With the sweet must also come the salty… and we certainly had some horrible films in 2010. We aren’t just talking about films that you can tolerate sitting through. We are talking about films that make you ask WHAT WERE THEY THINKING???
TOP TEN WORST FILMS OF 2010
Dishonorable Mention: ALPHA AND OMEGA
You would think that adding 3D to almost any movie would make it better. Let me be the first to tell you… this is not the case in ALPHA AND OMEGA! Justin Long and Hayden Panettiere couldn’t have possibly known how bad this was going to be. I actually like Justin Long, but this film belongs in the box of failure. The story was boring, the 3D was possibly the worst that I have ever seen, and the singing… oh, the horrible singing. Now, I normally take into account if the film is designed for children, but when the kid behind me yelled “I’m bored! When is this over?” I knew that this was a lost cause. You could not pay me to sit through this one again.
10. SEX AND THE CITY 2
Sarah, Kim, Kristin, and Cynthia, oh my! The first SEX AND THE CITY film was an appropriate and good quality follow-up to the long running HBO series. It tied up some loose ends. Answered some lingering questions. Part 2 was not necessary. It was a depressing and ill-paced film with a couple fun cameo appearances, and…then it was done. There was nothing new to contribute to the characters in a fundamental way, which was odd because they are deeply complex and interesting women created by the talented Candace Bushnell. It is nice to see the same actors portray the same characters throughout a series and even into the film adaptations; however, these are a specific demographic character set. Part of the appeal was watching these vibrant and sexy women in their twenty’s and thirty’s, not post plastic surgery forty’s and up. Carrie on…indeed.
09. HOW DO YOU KNOW
Here’s a flick that’s a bigger train wreck than UNSTOPPABLE. Maybe that’s because of my high expectations from James L. Brooks. Right out of the gate he scored big with his first feature film TERMS OF ENDEARMENT (this after co-creating one of the most beloved TV sitcoms of all time-The Mary Tyler Moore Show). True he’s had a couple of mis-steps since then, but this new one is a comedy almost completely free of laughs. I can’t really fault the cast. Reeses Witherspoon is very appealing as a confused former Olympic softball player at a crossroads. Paul Rudd uses every bit of his considerable charms as a business man whose life has taken a turn for the worst. Jack Nicholson does what he can with the thankless role of Rudd’s crooked father, one of the most detestable screen dads ever. Owen Wilson proves to be the best part of this film ( as he does in the dud, LITTLE FOCKERS) as the clueless jock vying for Reese. There are some good supporting turns by Kathryn Hahn and Mark Lynn-Baker. None of them can rescue this film from a meandering, unfocused script sol0 credited to Brooks. It’s over two hours of repetitive relationship psycho-babble. Big disappointment!
08. MY SOUL TO TAKE
Who would have thought the worst horror film of 2011 would have come from Wes Craven, one of the biggest names in the genre? Did Craven, the creator of Freddy Krueger, really think the Riverton Ripper, the villain from his wretched film MY SOUL TO TAKE, would join the pantheon of great horror boogey men? He looks like a slightly melted wax figure of Rasputin and I’ve seen Scooby Doo fight scarier fiends. It doesn’t matter though, because halfway the movie Craven puts the brakes on the unstoppable killer angle and goes for a lame body/soul jumping angle. It’s like Craven had no idea how to fully flesh out his ideas so he artlessly threw together plot strands, elevating this lousy movie to the level of horribly bad. Add a completely useless 3D conversion that added nothing to the experience and MY SOUL TO TAKE took my soul to a dark, depressing, and boring place.
07. YOGI BEAR
Despite the dollars at the box office and the beloved icon of Yogi, Oscar winner Eric Brevig still managed to direct a raspberry of a film. Justin Timberlake and Dan Aykroyd’s talented voices could not carry this paper-thin screenplay out of Jellystone in a pic-a-nic basket. The animation was well done, but the live action actors were obviously off the D-list and could not create a warm fuzzy feeling to match the adorable bears camaraderie. This movie can get the infrequent giggle from the audience, but if the viewer is over five years old, then it most likely will not happen. It should have been apparent that what was going to be on-screen was a bad idea all along, just by reading one of the movie’s taglines…All great things come in bears.
06. JONAH HEX
DC Comics continues it’s streak of poorly-made movies, once again proving that short of the BATMAN franchise — which is touch and go itself — they can’t get the formula right. When a film starring Josh Brolin and John Malkovich fails as substantially as this, there’s cause for ridicule. The director, Jimmy Hayward, last directed HORTON HEARS A WHO, his first feature film. This I do not criticize, but it does make me wonder what DC thought they saw in such a filmmaker that screamed violent, supernatural comic book western action movie. Of course, as much as I’d love to blame it all on Megan Fox, she was only part of the problem… the majority of the blame goes to the studio, as this was clearly a case of executives putting the director’s vision on the chopping block. A film of this type, with this subject matter, being rated PG-13… well, that’s red flag #1. Some of the action was kinda cool, but for the most part the film felt eerily reminiscent of WILD WILD WEST, and that’s certainly no compliment. Some of the stylistic elements felt out of place, perhaps because the abbreviated 81-minute theatrical release simply left too much on the cutting room floor. In short, a film that could have… should have been really cool and fun, ended up being really lame and painful to sit through.
