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The Postal Movie is Really Bad

Posted by Zonk on Mon Aug 13, 2007 06:57 PM
from the those-poor-men dept.
Media Movies Entertainment Games
Chris Kohler and Chris Baker of Wired had the deeply unfortunate task of watching Uwe Boll's latest affront to cinema and gaming: Postal. Kohler has a rundown on the exceedingly strange movie and its premiere. "Boll seems out to shock his audience into stunned disbelief rather than actually entertain them. Early in the movie, we get a long, leisurely shot of a fully nude Foley scratching his reproductive organs. I don't want to sound like I personally was offended or shocked by anything. In fact, the only time I laughed was during the movie's opening sequence, a comedy skit in the cockpit of one of the September 11 airplanes (they're fighting over the number of virgins they get in Paradise). It was legitimately well-paced and funny. But it was followed by 90 minutes of flat jokes." Baker has a much more in-depth look at Boll and the film's background ... if that's something you really want to hear about.
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  • I... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TellarHK (159748) <tellarhk.hotmail@com> on Monday August 13 2007, @07:12PM (#20219115) Homepage Journal
    ... I really, really don't know what words can be used to describe what I just read. Really. I don't. September 11th and Nazi gold jokes are bad enough, but is the world really ready for a movie featuring Dave Foley scratching his fully exposed balls?

    • Re:I... (Score:5, Funny)

      by UbuntuDupe (970646) * on Monday August 13 2007, @07:23PM (#20219249) Journal
      In fairness, George Lucas scratching his fully-exposed balls would have been an improvement over the Prequels.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by evwah (954864)
        except that after foley scratches his balls, there is still a terrible movie that follows

        so how would you feel if you had to watch george lucas scratching his balls and then watch episode 1 immediately after in all of its jar-jar glory? the word suicide comes to mind.

      • Re:I... (Score:5, Funny)

        by ConceptJunkie (24823) * on Monday August 13 2007, @10:03PM (#20220607) Homepage Journal
        In fairness, George Lucas scratching his fully-exposed balls would have been an improvement over the Prequels

        Isn't that more or less what the Prequels were?

      • In fairness, George Lucas scratching his fully-exposed balls would have been an improvement over the Prequels.
        It also might have given more sense to the term "Midichlorian". Of course... exactly what this would mean to the terms "pod race" and "Jedi duel" is best left unexplored.
    • I hope Foley at least put his cup of coffee down before filming that scene!
    • ... I really, really don't know what words can be used to describe what I just read. Really. I don't. September 11th and Nazi gold jokes are bad enough, but is the world really ready for a movie featuring Dave Foley scratching his fully exposed balls?

      It's like that in USA, you gotta get used to it. Grand theft auto, a game about killing cops and stealing cars. But what pulled it out of the stores? A hidden texture of a nude woman that could be enabled with a third party patch.

      The entire reason for this arti

  • This is not news. (Score:5, Funny)

    by mdenham (747985) on Monday August 13 2007, @07:15PM (#20219155)
    I mean, it's about an Uwe Boll movie. Of course the movie sucks!
    • a little while (or am I dreaming?) back that said this movie was actually pretty good. What happened?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by rar (110454)
      I agree that a bad Uwe Boll movie is not news. What actually is news is the interesting number of positive reviews that surfaced when the Postal movie was aired during the Cannes movie festival! Look here:

      Twitchfilm review [twitchfilm.net].

      Fright review [iconsoffright.com].

      The Feed review [g4tv.com].

      In contrast to the Wired review, I think this is news! (I actually tried to submit a story about it just after the Cannes festival, rejected, bla bla). I think this might mean the Wired comments could be subjective, rather than objective truth (as the badness
    • If it weren't for this story, I wouldn't have known that there was another Uwe Boll movie. Shame on you Slashdot editors!
      • ### I just can't understand why this guy hasn't gone away yet.

        Because he is pretty damn good at finding ways to finance his movies. He might not exactly be the best director, but he certainly knows a thing or to about organizing the money.

        That said, I don't consider him that bad, sure, not the best, but compared to the guys that butchered X-Men 3 his work is pure gold.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by mdenham (747985)

          seriously, who pays for his crap?
          My guess is people who are into doing re-enactments of MST3K.
        • > seriously, who pays for his crap?

