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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 1 year

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Is It Really That Bad?

The 90s were alternately an amazing time for comedies and an absolute wasteland of garbage best forgotten. Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler both rose to prominence during this era, and both thrived in their niches, delivering some of the most well-liked movies of their careers. But it was still the 90s, and the ugly side of comedy of the time was always ready to rear its ugly head. For instance, in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, we have the infamously transphobic finale, the joke the entire film has been building up to and is so shockingly bigoted you’d think it was written by J.K. Rowling. But bad comedies were just like that back then, and even good comedies could fall victim to it.

We’re not talking about a good comedy gone bad, though. We’re here to talk about a film with a solid 1 on Metacritic and that obliterated the careers of its two leads: Bio-Dome.

At one point, it was supposed to be a much more serious film about slackers being trapped and forced to survive in the titular structure, but you know how studio executives can be, and so the film was transformed into a totally radical 90s slacker grossout comedy filled with sex jokes, farts, and other tasteless humor. There are also rumors going around that this was originally supposed to be the third Bill and Ted adventure, but those are just rumors, albeit ones that you can see how one would believe considering how this film rips off that dynamic duo while cranking their idiocy and homoeroticism up to 11.

Whatever the case, what we got was absolutely torn apart by critics, and ensured Pauly Shore would never rise above doing anything more than direct-to-video garbage for the rest of his career, and turned Stephen Baldwin into the black sheep of the nepo baby dynasty that is the Baldwins, ruining his career which then led to him becoming a born again evangelical Christian whose daughter married Justin Bieber (which is still a massive W compared to inspiring GamerGate or actually murdering someone). It’s also the film that Weird Al decided to use to describe the miserable plane trip in his song “Albuquerque,” and the way he refers to it makes it clear the film is worse than the plane exploding in the second worse aviation accident to happen over New Mexico in fiction.

(This one being the worst, obviously).

But hey, maybe the critics were just being too harsh to this dumb comedy that was clearly meant to be enjoyed by stoners. With my tray table up and my seat back in the full upright position, I strapped on in and took a look at Bio-Dome to see if this comedy has a few laughs in it, or if it really is that bad after all.

THE GOOD

Well… The soundtrack is pretty good. They’ve got a lot of solid tracks on it, and Tenacious D actually briefly shows up for a cameo. It lasts maybe three seconds, but it might be the best three seconds in the movie.

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There’s also a montage set to “The Safety Dance” near the end of the movie, and it might be the single genuinely funny sequence the film has to offer. I thought a few of the gags in it were pretty good, and it’s the only time the protagonist's goofy idiocy felt charming instead of revolting. And then it leads into the climax of the films, which is actually decent because there are actual stakes instead of random vignettes of these idiots dicking around. Sure, it’s decent by the standards of the rest of the movie, but credit where credit is due.

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Finally, William “Walter Peck” Atherton plays a character named Dr. Faulkner, a guy who absolutely fucking hates Bud and Doyle, and thus he becomes the most sympathetic character in the entire film. You will be begging him to kill these two morons by the end. It helps that Atherton is the only person in the entire movie who is actually trying to act.

Yeah, that’s it. Time to shift into Hater Mode.

THE BAD

The fact the entire movie hinges on these two idiots is a joke, and not a particularly funny one a that.

The 90s was littered with all manner of idiot duos, most famously with Dumb & Dumber, but Bud and Doyle are easily the nadir of such characters. The big issue is they are not merely lethally stupid to the point they fuck up a massive science experiment—no, they are horribly unpleasant people. They bumble their way through the titular bio-dome, ruining the work of the scientists at every turn, but that’s not even the real problem. No, the problem is that despite having two girlfriends they supposedly adore, they not only constantly flirt with the women scientists in the dome, and even worse they crawl into their beds while they’re sleeping and start feeling them up. Ah, the 90s, where you could have your protagonists sexually assault a woman and still expect people to sympathize them while playing the violation off for laughs! Ah, but it’s okay, because they feel really bad about it, guys.

Aside from that vileness, the jokes are just as juvenile and pathetic as you can imagine they’d be. You have fart jokes, pee jokes, sex jokes, Baldwin eating Shore’s toenails… Stuff like this has its place and can be funny, but this is really the only humor the movie has. There isn’t more clever than some lame fart a stoner can laugh at while high off their ass.

And maybe this could be forgivable if anyone was actually fucking trying. There are two types of bad acting in this movie: hammy, camera-mugging idiocy (our two leads) and bland, wooden delivery (the female scientists). No one in this film seems like they cared at all, and honestly, it’s not hard to see why. What is there to even give a shit about? Out of the two leads I do think Shore is probably the “better” of the two, but this is better in the sense that being kicked in the balls is better than being shot in the back of the head execution style

IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?

Look, I went into this with an open mind. You all know I’m not above enjoying some nasty, trashy comedies; two of my all-time favorite films are Freddy Got Fingered and Little Nicky, the former film especially being one I hold in high regard. But… No, this one legitimately is as bad as it’s made out to be. Weird Al must be thanking his lucky stars that plane exploded over Albuquerque so he didn’t have to sit through the rest of the movie.

Like, in the movies I mentioned, there’s at least something to latch onto. Freddy Got Fingered is essentially the greatest troll in history, with Tom Green blowing a studio’s money to make the most bogus gross-out comedy ever, and in some bizarre ways it has some artistic merit. And with Little Nicky, there’s some entertaining villains, decent jokes here and there, and just a slew of memetic lines. Bio-Dome has absolutely nothing like that; it’s just two obnoxious, unpleasant characters being played by actors who definitely can’t salvage the material delivering the stupidest gags and jokes imaginable for an hour and a half. This really is the most bottom of the barrel lowest common denominator garbage you could scrape up.

Even still, I can’t particularly say it’s the absolute worst comedy I’ve ever seen, mainly because there wasn’t much expectations it would be good. It stars Pauly fucking Shore, the only guy from Encino Man who will probably never win an Oscar as long as he lives, it being dogshit was expected compared to something like The Love Guru or even The Master of Disguise. Those films starred genuinely talented comedians, while this movie just didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, this is still one of the worst comedies ever made, but it really was something I expected would suck even if I really hoped it wouldn’t.

I honestly don’t know how this managed a 4.4 on IMDB; I get there are some lunatics who actually love this movie, but there can’t be enough to pull this out of the bottom 100 gutter, can there be? It shouldn’t have higher than a 2.5, and that’s just being generous because there is nothing about this film that is so good enough that it deserves higher.

But that’s also the thing: As bad as it is, it is utterly unremarkable. It’s just the epitome of bad 90s comedy, and while it is the worst among that crowd, it doesn’t really stand out in any notable way other than sucking really hard. This is a film bad in the most generic ways possible, and I think that’s part of why it has fallen to the wayside in terms of “worst movies of all time” lists these days. Like does it deserve to be there? Sure, but there’s just a lot more vile and offensive comedies than this to pick from. This is just a generic bad comedy at the end of the day.

If you want to see the concept done right, and shorter to boot, just watch the episode of Johnny Bravo entitled “Biosphere Johnny,” which is a parody of this film and does every single thing this movie tried to do and better, proving once and for all Johnny is a true Chad.

#is it really that bad?#IIRTB #review #movie review #Bio-Dome #Pauly Shore #Stephen Baldwin #comedy

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