Erin Crock-o-spit

Rating: 2/10 (1 August 2001)

There are truly bad movies. Some of them are at least enjoyable, in a Mystery Science Theatre sort of way. But then there are bad movies that try to pass themselves off as good, in which even the flaws turn out to be flat-out annoying more than entertaining.
"Erin Brockovich" is of the second type. In fact, it's the worst of the second type of bad films to be released in 2000. Here's a brief summary of some of the reasons why:

Six hundred innocent lives are at stake. The audience is supposed to care. It doesn't. That's the first sign a movie like this is in trouble.

Julia Roberts is a good actress, but she comes off as over-acting because of the banal dialogue. No, sorry, "dialogue" implies interaction. All we have here is Julia Roberts dishing out lines that basically say, "look Ma, I'm acting!" and show off her talent to memorize tedium.

PG&E is portrayed as an evil, evil corporation. That's not the part I have a problem with. I have a problem with the fact that its representatives are portrayed as drones that serve as nothing more than voices for the evil, evil corporation. Faithful representatives, to be sure, but this was done better with stormtroopers and Star Wars.

Long and boring. This is a dramatized by-the-textbook retelling. "Gettysburg" and "Anna and the King" also suffered from this, but at least they were visually interesting. Visually (and musically), "Brockovich" plays like a Seinfeld episode without the humor. Or the character design.

It's just so COLD. And the characters are all flat. (That's right, I called Erin Brockovich flat.) "Tough biker who likes kids and is a sensitive guy on the inside" is NOT character development - and everyone else was worse.

I gave this an IMDB rating of 2/10. I'm a nice guy.