The Top Ten Worst Hit Songs of 2009

Sorry guys, that Best Film List for 2011 has hit of a creative writing block.  So you know what they say when you need a break from writing one list.  Just write another one.

The year is 2009.  Two years prior to 2011.  And we are just now entering one of the biggest eras for pop music.  I swear once we entered the Obama administration, pop music started to become significant again.  The early 2010's were a dynamic era for pop music as the artists had personality.  The music was lively.  And it just felt huge.  Huger than it is now.  I really genuinely do miss this era even though music is still pretty damn good as is.  I'm feeling all sorts of nostalgic for stupid music.

That doesn't mean this was a good overall year.  It was fine.  A tad overhated from what I've read through other music based blogs.  But by going off writing this worst list, yeah this worst list has some pretty large stinkers.  Say what you will about how huge the music felt, but the club boom era provided some of the most stupidest songs.  Which I could have filled this list up with easily.  But I do have my limitations for hollow voids of nothing, which there was a lot of that too.  Safe to say that while I do miss this era, I don't miss the bad music being this insulting to my intelligence.

So let's not waste any more of your valuable time with my incoherent ramblings.  We're counting down!

THE TOP TEN WORST HIT SONGS OF 2009

You can’t talk about this decade without the increasing amount of club shit that was starting to overtake the airwaves.  It was no wonder that I started listening to more and more underground indie shit.  Yeah most of you probably don’t know this about me unless you REALLY remember my early days, but you could have called me a hipster and I would have probably agreed with you in hindsight.  I do admit that in hindsight, it was cool to know that I saw A Day To Remember before they became one of the biggest alternative acts in the present and that I saw Portugal. The Man at the smallest of concert venues before they became rebels just for cash now.  And on the lower end of the spectrum, I also had the displeasure of these assholes opening for a pop-punk act and then make it big out of nowhere.

10. “Don’t Trust Me” – 3OH!3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdB3Oyd5HtU

And I really shouldn’t have been surprised that these two were big for nearly a year.  As most of you know, I’ve had the displeasure of hearing this song live in person before having this be one of the worst things I’ve insisted on hearing for many many years.  I remember back in my early days insisting this is one of the worst things I’ve ever heard.  Oh how young and naïve I used to be.

The course of time has really helped heal this song and this act in my eyes.  Of course they are still pretty bad and this song still sucks dick, which I think is a compliment to this act because they have god knows how many songs in their discography about their dicks:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSbCOxaZIVE

Yeah in case any of you were wondering what ever happened to these guys.  They’re still rapping about their dicks like its yesteryear.  As for this song, I still wished it would make them shut their lips.  Also, “DO THE HELEN KELLER AND TALK WITH YOUR HIPS!?!?!?!”  WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK- you know what, never mind.  The healing stopped and the hurting is back.  Next.

 

 

 

 

Yeah I think it’s safe to say that the Pitbull era has officially passed us by.  I mean I could be completely wrong and he shows up out of nowhere like the crazy uncle that unexpectedly arrives on your doorstep.   Especially with latin-pop kind of sort of making a comeback, but I don’t expect it to happen since Pitbull made this atrocity back in 2009:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFoxg4IFtqc

Yeah my guess is it’s kind of hard to be taken as a latin pop artist when you have this piece of garbage on your resume.  But this didn’t make the list because at least it’s entertainingly dumb.  To make this list, you have to go deep under my skin.

9. “Hotel Room Service” – Pitbull

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2up_Eq6r6Ko

What is this?  When did this song exist?  How did it make the top ten?  Why have we as a society collectively shoved this top ten smash hit collectively under the rug?  And this was on the upper half of this list.  I honest to god remember practically every song in Pitbull’s interchangeable pop discography except this one.  How did this happen?

My befuddlement aside, I think I know how I forgot this existed.  I’ve always been a Pitbull apologist.  Sure he’s had plenty of misses that I can’t defend, but if there is one thing I can say about Pitbull is that he can be enjoyably stupid.  No matter how repetitive he gets, he can be amusingly dumb because he always has such energetic production to go behind him.

Not here.  To put it nicely, the production is as disgusting as this song.  For a song about having hotel sex with multiple women, shouldn’t your song sound sexy?  Not like something straight out of an arcade game? 

Nah if there was ever a song that absolutely deserved all the hate that Pitbull received over the years, this is definitely one of them.  Not apologizing for this one.  Next. 

 

 

Looking back on my 2008 list, I feel like my worst list hasn’t held up all that well.  Maybe that should get a Retrospective Revisit someday?  Sure I still stand by not liking all of these songs but Miley Cyrus over Danity Kane and The Pussycat Dolls atrocities from this year?  What was I thinking?  But plenty of choices on that list still suck huge fat ones though.

8. “I’m Yours” – Jason Mraz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkHTsc9PU2A

I have nothing new to say about this song that I already haven’t said.  Unless you guys find it endearing that this song was nominated for Song of the Year and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance at the Grammys in 2009.  But it’s the Grammys so who the hell cares:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf9V0hwJ6qk

That Simpsons clip never gets old.  Just like this song will always suck until the end of time.  Moving on.

 

 

7. “How Do You Sleep?” – Jesse McCartney (featuring Ludacris)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bsXRqI1WbI

Okay let’s get this out of the way first.  The song sounds broken.  I don’t know if it’s the blipping synth, if it’s McCartney just being a flat out terrible singer, if it’s the nursery rhyme xylophone playing….I can’t believe this is a functioning song.  It sounds like half of one, if that.  Hell, I can barely make out anything at all.  Come on Jesse TRY HARDER!  ANNUNCIATE MOTHERFUCKER!  This needed to go back to the drawing board all over the place. 

