I learned a hilarious game today at the blog of one of my favorite authors, Jennifer Crusie, who learned it from a librarian who posted in the forums at io9.com.  The game is to guess the iconic movie or book based on one of its one-star reviews at Amazon.com.  Crusie’s point was that as a writer, you have to have thick skin and remember that you can’t please all the people all of the time.  I’m asking you to play the game here because I need to justify the hour I spent procrastinating at Amazon and laughing hysterically as I read one-star reviews.  I’ve copied and pasted these reviews directly from Amazon; the only changes I made were to take out the names of authors or to abridge due to length.  Hit me with your answers in the comments please!

[Also, huge apologies for not posting this week — I have a lot swirling in my head, but I’m having the kind of writer’s block that’s making it difficult to get everything down on paper in an interesting and cogent way.  Please trust me when I say that the later, higher quality product would be preferable to you than the unorganized meanderings I’ve written so far.]

1.  I suppose I am going to be branded narrow-minded and out-of-touch, but I cannot help wondering which people are showing this movie and its sequel to their children without any reservations at all. I, for one, do NOT allow my children to use language like ‘moron’, ‘loser’, ‘dirtbag’ or ‘idiot’, which language is found in this movie by the truckload…. I guess the people who get sucked into buying the movie for their kids won’t mind if their kids interact with one another using language and scenarios like these I mentioned. The minute I began to even suspect that the world of [this movie] and it’s values were going to be reflected in my childrens’ lives, I couldn’t throw the blasted thing out fast enough, and if you want your kids to grow up a little different than the TV-bred cretins around them, you’ll do the same

2.  My son is really into airplanes, so I thought I should let him watch the ultimate plane movie….  Full of awful acting, terrible singing, barfy music …, hokey characters, a bad script, weird cold war antics that never happened (did they?), the film is a B-movie from end to end that should have flopped at the box office.

3.  So sorry. This film is highly acclaimed and probably very good, but I could not get behind it. The wedding scene was interminable. I really don’t like noir and I simply couldn’t find the thread in all those people who kept getting killed. Then, some gorgeous horse gets its head severed and placed in bed with a director who wouldn’t give some family member a starring role. Yuck. I gave up. Just not my kind of movie, but I guess it’s a classic. Whatever.

4.  With so much good American literature around, I really can’t understand how someone can call this a classic. The book is pure cliché and melodrama, from beginning to end. Characters are more like shallow caricatures: there are the good guys, the bad guys, and nothing in-between. Nine-year-olds’ conversations and thoughts are annoyingly unrealistic and the plot is absolutely predictable. Remembers me a piece of propaganda; maybe with a good purpose, but propaganda anyway. Looking for Southern fiction? Stick to Faulkner!

5.  Whatever you do do not read this book. It’s long, it’s really hard to read, and the story just flat out sucks. A lot of people say that this book is packed with meaning, BUT IT’S NOT. [Author] wrote a stupid story about a boy and a slave floating down the mississsippi. THAT SOUNDS REALLY INTERESTING!! Yea right. This book is a big waste of time, it should be out-lawed from our schools, because [author] likes to use the “N” word a lot. This book in my opinion, should get the “Turkey of the Century” award. A big book B-B-Q, should be devoted to all the copies in print.