{"id":4286,"date":"2024-10-05T03:30:13","date_gmt":"2024-10-05T03:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=4286"},"modified":"2024-10-12T22:11:19","modified_gmt":"2024-10-12T22:11:19","slug":"bad-timing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/05\/bad-timing\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad Timing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Bad Timing <\/strong>(1980)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 World Northal\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 123 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R* (strong sexual content, full frontal nudity, rape, language, drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Nicolas Roeg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Yale Udoff\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Richard Hartley\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Anthony B. Richmond\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 25, 1980 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Art Garfunkel, Theresa Russell, Harvey Keitel, Denholm Elliot.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: NO STARS!!!<\/p>\n

\u00a0I would rather sit through 100 mindless grade-Z exploitation movies than a single film as utterly pretentious as Bad Timing<\/strong>, a psychological drama from Nicolas Roeg (Don\u2019t Look Now, The Man Who Fell to Earth). It\u2019s hard to say what was going through the filmmaker\u2019s mind when he decided to regale us with this tale of a troubling relationship between a dull-witted psychoanalyst and a disturbed woman. Oh, did I say regale? I meant bore us to death.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There are only four characters in Bad Timing<\/strong> you need concern yourself with; Dr. Alex Linden (singer Garfunkel), Milena (Russell, Black Widow), Inspector Netusil (Keitel, Taxi Driver) and Stefan (Elliott, Raiders of the Lost Ark). The different lovers, colleagues, students, doctors and policemen with whom they cross paths periodically are merely window dressing and don\u2019t matter in the slightest.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Once again, Roeg opts to tell his story in flashback form with Netusil interrogating Linden at a Vienna hospital about why Milena swallowed a whole bottle of pills. The flashbacks reveal the doctor was involved in a sexual relationship with the free-spirited young woman taking a break from her much older husband Stefan across the border. He\u2019s really into her; she\u2019s not into the whole commitment thing. Desire becomes love; love turns to obsession. She walks out on him. He can\u2019t forget her. Her mental state begins to deteriorate. He doesn\u2019t care anymore. She threatens to kill herself. He doesn\u2019t believe her. She almost dies before he finally calls for help. The police have questions. Something doesn\u2019t add up. I think that about covers it… almost.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Although I typically make it a habit not to drop spoilers, I believe I\u2019ll make an exception in this case. It\u2019s the only way to explain why Bad Timing<\/strong> ultimately sickened me. Trust me when I say you\u2019ll thank me later for saving you from a most miserable viewing experience. Linden takes his sweet time getting to Milena\u2019s apartment after she calls him to say her final goodbye. When he gets there, she\u2019s barely conscious. He taunts her for a while before she lapses into unconsciousness on the floor. He then carries her to the bed where he proceeds to rape her. When he\u2019s done, he dresses her and calls for an ambulance. Excuse me while I barf.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There are a ton of questions I could ask about Bad Timing<\/strong>, but none as pressing as the one surrounding Linden\u2019s competence as a mental health expert. He\u2019s good enough to teach at the local university yet doesn\u2019t seem to realize that Milena is manic depressive. How do you miss something like that? If he does realize, isn\u2019t it an ethical violation to get involved with her? Shouldn\u2019t he be reporting it to somebody so she can get help? This guy obviously has no morals.<\/p>\n

The acting in Bad Timing<\/strong> is horrendous. Garfunkel, who also starred in Carnal Knowledge, delivers a performance that mainly consists of smoking a lot of cigarettes and going around with a dour expression on his face at all times. For some reason, Keitel adapts the speech patterns of Christopher Walken when reciting his lines. If Roeg wanted that, why didn\u2019t he just hire Walken himself? Elliott does little more than look annoyed at his wife\u2019s erratic behavior and promiscuity. Russell is okay until she cranks it up to 11 in her depiction of her character\u2019s broken mental state. In a different movie, it would be funny. Here it\u2019s just sad and desperate.<\/p>\n

\u00a0If somebody was to ask me what Bad Timing<\/strong> is really<\/em> about, I\u2019d reply most emphatically with this one-word answer: \u201cNothing!\u201d It tells a story with no point or purpose. It\u2019s a two-hour visit with four people so shallow and unlikable; you wouldn\u2019t want to spend two minutes with any one of them. Yet Roeg appears to think he\u2019s making a grand artistic statement or something. About what, I haven\u2019t the faintest idea. He fills his movie with deep, meaningful statements like \u201cYou tell the truth about a lie so beautifully.\u201d and \u201cI\u2019ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out what normal means.\u201d In a note to Linden, Milena states, \u201cI wish you\u2019d understand me less and love me more.\u201d Dialogue like this only sounds intelligent to people who think fortune cookies contain great wisdom.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Bad Timing<\/strong> is a prime example of cinema gone wrong. It\u2019s neither art nor entertainment. It doesn\u2019t even work as a dirty movie. It\u2019s one of the biggest put-ons I\u2019ve ever seen. It\u2019s for idiots with college degrees who try to find deep meaning in everything. They can look all they want but they won\u2019t find it here. Bad Timing<\/strong> is as shallow as they come. I\u2019ve seen episodes of The Love Boat with more intelligence. I\u2019ve listened to long lectures more interesting than this lousy movie. It sinks about as low as one can go with that awful rape scene. Honestly, there is no good time to watch Bad Timing<\/strong>. I\u2019m going to do my best to forget it.<\/p>\n

*= originally rated X, later changed to R\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bad Timing (1980)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 World Northal\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 123 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R* (strong sexual content, full frontal nudity, rape, language, drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Nicolas Roeg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Yale Udoff\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Richard Hartley\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Anthony B. Richmond\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 25, 1980 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Art Garfunkel, Theresa Russell, Harvey Keitel, Denholm Elliot.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A Rating: NO STARS!!! \u00a0I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-this-sucks-so-bad"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Bad-Timing-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4286"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4493,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4286\/revisions\/4493"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}