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not horrible nor great

Absolutely Brilliant!

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

I laughed so hard reading the reviews here, I just had to watch this. It's available on the Internet for free, so, I watched it. No one should have to spend money to see it. If I had paid to watch even part of this movie, I would have been really upset. Note: This review has many spoilers, so... you've been alerted.Sam Mraovich stars in the leading role - and also wrote, directed, and produced this movie intending it to be a serious drama about two brothers, one who is gay, the other who is a religious zealot.It's a topic that could have been addressed wonderfully on film, but, WOW, this movie really is as bad as people wrote. Through most of it, you laugh because every aspect of this movie is so horrible. It's like it was thrown together by a few gay drunk junior high schoolers. The entire thing is a mess, start to finish, and is difficult to watch (even for the laughs.) The acting is incredibly bad, as are the lines. Combine bad acting with bizarre and ridiculous lines, and you end up cracking up.For example, the following is one of many hilarious scenes: Victor hires a private investigator to follow his gay brother, Arthur. The PI shows up and knocks on Victor's apartment door, and after Victor opens it, the PI announces, "Hi, I'm the private investigator you hired" while standing outside the apartment.Once inside, Victor says: "My brother is a homosexual. He's marrying a man, and I need to find out what his next move is." The PI looks like he's about age 16, and Victor mentions that he looks very young to be a private investigator. The PI then explains that he's actually just an Intern, and this is his first 'case.' Well, that should have been obvious when he announced he was a PI outside the apartment in the hallway for everyone to hear.The Intern says his fee is $800 a day. Interns get $800 a day? And on their first case? Well, that's no problem for Victor, who pays up. The PI Intern, on his first case, is able to amazingly predict that he'll have everything "in two days" - to which, right after he says that, it screen-cuts to an audience announcement: "Two Days Later." Then you have the annoying fold-out card-table that is used in almost every scene, the same dream-catcher that seems to be a decoration for every room in the movie, a Crayon Jesus "painting" in the Priest's office, them flying on a FedEx shipping airplane for their Honeymoon trip, and the Casio keyboard music throughout the movie.While most of the movie is so absurd, you just have to laugh, there are plenty of other scenes that are downright ugly, creepy, disturbing and bizarre. Certainly not appropriate for anyone under the age of 18. Some of the scenes that left me wondering what kind of person Sam is to come up with (and then actually film) some of this stuff are: A Catholic Priest who repeatedly yells obscenities to his secretary over being out of white out, Sam's character Arthur happily "skips" to his car to get gasoline out of the trunk, which he then pours on the same Priest and lights him on fire, a scene where his brother Victor forces a fully NAKED Arthur to be baptized in his own bathtub, Arthur (played by Sam) getting punched in the face and literally knocked out by his spouse - because Arthur told him he could use his death insurance money to buy 100 bicycles, and a bizarre incestuous moment between the two brothers just before they shoot and kill each other. No, I'm not making this all up.You can get over an hour of that kind of motion picture quality on the Web, just Google the movie title. Oh, you can also use Sam Mraovich to buy or sell your house in Hollywood. Seriously. On his website about his movies he's made (and continues to make), he also encourages you to call him if you're looking for a good real estate agent. No, I'm not kidding.While a lot of the movie is unintentionally hilarious, it's equally just flat out offensive to the LGBT community (I'm gay, and it insulted me in a variety of ways), religion in general, an insult to anyone really trying to put together an Independent amateur film... and so poorly written, acted, and directed that it falls into that category "so bad, it's funny." The truth is, though, I honestly feel sorry for Sam. I'm sorry for him because he isn't embarrassed.

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.

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...

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.