Michael_Elliott Ben & Arthur (2002) BOMB (out of 4) Sam Mraovich wrote, produced, directed, shot, scored and did just about everything else in this gay movie, which many consider the alternate of THE ROOM. In the film Mraovich plays Arthur, a gay man happily in love with his boyfriend Ben (Jamie Brett Gabel) and the two plan on getting married in Hawaii. Sadly, the state overturns their policy on gay marriage so they can't be together and things get even worse when Ben's wife refuses to give him a divorce thinking he's just confused. Things take a far more dangerous turn when Ben's brother is kicked out of his church because Ben is gay and he decides to kill his brother and his mate. Oh, what will Ben and Arthur do? Here's yet another film I first heard about in Michael Adams' "Showgirls, Teen Wolves and Astro Zombies" book and yes, it lives up to its reputation. The connection to THE ROOM really isn't all that fair since that movie was at least so bad that you could laugh at it whereas this one here is just plain bad. I guess we can give Mraovich a little credit considering how much he did to get this film made but sadly the hard work didn't pay off anywhere. The film really is a complete mess and we can start with the story itself, which is just so silly and over-the-top that you can never take it serious. Even worse is some of the dialogue and especially during the scenes where the righteous brother seeks advice from the "higher up" about his gay brother. There are many bad sequences here including one "romantic" sequence, which is just downright bad from the word go. Even worse are the performances, which are among some of the worst that you're going to see in any movie no matter the subject or genre. The continuity errors here are also quite shocking and worse than anything you'd see in an Edward D. Wood, Jr. movie. One example has Arthur going to an interview wearing a blue shirt and shorts but when he walks through the door he's all of the sudden wearing a black shirt. One scene he talks about his male lawyer but in the next scene we meet the lawyer and it's a woman. There are many other issues like this throughout the picture. Speaking of Ed Wood, you might want to really compare this to GLEN OR GLENDA? since you have a filmmaker trying to tell a serious story about his own issues.

Crazy_Gibberish It's tough to give Ben & Arthur a rating. It's so spectacularly bad, so Earth-shatteringly misconceived and awful that it becomes downright hysterical and eminently watchable. One could spend pages going over all of the technical failings, the risible acting, the clearly gay man playing a homophobic Christian, but for me there are moments in Ben & Arthur that become transcendent in their hilarity. When Arthur, played by the writer/director/producer/editor/grip Sam Mraovich actually says things like "what if I quited?" or "YOU need pray for" I hunch forward in my seat laughing. Forgive my insensitivity, but Arthur is played as autistic. He reminds me of this guy that pushes carts at a nearby Stop & Shop. He behaves like a child trapped in a hell-scape populated by bizarre, absurd cartoons. "Ben" seems to be in on the joke however, text messaging in his performance with a heavy sigh. It's a tough sell even for bad movie buffs, but if you and your friends get off on bad movie schadenfreude, you can't do better than Ben & Arthur. Well, maybe "Woodchipper Massacre", but that's a whole other animal...