But I think the main problem is obvious.  Jesse McCartney fucking sucks.  This guy just doesn’t have any sort of starpower.  Not even back in his early days.  The McCartney name doesn’t automatically mean a quality seal of approval.  Give this whiny song to prepubescent Justin Bieber…YEAH I SAID IT…and it would be a better song COME AT ME!

 This honestly would have been a worthy contender for the worst hit song of this year if it wasn’t for Ludacris saving the song.  Yes even at his guest spotting all over the pop chart phase of his career, he is still a welcome breathe of fresh air this song desperately needed.  That being said, this doesn’t excuse shit.  It’s no wonder this was the nail in the coffin for his career.  Now he can sleep all he wants.

 

 

 

So one of my main pop music reviewer influences started his career around this time.  I’m not going to mince any words when I say that I am a huge fan of Todd in the Shadows.  The first video I ever discovered of his was “Break Up” by Mario.  Which even til this day stands as the worst song he has ever reviewed.  He makes that perfectly clear more or less stating that this song is what nightmares are fueled by.  He’s right.  It is an audio nightmare.  And while I agree with him on that stance, it isn’t even the worst audio nightmare on the 2009 year end list.

6. “Pop Champagne” – Jim Jones (featuring Ron Browz and Juelz Santana)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrG4yKAVQuM

This is the much anticipated follow up to the ring-tone rap god himself, Jim Jones.  Further proving that you too can get that much anticipated second hit by abusing autotune worse than T-Pain ever would.

Honestly, the autotune abuse is the least of this song’s problems.  This is just one of the laziest songs I’ve ever heard.  From Jim Jones ripping off Biggie Smalls to the phrase pop champagne being one of the most overused clichés in all of music to this low rent T-Pain guest verse.  Yeah, I know I said the autotune is the least of the problems, but clearly they wanted T-Pain to be on this song, but even T-Pain has standards to reject this garbage.

But this songs biggest problems is the nonexistent production.  This beat is atrocious.  It’s just a thumping sound playing all over with sometimes a synth blaring awfully here and there.  How can you blast this in the club when there is basically nothing playing over it?  It’s just a nightmare to listen to.

And that’s “Pop Champagne”.  It’s….there….waiting for someone to listen to anything else.  Next.

 

 

…and speaking of listening to anything else.

5. “No Surprise” – Daughtry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyl24HRGgSU

Oh Chris Daughtry.  Your career had so much potential.  You were offered to become the lead singer of so many 90s alternative groups like Fuel to name one.  What happened?

Honestly, the American Idol corporate machine happened.  After lots and lots of devastated fans mourned their favorite getting knocked out too early on his season, Chris Daughtry made water into wine.  He was given so many opportunities to become other acts lead singers to the point that he said fuck it and formed his own band.

But that immediately turned into Chris Daughtry, an already vanilla personality, forming an even more vanilla band.  What could have led to more of a rock revival quickly became one of the least interesting adult alternative acts the genre spewed out.  With each passing single becoming more forgettable than the next.

And this is honestly the most forgettable of them all.  I at least could tell you a few lines from the likes of “It’s Not Over” and “Home”.  I honestly couldn’t tell you a damn thing about this song except it is about a couple on the rocks…..OH so its “It’s Not Over” again.  This time with a Chad Kroeger writing credit.  That’s not surprising to me in the slightest because this sounds like Chris Daughtry trying to sound like Chad Kroeger.

Sorry, but I don’t hear anthemic like the critics call it.  I just hear inoffensive mush that would be perfect retail playlist fodder.

 

 https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/flo-rida-on-chart-domination-and-his-recipe-for-success-190906/

With all the knocks against Flo Rida’s inexplicably very successful pop career, I have to give the man a ton of credit.  He knows his way around a damn good hook.  It’s why you have never seen him criticize the man that everyone forgets.  Shoot, even on the songs I outright hate by the guy, I have to admit that they are still very catchy.  That guy sure knows how to utilize those samples to get them stuck in your head.  He also knows how to pick out frequently good to great collaborators.  So what do you get when you do neither of those two things?  Well you get this.

4. “Sugar” – Flo Rida (featuring Wynter)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4WS_Q5Mq2s

How do you mess up a sample this badly?  I blame most of the problems with this song solely on the execution.  There are far better ways to utilize a sample then by grabbing one that’s recognizable and shoving it into your totally unrelated song.  A good sample adds to the layers of the song.  WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH EIFFEL 65 AT ALL!?  It’s like Flo Rida thought this overdone topic about candy/sexual double entendres couldn’t stand on its own two feet without something to pull you in so he decided to thrown in that sample of “Blue (Da Ba Dee)”.

I’ll actually give Flo Rida credit.  Him doing his same damn thing that I’ll completely forget by the time this song is over is more memorable than whoever this Wynter girl is.  How does she manage to be more forgettable than a guy that anyone can outshine?  But the lyrics don’t matter because it’s a Flo Rida song, who cares.  It all comes down to the sample that doesn’t blend well at all with the production.  What the hell is going on with those synths?  It’s nauseating.  Whoever the hell mixed this song had to have lost their job over this.  Jesus.

Unlistenable.  Next.

 

 

https://people.com/music/miley-cyrus-career-evolution-child-star-music-icon/

What a career this woman has had.  Spanning for over a decade now, I can genuinely say that there hasn’t been a career arch like Miley Cyrus’s.  Who else can say that they went from making Disney pop fluff to provocative party girl shit to psychedelic rock/pop to adult alternative fluff to nostalgic 80s throwbacks?  Nobody.  There is only one Miley Cyrus and she will continue to follow her passion to whatever niche circles she’ll want to explore next.  And I respect that about her…but she does have her limitations.

