A Look Back At The Worst Part II — Movies 2010

By Shawn Deena

While the small screen suckfest only took away precious time we wish we could get back, the craptaculars at the cineplex took away time and money. As we close out the first decade of the 21st Century we had a year filled with big budget stink bombs and star driven disasters. There were so many to choose from in just about every category and then there  were some that just should have never been made. Like the first one on my list.

Avatar: The Last Airbender

First, M. Night Shamalamadingdong had to suffer the indignity of not using Avatar because Mr. Bigshot James Cameron finished his movie first. And .. that was a good thing. See the thing about The Last Airbender was that when it was a cartoon on Nickelodeon and named Avatar, it was actually a really decent Japanime cartoon. Great story and good messages for the kids, enjoyable for adults, and so on. Essentially a kid who is supposed to be a great hero/savior ends up being a kid who has to try and figure out how he’s going to save the world. What our modern day director of horrible head scratchers (minus 6th Sense)  did was to take this good cartoon and totally screw it up with deplorable action, actors reciting wooden lines and a story that was incredibly stupid. It’s like he keeps trying to make a comeback hit and ends up making films that are progressively worse. Please stop.

The Tooth Fairy

As a parent you sometimes have to sit through some drivel because kids sometimes like things that adults see no joy in (Barney, Backyardigans, the freaky phallic show with the guy in orange,). Sometimes you have to go to bad movies too. And this Dwayne Johnson train wreck is one of those movies. I actually like the Rock. He’s kind of like a friendlier Vin Diesel. And he’s done some decent (emphasis on decent) films since he hung up his wrestling tights.  This movie though, was a one-joke gag that lasted as long as a piece of Bazooka Joe but without the funny cartoon.  Yeah we get it — big brawny, alpha male hunk,  has to be a …. Fairy! And to put poor Julie Andrews into this, that’s just wrong..

The Back-up Plan

That plan should have been to scrap this movie and release something else. Jennifer Lopez, outside of Selena has yet to make a good movie. Some have been palpable  but this movie, it wasn’t even tolerable. In yet another romantic comedy (she likes those), Lopez plays a middle aged woman who wants to have a baby on her own and through some crazy circumstances she falls in love with a, wait for it, local cheese maker. Any other plot information is pointless, just know that this movie was not funny, entertaining or even worthy of something you would watch while folding laundry if it came on TV. Yeah, it was that bad.I hope Jennifer Lopez is a better judge of wannabe singers than she is of scripts and her own acting.

Copout

Oh look, funny black guy gets partnered with serious, gruff white cop. Let the shenanigans begin. We’ve seen this before, 100 times, the classic of course being 48 hours. This 21st century version has 30 Rock funny man Tracy Jordan paired up with Die Hard badass Bruce Willis. Did I mention that this movie was directed by Kevin Smith? Yes the same guy who did Clerks. The guy who is well known for his writing skills, but his directorial skills–not so much. Bruce Willis looked like he sent in his robot twin and Tracy Jordan, who is normally a funny guy on TV, just didn’t pull it off.  Really not sure who thought this was a good idea.

Furry Vengeance

Oh Brendan Frasier. Remember this guy? The Encino Man, the hunky sensitive leading man who made The Mummy so enjoyable (then he made two more)? Well somewhere along the line he became the green screen actor seeming to land roles where he spent a lot of time acting in movies that needed one. Enter Furry Vengeance. Fraser, talking animals and skunk farts. The movie was about animals fighting back but it’s entirely irrelevant. This is not the Norma Rae (Oscar nominated film with Sally Field) of talking animal movies. By the way I would like to lump in the Cats & Dogs sequel, Marmaduke, Yogi Bear to this animated animal quartet of suck.

Legion

Well, the poster was cool. The fight for all humanity for some reason takes place in a diner in the Mojave desert? Throw in an extra pale Paul Bettany, Dennis Quaid with a really weird accent, a creepy old lady who crawls the wall and Tyrese on break from Transformers and mix. Bake lightly and you get the twaddle that was Legion. This was supposed to be a an action/horror movie. The horror, believe it or not, is that the filmmakers might  make a sequel.

