After over 100 years of theater, you’d think that the public would get wise to this schlock, but no. These 11 movies, born on the eve of the new millennium, prove that cheez is not relegated to the earlier decades, but rather lives on, stronger than ever, boldly striding into a new age of mankind.
10. Lake Placid. Not scary enough to be horror, not funny enough to be comedy, and too disastrous to be a disaster movie. A special team of croc experts are assembled to eliminate a 30 ft. Asian crocodile from Lake Placid. As the first 20 minutes of the movie reveals, they are well equipped with both weaponry and provisions, so they should be in no danger unless they do something unbelievably stupid, which, in true cheezy form, they do. Again, and again, and again. A cheezy rip off of Anaconda, which, of course, is a cheezy rip off of Jaws, which already had some cheezy moments. Uber formulaic plot, stupid characters, played out love story, and awful CGI make Lake Placid a pioneer of cheez in the new millennium.
9. Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo. Absurd plot + basic gross-out humor + annoying ex-SNL cast members = Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo. The plot is basically a non-existent excuse for Rob Schneider, who’s no Brad Pitt himself, to have sex with an honor roll of physically deformed women. Runs 84 minutes and probably took about 48 hours to shoot.
8. Wild, Wild West. Will Smith turned down The Matrix to do this???
7. The Muse. A movie about how funny and weird the film business is! How novel. A Hollywood scriptwriter gets fired for “losing his edge,” and employs an actual muse for inspiration. Basically a 90 minute sitcom episode that has only one joke. To pry out some extra laughs, there’s this hysterical salad scene where Albert Brooks gets hit in the face with salad! And then after that he gets hit with salad in his pants! OMG LOL! This movie has no point, but people still saw it.
6. Superstar. If you really want to make a cheezy comedy, but aren’t exactly sure how to go about it, there are plenty of SNL characters to choose from. All you do is take a 5 minute skit and drag it out for an hour and a half. If it’s funny to watch Molly Shannon make out with a tree, then it’ll be funny to watch her make out with a stop sign too, right? And if its funny to watch her fall down, than it will even funnier to have her fall down over some chairs. Right? And if its funny to watch her sniff her armpits than it will be even funnier to have somebody else sniff her armpits, won’t it? Note to producers: Not every SNL character is interesting enough to base a full length feature film on. In fact, basically none are. That’s why they have more than one skit in an episode.
5. House on Haunted Hill/The Haunting. (These is no difference between these two movies.) As everybody knows, some places are haunted, and when people go there they start to get ghosted and sometimes die. It’s not the over-used plot that makes House on Haunted Hill truly cheezy, though; it’s the lame-ass gory scares that replace actual suspense with a trill of music and a flash of grotesque imagery. The moral of the story is, when you get right down to it, never move to a house, or for that matter enter a house, if somebody has at one time died there. But the lesson that America has yet to learn is: don’t enter a movie house if a movie with the word “Haunt” in its title is playing there.
4. Message in a Bottle. What’s the only cheez sappy enough to make maple syrup? Romantic cheez! If a movie can be called romantic, it can probably also be called cheezy, but Message in a Bottle is easily the cheeziest romance of 1999. A gruff-but-lovable, sensitive man has lost his beloved wife, and only by reaching out through the medium of bottle-enclosed message writing can he find the one woman that will finally be able to penetrate his rugged exterior. Give me an f’n break.
3. Next Friday. Is it funny because they’re stupid, because they’re stoned, or because they’re black? Oh wait, it’s not funny, it’s cheezy. UPN cheezy.
2. Bats. I don’t think anybody actually saw this movie, but you probably saw the trailer. At one point, a car explodes. Think about that, and then look at the title of this movie again. Ok? Bats did not make that car explode. A B movie on steroids, Bats is cheezier than a double quarter pounder… with cheese.
1. End of Days. This movie encapsulates everything cheezy about 1999. Y2K pandemonium runs rampant as Arnold Schwarzenegger takes on the dark lord SATAN on the eve of the apocalypse (Dec. 31, 1999 of course). Why 1999? Because if you flip 666 upside-down, it reads “999.” Yeah, that’s seriously one of the major plot points of the movie. Another is Satan’s exploding urine, which destroys about a dozen cars in the middle of the night. The cops never come of course, nor do any of the neighbors peek outside to find out what might have caused their cars to explode. The climax of this movie actually utilizes a hooded cult chanting in a circle while Arnold stops Satan from raping the heroine. A disgusting mess of mythology, and probably the cheeziest of 1999.
0. Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Everybody thought it was awful crap, but it was still the highest grossing film of 1999. The special effects were cheezy and looked like a video game, the plot was cheezy, the acting was pretty bad, the script was terrible, but god damnit it was a Star Wars movie. The fact that they made two more of these things and people still went to see them proves that we’ll watch just about anything. Long live Cheez in the new millennium!
Talk about cheezy, just look at the Top 10 of the top 40 of 1999. This isn’t even a worst of compilation list, it’s literally the top 10 songs of 1999’s Top 40. I repeat: This is NOT a worst of list, it is the ACTUAL TOP 10 SONGS OF 1999! You know you listened to this shit, and you’re not nearly as ashamed as you should be.
1. Every Morning by Sugar Ray (AKA “That Stupid Fucking Four Post Bed Song”) 2. Slide by the Goo Goo Dolls. (No comment) 3. Kiss Me by Sixpence None the Richer (Kill me!) 4. Hit Me Baby One More Time by Britney Spears (and people STILL listen to this shit) 5. No Scrubs by TLC (Make up your minds, 5 years ago I was a “Mighty fine man.”) 6. All Star by Smashmouth (AKA “the Shrek Song”) 7. Genie In A Bottle by Christina Aguilera (AKA Slut.) 8. I Want it That Way by The Backstreet Boys (Why did it take so long for us to laugh these fools out of existence? I mean, they broke up before we stopped listening to them! They had to break up before we stopped! They’re coming out with a new album. Please, don’t listen to their music, even to make fun. It just encourages them.) 9. Livin’ La Vida Loca by Ricky Martin (You know you sang that shit to your car radio. Aren’t you ashamed?) 10. Do You Believe in Life after Love by Cher (Making cheezy music since the 1960s)
Honorable Mention: -She’s so High by Tal Bachman (I wish I was) -Mambo no. 5 by Lou Bega (22 on the charts, but number 5 in our hearts) -That Don’t Impress Me Much by Shanaia Twain (She took the words right out of my mouth)