          The German Government. There's a ministry that will finance any piece of crap as long as it's German.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by despisethesun (880261)
        I think it's worth noting that Seanbaby [seanbaby.com] was supposed to fight Uwe, too, but Uwe pussied out [1up.com] when he found out that Seanbaby is a trained MMA fighter. He's a big toughguy when he's fighting your average internet dork but if someone actually knows how to fight, he's nowhere to be found.

  • I hear a sequel is in the works (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 13 2007, @07:17PM (#20219173)
    Goatse, The Movie. I hear the directors cut will include three hours of extended footage added to the already lengthy 2 hour and 30 minute film. I also hear he borrows extensively from Gus Van Sant.
  • Uwe Boll is the only director who can make the average Troma film look like high art. Has he ever made a decent film? If the news that there is Postal movie wasnt bad enough, gamers can look forward to having Dungeon Siege, Legacy of Kain and Far Cry are all due to get the Boll treatment soon enough. After House of the Dead, I refuse to see them in theatres, refuse to rent them, definately refuse to buy them, if more did the same maybe studios would get the hint and stop giving this bozo money.
    • if more did the same maybe studios would get the hint and stop giving this bozo money.

      Or just blame piracy for the lack of money generated*. Boll isn't the only horrible filmmaker out there, he's just the (arguably) worst and he apparently revels in this sort of attention. I'm not sure why he picked video game movies as the genre to make worse. That's like deciding to make a worse version of ET for the 2600.

      * But who would pirate a Uwe Boll movie, even with free unlimited bandwidth!?
      • Ugghh your right, I forgot about that...though anyone who would waste the bandwidth deserves the badness.
    • Is it just me, or is Uwe Boll doing more damage to the image of the video game industry than Jack Thompson?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mwvdlee (775178)
      I'm surprised that game studio's let him direct those movies. I'm sure it's a commercial decission and Boll is probably the cheapest director they can find but really; if you have any pride in product you made, why would you let Boll touch it?
    • House of the dead was a *great* freakin' movie. It was the least scary, most unintentionally funny bad movie since Deep Blue Sea. And that's saying a lot. I mean, come one! Who else would include actual game footage every time someone bit it? That was brilliant! It was so brilliant, Doom copied it, only they didn't include actual game footage, and it wasn't when the hero died (damnit).

      Okay, "Alone in the Dark" shat. I refused to see BloodRayne, 'cause it had a stupid title, and I hated the game. But House o

      • Re:Of course its bad its Uwe Boll (Score:4, Funny)

        by Asmor (775910) on Monday August 13 2007, @09:50PM (#20220515) Homepage
        Be on the lookout this summer for a trilogy of fantastic new Uwe Boll movies including:

        Custer's Revenge
        ET: The Video Game: The Movie
        Street Fighter: The Movie: The Video Game: The Movie
      • ### The problem with Uwe is that he starts out with good (or at least decent) games and turns into crappy movies.

        Alone in the Dark was cool back when it run on a 386 and had a character build out of 20 polygons, nobody cared about the later incarnations of it. House of the Death was a lightgun shooter, how much of a good movie do you expect from that? And BloodRayne is about a sexy girl and lots of blood, I think he adopted that fine, even so when he changed the story around a bit (which video game movie ha
      • Then why on earth do game companies grant him permission, knowing it'll suck? Those things are bad enough to destroy a franchise just by association.

        The same reason that otherwise competent actors appear in his dreck - filthy lucre.

        I expect the reasoning for both is that nobody is going to see the crap (which is only being made for some tax scam anyway), so why not take the money?

      • I never played Postal, but Postal 2 was a wretched, immature piece of crap masquerading as a game. It wasn't funny, it wasn't playable. It's only "redeeming" feature was its shock value and even that got tiresome with about 10 minutes of play.
          • No, the point of ANY GAME is to be fun, involving or thought provoking. Postal 2 was none of those things. It was a badly designed piece of shit with atrocious loading times, crashes, arbitrary deaths, box-like and nausea inducing levels, wave upon wave of tedious enemies, juvenile humour and no redeeming features of any kind. It was a terrible game and I feel sullied to have even played it.
              • I'm on a high horse for hating the game for a whole list of reasons that I cited? Well excuse me for having an opinion and stating it in a discussion thread.

