‘Failure fascinates, for all the reasons that success is a drag…’
Tim Robey is an acclaimed UK film critic best known for his work with the Daily Telegraph. As a man with thousands of film reviews under his belt, he knows a thing or two about a flop. Box Office Poison charts a century of flops beginning with noted racist D.W. Griffiths’ Intolerance and ending with 2019’s disastrous big-screen adaptation of Cats (a film that Robey himself famously awarded an almost unprecedented zero stars). While it’s important to note that not every film in this book is bad (there is nothing wrong with William Friedkin’s curiously named Sorceror or the Coen Brothers’ The Hudsucker Proxy), there are some real stinkers here, and it is those films that often inspire the best chapters…
There is something fascinating about a flop. How can so many people, some of them experienced, some of them clearly talented, combine to produce something that is so, so bad? While many of these flops are notorious (Catwoman, Dune), Robey wisely eschews writing about Heaven’s Gate and Ishtar because those particular disasters have been covered in depth elsewhere. This is typical of Robey’s overall style. He has the confidence to guide the reader through a century of flops without ever making it feel like a film studies lesson. His informal, conversational style is entertaining, often hilarious and always accessible.
Box Office Poison gives us the chance to slow down at the car crash. It’s irresistible.