3. “The Climb” – Miley Cyrus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG2zyeVRcbs

Say what you will about the bad music from Miley’s discography like “Can’t Be Tamed” or “We Can’t Stop” or in my honest opinion and I know this is a hot take, but “Wrecking Ball”.  At least they have interesting levels of bad to them.  At least Miley puts forth the effort and believes they are good to her.  “The Climb” is the most generic, uninteresting, unchallenging, run of the mill, dull, vapid, hollow….need I go on?  It’s a nothing of a song performed by someone who clearly did a first draft level performance of it.

It is funny that I brought up “American Idol” previously in this post because this sounds like something the loser has to give as a final performance to remind themselves that their dream isn’t over yet.  And its performed like that too.  My god I know Miley doesn’t have the most angelic voice but I’d rather be listening to 2009 Justin Bieber over 2009 Miley Cyrus if I’m being brutally honest.  At least I can laugh at the former, while the latter I just want her to wrap it up before I fall asleep.

Say what you will about her, but Miley is absolutely far more talented and deserving to be more challenged than given reality show leftovers. 

 

I had this song ranked pretty high on my worst songs ever countdown and with all the short-sighted decisions that went into ranking those songs, my hatred for this song has only gone up since then.  It was ranked pretty high too, so let that emphasize how much I still despise this song.  And it comes from quite the familiar punching bag of mine.  In case you all forgot who he is, SING IT MAN!

2. “What’cha Say” – Jason DeRulo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBI3lc18k8Q

God what a first impression of the amounts this guy sucks.  One of the worst examples of sampling I’ve ever come across.  And the amounts of unfathomably awful moments of this song from DeRulo implying that him becoming a star will make the cheating stop to him singing along with Imogean Heap.  I don’t think this guy understands sarcasm at all.  It’s no surprise that we brought Chris Brown back after his career was left for dead after the incident.  We tried to replace him with someone even worse as a performer.

I’ve said once before that “Wiggle” is the worst song that this man will ever do.  And I still stand by saying that about such a god awful song.  But this is a close second.  I hate it that much.

But alas, it’s the end of an era for me.  Because as of this moment, I don’t think I’m ever going to talk about Jason DeRulo on this blog ever again.  His career is more or less a novelty.  He isn’t making music I outright hate anymore.  He’s just…there.  Who knows, maybe someday he’ll make something that outright pisses me off again.  He’s come back from irrelevance more than once before.  I just think that talking about Jason DeRulo has now officially overstayed its welcome on here.  And now that I’ve officially covered every year this man has been relevant in, it’s all the best that we do the same.

R.I.P. THE COMEDICALLY BAD, BUT ACTUAL INTOLERANCE FOR THE MUSIC OF JASON DERULO

2009 – 2020

 

I know what you all are thinking.  WHAT!?  YOU DIDN’T RANK JASON DERULO AS YOUR NUMBER ONE?!  Oh trust me, it was incredibly hard not to do so.  You all know how easy of a pick that would be.  What’cha Say is an awful awful song.  But at least it’s recognizably distinct.

My number one choice from this year is somewhat different from the usual norms of criteria I go through picking this list.  On its own merits, it’s not your usual levels of what to expect from bad pop music.  But if you put it into the context of what this year had to offer, then yeah, it is unacceptable that this was one of the biggest songs of the year and an overlooked song from my own 2010 worst list.  How did this fly under the radar from the MANY songs I ranted about from that year?

Simple.  It sounded like everything else on the radio.  Nothing about it stands out.  There is literally no outstanding qualities to my number one choice and at the end of the day, this stood out as the worst this year had to offer.

1. “Replay” – Iyaz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoG5jJ3E8rg

What a fitting name for a song that was overplayed back in this time period.  Seriously, if I can best represent what pop music sounded like back in this time period, it would sound exactly like “Replay” by Iyaz.  It has it all:

-Groanworthy usage of the word “shorty”

-Terrible producer namechecking himself in the beginning: JR Rotem is on the shitlist if I haven’t placed him there yet.

-Random guys shouting “HEY!”

-Vaguely foreign R&B singer who is trying to replace Chris Brown in the pop music landscape.

-Taking mannerisms from other artists?  Dude is practically a ripoff of Akon more than anybody else.

-A remix from one of the following: Ludacris, Akon, Lil Wayne, T-Pain, or Flo Rida.  It’s the last one in case any of you are wondering.

-R&B synths

-Crooning about how in love he is with a woman.

Yeah this song has practically everything that you could get from your male pop/R&B singers in 2009.  Not to mention that this guy is the protégé to Sean Kingston, you know the guy he is years older than?  This is one of the most useless songs I’ve ever come across while doing these chart retrospectives.  It’s blithering amounts of boring and I’ve got zero use for it.  Iyaz is one of the most anti-charistmatic performers I’ve ever come across and was just part of a trend that I’m glad we’ve swept under a rug. I’m going to end this ranking the same way Iyaz begins and ends this song.  Blandly.

 

And there you have it.  A top ten list to procrastinate from finishing my other top ten list.  Now I have TWO best lists to write, instead of one.  Maybe this wasn't a good idea after all.

Jokes aside, I hope you all enjoyed taking a look back at a more semi-recent music year.  Best list and the other best list for 2011 film are on the way.  Thank you all for reading and take care!

The Top Ten Worst Movies of 2011

 

I’ve been meaning to jumpstart this project for a while now.  Music shouldn’t be the only format of media on this blog that gets retrospective rundowns.  So welcome to the first time on this blog, the Best/Worst Movies of previous years.

