The 7 Most Unintentionally Hilarious Movies of the Decade

6 Battlefield Earth

There's a lot of Travolta going on here, and I promise we'll get to that. We are not made of stone! And we all know this is a legendarily bad movie. But did you know that the people who created this unintentionally comic classic were deadly serious about its important message? Oh yes they were! Battlefield Earth is one of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's dreary sci-fi tomes that some dum-dum Hollywood people (and some dum-dum others, too, to be fair) literally treat as the Gospel. In this particular story, L. Ron's goal was stated by the proto-fascist charlatan himself: "I was a bit disgusted with the way the psychologists and brain surgeons mess people up so I wrote a fiction story based in part on the consequences that could occur if the shrinks continued to do it."

Yep. A "fiction story." He just went ahead and wrote that thing. Battlefield Earth tells the tale of humanity's bleak future, in the conveniently round year of A.D. 3000 (can you imagine using that in the title of any respectable piece of entertainment?!). Earth has been conquered by a bunch of smelly, dreadlocked giants called the Psychlos, who somehow represent that great demon psychiatry. Subtle nomenclature, I know, but if you think about it, the words sort of sound the same: Psychlo, psychiatry, OF COURSE I AM KIDDING IT'S AS SUBTLE AS A CINDER BLOCK UPSIDE THE HEAD. It is a ridiculous book, but for some reason the people at St. Martin's Press published it in 1982. Its initial title was Man, the Endangered Species, and the fact that a respectable publishing house put it out made a good case for that title as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Well, years later, a decent-for-a-white-guy dancer/fan of exciting massage/Hollywood dum-dum named John Travolta -- acolyte of all things L. Ron -- decided that it needed to be a movie, and achieved the impossible: He made the book look great by comparison. The great pleasure of watching Travolta chew scenery in Battlefield Earth is knowing that he really thought he was saying something deep, man. But it's a clown show through and through: All the poor bastards playing Psychlos along with Travolta (including genuinely excellent actor Forest Whitaker) join him in gnawing the furniture, performing like drunk thespians at a particularly down-on-its-luck Renfest. The actors playing the humans must have all been told on pain of being fired, "Your main job is to portray incredible, mind-bending dumbness, and with the least amount of charisma mathematically possible." The Psychlos call things they don't like "craplousy" -- one word -- and while awkward, it describes every single goddamned second of this film perfectly. The "hero" humans' battle cry is, I swear to God, "Blow the Dome!" Man, nobody gets out of this Scientological poo-fest with any dignity, and that makes it all the more Schadenfreudentastic. Praise Xenu!

5 Crossroads

The pitch meeting for Crossroads must have gone something like this: "We should make a movie and Britney Spears should be in it." No surprises there. In 2002, she was still the hottest pop star on the planet. If you'd have suggested that a guy like K-Fed might one day popo her zao, you'd have been laughed out of one of the thousands of Britney forums where middle-aged men posing as 12-year-old girls slowly whiled away the final years of their once-happy marriages.

The Crossroads meetings that I wish we'd seen took place a bit farther down the line. Meetings like the one that must have happened at some point in time, where a junior executive timidly raised his hand and said, "Should this low-budget pop star vanity project really have a scene where it turns out that Britney's best friend's fiance got her other best friend pregnant by raping her?"

Then, after that unfortunate person had been fired and production continued, there definitely had to be another meeting where an assistant junior executive cautiously cleared her throat and asked, "OK, but in this movie targeted toward the pre-teens that make up Britney's audience ... after the boyfriend is revealed as a rapist, should the pregnant friend really flee the scene, trip down a flight of stairs and have a miscarriage?"

After that firing, an unpaid intern most assuredly chimed in at a meeting and said, "I'm just an unpaid intern, but should Britney's dad really be played by an enormous garbage bag filled almost to bursting with turkey stuffing?" Then he said, "No, I've never heard of Dan Aykroyd, I'm 18." Then he said, "You're kidding! That's the Blues Brothers guy? Did he eat John Belushi?"

That guy wasn't fired because his uncle is McG, but finally, a caterer chimed in at a meeting and said, "I know I don't work here, but you're not really going to have the fiance reveal himself as the rapist by taking a sip of beer from a blue bottle, which the girl he raped mentioned he was also drinking the night that he raped her? Not only do I not think they make beer in blue bottles, but the mere act of drinking one would hardly be construed by any rational person as solid evidence that you're a rapist. Which of you idiots had the Reuben?"

The point I'm making is that if you went into Crossroads expecting a dippy little road trip movie where the three childhood friends sing Sheryl Crow songs in a convertible and improbably win hundreds of dollars in a Bourbon Street karaoke contest, you would have been right. But the movie also attempted to tackle weighty, real-life issues such as teen pregnancy, rape, murder and parental abandonment, with hilarious consequences. It's like a blender full of Lifetime TV movies set to puree and then poured straight into a toilet.

When the 18-year-old girls learn that the stranger who is driving them to LA has been in prison for murder, one of them brushes it off by saying, "So he may have killed someone, OK? So what? He did his time, he's paid his debt to society!" When valedictorian Britney Spears arrives at her mother's house to meet her for the first time, her mother promptly tells her she was a mistake and that she never wants to see her again. Would it make it even funnier if in this supposedly tragic scene, Britney's mom was hamfistedly played by Kim Cattrall? Done and done!

