Crossover (2006) and Crossing Over to the IMDb Bottom 100

This week’s movie for the Sunday “Bad” Movie blog post is a movie called Crossover.  This was a suggested movie that would surely fit within the movies I’ve watched for these posts.  I have never heard anything good about the movie.  Usually what I hear are things like “That movie is terrible,” or “I really hated that movie,” or “It’s a blemish on Anthony Mackie’s career.”  These aren’t really things you want to hear when you go into a movie.  You don’t want to hear about how bad it is.  It brings your expectations way down and actually gets you a little bit afraid of what you are about to watch.

This fear only grows when you go to IMDb, the Internet Movie Database.  If you’re reading this blog post, you probably already know about that website.  Who doesn’t at this point?  It’s probably the most well-known website that has anything to do with movies, outside of maybe Netflix.  There is a section of IMDb devoted to bad movies.  This is called the IMDb bottom 100.  This list is a collection of the 100 lowest rated movies on IMDb.  There is a wide variety of movies on there.  If you go to that list, you will find Crossover ranked as the seventeenth lowest rated movie of all time.  (That’s at the time of my writing this.  It could have changed by the time this post goes up, but I have a feeling it won’t.  If you’re reading this further in the future, it will likely change at some point.)  That ranking had me worried.  If this was the seventeenth worst movie of all time, it wasn’t going to be good.

Was it good?  No.  It wasn’t good.  But I also don’t think that Crossover is as bad as I was led to believe by peoples’ reactions to it.  I don’t hate the movie.  There were moments that were enjoyable.  It’s very rare that I cannot find a good thing within a movie.  Crossover was not as terrible as people were telling me it was.  I have seen far worse movies in my time watching bad movies.  Hell, I’ve seen worse movies as part of the Sunday “Bad” Movies, and none of them have been ranked as low as Crossover on the IMDb bottom 100.  This is where this week’s topic comes into play.  Film watchers really like their hyperbole.

I don’t know how many times a year that I hear people give a newly released film the title of “Worst Movie Ever Made.”  The same could be said for the opposite side of the spectrum.  The modern mindset is that a movie can only be great or terrible, and there is no middle ground.  Fundamentally, that way of thinking is wrong.  Most movies fall into the middle of the spectrum.  They are serviceable and okay.  There is nothing special to the movie, but there is nothing that makes it bad, either.  The movie exists.  That’s all it does.  But since it didn’t connect with the viewer, it sucks.  This kind of hyperbole only goes to hurt other people’s enjoyment of movies.  If you’re always dismissing movies because they aren’t the best possible movie, you are going to cause your own disillusionment.  You will also try to spread that disillusionment upon others.  Negativity can be a cruel beast.  It grows out of nothing and is all-consuming.

Yes, I know what some of you who are reading this are saying right now.  The general public does not act this way.  It’s only the bloggers and online film critics who behave in this manner.  They are only a small fragment of the whole population.  I respond with this.  They are vocal.  They are very vocal.  And when someone who isn’t a part of this online culture does a little bit of research to see if they should watch a certain movie, they will stumble across this vocal minority.  The words of the bloggers and critics have meaning to a person who only occasionally watches movies.  They could miss out on something that they would love and cherish all because of the hyperbolic best/worst mindset.  I know that there are many movies out there that I hold dearly which many people would say are some of the worst movies ever.  If I only occasionally watched movies and took others’ thoughts into account when watching them, I likely never would have seen the movies.  I wouldn’t know that Paul Blart: Mall Cop is actually an entertaining, heart-warming, and funny movie.  I wouldn’t have it in my life.

The IMDb bottom 100 is a collection of many of these online personas.  The movies that people collectively dislike get thrown onto this list without any actual reasoning to back it up.  By looking at the list, do I know why Crossover is the seventeenth worst movie of all time?  Sure I do.  It’s because 1500 people on the internet said that it’s one of the worst movies ever.  But why is it so bad?  There is nothing to back up this claim.  This list is only an extrapolation and summarization of the vocal minority crying out that movies are the worst movies ever.  Do you know how many movies that are possibly worse than the movies on the list get ignored because 1500 people did not vote on them?  There are hundreds, maybe thousands out there.  I know that this is an extreme assumption on my part, and I know that it’s not possible for anybody to see every movie that has ever been released.  I know that no top or bottom 100 list is ever going to be accurate due to taste and the fact that there are unseen films.  But the fact that there are movies out there worse than the bottom 100 really grinds my gears.

The vocal minority wins out with the IMDb bottom 100, as they win out on social media.  It’s hard to go anywhere on the internet now without seeing people claim that a movie is either the best or the worst piece of cinematic art to ever grace the many screens that it could be shown on.  This is how the world exists in this day and age.  The internet has allowed for people to exaggerate their opinions to get their own agendas across.  Do I like it?  No.  But I live with it because I love movies and these hyperbolic statements are never going to ruin that for me.  I’ll keep on making my own mind up on movies such as Crossover.  I may find them fitting of the things that people claim.  Many times I won’t.  I didn’t find Crossover to be one of the worst movies ever made.  That’s for sure.

There are a few notes that I am going to make before I end this post:

• Other movies in the Sunday “Bad” Movies to make the IMDb bottom 100 are Glitter, Ed, and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
• If you have any suggestions for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, leave a comment, or message me on Twitter.