05. A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET
Hmm… Robert Englund is still alive,but not Freddy… Wes Craven has no part in it… Lots of Emo teens… THIS SOUNDS LIKE THE ULTIMATE NIGHTMARE! And not in a good way! Hollywood has gotten on this horrible bandwagon of remakes, and it has now gotten into one of my favorite genres, the cheesy 80’s horror film. From the minute that I heard this film was happening, I knew it would be horrible. Jackie Earle Haley is a terrific actor, but he was cast in the role of a specific icon who happens to be still alive, and far to fresh in peoples minds. Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees can be recast because they are essentially faceless. There is only one Freddy Krueger. They essentially tried to make the series scary again, but instead took away the things that made it iconic… such as the humor and the sketchy, awesomely bad special effects. They did nail bad effects though. The CGI was excruciating! The Freddy makeover was abominable. His makeup looked like it was rushed, or not thought through, and the same goes for the camera angles! He was too short to be scary! Add a scruffy, fake sounding voice and you have possibly the biggest failures in remake history. Congrats!
04. GROWN UPS
What do you get when you combine a ton of funny actors and expect them to carry a movie with no real storyline or script? That would be GROWN UPS. Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade and yes, even Rob Schneider have been in hit comedies, and often lead to box office gold. When I saw the list of this ensemble cast, even I thought that it would be a winner. Boy, was I wrong! Essentially, they took these “funny” guys and threw them on a set with the only instruction to “Be Funny!”. At least, that is how it comes across. It’s like they are all trying to top one another. I am even more surprised that I am going to say this: Rob Schneider is the funniest one in the film. Probably because he is the only one that is playing a character, rather than the funny guy that’s being paid to make fun of his friends. Ugh! This could have been a huge hit if they would have taken their time and actually developed a script. The concept was great, but the follow-through was less than parr.
03. ROBIN HOOD
The story of Robin and his merry men of Sherwood Forest has been told on screen since the invention of motion pictures. How can you go wrong with this legend? Well this past year the producers of ROBIN HOOD found a way. First off the title’s misleading. The Robin we know and love doesn’t show up till the last minutes. Maybe it should have been named “Robin Hood Begins”. We first meet Robin Longstride(!) as he’s part of King Richards troops pillaging their way back to Britain after the crusades. Instead of meeting up on a log bridge, Little John and Robin are G.I.s fighting over a game of three-card-Monty! Returning to England we are treated to countless, unending scenes of palace plotting involving now King John and his traitorous right hand man, Godfrey ( he’s in with France). Returning the family sword of a deceased soldier, Robin is enlisted by Papa Loxley to assume the dead man’s role and play the husband to widow Marion. So much for any forest romance. The finale scenes are a medieval version of the D Day sequence from SAVING PRIVATE RYAN with flaying swords and confusing edits. Can this be the same Ridley Scott that gave us GLADIATOR? The whole thing’s a big jumbled mess. Mark Strong makes a good hiss-able villain and Cate Blanchett does what she can as a tough Maid Marion ( she armors up for that final battle ). Russell Crowe plays his usual smoldering, dark action hero. He’s far from the worst movie Robin Hood. Kevin Costner’s got a lock on that ( Disney’s animated fox is more believable than him!). This is a huge botch of a story that should be an exciting, rousing entertainment.
02. PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2
The first PARANORMAL ACTIVITY was fresh, edgy and original enough to be enjoyable and even scary… if you’re scared easily. Unfortunately, whenever a film does really well… like, unexpectedly extraordinarily well, as the first film did, studios see nothing but sequels in their eyes. Hey, you can’t blame a guy for making money, right? The problem is, these sequels rarely bring the original filmmakers back, which means films of unique vision such as PARANORMAL ACTIVITY lose much of that essence in the pending franchise. This is where PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 fails. The first thing noticed about PA2 was that the budget was obviously bigger, much bigger, having been shot in high-definition. What’s really goofy about this is that we’re still expected to perceive the film as if it’s being told with home security camera footage. Look, if high-security facilities don’t have full-color, high-def security video, then these average suburban folks don’t either. As for the plot, well… I’m still unclear on exactly how that’s to be interpreted. PA2 takes place in a home that is incredibly similar to that of the first film, but it’s an entirely different family. The film seems to have difficulty deciding on it’s back-story as well, as we’re given a couple of thinly developed, rather hokey bits of extrapolation to chew on, but no of it makes much sense. Even some of the choices in shots and sequences intended to make us scared are questionable, most notably the gratuitous number of night-time pool shots. Ooooh… a possessed pool vacuum! Guess I won’t be swimming anytime soon. Overall, the biggest flaw of PA2 is that the gig is up, the cat is out of the bag. After seeing the first movie, any additional films are just gonna pail in comparison. So, it’s not unlikely we could see a PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3.
01. CLASH OF THE TITANS
Holy Ray Harryhausen! There are so many things going wrong in this film, it impossible to count on one’s fingers and toes. This should have at least had some great action sequences in it due to the usually reliable director Louis Letterier, but there is only one that comes to mind easily. This huge ensemble cast alone ought to demand some amount of respect, notability, something? Nope. Maybe someone slipped a fake script to Ralph Fiennes and Liam Neeson to get them to do this film because they are both such fine actors; it is difficult to imagine that they said they were on-board with this draft. The use of computer generated animation is used so poorly, then not all the way throughout the movie, and then in 3-D. All we can do is shake our heads at this monstrosity because they should have left the 1981 version alone. Or, at least until it had a chance to be remade in the style befitting it’s Calibos. Oops, caliber.
