The first thing to know about 88 Minutes is that it actually runs 108 minutes. Clearly this is not a movie to be trusted. Yesterday Defamer noted that the Al Pacino vehicle ranked third on Metacritic’s list of the all-time worst reviewed movies, although it apparently has received a positive notice or two in the meantime as it has dropped to #29 as of this writing, just behind the 2002 Dana Carvey “comedy” Master of Disguise. 88 Minutes has a critic’s score of 12 out of 100, a rating of “extreme dislike or disgust” in Metacritic parlance. At Rotten Tomatoes, it is currently weighing in at 12%, and the critical consensus is listed as “A shockingly inept psychological thriller.”
It’s hard to believe a movie with the IMDb plot keywords “Exploding Car,” “Female Nudity,” “Seaplane,” “Lesbian,” “Tied to Chair” and “Obscene Finger Gesture” could be all that bad. Pacino plays “Dr. Jack Gramm, a college professor who moonlights as a forensic psychiatrist for the FBI. When Gramm receives a death threat claiming he has only 88 minutes to live, he must use all his skills and training to narrow down the possible suspects, who include a disgruntled student, a jilted former lover, and a serial killer who is already on death row, before his time runs out.” Sounds promising, no? Here’s a sampling of pull quotes you probably won’t be seeing in the newspaper ads this weekend:
“Preposterous in design, abysmal in execution and laugh-out-loud funny when it's straining for drama, the film doesn't even honor the lean-and-mean promise of its title.” – Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“The picture easily snatches from Revolution the prize as Al Pacino's career worst.” – Todd McCarthy, Variety
“The execrable 88 Minutes has many of the main ingredients for a camp lollapalooza, notably one of those unfortunate Al Pacino star turns that make you wonder if a career intervention is even possible at this stage. Certainly his startling appearance — a dusky orange tan that suggests a charbroiled George Hamilton and an elevated pouf of hair that appears to have been engineered to put Mr. Pacino within vertical range of his female co-stars — suggests a level of vanity that might make an intervention difficult.” – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
“Even the most prolific actors—and Pacino isn't that prolific—only get so many films. And of all the scripts out there, why choose one that requires him to explain that he didn't know the dead woman was a hooker when he slept with her, and that whoever's framing him for the crime must have pumped his semen out of the dead hooker and into the corpse of a former student, because he knows he never slept with her?” – Keith Phipps, The A.V. Club
Almost makes you want to see it for yourself, doesn’t it? If you actually have seen it, please chime in on the comments. Not that we don’t trust these distinguished critics, but we want to hear from our Screengrab readers before we make our weekend viewing plans.