The Wicker Man (2006) **
(and also ****)
I've given this film both a two star rating (and that's being generous) for overall quality, and also four stars for kitschy fun, because this attempt at remaking the 1973 cult classic of the same name goes so badly off-track that it becomes one of the most unintentionally hilarious bad films of the past decade.

Hollywood remakes in general tend to go poorly, especially remakes of classics, but there are so many missteps here it boggles the mind. The original was an English film and contrasted a believable stiff-upper-lip modern Brit encountering a pagan cult still practicing ancient Celtic rites in the remote islands off the coast of Scotland. As such, it was completely believable. This version however decided to relocate the cult to the U.S. of course, which automatically stretches the credibility. But not somewhere in, say, New England, oh no, it was set in the islands of the Pacific Northwest, a place Hollywood loves to shoot for budgetary reasons.

But taking the ancient Celtic cult about as far away from the British Isles as possible in the U.S., save maybe Alaska, was just the beginning. The lead role was given to none other than Nic Cage, whose (ahem) limited acting range have helped make bombs out of a lot of other genre pictures. Here Cage does not disappoint, turning in a performance so wooden that you might think the title refers to his character.

Cage plays police officer Edward Malus, who goes to the island to investigate the disappearance of a girl who looks identical to a girl who he failed to save in a car crash a few months earlier. Despite near constant flashbacks, to that scene, it's never explained, with even such details as who was driving either vehicle left completely unresolved.

These annoying, persistent flashbacks aren't the only intrusive and unexplained scenes though. Soon Malus starts having flashbacks to things that never actually happened in what is obviously a desperate attempt by the filmmakers to inject some sort of visual shock value into the otherwise lifeless film. In one particularly funny sequence, Malus rescues a drowned girl only to flashback to not having rescued the drowned girl, before flashing back to having rescued the drowned girl, before showing in the present that he hasn't in fact rescued anyone - all through a series of jump cuts. Despite this and other attempts at shock value, this PG-13 film is actually tamer, with nothing to rival the pagan debauchery of its predecessor of more than 30 years!

Eventually Malus actually has to don a bear costume (that is funnier than the 'pagan' outfits Dan Akroyd and Tom Hanks wear in the comedy remake of Dragnet) in order to infiltrate one of the cult's sacred rites.

There's so much more I could go into, but I'm going to leave it at that and say grab some beers and some buds and check this out (the theatrical version is preferred over the 'unrated' version for maximum lulz), you will be rolling on the floor with laughter before the first ten minutes are up!