I briefly started this project on one of my regular forums six years ago.  My criteria back then was I was going to limit myself to only the top 100 most profitable films domestic at the box office.  Why?  Because those were the movies that people actually paid to see.  Doing this project, I only managed to do two years and then I abandoned it.  Because let’s be honest; it is easier to listen to one hundred songs with two to five minutes long than it is to watch one hundred movies that are an hour and a half long.  It was too much work, especially since I was just coming off unemployment at the time and returning to the world of full-time work after a five month layoff.

So I know what you are thinking after that explanation.  Why am I returning to this now?  Isn’t this going to be a lot of work again?  In a way, it will still be a challenge.  But I’m going to take it easier on myself by doing more recent years.  Because the moment I got my driver’s license in 2006, I would regularly visit my local theaters and watch movies online in my free time.  There is a better chance of me having sat through at least 70-80% of these top one hundred lists making what little I haven’t seen easier to process.  Plus I think it will be a refreshing change of pace amongst all my music retrospectives.  Haven’t really seen as many film retrospectives like this so hopefully it will bring more attention to my blog (flex).

So a few rules for these film retrospectives:

-Candidates for my best and worst lists must have ranked in the Top 100 of the box office of the year I end up ranking.  I’m limiting myself to just domestic films because it would be easier for me to access and obtain copies of said films.  The worldwide box office results aren’t really all that much different outside of a few foreign films that are hard for me to locate.

-I’m only doing films of said year.  If they were released the year prior, they will not count towards the current year.  They were released the year prior for a reason.

-I will not be doing a 100 or so film ranking like I do with my music lists.  That’s impossible to rank.  But I will open up to mini-reviews if anyone who comments want to know my thoughts on certain movies that I don’t talk about in my best or worst lists.

-If you guys are ever curious as to what films are going to be in contention for my best and worst lists, I’d normally recommend checking out boxofficemojo.com.  But ever since their site got redesigned two years ago, those lists have become impossible to read.  All you guys need to do is click on “in-year releases” to see what the true list is.  Stop at 100 though, just remember.  Anything lower than that won’t count.

-And my last rule and it’s especially important for the first year I’m doing this project for.  No concert films or 3-D re-releases.  Those are gimmicks.  The concert films are just to exploit fanbases for extra money.  And the 3-D re-releases are of older movies that I’ll eventually be talking about anyway for the years they were released.

Got it?  Good.

So what is this year I’ll be starting off with?  Let’s go back ten years to the magical year of 2011.  Or as I like to call it, the worst film year of the 2010’s.

By no means do I think this year isn’t redeemable.  Far from it.  As I like to say, it just makes the best films of a weaker year stick out more.  But the way I see it, the good movies of this year just weren’t nearly as memorable as they were in stronger years.  To me, the overall sense I got from the year of film that was 2011 is that the general public was just there was no real sense of direction.  The big blockbusters and franchise films aren’t nearly as strong as their contemporaries, while the prestige films just did not feel like they would compete with some of the stronger playing fields we ended up getting as the 2010’s rolled on.

Yeah 2011 just felt like a proverbial blip on the radar of quality that I’ve never really been able to shake.  Just a lot of mediocrity all over this list that I could technically make a list of top ten biggest disappointments.  But like I said before, I know what gets the view.  So let’s talk about some stinkers.  And man.  There are plenty of those to go around this year.  So why not waste any more of y’all’s time?  Let’s move onto the feature presentation.

THE TOP TEN WORST MOVIES OF 2011

 

 

I bet a lot of you were expecting this to top the list as soon as you saw what year I was doing.

10. Jack & Jill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJVv3PBoPMc

I’m just going to come out and say it.  This isn’t nearly as bad as the concept makes it out to be.  Which who are we kidding?  This is still one of the worst concepts for a movie in our lifetime.  This was exactly one of those fake-out parody movies in Adam Sandler’s 2009 comedy, “Funny People”.  It shouldn’t exist.  I’ve seen it twice and I still can’t believe this exists.  But I’m kind of glad that I saw it a second time.  Because after hate-watching it out of my morbid curiosity’s sake the first time, I ended up seeing it again at a friend’s house years ago.  I mean I can’t believe of all the movies playing, it was this garbage.  But re-watching it helped me realize that there were a few things worth salvaging.

The premise sucks and it knows it is stupid.  And at times, it glorifies its own stupidity to sometimes amusing results.  Like more often than not, I’m wondering if Sandler’s connections really came around to helping some of these actors and actresses, who appear to be here against their will, try to help bring some unintentional enjoyment.  And speaking of which, and easily the best part of this movie, is Al Pacino.  He plays this over the top version of himself who falls in love with Jill and my god, I really do believe he was on something while being in this.  Because this level of acting in an all-time bad comedy shouldn’t be this amusing.

So yeah, I’m going to say it.  Jack & Jill is horrible.  But not nearly as bad as so many people make it out to be.  And it’s only number ten on my personal list.  We got more shit to get through.

 

Look I wanted to avoid the easy targets at all costs and would rather point out some more of the under the radar stinkers from this year.  But this is a honest list and this was definitely a studio defining mistake.

9. Cars 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg5hj2c5Nkk

Look when even Pixar themselves had to come out and say that we are no longer going to make sequels solely for the merchandise deals, you know that’s when your studio regrets ever making this.  And they really should.

I’m not going to sit here and point out all the faults.  Because even those who haven’t seen it knows that making this movie Mater-centric with a what the fuck spy-espionage plot is truly not giving a fuck about the quality of this.  Instead, I’m going to defend the Cars franchise for not being “that bad”.  Because I can see why this series is merchandisable.  Giving vehicles eyes is marketing genius.  Lots of kids play with toy cars when they were younger.  It makes a lot of sense that Cars is a cross-merchandising studios dream franchise.