The Bounty Hunter

Poor Jennifer Anniston. First she gets to be part of the couple that wasn’t and then proceeds to make a string of unmemorable romantic comedies. I’m not a robot; she’s a fine woman, but that’s not enough to make this movie worthwhile. With himbo Gerrard Butler as the male lead, these two “incorrigible” ex mates were supposed to fill up the screen with their chemistry and be the driving force behind the movie. Down and out bounty hunter chasing his bail jumping ex-wife. Comedy does not ensue. Comedy in fact, did not exist. Not sure what’s next for Butler but that’s two years in a row now he’s been in a romantic comedy clunker. Nice work.

I’m Still Here

What if Joaquin Phoenix made a fake documentary about quitting the business which was part of an elaborate scheme that involved him acting like a nutter with his Charles Manson beard and being totally cuckoo on David Letterman? What if no one cared? Guess what? No one cared. This certifiable stinker was directed  by Casey Affleck and even though the whole thing was a hoax answer me this Joaquin– how’s the real career going? Yeah, I thought so.

Grown-Ups

On paper this probably sounded like a really funny idea. Take a bunch of SNL alums (minus Kevin James) and have them make a movie about middle aged dudes living the middle aged live with completely unbelievable wives (Salma Hayek and Maria Bello). You would think with Chris Rock and Sandler alone that we would have some comedy gold but this really pointless buddy comedy disappointed across the board. You have to wonder if this was just Sandler being nice to his old comedy chums but attempting to make a movie they could all be in together. While it was a nice gesture, maybe next time just do a stand-up tour instead.

Jonah Hex

Yes, there have been really terrible comic book/graphic novel movies in the last decade, but none as heinous as Jonah Hex. Where to begin? Let’s see, Meagan Fox. There’s her wooden and boobified performance. There’s the fact that this movie looks like it was finished the day before release. This film based on a DC Comics Western hero had Josh Brolin in the title role amidst a clunky script and a bad CGI a finale that looked like it was lifted from another bad movie. This is one of those movies you see a trailer for and go, “Why would I want to see that?” Apparently, a lot of people decided they didn’t want to. It’s only saving grace — it was only 81 minutes long.

The Spy Next Door

I wouldn’t have really given this movie any attention except for the aforementioned kid factor but more importantly all the accolades Jackie Chan got for being the new and fresh sensei in the this summer’s Karate Kid remake went out the window if you happened upon this piece of cinema drivel. Chan as a romantic lead is about as plausible as Ryan Seacrest playing the lead in Othello. The Spy Next Door should have never come over.

Killers

Speaking of never coming over, if you lived next door to the couple that Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigel play in Killers, you would move.  In what has to be the worst attempt to spin the formula done so well in other films (True Lies for example) where you have on spouse/partner who’s really some kind of covert operative/assassin something, we’re supposed to buy Kutcher as that guy and Heigel falls in love with him and then discovers his “secret.”  They had less chemistry than Butler and Anniston and the dreadful plot combined with Heigel’s terrible acting made it clear that one person’s idea of good is everyone else’s idea of a yawn inducing, cringe worthy bore.

Hot Tub Time Machine

I wanted to like this idea. A hot tub that takes you back to the 80s and has the comedy styling of John … Cusack? Well it also had The Daily Show’s Rob Corddry  (from other crappy films, too), Craig Robinson from The Office and a funny but sadly placed Clark Duke. He’s a newcomer to the big screen who probably thought landed his dream comedy acting gig with the other three but instead gets to be part of a foursome that gets stuck in some poorly delivered 80s/Reagan era jokes,  a bunch of subplots that were all over the place and and potentially good idea gone to waste with this cast, writers and directors. Sure it had a great title but once you get past the pitch and lay it out on film, unfortunately it fell apart. Where’s a good time traveling phone box when you need one?

I could go on because there were a lot of bad films this year. More than 100 in fact. That means more bargain DVDs for the Wal-Mart bin next year and people at the RedBox kiosk thinking, “I wonder if that’s any good?” Epic Fail. If you did happen to catch a good movie like Inception or Black Swan, cherish those and have a happy new year.

Shawn Deena is a writer, musician, gamer and all around comic book and sci-fi nerd. As lover of films and television he has entirely useless library of knowledge that has now been increased thanks to the large volume of movies and TV shows Netflix offers on their instant play. As someone who likes to share his opinion, having a forum where he can rant incessantly about things in entertainment that bother him, make him laugh or make him want to hit himself in the face with a DVD box is a good thing. Having written about everything from Office Depot chairs to the page turning excitement of CPA guidebooks nothing pleases him more than writing about the stuff he loves and knows.

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