Ben & Arthur (2002)

Absolutely Fantastic

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Tommy Wiseau, James Nguyen, Sam Mraovich - birds of a feather, peas in a pod. If you recognise the first two in this sequence of names, you will know EXACTLY what to expect.This is a melodrama about gay marriage and prejudice. It could have been directed by any one of the three names mentioned above. It just happened to be Sam Mraovich this time.Murky, incompetent, hilarious. The latter only applies if you are in the mood for cinematic compost.

With production values that make "The Room" look like "Inception," dialogue that makes "Troll 2" look like Shakespeare, performances that make Pia Zadora look like Meryl Streep, and a deluded, egomaniacal creator that would make even Tommy Wiseau seem modest, "Ben & Arthur" is just about as bad as it gets. It is ultimately what you get when someone with delusions of grandeur and no resources has WAY too much time on their hands.The movie is just plain wrong from the word "go,"beginning with a desecration of Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" that not only sounds cheap but is wildly inappropriate. Credits scroll by simply as an excuse to stroke creator Sam Mraovich's massive ego while juxtaposed on a nauseating brown background that looks like somebody vomited on the print, appropriately enough.From there we are introduced to the titular characters, a relatively handsome man named Ben and his lover, a doughy, pasty, balding man named Arthur who is none other than demented creator Sam Mraovich himself, proving that the "Ugly Guy, Hot Wife" trope works just as well for gay men. Their raison d'etre is a simple one: they want to get married.However, things are revealed to be not quite so simple. First, Hawaii revokes their gay marriage laws, then Ben drops a bombshell that he's still married to a woman (who apparently didn't know he was gay?) then Arthur must turn to his disapproving conservative Christian homophobe brother for a loan.Jamie Brett Gabel does an admirable job as Ben but it is Sam Mraovich who makes this train wreck utterly fascinating to watch. He has to be the most offensive stereotype to walk this earth, or in his case, prance. He runs like a girl and his dancing has to be seen to be believed. His mannerisms incite laughter because you get the feeling he's not acting.To pull off such a character you need a few redeeming qualities but sadly, Arthur has none. He's a whiny, entitled drama queen, and you want to cheer during one scene where Ben punches him even though it's basically condoning domestic abuse. Then he sets a priest on fire while humming merrily and this is the guy we're supposed to root for?Arthur has a fundamentalist brother who would be the gayest person in the movie were it not for him. He has blonde highlights, is constantly seen petting a cat, and spends all his free time with a man named Stan. I do understand the point they were trying to make, that a lot of extreme homophobia comes from people who are in denial about their own sexuality, but they could've been more subtle in their casting. Then again, nothing in this movie is subtle. To round out the cast we have Ben's loony wife who thinks that holding him at gunpoint and offering to be gay like him will fix their marriage, a woman lawyer who reads her lines in a distracted monotone, and Mildread, a woman who shows up only to complain about stuff.The plot starts off sensibly enough but devolves into insanity as it progresses. Ben and Arthur go from wanting to get married and seeking legitimate legal avenues to domestic violence and murdering priests. Victor, the brother, goes from proselytizing to taping bottles of strange liquid to his brother's door, murdering lawyers, hiring PI's to follow his brother around and finally hiring a hit-man to kill Ben and Arthur then sending him away at the last minute to do the deed himself. In fact, Arthur not drinking the holy water is the only thing in the last half that makes any sense.The lack of research in this film is just astounding. In Mraovich-land, holy water has a recipe, Catholics believe in karma, are willing to kick people out of their congregation just for having homosexual relatives, advocate killing sinners to save their souls, and baptize people in the nude. Vermont has palm trees and you can ship yourself there by FedEx and graham crackers make a perfectly normal dinner.It was really a challenge to keep this review down to a thousand words because there are just so many things wrong with this movie. The cinematography is horrid, the camera shakes and wobbles, all continuity or pretense of realism is thrown out the window, and the score and set design are laughably cheap. The most memorable examples of these flaws are people getting shot with no bullet wounds and blood, several characters getting killed without police investigation, a sex scene where nobody moves, a song with only the words "Let's go," the obvious background noise clipping, and the priest's office, complete with cardboard cross and paint-by-numbers Jesus.As a final testament to Mraovich's ego, he ends the film by visually assaulting us with the image of his naked body and generously borrowing from the final scene of "Scarface" only with him and Victor substituting for Gina and Tony. Fortunately, Arthur dies at the end.In fact, nobody in this movie gets a happy ending, unless you count the audience because they no longer have to watch it. All that remains is an ending credits sequence that pays further tribute to Sam Mraovich while set to the soothing sounds of a Fisher Price rendition of Pachelbel's "Cannon" in D.I guess it's only appropriate that the movie should end with a spelling error. Nothing else was done right in this mess of a movie so why should they care about spelling? Sam Mraovich should just stick to real estate.

