Grandma, put down the jewellery.

The Movie: Tempo, directed by Eric Styles
Recommendation: No one.
Reason: No one should ever see this movie. Ever.

Seriously. Never. I've seen some pretty awful movies. I've seen Cabin Fever, I've seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre: the Next Generation. I've seen every Uwe Boll movie to date (for free). I even sat through the anatomically impossible sex scene in Bloodrayne without puking. No one should be made to watch Tempo. Never in a million years did I think a movie could be so awful, and yet here we are.

Broomie bought this movie for me due to a certain...enthusiasm on my part for Rachel Leigh Cook. Specifically, she's adorable and I love Josie and the Pussycats. So naturally, no Rachel Leigh Cook movie could be a bad choice. Noooo. I was so very wrong. The script was wretched, packed with unbelievably stupid lines that sounded as though they were written by a high school kid. It was like a tenth-grader trying to rewrite Closer (everyone must see Closer). Follow that with Rachel Leigh Cook in the role of Not-Alice, who acts passably in roles she's familiar with (ie. not this) and Hugh Dancy in the role of Not-Dan, who as far as I can tell is made of animated wood. That leaves us with Melanie Griffith in the role of Not-Anna, and not a Clive Owen-inspired role in sight. (Let's also ignore that Tempo was released before Closer, just for the sake of the metaphor here.)

Melanie Griffith is what drags this film from mediocre-bad to absolutely-wretched-bad. She emotes like a brick wall, barely able to slur out her lines between lips so stuffed with collagen they look like overinflated party balloons. She sounds, acts and moves like a grandma, making her escape from anything more violent than a fire hydrant seem less and less likely with each passing second. When she tries to sound tough and use curse words, she sounds like she's never even heard them before in her life. Four-letter words have to be hurled with confidence, not hissed as though your mom's listening. Thanks for hauling a bad movie into the realms of hell, Melanie.

-67/365 down, 298/365 to go