Awful DVD commentaries

[willywonka666]

I don't listen to many, but in the Arnold thread, it was mentioned that some commentaries are boring because they're too technical and such, so what are some examples of bad commentary?

[The Legend of Groose]

Uwe Boll's commentary for House of the Dead is one of the most frustrating and anger inducing things I've ever heard. There's times he'll his phone rings and at one point he picks it up and starts talking on the phone. At one point, he goes on a 20 min rant about a first person camera shot that last 3 seconds and talks about "I don't get why people say it's not like the game, that shot was proof. People need to quit bitching." It's just the biggest case of a guy could not give less a crap about his movie.

[Mighty Attack Tribble]

Dodgeball and Anchorman are both absolute drizzling shits, as everybody participating in both are playing characters, pretending not to know each other and/or hating each other.

[1 Free Moon-Down with Burger]

That one Aqua Teen Hunger Force commentary where a guy just starts playing guitar for 10 minutes.

[I'm Team Bayley and Indi]

I am a big fan of his but Robert Altman's commentary for MASH, long pauses (also he wasn't a fan of the series which I greatly disagree with), also any commentary where this long pauses which makes you forget you are watching the film with the commentary on.

With some exceptions I am not a fan of in-character commentaries (This Is Spinal Tap is one notable exception)

[Mighty Attack Tribble]

Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back has an extremely awkward one. It starts off fairly normally, with Smith, Jason Mewes and Scott Mosier talking about making the movie. Then Mewes just disappears off the track for 15-20 minutes and when he comes back is very obviously high as a kite, which hangs like a black cloud over the rest of the run time. A few years later it was revealed he was at his worst stage of heroin addiction around this time and Smith ended their friendship for a while not long after the recording of the commentary track.

[BorneAgain]

The makers of the Twilight Zone DVDs made the mistake of having Mickey Rooney commentate on his episode, which makes for a very uncomfortable listen as he more or less acts like a bitter asshole to the interviewer for the entire running time. Between him angrily mentioning he doesn't remember how the production went and being pissed about being reminded of all the short jokes at this expense, the only redeeming quality of the entire commentary is his hilariously cynical line about the younger audience:

[Joe Neglia]

Any time Warner Bros made the mistake of putting John Kricfalusi on commentary for their Looney Tunes/Tom & Jerry/Popeye collections, especially when he's covering a short that wasn't directed by Bob Clampett, his idol. The Clampett ones are bad enough (all of them are pretty much "Clampett was a genius! Look at his timing! He was so wacky! Everything I do is based on his!") but the non-Clampett ones are horrendous, as he goes in completely bored and disinterested and just spends that 7-8 minutes either in silence or talking about how it's not as good as Clampett's stuff.

[Deleted]

Feb 16, 2017 16:01:14 GMT -5 Mighty Attack Tribble said:

Dodgeball and Anchorman are both absolute drizzling shits, as everybody participating in both are playing characters, pretending not to know each other and/or hating each other.

Conversely, the one for This Is Spinal Tap made perfect sense for in-character commentary.

I'd give a nod, on movies, to commentaries involving bad directors. For example, the guy who made Glitter made ridiculous excuses for all the continuity errors & forgetting storyline elements he made (not "I didn't notice" but "I took artistic license" excuses).

For TV shows, a few tracks for The Simpsons are terrible. In the 8th season, Josh Weinstein brought his kids to do two episodes & they ruined the experience, along with Bill Oakley, the other executive producer, only bothering with two episodes (though I think Oakley is very snide and condescending on commentary). "They Saved Lisa's Brain" spent 15 minutes on a stupid prank over a joke about East St. Louis. "Brawl in the Family" had the man who voiced Gabriel ask questions for 13 minutes straight. And a track on the 14th season was just them ragging on a fan who sent a letter complaining about their commentaries.

[eDemento2099]

Some video games have optional commentary. The latest port of Duke Nukem 3D has this feature, and it sucks. Most of the maps are actually devoid of commentary, and what little there is is uninspired and just points out the obvious.

[Fade]

Ben Affleck trashes Michael Bay and Armageddon throughout its commentary. Whether that's good or bad is up to interpretation.

Arnold's are always cringeworthy..especially T3: Rise of the Machines.

Dude Where's My Car is pretty bad too. Pretty sure they're high off their rockers.

[arrogantmodel]

Spaceballs is basically Mel Brooks blowing himself over what a genius he is. It is funny at times though.

[Deleted]

Feb 16, 2017 20:47:58 GMT -5 arrogantmodel said:

Spaceballs is basically Mel Brooks blowing himself over what a genius he is. It is funny at times though.

Until they get to the "Asshole" bit or anything else vaguely dirty. He says, "Oh, I really didn't want to do that, but I was told it was funny."

[wildojinx]

The Simpsons commentaries with Conan O'Brien. They basically do nothing but talk about all the goofy stuff Conan did in the writers room and such, and ignore the episode itself.

[Futureraven: Beelzebruv]

Feb 16, 2017 20:47:58 GMT -5 arrogantmodel said:

Spaceballs is basically Mel Brooks blowing himself over what a genius he is. It is funny at times though.

Young Frankenstein too, where he badly explains a lot of the jokes, long pauses, just kinda boring.


I'll also throw out Wayne's World where the director just throws out random crap, like how she roomed with Matt Groening in the 70s when he created the Simpsons.

[Sparvid]

I haven't listened to it since I first got the DVDs, but IIRC there was one episode around season 3-4 of Buffy with commentary by the director (not any of the regularly appearing creative members) which was so boring. Just purely technical stuff, nothing about the actors or plot or characters or anything.

[G✇JI☈A]

Terror of MechaGodzilla (from the TOHO Master Collection) - they got some Godzilla historians (aka fanboys) to do to be fair a very insightful commentary on the final Godzilla film of the Showa era. But they do it without an once of charisma they sound more like robots reading off a sheet of paper.

[WoodStoner1]

Depending on how you view his version of Batman, Joel Schumacher's B&R commentary can be infuriating I'd imagine. Most of it is blaming the toy companies and telling us, "See? I based this off the animated series!"

Now how about GREAT commentaries? When I think of that I usually jump to the Puni-Poemy commentary track just for how wacky and quotable it is.

[Bub (BLM)]

Bryan Singer's commentary on the first X-Men is bad. He spends half of it explaining how he shot certain scenes while sounding like it's so boring he's putting himself to sleep, and spends the other half justifying all the changes he made to the material which at times seems like he's just saying it's stupid.

[A Platypus Rave is Correct]

Feb 17, 2017 13:19:20 GMT -5 WoodStoner1 said:

Depending on how you view his version of Batman, Joel Schumacher's B&R commentary can be infuriating I'd imagine. Most of it is blaming the toy companies and telling us, "See? I based this off the animated series!"

he spends most of it apologizing and pointing out that it didn't work. IIRC.

Feb 16, 2017 20:25:33 GMT -5 Fade said:

Ben Affleck trashes Michael Bay and Armageddon throughout its commentary. Whether that's good or bad is up to interpretation.

my favorite part of that was Ben bringing up it makes more sense for NASA to train Astronauts to drill than Drillers how to be Astronauts... he was told to shut the f*** up by Bay