What can I say, this is a piece of brilliant film-making that should have won an Oscar. A copy should be kept safe in a secure vault for posterity. It should be required viewing for all high school students across the world. Sam Mraovich is a genius, perhaps the most genius writer/director/producer/chef/babysitter/walmart greeter to ever grace the cinema world with his art.Where do I begin with this one? Every millisecond of Ben and Arthur was so completely breathtaking! And Mraovich as Arthur, wow, he is so attractive I'm surprised he didn't go for Mr. Universe. I couldn't contain myself during the nude scene. I loaned this movie to my brother and he called me on the phone saying how Arthur's nude scene turned him gay. I am totally supportive of course, because of this film and it's beautifully crafted lessons in tolerance. Why just yesterday I burned down a church and I wrote "for Sam and Arthur" in its smoldering ashes.The cinematography was the best thing about this film. When that Fed-Ex plane took to the skies amid the palm trees of Vermont, I wept! Why, I never even knew they had palm trees in Vermont or that people could travel on Fed-Ex planes before this film. It opened my eyes to a new realm of possibilities. This film inspired me to enroll in Sam Mraovich's school of Screen writing, Acting, Directing, Composing, Casting, Producing, Production Design and Real Estate. I just want to say, "Thank you, Mr. Mraovich. Thank you for bringing this creation into the world. We can never re-pay you enough."

Just watched this after hearing about how bad it was and wanted to see for myself. Seriously, even if you read all the negative comments on here you will be nowhere near able to comprehend how awful this film actually is, although it has to be one of the most hilarious things I have ever seen! Never bothered to post a comment on here before, but this piece of crap really warrants it. Firstly the entire plot is ridiculous and nonsensical. Brother of the lead character (either Ben or Arthur, I forget which is which, and frankly it's never very clear) wants to stop some kind of gay marriage by killing everyone in sight - because homosexuality is abhorrent to Christians, but apparently mass murder isn't. Then there's some other crap thrown in about one of the gay couple's ex-wife trying to force him to remarry her at gunpoint. This leads to nothing, but provides us with one of the funniest lines of dialogue in the whole "film" - "I don't make sense? You don't make sense! That's who makes sense!". Brilliant.Then there's the acting, which is just atrocious. It must be seen to be believed. My personal favourite is the apparently stoned civil rights lawyer woman, who is clearly reading her lines off of something, yet still managing to mess them up. Enough said. The gay couple couldn't be less convincing. There's the vaguely attractive and completely gormless guy, and his boyfriend who looks like that little cartoon dough man of the bisto adverts. Only fatter. And less talented. The "film" has also been filmed by someone who is incapable of holding a camera even remotely still, and the number of mistakes throughout is amazing. The whole thing kicks off with the fat main guy in bed with a pair of boots on. Yep.But anyways, we all know how terrible this thing is, so I'd like to highlight some of the most priceless comedy moments that the "film" provides. When the fat guy sets the church on fire and then prances like a six year old girl across the car park to make his escape. Hilarious.Mildread! No idea what relation she is to the main characters - sometimes they know her, sometimes they don't, but she pops up in a couple of scenes nonetheless. Hilarious.The stoned lawyer. Already mentioned her, but she's so funny she's worth another mention.The evil brothers dinner of crackers that he lays on for his guests.The evil brother's anti-gay potion.The evil brother's cats.The ending, which I won't give away because it MUST be seen to be believed. I warn you though, make sure you're not eating at the time!!!! The tub of lard main character/director/producer gets naked. It's foul. Basically, Ben and Arthur is indescribably bad, but unintentionally the most comical thing you'll see for a long time. Literally, nothing is good about this excuse for a film, the goon of a director even manages to make the opening credits into a joke by writing his own name about 15 times.