And you know what?  The first movie was perfectly fine.  It’s a fine fish out of water story that had memorable characters and some clever puns here and there.  And I’ll even defend the third movie.  It was good and the best of the franchise.  Seeing Lightning McQueen take on the mentor role makes the series come around full circle.

But this truly was a terrible decision.  If movie studios haven’t learned by now, let this be a prime example as to why we should never make a spin-off or a sequel mainly about the comedic side-character.  More often than not, it ends up being awful and here I present Exhibit A.  Next.

 

 

For as much as comedies fell off in the back half of the 2010’s, you could tell that the nosedive was coming as early as 2011.  When everyone was trying to be the next version of The Hangover.  And that includes the sequel, which was basically the first one all over again in Thailand.  And for as much as I wanted to place that sequel on this list, that would be unfair to the many, and I do mean many, bad comedies that were so badly trying to capture what made The Hangover a success.  At least the sequel still managed a few laughs out of me even if the storytelling was literally copy and paste.

 

So with that said, let’s talk about a movie that got literally ZERO laughs out of me.

8. Hall Pass

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIMYNVkZBSo

From one of the future Academy Award winning makers of 2018 classic and one of my worst films of that year, “Green Book”, comes this timeless tale of two grown men who are given a hall pass to cheat on their wives because ISN’T INFIDELITY FUNNY!?  LAUGH DAMN YOU!

Honestly this movie is tailor made for 40 year old dads who have some sort of power fantasy of being allowed to cheat on their wives.  And even then, it doesn’t remotely work.  The comedy in this is as low brow as it can possibly go.  Plus everybody in this is extremely unlikeable.  They somehow managed to make likeable actors and actresses such as Owen Wilson, Jason Sudeikis, Christina Applegate, and Jenna Fischer and just turn each and every one of them into irredeemable characters.  From my understanding, that was the Farrelly Brothers thing as directors before they became Academy Award winning “artists”.  But have no worries, they still don’t have a basic understanding as to how actual humans work in their movies no matter what time period they’re working in.

But yeah, Hall Pass gets a hard pass for me.  Not even a single chuckle.  Worst comedy of the year...

 

 

 

…oh wait, there was this too.

7. Bad Teacher

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GahC5cVsU6A

Try convincing me that these aren’t the same movie.  Unlikeable characters all around.  Really unfunny comedy, obvious R-rated joke material being all the more obvious, and just trying and failing to get a reaction solely based off your premise.  The only major difference being leads and honestly Cameron Diaz was a box office draw at the time and her name probably pushed this to being as financially successful as it was.

Here’s the thing that not enough people talk about.  Cameron Diaz was on the downswing of her career at this point in time.  Like you could just tell that she was getting bored with acting with all of the bad projects she was deciding to be a part of.  The penultimate bad year for her was 2014, where she was in three of the most critically reviled movies of that year in general.  But honestly, I point to 2011 being the first major sign of her not caring anymore as she basically slept walk her way throughout this entire performance.  That’s why this is higher than Hall Pass.  At least the actors and actresses tried to make that movie work.

Not even the supporting cast tried here.  Lucy Punch was not an interesting “antagonist”.  Justin Timberlake and Jason Segel were both uninteresting love interests.  Especially Timberlake who I’m sorry but he’s not as good of an actor as we made him out to be.  Sure he had a few good roles, but he’s not a leading man.  Never was.  And look no further than here where there is a gag so repulsively unfunny that goes on for way too long.

 

 

 

How many of you remember this relic from yesteryear?  Yes, Valentine’s Day.  A romantic comedy from iconic director Garry Marshall, may he rest in peace, that was hilariously bad but it managed to be one of the biggest movies from the previous year, 2010.  Also a movie that proves that sometimes all a movie needs are huge stars and people will turn out in droves to go see it regardless of quality.  And by god, this movie sure had some huge names attached.  This was such a huge success that Warner Brothers told Garry Marshall to fast track a sequel immediately.

6. New Year’s Eve

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5VS2GERO_8

Thus we got New Year’s Eve.  A movie that was made for even less with not nearly as impressive of a cast list (but still more impressive than others at the time because STARS SELL) and not nearly as cohesive of a script.

If you guys are expecting a full analysis of how much this movie does not work, then just skip ahead because none of these holiday themed romantic comedies were not actual movies to begin with.  They are just a bunch of short films that don’t last long enough to really leave any impression and are just rushed job paychecks for the actors involved.

But at least Valentine’s Day, for as bad of a movie as that was; and it was pretty damn bad.  At least that movie had a who’s who of major stars from the likes of Julia Roberts, Anne Hathaway, Bradley Cooper, Jamie Foxx, hell even Taylor Swift made her acting debut; just to name a few of the many big names.  Those are names that are going to draw people into movie theaters opening weekend.  New Years Eve has Jessica Biel, Zac Efron, Sarah Jessica Parker, Halle Berry….look I think you get the point.  At this point in time, none of those names were proven draws, or yet in Zac Efron’s case.  The only actor that was involved in both of these movies was Ashton Kutcher, who I felt like was contractually obligated to all these movies, he was even set to appear in the scrapped third one after this bombed.

If you want to look at why romantic comedies were so fucking terrible to the point that it took actual effort for them to become popular again, look no further than this gimmicky piece of crap.  The effort to make quality couldn’t come soon enough.  Next.