  • I saw this coming (Score:3, Funny)

    by jollyreaper (513215) on Monday August 13 2007, @07:36PM (#20219407)
    Who would think a movie about the US Postal Service would be exciting? Puhleeeaze. What's that, TFA? No. I didn't read it. Why do you ask?
  • The thing that makes Uwe Boll movies even worse than they already are is his dickish attitude. Lets not forget that he got into a boxing match with some of his most disliked movie critics, but only after denying them the training he had promised, as well as screening out the few with real experience. So he is a totally talentless asshole whose sole job it is to ruin franchises that we all hold dear. Germany really has to stop subsidizing him- it really makes a mockery of the the tax break meant to fund "art
  • The major characters in the comic The Whiteboard [the-whiteboard.com] are drawn as various animals. The big polar bear is Doc, the main character.

    http://the-whiteboard.com/autowb643.html [the-whiteboard.com]

    http://the-whiteboard.com/autowb645.html [the-whiteboard.com]

    steveha
  • Maybe the fact that the trailer has the only good scene will finally create a case for consumer fraud against Boll?
  • ... as the next guy. But I think Uwe found the genre he belongs to.
    The trailer of this movie looks very interesting from a very very bad movie that requires watching with friends and a lot of beer.
  • We've all heard how Boll is exploiting some tax loophole by watching expensive & unwatchable flops, but how do the investors make money? There must be a site that explains it in detail what is happening. And given that, why haven't the German government closed this loophole to but this jerk out of business?
      • I still don't get it. Uwe Boll films make almost no money at all, have no distribution deals and no TV rights since they are unwatchable crap. Tomb Raider might also be unwatchable crap but it was assured of all those things. All that applies to a Boll movie is the German loophole which gives you 10% tax back. So you sink 10 million into filming Postal and get 1 million back from the 10% tax rebate. What good is that if you subsequently lose your 10 million investment because the movie is a complete flop?
        • Bolls films already have the built in audience of gamers so they will almost always make back the minimal amount of money that they take to make.

          And even though Germany has changed the law so that only German production companies can make use of the tax shelter, because Boll is German he still can take advantage of it. And if the films lose money then they can still move tax losses to another year and therefore put off the losses until a future date when perhaps they will make some money through dvd sales
  • You know what the deal is with Uwe Boll and his horrible movies based on video games? I'm betting it's Hollywood's revenge against the video game industry for making more in sales than movies get in box office receipts (obligatory Wikipedia link [wikipedia.org]).
  • I was REALLY excited when I learned that A. They were making a Postal movie and that B. it would be made to be as absolutely offensive as possible. I adored the original two games (because, let's face it, after a really bad day at work, Postal was the perfect game to play) and I appreciated their very twisted humour.

    I cannot wait to be able to actually get my hands on this. Just about all of his past movies have been travesties, but in all honesty I think he was the right guy to pick to make this movie.
  • Bad as they may be, gotta give him credit for actually managing to make movie after movie, often with big-name stars.

    Worth quoting the Wikipedia entry on Boll [wikipedia.org]:

    While Boll has received a lot of negative publicity regarding this funding method, he was actually one of the few directors to use the tax shelter as intended. His films were financed, produced, and directed by a German company, which was the initial intention behind the tax shelter: to provide incentive for investment in German entertainment properti

    • Whine about his works as you like; he is actually DOING SOMETHING, and doing it legitimately (albeit badly), and making a bunch of money at it.
      No, he is exploiting a loophole in the tax code that allows him to make money by contributing nothing useful at all to society and merely leeching off of the tax revenue collected from others. Sorry my friend, but Uwe Boll is the scum of the earth, and has contributed nothing meaningful to society.
    • I have. Well, sort of. Of course, I didn't really expect it to be a good movie, but I secretly hoped it could be good in the same way Postal the game was. Maybe something like Road House [imdb.com] (except with all the ghey carefully removed): rather stupid, cheap, and cheesy, but also super violent and funny. Apparently, the movie easily scored on the "stupid" part and failed on the "funny", which is pretty much what I thought was the realist expectation.
      • I'm still hoping this movie isn't too bad - some reviews are actually positive. It should be the perfect game for a Boll movie, really.

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