The only explanation that makes any sense to me? Director Tamra Davis, of Billy Madison, Half Baked and CB4 fame, knew she was making another stoner classic. "No, seriously, guys, they'll be howling. By the time the Apple Guy from the ads coats himself in baby powder and literally begs Britney for sex on prom night, they'll completely forget that this movie was meant for sixth-grade girls. Now pass the bong and button up Aykroyd's shirt, I think some stuffing is starting to leak out."

Odds are, you know the memes. You've seen the highlight videos. Nic Cage in a bear suit. Nic Cage in a bear suit, punching women in the face. Nic Cage screaming "NOT THE BEES!" as a fun-loving gang of honey cultists pour bees onto his face -- a scene that, many critics argue, could only be improved by the inclusion of a bear suit. And that stuff's all great, obviously. But there's so much more. If you're someone who likes laughing for the wrong reasons, and I sense that you are, there's no better treat than sitting down to feed your brain every delusional second of The Wicker Man.

Not only is the comedy unintentional, it's unintentional as hell. This remake of the well-regarded 1973 British original was definitely meant to be taken seriously. They hired popular celebrity man-rodent Cage as the lead, and Academy Award winner Ellen Burstyn to rule the honeypot in full Braveheart makeup. It was written and directed by Neil LaBute, a controversial playwright whose previous work included one of the first major plays about the 9/11 attacks -- so, yeah, serious. He's known for exploring gender roles, and The Wicker Man explores them with all the subtlety of a tire fire in church -- did I mention the repeated punching of women in the face? Or the fun, flirty subplot with Leelee Sobieski that culminates in Nic kicking her into a wall? Or the fact that the movie ends with Cage burned alive by the daughter he was tricked into conceiving years before by a group of conniving women? The misogyny would be unsettling if the whole thing wasn't such a goofy-ass cartoon.

But that's what makes The Wicker Man so great: the giant abyss between what it wants to be and what it actually is. It's a horror movie with no scares, occurring entirely in broad daylight. It's a psychological thriller with no thrills, or psychology. When it goes for creepy, you just laugh, partially because Nic Cage's reactions are just as nonsensical as the movie itself. He's in the movie, but clearly doesn't know what the hell it's about. He goes back and forth between sleepwalky mumbling and full-throttle shouting madness, always at the wrong times. When he learns the cult is into selective breeding and ritual sacrifice, his response is a mild "I don't GET you. I don't GET this place." When faced with unspeakable horror, Cage seemingly thought to himself, "What would Chandler Bing say?"

The film's finest WTF moment, and one you won't find in the Best Of compilations, comes right after policeman Cage arrives on the cult's island to search for a missing girl. He meets some villagers carrying a large burlap sack, and whatever's in the sack is squirming and dripping blood. He takes a good look at this -- remember, he's searching for a missing girl -- musters his years of police experience, and asks, "What's in the bag? A shark or something?"

There have been no sharks. There's no reason to think of sharks, or, really, anything other than THE MISSING GIRL HE IS THERE TO FIND. He gets no answer, and asks no follow-ups. Shark was all he had. He took his best shot, and his best shot was shark. And that sentence makes about as much sense as the whole movie.

Every great joke needs a punchline, and The Wicker Man doesn't disappoint. After Cage meets his screaming, charbroiled death, the film ends and a title slate appears: "For JOHNNY RAMONE." Sure. I don't know why it's there, and I don't want to find out. As it stands, it's the perfect absinthe-soaked cherry on the cyanide-and-gravy sundae that is The Wicker Man.

3 The Room

First: If you still haven't seen The Room, for the love of all that is good and cheesy watch it now. No, I'm not kidding, I mean NOW. Come on, it's time, my friend. Do your duty and finally watch this thing. Go ahead, I'll wait.

There, now you've watched The Room. Welcome to the other side! I'm here with your complimentary cocktail of whiskey and vodka (mixed), football in hand, ready to say to you, Dear Reader: right?!?! Isn't that one of the weirdest, most inexplicable things you've ever seen? YES, you say. Of course you do!

But is it unintentionally funny? Oh hell yes, with a few disclaimers up front: The funny might be mixed with a fair amount of revulsion, especially at the scenes of star/writer/director/producer/alien being Tommy Wiseau's stringy nakedness. He loves to show his gnarled beef-jerky-looking ass, and that is an unfortunate fact of the The Room experience. It's rough for all of us.

And yes, if you stop and think for too long that people -- real, carbon-based fellow human beings! -- actually assembled in a specific location on Earth for more than one day in a row to make this movie happen, a kind of existential despair can overtake you. We've all been there.

Beyond that, though, The Room is purely hilarious. We start with the obvious: watching everyone in the movie trying to pretend that the leading man (Wiseau) is NOT a non-specifically-Eastern-European-accented freakshow with unwashed rock-roadie hair. He is simply "Johnny," good ol' American Johnny, who works doing something profitable in a "bank." His mother-in-law loves him because he's a good provider, rendering her blind to the fact that he does not behave, or speak, like any person who ever existed. Even allowing for the strong accent, Wiseau's version of English seems to defy all linguistic rules and rhythms, making no simple sentence safe from druggy weirdness.