 

 

 

Like I touched upon in my opening, 3D was really being pushed hard at around this time as the next big thing.  Movies from yesteryear were getting re-releases with added on 3D aspects.  Concerts were being pushed as 3D viewing experiences.  Televisions were becoming 3D.  Hell Nintendo just released the 3DS hyping it as a whole new gaming experience…says the company who made the Virtual Boy.

But 2011 also felt like the decline of the 3D era.  More and more studios started notice sharper 3D sales declines as well as more and more crap started to flood the three dimensional systems.  Plus more and more studios started to notice increases in this little viewing experience called IMAX; maybe you all have heard of that?  Either way, 3D was getting towards absolute burnout so directors tried harder and harder to find other ways to sell their films.

5. Spy Kids 4D: All the Time In The World

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWWOrCE1MR8

Enter Robert Rodriguez.  Who was honestly ahead of the curve when it came to 3D becoming a thing.  Rodriguez was at this weird point in his career where he was splitting time between making R-rated gore flicks like Grindhouse/Machete/Sin City one year followed immediately by family friendly flicks like the Spy Kids series/Shark Boy and Lava Girl/Shorts the following year.  Robert Rodriguez will go down in my opinion with one of the most diverse catalogs of directorial features when it is all said and done.  But like I said, he was making 3D films like the third Spy Kids and Shark Boy and Lava Girl before James Cameron really brought 3D into the popular culture in a big way with Avatar.  So if anyone would be able to find a way to keep 3D fresh and innovative, it would be him.

Uhhh, he sure did I guess?  Enter 4D: Aroma-Scope!  Where theater attendants passed out scratch and sniff cards where the viewers would follow along with the movie and smell exactly what the characters smelt in the movie…I guess?  Look, I did not go see Spy Kids 4D in theaters at the time, so I’m going with one of my friend’s words on how this movie turned out.  He said that was more or less what the aroma-scope feature was.  And yeah, that sounds like the sort of shit you would expect for a theme park ride.  I’m surprised the seats didn’t shake the audience or water would shoot out at you.  I guess we are saving that for Spy Kids 5D?

My viewing experience was sadly less active watching it on Netflix.  Instead I ended up watching some cheesy lame family flick with a message that was so ham-fisted down our throats about spending time with your children that it put me to sleep.  Twice.  I’m not kidding.  This movie was so boring and predictable that all you need to do is just watch the trailer and you can probably guess where this movie is going and you’ll be right.  Unfortunately, it does not come with a scratch and sniff card so you probably won’t get to smell barf or shit or whatever else that card came with.

 

 

Honestly I lied.  This is a top eleven worst movie list.  Because this is basically a tie.

4A. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSONGEe2Fb0

4B. The Smurfs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhBpgqXwrt8

I’m just roping these two in together because they both represent a trend that I thought died out between the years of 2005-2015, but unfortunately with the release of Tom & Jerry this year, proved that I was completely wrong and this trend is still alive and kicking.  And if you can’t tell what trend I’m talking about, you’re just as creatively bankrupt as the studios that greenlight these no effort adaptations of classic television properites.

Sad thing is that the original Alvin and the Chipmunks actually wasn’t nearly as bad as the rest of the Chipmunk films.  Hell catch me on a good day and I’d say it was mediocre instead out of outright dog shit like all the sequels.  Why?  Because it had a decent amount of effort put into its story, its character depth, and staying loyal to the source material with its songs and not becoming D-list covers of modern pop songs like all the sequels.  Chipwrecked is by far the worst of these movies as you can just tell that absolutely nobody had any sort of fun making this.  David Cross has even gone on the record saying that it was one of the worst experiences of his career.  If that isn’t an indictment on your franchise churning out utter garbage year after year, then I don’t know what is?

The Smurfs on the other hand, I could tell from the trailers that this franchise was going to be trash from the get go.  And low and behold, we get a film that smurfed us all with its low effort, low quality complacency from the moment this movie starts.  The only thing saving this from being any lower, thus breaking this tie, is me being rather apathetic to Hank Azaria.  Who actually does a really damn good Gargamel in comparison to Jason Lee who was never a good Dave Seville in the Chipmunk films.  This movie, hell even the sequel, doesn’t deserve the effort that Hank Azaria is giving these movies.  Meanwhile, none of the other actors and actresses are doing anything spectacular.  Even Neil Patrick Harris, who I wonder why is he even doing these movies to begin with.

Sadly, I know why this trend is never going to die.  Hollywood knows that nostalgia sells.  And it will continue to sell.  And they are made for dirt cheap.  Hell Tom & Jerry made its money back during its theatrical run in a fucking pandemic.  Get ready for more of these easy quick cash-ins the older you get.

 

 

I was going to group this one in with the last two, but honestly, that would be a disservice to this family comedy.  After all, it’s the only Easter movie we have.

3. Hop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYrxIQf-s-g

So what you may be asking makes Hop worse than Chipwrecked and the Smurfs?  Besides setting an already low bar even lower?  Well you see…those last two movies…they felt like actual movies in a sense.  Sure all my complaints still stand, but they at least they had a story.  A point A to point B to point C and so on during its entire run time. 

Hop…has no direction.  Hop barely has a story.  The sequential storytelling in Hop makes no fucking sense whatsoever.  It’s just Russell Brand rabbit and James Marsden sitting around talking, standing around talking, driving around talking, and just doing the exact bare minimum to qualify itself as a movie.  The plot of this movie actually starts in the second half when Russell Brand rabbit no longer wants to be the Easter Bunny and James Marsden wants to become the Easter Bunny.  Sorry for the spoilers, but I just want you all to understand how fundamentally broken this movie is.  A fully grown man who literally has the mindset of a child for basically this entire movie, wants to be a rabbit who hands out candy.  I….I just don’t get it.  Add in that the big bad guy in this movie is a….Mexican chicken stereotyped so terribly by Hank Azaria; who makes me want to take back any compliment I just gave him in the last movie.  I….I’m just at a loss for words about how much of this movie doesn’t make any sense.

