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I faintly recall coming across something along the lines of

a half-baked consternation of [...]

a couple of times on the web. My hunch is that I probably encountered this sort of phrasing in reviews of movies so mind-bogglingly bad that it had the critic exerting himself to find the most appropriate words to accurately express his distaste.

I'm not sure if "consternation" is the word (I'm looking for). Looking up the word, it doesn't really seem to fit. But that's the phonetically closest to the actual word that my memory could mug up.

Basically, the idea is that when something is a weird combination of things which horribly clash with one another, it becomes an unpleasant mixture of really random elements all mashed up together that is indicative of the maker's lack of style/elegance.

That is what the word after "half-baked" should mean, I suppose.

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  • Why not half-baked combination, just as you said in your question? It even sounds similar to consternation.
    – Jason Bassford
    Aug 21, 2018 at 19:56
  • @JasonBassford Umm...doesn't sound right to me. Besides, I believe it might be a well-known phrase. Half-baked and combination don't go well together, at least to my (admittedly, non-native) ears. Nor is it a particularly well-known combination (pardon the lameness of the pun).
    – Soha Farhin Pine
    Aug 21, 2018 at 19:59

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The phrase may have been "half-baked concoction". A concoction is a mixture, it can be applied to food (so "half-baked" would match) and it also has a sense of being invented (for example "concoct a story").

In fact, if my memory serves me well, this kind of half-baked concoction is now a Sundance staple, and the dirty little secret of the indie film. (Source)

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  • On point! That's exactly what I was looking for. You grasped the food connotation as well. And its connection with cinema---it seems to frequently get used in that context.
    – Soha Farhin Pine
    Aug 21, 2018 at 20:22

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