Numan Parada I have found it! This is the real deal, the bottom of the barrel, the absolute worst, the nadir of cinema. Ben & Arthur made me do the unthinkable by "honoring" it with a 1 rating on IMDb, something I have never done in the 11 years I have been rating movies on this site. Normally, I try to find at least one redeeming point in any bad film I see, if only to rationalize its merits and save myself face: Even the horrendous "Titanic: The Animated Musical" had at least decent still drawings at the very end. Alas, "Ben & Arthur" was beyond redemption and any hope that one could walk away from the film with something to justify the experience.The fact that IMDb even has an entry for this audiovisual equivalent of excrement frightens me. I believe it did get a screening at a movie theater, it is a feature-length work and its DVD is readily available at several online stores, so I guess it technically qualifies as a "film". Whatever you wish to call this work, everything in it is bad: Acting, writing, direction, editing, music, photography, sound recording, set design, continuity.... I could go on, but other reviewers on this site have already elaborated on this film's numerous flaws, with far better grace and humor.My goodness, even the first few seconds tells you how badly this film will devolve: It features an irrelevant and disgusting background animation for an opening sequence and the use of a gingerly MIDI-recorded rendition of "The Entertainer" for an otherwise ostensibly tragic love story. Scott Joplin should simply come back from the grave and toss the filmmaker into a vat of liquefied iron, which closely resembles the red fluid flowing across the screen. It would've made the opening credits seem more proper.Oh, but the filmmaker, Sam Mraovich. Let me add something that no reviewer has addressed as of yet: Considering he did nearly all of the production duties in this film, he is technically also an "auteur" in the same vein as, say, Stanley Kubrick or Wes Anderson. However, those last two, while often writing and producing their own material, nevertheless saw the benefit of sharing the workload with people that are experts in their respective fields of film production, while also staying involved and informed of progress. Mraovich on the other hand quite literally does all the work in piecing together this wreck, almost surely because he fancied himself as capable of such and not because a lack of appropriate personnel. Fact-checking is non-existent, with Mraovich going as far as screwing up basic Bible facts that even cold-hearted Atheists would recognize. The fact that he also stars in Ben & Arthur as the central protagonist (nudity and all), while providing what is hands-down the worst performance by any actor I have ever seen, reinforces what everyone here already knows: That Mraovich has lost much of his grasp of reality and has no idea of how humans function.(Additionally, even Kubrick usually had his name in only a few credits at most or, in the case of "A Clockwork Orange", in just one card. Mraovich's name is everywhere in Ben & Arthur.)And just what were the actors in this movie thinking of when they signed on to this thing anyway? Anyone with a brain cell would have backed out after reading the first page of the script. Were they doing it out of duty? Maybe they were blackmailed. Were they even paid well? (I would imagine SAG would frown upon paying actors in graham crackers.) Maybe they simply pitied the hopelessly delusional Mraovich.In any case, Ben & Arthur was quite the discovery for me. Wider awareness of this movie could easily set the gay rights movement back to the stone age. Once you are done with this abomination, if you dare brave it, you'll conclude that it belongs in the great Pantheon of Bad Ideas like the Great Leap Forward and The Baseball Network.

MartinHafer When the film began, I was shocked to see it was filmed using a cheap video camera! In fact, the camera shakes and looks worse than the average home movie. Even direct to DVD films should have production values better than this! Heck, a large percentage of the home videos uploaded to YouTube have better production values! All too often, the film seriously appears to be made by sticking the camera on a tripod and turning it on--with no camera person! Closeups and anything resembling camera-work are absent in some scenes where they might have worked and in others there are too many or poorly framed closeups. Yecch! The film is about two gay men who want to become married. As if was made almost a decade ago, their only option was marrying in Vermont--times have definitely changed. However, the recent acceptance of gay marriage cannot in any way be attributed to this film--if anything, it set the gay marriage supporters back instead of helping as the movie stinks and never really tries to seriously address the issue. According to the film, religious people are one-dimensional idiots who carry Bibles EVERYWHERE and shoot people as well as wives who have gay husbands are narrow-minded when they learn their spouses have been living a lie--go figure. I'm sure glad it gives an honest chance to both sides on the issue! The bottom line--nothing about the film shows any professionalism at all and I even hesitate to call this a film. It's more like a home movie and doesn't even merit a listing on IMDb or even inclusion on IMDb's Bottom 100 list of the worst rated films of all time. The acting is horrible, the writing is horrible, the direction (if there even is any) is horrible, the camera-work is horrible and the plot is horrible. It's a home movie!! There is nothing positive I can say about this in any way except that it makes the films of Ed Wood seem like Oscar contenders in comparison and I am sure the ghost of Mr. Wood is smiling every time someone watches this mess! I don't care if you are gay or straight--this film is not worth your time and I don't know how they managed to create DVDs of it. I assume one of the actors burns them on his home computer during his free time! Seriously, this gives new meaning to the word 'bad'!By the way, if the one lady in the film WAS a real lawyer, wouldn't the ability to read be an important prerequisite?! I'm just sayin'.Finally, with gay marriage being such a serious and important topic, can't we have a film that's BETTER than THIS that addresses the issue?! This one, sadly, only invites laughter.