This movie broke me.  In more ways than one.  I’ve seen plenty of bad family comedies in my lifetime, but not one this perplexingly horrible.  Add in that this is Illumination Studios only live-action movie to date and now I can honestly see why they stopped doing them.

 

 

 

Like I said earlier, this was a really bad year for comedies.  And this was the most painful of them all.

2. Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3J29PNvIhY

I don’t know how hot of a take this is, but I absolutely hate the original Big Momma’s House.  I mean it’s more or less just Martin Lawrence doing his own version of Mrs. Doubtfire.  And I’m just not a fan of those types of comedies to begin with.  They are just not that funny to me.  Nothing against Martin Lawrence, who I do find to be a funny guy.  But this series is absolutely not up my alley.  Especially when this series is from the minds of two directors that I absolutely cannot stand in Raja Gosnell and John Whitesell.

Thus we have the threequel, which also is riding another trend that was starting around this time.  Handing off the reigns of an “iconic character” to a younger actor or actress.  The Terminator movies were doing it.  Die Hard was doing it.  Why not the “iconic” Big Momma’s House?  I’ll tell you why because THESE MOVIES ARE NOT FUNNY.  And after years of telling myself I would not watch this movie, I finally had to for this project.  I’m probably exaggerating when I say this, but I just sat there contemplating what the hell I was doing with my life while sitting through this painful painful hour and a half of watching these two grown men doing painfully unfunny grossout jokes and playing into these tropes that should have died so long ago.

Not a single salvageable minute from this.  Nothing worth mentioning and the sooner this leaves my mind, the better.

 

 

 

I could go on some soliloquy about why this is my number one before the reveal, but instead, I’ll just let this post credit scene from Deadpool 2 do it for me:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2xZhY31n00

Hahaha it’s funny because this movie was almost a career killer.  And it’s fucking terrible.

1. Green Lantern

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-GO9fo9DtM

Deadpool broke a lot of barriers for superhero movies and the R rating as a whole.  But what doesn’t get talked nearly enough is how it single handedly saved Ryan Reynolds from fading into obscurity as a leading man.  Which it did.  And it was because of so many terrible career choices from the years prior that put him in such a position in the first place.  Whether it be playing a PG-13 version of the merc with a mouth in Origins: Wolverine to playing a detective of the afterlife in R.I.P.D. and even starring in his own fair share of bad comedies like his R-rated Freaky Friday themed film this year in The Change-Up; consider that one my unofficial number eleven from this top ten worst list.

But most infamous of them all is Green Lantern.  A movie so ugly, unimaginative, uncharming, and unoriginal.  This isn’t a superhero movie.  This is an imitation of a superhero movie.  Just because you have a guy who can look the part, doesn’t mean he can play the part.  Nobody involved with this, not even Ryan Reynolds himself, had any idea what made the Green Lantern such a timeless superhero.  I’m not going to sit here and act like I’m knowledgeable on everything Green Lantern and the corps.  When it came to DC comics, I didn’t read barely any of his stories, sorry.  But even I’m probably more aware of how to make a more faithful or at the very least an interesting adaptation of Green Lantern than anybody involved with this did.  An instead of getting something more clever and timeless that would have possibly led to some sort of connection to a DC Extended Universe (it was only a few years away, just saying), you just get something so thoroughly dated and forgettable.

Hell since I brought it up, I'll go ahead and say it.  The DCEU, with as many bad movies as there were, didn't have a movie THIS level of awful.  And even the things that are terrible about this movie like the all CGI suit and the dark and ugly universe built around it, they aren’t even MEMORABLY bad.  They are just as shrugged off and dull as the rest of this movie.  At the very least, even the worst superhero movies off the top of my mind had some memorable elements to it.  This movie doesn’t even try to give us some distinct memorable irritations that would normally be fun to rage about it in all my nerd-dom.

All these elements are what makes this one of the worst superhero movies of all-time for me.  It’s a dull ugly uninspired mess of a movie that didn’t even have the audacity to try, so why should I even try to care about your shitty superhero movie?  This is right up there with Fan4stic and Catwoman at the top of the list.  Wade Wilson, play me out.

Couldn't say it better myself.

And those were the top ten worst movies of 2011.  Like I said at the beginning, this year wasn't completely unsalvageable.  The best list for this year is in the works.  Hopefully will have it posted within this month.  So stay tuned for that.  Any thoughts?  Share in the comments below or just let me know.  Love to here feedback when I get the chance.  And as always, thanks for reading.  Until next time, take care.

Review: Godzilla vs Kong

 

Yeah I know I know.  This is like four to five weeks late.  Especially since the peak time to talk about this movie has come and gone.  But I wanted to give this movie the treatment it deserves because I think its success is an understatement at this point and time.

But first a little bit of backstory.  This has been in the works for nearly ten years when Warner Brothers first decided to revive the Godzilla franchise; which has been dormant for close to fifteen years prior thanks to the god awful 90’s Godzilla film that brought us classic lines like this:

 

For those of you who don’t know of it, the less you know the better.  Its seriously one of the cheesiest movies I’ve ever seen in my life and not in a good way.  Either way, this film killed the interest in the classic movie monster stateside for quite some time, but you know where Godzilla still reigned supreme?  The worldwide box office as the Godzilla movies still have major worldwide appeal at the box office, especially in the Asian markets.  That’s why most of the films take place there due to its film legacy status.  So no matter what the domestic haul is for these films, the worldwide box office is where these movies make major bank.  And studio executives knew this.  So if they were to make more massive appeal Godzilla films, they had to plan a major way to reignite the Godzilla franchise for a new era.

