and possibly something else—a sneaking suspicion that I was watching a foreign film re-packaged for North American consumption. And why, in the name of Ikea, were images of Swedish meatballs popping into my mind?

It was driving me crazy. "What the @#$! kind of accent is that?" I hollered at my television. Of course, my television gave no reply. So, I looked it up on the Web, and I found my answer. Junior, interestingly enough, is a Belgian film.

Based on this evidence, the Belgian people should never, ever, be allowed to make films. Ever.

The actual title of this film, according to the IMDb, is Engine Trouble, which sums up the horribly, horribly formulaic plot of, "two girls get stranded on the side of the road, and then, of course, have no choice but to split up, but one goes missing, so the other one looks around, but of course, a psychotic killer is on the loose, et cetera."

It gets better. The killer is a freak that fights with a big shiny cudgel, but despite being a deformed monster who grunts and groans like Sloth from The Goonies, he wears a black trench coat, and does acrobatic martial art flips.

Terrible! Absolutely terrible! I've seen many a bad horror movie, and this movie scares me—the fact that, yes, somebody actually made it, that two people actually ended up watching it (namely, me, and the director), and that Artisan actually took the time to buy this piece of crap and release it into our continent? I may never sleep again!

I heard that Artisan, as a company, has $50 million worth of debt.

Good. Consider it "idiot tax."

The only reason this film scored any points, at all, is that the film actually managed to scrape together some "content"—of which I use the term in the loosest possible sense—things like a surprisingly competent 5.1 Dolby Digital track, trailers, a photo gallery and a "sneak peeks" trailer gallery of movie that you will never ever want to see. Trust me.

The butchered full-screen video presentation is terrible, the dialogue is inane, the acting is embarrassing to the senses, and the script is so laughable that it actually sucks away your will to laugh ever again.

Here it is—the worst thing to ever hit the silver screen. Right here; search no further. And I am not wasting one more second reviewing it.

If you go out and get a copy of Junior to watch, I will come to your house and give you an upper body beating. And boy, you will have deserved it.

That is all.

Similar Decisions

• Mamoru Oshii's Talking Head
• Exotica
• The River (1997)
• Yi Yi (A One And A Two): Criterion Collection

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