When it comes to failure, no one does it better than Hollywood.
greater! More daring! Disgusting on steroids! We can’t look away at the turkeys like “Dr. Doolittle(1967), Rollerball (2002), and Catwoman (2004), three duds dissected in Tim Robey’s film. “Box office poison.”
The book begins near the dawn of cinema and takes us to the gold standard of modern mistakes, 2019’s Cats.
Robbie spares no detail in his comprehensive work, one that avoids obvious errors like “Battlefield Earth,” “Waterworld,” “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” and “Heaven’s Gate.”
(“Devil’s Candy”). Share everything we need to know about the “vanity” debacle.)
Instead, we delve into duds like “Nothing But Trouble,” a 1991 disaster film starring some of Hollywood’s best comedic talent. “Venom” covers more than a century of films, but some things never change.
selfishness. denial. Overcompensation. greed. Sometimes the best intentions lead filmmakers astray.
It’s an exhilarating tour through Hollywood excess, and Robbie’s sassy pose keeps us engaged even as he delves into the details. Studio executives may grumble about each new chapter, but readers will enjoy the laborious close-ups.
Some bad guys emerge from the wreckage. Actor Oliver Reed hardly comes off well. Neither does Rex Harrison of “Doctor Dolittle” fame. How young Sarah Polley survived her first brush with fame through “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” is anyone’s guess.
As a child, Sarah Polley feared for her life on the set of Terry Gilliam’s chaotic films: #Arts #Arts_News
In Baron Munchausen’s adventure collection, “explosions of debris exploded on the ground around me, accompanied by a deafening boom that made me feel as if… pic.twitter.com/QBsa1JV5cS
– Arts Journal (@ ArtsJournalNews) June 14, 2022
Other stars are victims of circumstances. The scene of mistakes from the 1991 film “Nothing But Trouble” comes to mind.
The book also points out the cruelty that accompanies failure. A few name managers have seen their careers evaporate after failing too often. Others dutifully got down with the ship, unwilling to release their grip on projects that seemed doomed from the jump.
Robbie blends film criticism with a reporter’s eye for the smallest grain of gossip. It is also susceptible to some lateral waking. Why summon the specter of prominent white men while they x-ray the failure that was Catwoman?
It’s an unnecessary tic but hardly distracting.
RELATED: Why ‘King Arthur’ Didn’t Deserve to Fail So Badly
“Poison” reveals plenty of delicious morsels for movie fans to savor. The author mines old interviews, eared press kits, and more to craft three-dimensional portraits of a production gone wild.
He is never harsh, only surgical in his assessments. He’s strangely fascinated by some of these hardened people, and puts aside his admiration to show why they bleed red ink in their studios.
Enduring themes can only emerge from the wreckage. Casting is always important. Vanity drowns out more than a few projects. Stubborn artists receive a great deal of the blame, but one could argue that this attitude also helped shape more than a few film classics.
Imagine if James Cameron, mired in bad buzz for most of his creative career, had raised his hands instead of finishing Titanic.
Some stories will stick, like Andrew Lloyd Webber getting an emotional support dog after the Cats disaster. The punchline of this story won’t be spoiled here, but it’s so good it’s worth picking up the book on its own.
The book ends, appropriately enough, with “Cats.” Robbie points out that failed businesses have become more complex in recent years. Hollywood remains absurdly risk-averse, clinging to intellectual property and safe bets at almost every turn.
Hollywood failure will never die. Just ask the people behind 2024’s Better Man, a monkey musical inspired by the career of Robbie Williams.
After the disastrous failure of #The best manthe question was less: Why wouldn’t audiences see a $110 million R-rated pop music biopic about a CGI chimpanzee snorting cocaine? More: Who thinks they can make $$$ with this? My postmortem autopsy:
– Chris Lee (@__ChrisLee) January 16, 2025
