danielemerson Tommy Wiseau, James Nguyen, Sam Mraovich - birds of a feather, peas in a pod. If you recognise the first two in this sequence of names, you will know EXACTLY what to expect.This is a melodrama about gay marriage and prejudice. It could have been directed by any one of the three names mentioned above. It just happened to be Sam Mraovich this time.Murky, incompetent, hilarious. The latter only applies if you are in the mood for cinematic compost.

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.

ejonconrad You know you're in for a real treat right from the beginning, as the EZ-Piano version of The Entertainer plays very slowly over the opening credits, who are mostly Sam Mraovich and other people named Mraovich. The direct-to-videotape quality is that of a very mediocre high school film project - made by people who have been held back so many times they're in their mid 20's.If you enjoy spotting plot holes, glaring inconsistencies and downright goofs, then this is a movie for you. They start right at the beginning and don't let up for an hour and a half.The movie opens as our protagonists, Ben and Arthur, are overjoyed to learn that gay marriage has been legalized in Hawaii. They immediately buy plane tickets, but their hopes are dashed a few hours later when the judge issues a stay against his own ruling (huh?), so they decide instead to go to Vermont (couldn't they have done that before?). At this point, Ben confesses that he still needs to divorce his wife. I gather they believe polygamy is legal in Hawaii, because this didn't become a worry until the change of venue. Ben's wife must not have noticed that he moved out and has been living with another man for some time, because she is caught completely off guard both by his revelation that he is gay and by the divorce papers, which she refuses to sign. Ben assures Arthur that he will contact his lawyer to handle it. This must be one hell of a lawyer, because they are able to marry just a few days later - among the gently swaying palm trees of Vermont! The ex-wife makes one brief appearance much later in the movie when she shows up and demands - at gunpoint! - that Ben remarry her, but he wrestles the gun away from her and we never see her again.The side story involves their rather meager existence. We are told Ben is a licensed nurse, but chooses to work as a dish washer because he "has his music" (nurses can't be musicians?). Arthur works as a waiter in the same restaurant, but quits after a run-in with a mildly rude customer. At this point, he realizes he has no skills and no education, and decides to hit up his estranged brother Victor for money to go back to school. His brother doesn't recognize him, because he hasn't seen him in "like seven years", but when he finds out who he is, immediately establishes himself as a "crazy Christian", by asking Arthur if he has found God yet. Arthur, in an attempt to charm his brother out of the money, tells him to stop with the "religious s&%#". Nevertheless, his brother insists that before he gives them any money both he and Ben must come to see him.This is when the movie starts to get really weird. There would be no problem building very sinister villains out of things mainstream churches have actually said and done regarding homosexuality, but this wasn't enough for the writer. He instead opts to introduce "christian" characters (they appear to be Catholic) whose actions are so bizarre and hateful they would make the Westboro Baptist Church blush. After not seeing his brother for seven years, Victor becomes completely obsessed with saving his soul. He kills (!!) the lawyer who has been helping them get their marriage recognized in California, but then goes really crazy after he's kicked out of his church for having a gay brother (again,huh?). In desperation, he offers to kill Ben and Arthur. The priest thinks this is a good idea, and hooks him up with a hit man, who only manages to wound Ben. This drives Arthur crazy and he kills the priest by dowsing him with distilled water and setting him on fire (note, at this point he has no evidence the priest was even involved).Yada yada, Victor shoots and kills Ben, then forces Arthur to get baptized (which the writer seems to believe Catholics do naked). In the end Victor and Ben shoot each other after doing a gay reenactment of the scene between Tony and his sister in Scarface.Oh, did I mention that there's a completely non-sequitur scene where Ben suddenly becomes abusive and punches Arthur (knocking him out) for being a whiny little bitch? No matter, it's just one of the many unintentionally funny parts.So congratulations, Tommy Wisceau! Now there's a movie even you can look down on.

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.