REVIEW: Box Office Poison: Hollywood’s Story in a Century of Flops by Tim Robey
A riotous and revealing story of Hollywood’s most spectacular flops.
‘Failure fascinates, for all the reasons that success is a drag . . .’
From grand follies to misunderstood masterpieces, disastrous sequels to catastrophic literary adaptations, Tim Robey’s hugely entertaining Box Office Poison tells an alternative history of Hollywood, through a century of its most notable flops.
What can these films tell us about the Hollywood system, the public’s appetite–or lack of it–and the circumstances that saw such flops actually made? Away from the canon, this is the definitive take on these ill-fated, but essential celluloid failures.
Robey covers a vast century of flops, including: Intolerance; Queen Kelly; Freaks; Sylvia Scarlett; The Magnificent Ambersons; Land of the Pharaohs; Doctor Dolittle; Sorcerer; Dune; The Adventures of Baron Munchausen; Nothing But Trouble; The Hudsucker Proxy; Cutthroat Island; Speed 2: Cruise Control; Babe: Pig in the City; Supernova; Rollerball; The Adventures of Pluto Nash; Gigli; Alexander; Catwoman; A Sound of Thunder; Speed Racer; Synecdoche, New York; Pan; and Cats.
From Daily Telegraph film critic Tim Robey, this is a brilliantly fun exploration of human nature and stupidity in some of the greatest film flops throughout history.
Review
As part of the blurb says, we like to focus on what goes terribly wrong. Robey has a grab bag of films that for one reason or another, failed spectacularly. Hubris, bad timing, miscasting, misreading the room, money (too much and too little), making enemies in the business, or just bad luck – the reasons are many with some films snagging more than one.
There are probably some films missing that you’d think would be here – “Battlefield Earth,” maybe? – but Robey lists other sources which he says have already said about all there is to say about these. Among the choices he covers are some films that ought to have been masterpieces while others make one mutter about what the studio heads were thinking when they greenlit these projects.
Robey avoids doing little but taking the piss about these films. Instead he delves into why the film should have worked and what specifically happened to stop that. Robey also points out things that did work and mentions when some films have managed to rise from the dead through fandoms and becoming cult classics. “Cats” is the last film covered after which he muses a little on how Covid and streaming services might have forever changed film floppage. Some of these films I’ve seen, some I’ve heard of, and some were totally new to me.
The writing style is approachable, readable, and fun. It’s clear that Robey loves films and talking about them. One or two have piqued my interest and I might see if I can find a copy to watch. But “Cats,” no, I’ll skip that one along with “Nothing but Trouble.” B
~Jayne
AmazonBNKoboBook DepositoryGoogle
Ooh, this sounds good and the list of movies is interesting. Searching for it now!
And I’d also recommend “Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood” by Ed Zwick. Read it this fall and it was a good insider scoop on how the sausage is made.
@Tanya: Thanks for the rec! I think my library has that one.
This was fun! I especially enjoyed the first half of the book that covered movies with which I was not familiar.
I’m pretty sure I took my 4 and 7 year old kids to see “Babe: Pig in the City” in 1998, but I don’t remember them being traumatized by it!
@SusanS: I agree that the movies I didn’t know much about were the most interesting to read about. I’ve never seen that one. I loved Babe and was excited about a sequel but then heard that it wasn’t as good.