Love to Hate

[Guest ScirosDarkblade]

Who or what do you love to hate? In film, that is.

I know it's a strange question, but there are certain films or actors or characters who we all know are either lame or stupid or what not, and we make fun of them at any opportunity, but yet watch them for some reason. Often it's just to amuse ourselves with the crappiness of the movie/acting/etc. But anyway you get the idea.

Someone I "love to hate" is Jean-Claude Van Damme. The man is a complete joke. If you've ever run into a "Van Damme fansite" you'll know what I mean. Just look for fandamme.net or something like it. I remember finding that site and it made me laugh so hard... but I digress. I think Van Damme is a pretty lousy movie star, because not only do 95% of his films totally suck, but they are all filled with what I've termed "Van Dammish" elements, which are the following:
1. random cursing for what seems to be absolutely no reason, and doesn't fit the characters
2. the worst excuses ever for Van Damme to show his bare a**. There is NO excuse to do this, I believe.
3. the Van Damme Kick -- that jumping 360-degree split-kick he does where he slaps the bad guy in the face with his right leg.
4. a 1-second-long resolution, or none at all. Van Damme kicks bad guy, bad guy falls, Van Damme hugs the girl, credits roll.
5. the worst actors ever playing the villains. The best villain-actor in a Van Damme movie is in Sudden Death, which is scary but true.
6. A plot which is actually accurately summarized in the "info" panel you bring up on the TV if you have cable. "Escaped convict he-man protects widow from retarded bad guys who want her land and her boobies."

Anyway, I am embarrassed to say that I have seen every Van Damme film ever (in which he's played a leading role) with the exception of "Hell" or whatever that brand-new straight-to-video nightmare is. He amuses me with his antics. It used to be that I was a huge Van Damme fan, back when he was a bonafide movie star and made movies like Double Impact and Lionheart. But it seems that as soon as I moved from NYC to Ohio Van Damme went down the toilet. His last six films (not counting that one I mentioned above) -- Double Team, Knockoff, Universal Soldier: The Return, The Replicant, The Order, Derailed -- are just horrendous. I can go on for ages about each one, telling you how much they all suck and how Van Damme should change his name and move to Antarctica. But it's so fun to do, that I keep watching the movies so I can add to my Van Damme-bashing repetoire.

I love to hate the man. He's so funny. And the fact that he makes news-worthy (E!-type-news) stupid mistakes just about every week only adds to the hilarity.

[Semjaza]

The strangest thing about Van Damme was the fact that he was cast to play Guile in the Street Fighter movie. A man with an insanely thick accent playing a man born and raised in America. [I]Yeah[/I]...

There's a few people in the TV/movie business that I dislike more than I probably should.

First up is Bob Saget. The guy isn't all that bad in person from what I've seen and is quite capable of poking fun at himself. However, after Full House and America's Funniest Home Videos, I really don't think that I can look at this man as a normal human being anymore.

He seems so digustingly nice in those shows that you can't help but want to rip his face off and feed it to a murder of crows. And that's just for starters. It's worse in AFHVs because of his voices. Who told this man he was good at voice overs, I have no idea. Hopefully they were fired from their jobs and live in a gutter somewhere now. If he wasn't doing a horrible voice he was complaining about his evil producers.

Second is Rosie O'Donnel. I have no idea how this woman got anywhere in life. She sounds terrible and is just incredibly abrasive. She's on of those types that likes to do anything she can to get her way. Once she had her own successful show there was no stopping her... she could invite guests on her show and be a total ***** and her crowd of 40 something soccer mom's and grandmas would cheer her on the entire time.

What I've never understood is how someone can go from R rated movies and stand up comedy acts to being a center of family entertainment. She even kept doing that standup while keeping up her food loving, koosh ball shooting self on people's TVs during daylight hours.

Anyway.