Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.
This entry requires a bit of an explanation. As I’ve mentioned before, the IMDb Bottom 100 list is a fluid entity. There is no single version of this list because you, the loyal bad movie viewer, alter it every time you cast your vote. I am working from a version I downloaded two months ago when I began this project, and although that list may have many crapulescent movies in common with the current version, they may rank higher or lower on the list – and of course, many entries have since been supplanted by fresh, steaming piles from the cineplex.
So why am I telling you this? Well, for the first time since I began the Unwatchable project, a Bottom 100 entry has defeated me. I don’t mean I couldn’t get through the movie – that would be antithetical to everything I stand for – I mean I couldn’t find the movie at all. Number 81 on my list is Levottomat 3, a 2005 Finnish film that, as far as I can tell, has received no U.S. release at all. Believe me, I tried to find it – after all, this is a movie featuring such IMDb keywords as Sex, Sexuality, Sexual Promiscuity, Sex Addiction, Sex in Public, Sex Maniac, Sexual Fantasy, Rough Sex, Casual Sex and even Sex in Bathroom. How bad could it be? Alas, my efforts failed. I was, however, able to track down the trailer, so let’s watch it together, shall we?
So that was fun, but I still owe you good people an installment of Unwatchable. Here’s the solution I came up with: I went to the current version of the Bottom IMDb list and, starting at the bottom, searched until I came across the first entry that did not also appear on the version of the list I’m working from. That movie turned out to be Soccer Dog: The Movie, a 1999 family film that is probably as close to the exact opposite of Levottomat 3 as you can get.
James Marshall, best known as limp noodle James Hurley from Twin Peaks, and Olivia d’Abo, whose nude prancing in Unwatchable # 97 Bolero is forever singed into my cerebral cortex, are a young couple who adopt Clay, a boy who has spent his life in an orphanage. Marshall pushes Clay to join the soccer team, but the lad pretty much stinks at the whole kicking the ball thing. After Clay adopts Lincoln, a mutt who has escaped from the dog pound (see – they’re both orphans!), he is further humiliated to learn the dog possesses much more skill at the soccer arts than he does. In fact, the dog becomes the star of the team and Clay becomes a surly little punk. Tragedy strikes when the evil dog catcher snatches Lincoln, and everyone bonds over his disappearance and vows to get him back.
Soccer Dog obviously isn’t my idea of a good time, but one of the 100 worst movies of all time? Come on. There’s a million family flicks like this – in fact, there’s a whole subgenre of “dogs playing sports” movies like Air Bud and its sequels, and even a Soccer Dog sequel, European Cup. (There’s also the baseball-playing monkey movie Ed, but I have a feeling we’ll be getting to that eventually.) It’s bland, processed entertainment, but it does feature reliable comic actor Sam McMurray as the soccer coach, as well as a dead-on R. Lee Ermey impression by Franklin Dennis Jones as his arch-rival. Granted, I’m not entirely certain why the producers felt the need to append “The Movie” to the title – were they worried audiences would confuse it with Soccer Dog: The Energy Drink? – but that’s a small matter. True, I would have rather been watching the Finnish movie with all the sex maniacs, but I can’t bring myself to give Soccer Dog more than two Maurys.
Previously on Unwatchable:
82. American Soldiers
83. First Sunday
84. It’s Pat
85. Battlefield Earth
86. Hobgoblins
