Lake Placid

Lake Placid is a 1999 horror-comedy film starring Bridget Fonda, Bill Pullman, Oliver Platt, Betty White, Meredith Salenger and Mariska Hargitay. The film was written by David E. Kelley and directed by Steve Miner.

Plot
A killer crocodile terrorizes the small town of Black Lake, Maine.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The story is poorly written.
 * 2) Despite the title being Lake Placid, the town isn't even named Lake Placid (mentioned in plot).
 * 3) Awkward dialogue.
 * 4) Campy performances.
 * 5) The film changes the plot's directions in a bad way.
 * 6) Ignorance about crocodiles: the character Sheriff Keogh states that "crocodiles can't swim in salt water", while they actually can. Although it's possible this was intentionally written this way because Keogh is meant to be incompetent.
 * 7) Geographical errors: There are no brown bears in Maine. The crocodile in this movie is a saltwater crocodile, even though saltwater crocodiles are only native to Southeast Asia and Northern Australia.
 * 8) *The opening high pan shows Camden Harbor, but the sheriff's boat says "Aroostook County", when Camden is located in the Knox county of Maine, not the Aroostook County.
 * 9) The scenes set in the Museum of Natural History are pointless and don't have anything to do with the movie.

Good Qualities

 * 1) Surprisingly very good special effects for it's time.
 * 2) Awesome soundtrack composed by John Ottman.
 * 3) The jokes are pretty funny.
 * 4) The kill scenes are gory and can satisfy splatter fans.
 * 5) There are still plenty of very cool and memorable scene, like when the crocodile kills the bear or when the crocodile attacks the helicopter.
 * 6) The giant animatronic crocodile is absolutely stellar!
 * 7) It has some decently tense moments.
 * 8) "Holy Spirit of Sobek, holy ghost, holy shit!"

Reception
Despite being successful at the box office, Lake Placid currently holds a 47% "rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average of 5 out of 10 and a critic consensus that reads "Betty White's delightful supporting turn may be worth the price of admission alone, but Lake Placid is swamped by a smarmy script and inability to deliver on the creature feature mayhem." Roger Ebert awarded the film one star and stated in his review of Lake Placid that it was "completely wrong-headed from beginning to end". On The Worst of 1999 show, Roger called it his worst film in the category of Parodies That Self-Destructed. Guest critic Joel Siegel of Good Morning America stated to Roger "I was very lucky with this film. I took your advice, I missed it." Roger said back "Don't go to see it! Just give us another picture!" Joel later stated that Wild Wild West was his worst film in the same category. It has a 5.7/10 on IMDb.

Video
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