"Breakfast of Champions" (1999)

What?
The?
 Hell?
 Did?
 I?
 Just?
Watch?

I seriously can't write let alone try to digest this film. I thought "The Staircase" was bad for being over dramatic. Well, this felt like someone wrote it and directed it while on a major Acid trip.

I think it was about a car dealer who is going through a midlife crisis. I think. I really couldn't actually understand what was going on because I had no clue what was happening.

Really, the only thing that made this worth watching was to see Barbara Hershey dress in a lumber jack's hat, fur coat, and rainboots and take to walking down the street. That's it. That is all she wrote.

"The Staircase" (1998)

So you know how in the 90's there was that major resurgence of Westerns? Well, this kind of falls under it.

The film is based off of a really interesting story. In a church somewhere in Santa Fe, California there is a spiral staircase that was made and still stands that baffles people still to this day. It was made using no nails and no support beams.

If you go research the actual church and the story behind it, it's very interesting to read the sister's stories. Sadly, because this film was just one big over the top, try to take itself way to seriously mess, that interesting part got overshadowed completely by an awful script.

And by awful I really mean awful. Half way through I was trying really hard not to roll my eyes so hard for fear of straining them. There is an argument about allowing this guy to build the staircase (that they originally FORGOT to put in in the first place) that escalates so quickly that you could have blanked and BOOM, it's at the point where one guy shoots another guy... over the subject of the staircase!

No over the top movie would be complete without someone dying of cancer. Really, why wasn't this film on Lifetime? Our cancer victim this time is the Mother Superior (Barbara Hershey). Her ultimate goal is to have her church completely finished (staircase and all) before she dies. In the world of cliche finales she climbs the finished staircase complete with over the top score music (with someone actually playing along on the piano), falls but succeeds in getting to the top and just when you wish they would start playing "Stairway to Heaven" she dies dramatically in the arms of a young boy.

I can't any more. The things I do to reach a goal. This film could have had so much greatness, and have been so amazing if it was just written better. I can't even fault the actors who tried really hard to make it work because you can see that they tried. But seriously, I'm going to quote my roommate right now, "Barbara Hershey needs to come over and give me a massage."