Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Lack of good storyline.

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Brilliant and touching

Ben and Arthur deals with gay marriage in America and the issues surrounding it with religious groups opposing legalization and so forth. Obviously, Sam Mraovich cares greatly about this issue as he has made it the painstakingly obvious main theme (perhaps only theme) of his movie. I say his movie because Mr. Mraovich wrote, directed and starred in the movie himself. The problem is that he is not very good at either of these roles, and frankly, neither are the other actors at theirs. Another problem is that Sam Mraovich has taken a very childish, oversimplified approach to the issue in the main theme. They could have had the characters actually discuss the issue, talk it over and have different characters with conflicting views, you know, some drama. Instead, the protagonists overly religious brother decide he must stop them at any cost, and goes to kill the gay couple, and with the that the movie goes from what could have been a decent drama, to a poorly executed action thriller.

I almost feel bad for mocking this film. It's so amateurishly poor that I can't help but feel like I'm kicking it while its down. Its like laughing at a kid in a wheelchair. But good lord, this one just transcends "bad". Its about the a gay couple who want desperately to get married, but the law and one of their brothers stands in the way of their happiness- not a bad basic idea, really, and in the right hands, it could have been a very important film about acceptance and putting ones own petty intolerances aside for the sake of other peoples happiness. But it's not in the right hands. It's in the hands of writer/director/producer/composer/star Sam Mraovich. Who is Sam Mraovich? Well, that depends on who you ask. If you ask Sam Mraovich who Sam Mraovich is, you'll be told he's a true visionary and a cinematic genius who dared to dream. But if you ask any of the few people who've actually heard of him who Sam Mraovich is, you'll be told he's a delusional airhead with no grasp of even the most basic techniques of filmmaking or storytelling, who probably got kicked out of the glee club in high school for being too flamboyant and annoying.So why is Ben and Arthur so bad? Well firstly it's hard to take a film about intolerance seriously when your star embodies every negative gay stereotype you could think of, and then some. Secondly, its even harder to take a film seriously when it's shot on the kind of camera people buy to film kids birthday parties and family trips to Disneyland. Look Sammy, I know the purse string must have been tight on this film, but Hell, even Tommy Wiseau shelled over enough for a decent camera. And really, what else is there to say? We have a supposed homophobe who greets people at the door wearing a fluffy pink bathrobe. We have a Christian minister who also seems to believe in karma, a crazy ex-wife who seems to believe becoming a lesbian will make her gay husband come back to her, a square jawed Adonis who totally goes for short, fat balding men, and a finale that truly has to be seen to be believed. I can't even bring myself to type what happens. Its that horrible. But despite all this, I'd still recommend this film. Why? Because its funny as Hell, thats why!

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...

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.