Nothing makes sense in this movie. Nothing, not a damned thing. An old woman announces to her beloved daughter that she has breast cancer and the daughter's reaction is casual annoyance. They literally replace an actor halfway through the movie with someone else, and we're not supposed to notice. Everyone flips the hells out when a creepy little bastard named Denny -- who I guess is supposed to be a sweet 13-year-old in the movie but looks more like a budding sexual offender in his mid-late 20s -- gets involved with a drug dealer. Then that story is dropped like a hot rock, and nobody gives a damn. Everyone throws a football around playing "catch," but only from distances of less than five feet. A terrible comic-relief actor is allowed to hijack an already terrible scene, babbling about "me underwears." Every single goddamned thing is wrong with this movie, and it is hilarious.

And looming over it all: Tommy Wiseau, a colossus of terrible movie making; a mystery to this very day; a man who made such an exquisitely awful movie that countless articles have been written about it AND THIS IS ONE MORE; a man who occasionally tries to hint that this was his intention all along -- to make a "comedy!" He is some sort of twisted marketing genius, and his money may well have come from selling Serbian children's kidneys on the black market. But no, The Room was not an intentional comedy. You cannot fake stuff this bad. It is a relationship melodrama gone unimaginably wrong, and one of the funniest movies you'll ever see.

2 The Happening

With The Happening, M. Night Shyamalyanalayalan seals his place in movie firmament as the most prolifically and consistently unintentionally funny director since Ed Wood. The creepier he tries to be, the sillier he gets, so I nominate him to direct the relaunch of House of a Thousand Corpses.

It's the future, I think, by maybe five minutes or so, when in New York City a mysterious wind carrying -- I dunno, pollen or leaf mold or something -- causes people to start stabbing themselves, blowing their own brains out, hurling themselves off buildings, eating at Arby's, just a big bunch of fun suicides.

Enter Markulus (E Markus) Wahlberg, an earnest, soft-spoken science teacher, who first shows his foolhardy courage in the face of insanity by being a friend to John Leguizamo. Mark's wife, an intelligent, nattering lemur played by Zooey Deschanel, tells them that there is a happening happening and that she has an old boyfriend, and they need to leave but she can't find her ukulele.

Off they go, running from the evil Oak Wilt, or Corn Smut, or whatever the hell it is. Mr. E. Mark's odd whiny delivery perfectly complements his oversized block of a head, prominent in Shyamalan's many Spielbergian closeups. Ms. Deschanel's numb line delivery makes her sound like she's constantly telling her iPhone to order her tomato soup. John Leguizamo seems to spit all his lines in a continuous rubber-mouthed issue of saliva and incomprehension.

A cast of increasingly loony characters parade on screen and swiftly die, including two perfectly innocent kids, culminating with a star turn by the formerly dignified Betty Buckley, who delivers the movie's most memorable line: "Why you eyein' my lemon drink?"

You'll see a man lie down in front of a self-propelled lawn mower and mow himself to death. You'll see extreme closeups of a deformed troglodyte obsess over hot dogs. And you'll see John Leguizamo crash into a tree in a Jeep. What's not to love?

It's no exaggeration to say that Birdemic delivers more laughs than Adam Sandler's last 15 movies combined (I realize that analogy lacks explanatory power because a typical grease fire delivers more laughs than Adam Sandler's last 15 movies, but you get the point). It's something you would not expect from a Hitchcock homage made by a Vietnamese immigrant, one whose female lead doubled as the film's makeup artist, whose male lead acts as though he'd just been through some unspeakable trauma and given a powerful sedative, and that, though shot in 2009, looks to have been done on a camera that would have been out of date the year that Doogie Howser, M.D. was in its second season.

And yet despite the bad writing, bad acting, bad sound, bad directing, bad casting, bad editing and bad craft services (I assume), it is one of the most sublime experiences you'll ever have at the cinema. This is mostly due to the fact that the reach of its director, James Nguyen, so exceeded his grasp that they really aren't even in the same plane of existence.

Taking his cue from the Hitchcock masterpiece The Birds, which is about a romance that takes place during an unexplained bird attack in Half Moon Bay, Nguyen weaves the tale of a romance that takes place during an unexplained bird attack in Half Moon Bay. Unlike Hitchcock, however, in lieu of actual birds, Nguyen substituted badly done animated GIFs of birds that look like they flew out of an e-card your great aunt Dora sent you in 1996.

Hilariously, the birds make sounds like dive-bombing planes -- and in fact they do appear to drop bombs of some sort, as well as, quite memorably, several buckets of caustic liquid. But not to worry, our heroes are able to fend them off easily enough with coat hangers borrowed from their cheap hotel.

To describe it in any more detail would be to rob you of the joy of experiencing every exquisitely bad frame.

For more accidental humor, check out 4 Unintentionally Hilarious Guides for Depressing Situations and 5 Unintentionally Hilarious Soviet Versions of Good Ideas.