An Alan Smithee Film: Burn, Hollywood, Burn (1998)

Best movie of this year hands down!

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Anyone who doesn't like this film, and there are a lot who don't, obviously has no idea of how Hollywood works. It's a funny film, it's got a lot of pace, good performances and lots of stars. The story is quite good, and the reversal of fortunes quite believable.You don't have to work in Hollywood to understand this movie, a bit of imagination is all it takes. If you liked "The Player" you will like this. It's Robert Altman type funny. I would also compare it to the Larry David Show.Also don't stop watching once the credits roll, there are some great parts all the way through to the end.

For those who don't know, Alan Smithee is not a real man, rather, a fake name for Hollywood filmmakers to choose if they are not happy with the end result of whatever movie they're making. Generally, these films will be films that were either destroyed by the studio, or were crafted together in an uncaring and unconcerned fashion. Some films that are "directed" by Alan Smithee include HELLRAISER: BLOODLINE(a movie I liked), THE BIRDS 2(which I thought was okay), GUNHED(which I loathed), and SUPERNOVA(which wasn't that bad in my opinion). BURN Hollywood BURN is a film by Alan Smithee. Yep, the director of BURN Hollywood BURN was so ashamed of the result of his movie about Alan Smithee that he chose the Alan Smithee alias as the director of the film. Um... Yeah. Cool? Not really. This film apparently is intentionally bad, but it really takes talent to make something this bad. I wonder what would have happened if instead of Hollywood wasting such fine talent as Eric Idle,Coolio, and Jackie Chan on a half-assed project like this, they decide to quit at the screenplay stage, if there is a screenplay, and pack up, go home, and then continue putting out their usual crap and occasional gems. That would've been cool. If they had done that instead, we wouldn't have gotten this boring, cheap, confusing mess of a picture. Sure, it has it's followings, and sure, people undoubtedly will forever love it for it's energy, wit, talent, and uniqueness, but in the long run, it was a film that never should have been made and will most likely be forgotten about.

Hollywood spoofing itself? I'd want to see that! But surely not in the way 'Burn Hollywood Burn' does it.The story resolves about a missing, big budget, big stars picture of which the director (Monty Python's Eric Idle) wasn't satisfied, so he took the only copy and ran off. This much to the dislike of the producers, as one can imagine.The movie tells the story documentary-like, which becomes incredibly annoying after 20 minutes or so. The characters are overdone (and not in a 'fun' way) and although the original thought of the movie is a cool one, Burn Hollywood Burn fails miserably, as it's boring, unfocused, annoying and messy.3/10.

"Burn, Hollywood, Burn" is not an altogether successful satire. It's shapeless, it's talky, it's self-conscious, it has essentially no plot and it wastes Eric Idle's talents badly. However, giving it "zero stars" or labeling it "one of the worst movies ever made", as so many reviewers have done, suggests that there is nothing worthwhile to be found here at all, which is pretty inaccurate. There are, in fact, some big laughs in this movie, especially when Stallone (explaining why the "Rocky" pictures are deeply religious) and Jackie Chan (demonstrating how he feels about any director who tries to "control" him) are parodying their screen images. There are also some biting satirical remarks about the role of the director in a big Hollywood blockbuster and the marketing strategies the studios are prepared to use to get the audiences where they want them. At one point, a producer says: "We don't have a movie. So what? We have a 30-second trailer. We can release that to theaters and charge full price!" How far do you suppose this way of thinking is removed from reality? (**1/2)