dungeonstudio How many times we have all said at the theater 'who was behind this garbage? Who green lit this thing? Cripes, I wish I could get my money back now.' and so on, I'm surprised many don't embrace this movie more than they do? It's Robert Altman's The Player on steroids! It encapsulates so much of the folklore, suspicions, tabloid tell all, racially biased, and over hyped movies we love to hate today. And I think it's main problem is it's too sophisticated for the viewer and/or really pokes the finger at the movie going public for allowing them to perpetuate the Hollywood system by freely giving their money to it, and never asking for it back. Albeit this movie is pretty fast paced and crammed with celebrities factual and fictional. But the core of it is how a simple story - and possibly a good one, can get so manipulated and brutalized for the sake of star power and budget. And we all get sucked into it and try to justify the director or actors or weather on set, etc. Is Malcolm X a better movie than Eyes Wide Shut...? I like to think so. And I'm a HUGE Stanley Kubrick fan at that! Did dealing with the pressures of Warner Bros. and Tom Cruise and all cause Stan to die after it was done - maybe? Yet, here we are today trying to justify it and get something out of it, when in fact it maybe just a BAD movie that had the best intentions at first? And yet Malcolm X is such an amazing achievement for Spike Lee, Denzel Washington, and history itself. And we're like 'too long, and too black' still. And 90% don't want to admit that, don't see the humor in that statement, or will go out of their way to make me a racist - even though I think it's a fantastic film. So if you can laugh at all this as you read it, I think you should like Burn Hollywood Burn then.

Mr-Fusion There's enough of a shameful cloud hanging over "Burn Hollywood Burn", but you just have to see it to know exactly why. And it's almost awe-inspiring how badly this has been put together. It's a long 86 minutes, never funny, and it totally squanders its roster of name actors. Among them, Ryan O'Neal fares the worst, while Richard Jeni and non-actor Harvey Weinstein emerge unscathed. Somewhere in all of this is a film industry satire, but there's no consistency in the cutting and the parade of talking heads gets old very quickly. The irony in the title (that Arthur Hiller himself became the Alan Smithee gimmick that this is skewering) is the funniest thing about this movie.I can't recommend this to anyone.3/10

john_phelan911 Congratulations. This fetid corpse of a movie managed to replace Smokey and the Bandit 3 as my 'Gold Standard' of eye slicingly grim movie making.Its cheese meltingly smug yet testicle chillingly amateurish at the same time. Its supposed to be a movie from a Hollywood 'Insider' but the stars are washed up old lags Eric Idle and Ryan O'Neal. Its also so boring it could, in some cases, cause death. The director had his name removed from the credits of this film. He may also want to remove his name from any public records so as to avoid detection by people who paid to see this pile of dead monkeys. This film blows more than a tornado in a trailer park.

Merwyn Grote I am willing to bet that when the principle players in the making of AN ALAN SMITHEE FILM: BURN, H0LLYW00D, BURN got together and read the script they probably found it hilarious. But they were probably drunk, stoned or deep into jet lag at the time. But somewhere between that first reading and the film's release, someone surely must have sobered up and noticed just how badly this film fails to deliver. The film is bad not just because it is bad, but because it coulda/shoulda been pretty good. Joe Eszterhas's script is sophisticated and savage and full of inside jokes. The direction by Arthur Hiller/Alan Smithee cleverly juggles ideas and viewpoints. And most of the cast give credible performances, even the nonprofessionals who contribute cameos. Obviously, everyone thought they were making a pretty good movie. In the end, the film is smart and pointed and even insightful, but it is never, never, never, never even remotely funny. It is hard to pinpoint just why the film ends up being so depressingly blah, but a good guess would be that it is a matter of attitude. ALAN SMITHEE is just so insultingly smug. Everybody involved is basically making fun of themselves, but not in jovial, lighthearted way. The self-deprecation is condescending: "See," they all seem to be saying, "I called myself a bastard before you had a chance. Nyah, nyah, nyah!!! I beat you to the punch." I mean what is the point of self mockery if it is intended to belittle someone else? Even the most mean-spirited of satires require a degree of innocence; a posture that allows the audience to find the humor and the hypocrisy for themselves, rather than to have it force fed to them. For instance, the film's structure, basically a series of talking head interviews, demands that the interview blurbs seem spontaneous, not preprocessed and rehearsed. Hiller skillful stages these little snatches of interviews as though they are being given on the fly, in different places and at different times, but they still seem canned. Even the characters' insincerity should seem sincerely insincere, not like tossed-off one-liners at a Friars Club roast. Even though everyone involved is obviously in on the joke, they shouldn't appear to be. And a major inexplicable problem is the whole black thing the film seems to be doing. This is a satire about a British director and bunch of Beverly Hills/movie studio suits, so why does the film feature rap music, African-American themed title credits and references to black directors? Is black cinema supposed to be the new New Wave or avant-garde? Is it supposed to be like references to beatniks in the fifties and hippies in the sixties, a clumsy attempt to make the squares seem hip and to make the story seem relevant (when ultimately it will only make the film seem quickly dated)? The film can't fake sincerity, why do the filmmakers think they can fake soul? In the end, ALAN SMITHEE seems to be little more than a home movie, a gag reel to be played at the office Christmas party. If that were the case, I suspect that all involved would still find the material funny. But, what happens at the Christmas party should stay at the Christmas party, otherwise it can just be too embarrassing.