Enter Marvel Studios and the new way to make franchise films.  Everyone caught on with how the cinematic universe trend soon after The Avengers made massive amounts of money in 2012.  Especially Warner Brothers, who decided to turn all their franchises into cinematic universes of sorts from DC Films to The Conjuring to Harry Potter.  And I absolutely understand why Godzilla got one with all of its years and years of lore to pull from with all the titans Godzilla has gone up against in the 50s onward.  There were tons of opponents for Godzilla to go up against, but studio execs knew that they needed a major trademarked character for Godzilla to go up against in order to get their Avengers style storytelling payoff.  But who?

Enter King Kong himself.  Another major character from years past in the Warner Brothers IP library.  Kong’s history hasn’t been nearly as shaky as the king of the monsters, but Kong’s history is more diverse as nearly every decade had a King Kong movie of some sort.  Hell this isn’t even the first time he has fought Godzilla either as he fought him once before in 1963.  The Kong movies have always been fascinating to me of sorts.  They are never boring as Kong seems to be more about trying to connect with the humans that are terrified of him.  Even the admittedly most boring Kong movie, the 2005 Peter Jackson three hour longed snoozer was more or less about Kong’s longing for some sort of connection despite his monstrous size and rampaging anyone who threatens him.  In other words, he’s the perfect sort of rival to fight a radioactive lizard that wants to protect us from other titans that want to destroy us.

And this is the part where I talk about the films that led up to the gigantic showdown, but I’ll be honest.  Except for Kong: Skull Island, which was a gloriously cartoony B-movie with a legitimately good cast of actors and actresses, I’ve not been all that impressed with the two Godzilla movies.  The first one was hideously boring and had a lack of Godzilla.  King of the Monsters had some great fights, but I couldn’t give two shits about any of the story because it was so plot hole filled and had so many irredeemable characters that pissed me off.  That’s been the problem with this “cinematic universe”, even Kong: Skull Island which I liked.  None of these movies have successfully managed to juggle between showing the titans clashing with their enemies and giving us an interesting story or likeable characters.  The only reason Skull Island worked was because it knew not to take itself too seriously.  When you have Samuel L. Jackson staring off against King Kong with a ridiculous score blasting over it, how serious am I supposed to take this?

Needless to say, Godzilla vs Kong finally got the middle ground right.  They gave us exactly what we wanted from a popcorn blockbuster movie in an era where we don’t have any of these at the moment.  I mean it’s not god’s gift to cinema because there is still plenty to nitpick, but it more than made up with it by giving us the right amounts of fighting between two cinematic behemoths.  That’s exactly what the title and it lived up to the fucking hype, my god.

I’m just going to get my needless nitpicking out of the way first.  The characters are still plenty flat.  But unlike the other films up til this point, we don’t need them to be THAT interesting.  And unlike the other movies, the ones that we are supposed to like are likeable.  Alexander Skarsgard and Rebecca Hall are good actors, but I honestly couldn’t tell you anything about any of their characters, no offense.  The unlikeable characters rightfully die without overstaying their welcomes.  Literally, that’s all we are asking for with these monster movies.  The only character I don’t like was the podcast guy, whose name is not that important but he’s played by Brian Tyree Henry, but thankfully he doesn’t get too much screen time and at least his subplot with Millie Bobby Brown and Julian Dennison leads to something.  Something incredibly stupid, which is the other major nitpick I have with this.  This subplot, without giving away any major spoilers, has an incredibly stupid leap of logic that it wants you to take no questions asked.  And I honestly have a lot of questions as to how we are supposed to believe that could even possibly happen.  Let’s just say that a character died in King of the Monsters and its spirit somehow was still alive to be brought back to life in a new form.  Yeah I guess that’s a slight spoiler in a way, but that’s the best I can describe it.

But look, we all know we didn’t pay for a ticket or a subscription to HBO Max for this movie expecting a coherent story or deep character studies.  No.  We paid to see Godzilla and Kong wrecking shit and beating the hell out of each other.  AND MY GOD DID THAT DELIVER.  All three fight sequences fucking delivered the goods.  The way these sequences were filmed were great as we got exactly the right amounts of both characters having the upper hands and the right amounts of focus on each.  We understood why Godzilla was rightfully pissed off and played the antagonist, that wasn’t really the antagonist.  The movie rightfully made Kong the protagonist as its in his lore and the human aspect to his character was played perfectly with his friendship with this little deaf girl, played by Kaylee Hottle, who by far was the best actress in this movie.

You know what the best part of these fight sequences were?  THEY WERE FILMED WITH LIGHT!  HELL YES!  That has been a major complaint I’ve had with so many blockbusters as of late.  Including the previous films in this cinematic universe.  We are getting way too many dark and gritty stylized fight sequences were you have to squint at times to see the action.  I get that’s the way things are now, but I wish it wasn’t.  Because it may add a cool style to it, but it makes the movie hard to follow at times and is kind of a detriment.  Not here and thank you Adam Wingard for not following the trend.

Bottom line.  You're getting what you get when you watch this.  It's not something prolifically deep or life-changing.  It's just Godzilla and King Kong duking it out with some human interaction to further along the story leading to more Godzilla and Kong fighting.  And you know what?  That's all I really wanted from this movie and it absolutely delivered on that front.  My only regret is not seeing this movie in theaters.  Which is not this movie's fault that it came out during a pandemic, so nothing against it.  I bet it would be even more amazing in IMAX.  But yeah, this is a really fun action movie that is great popcorn fun.

Final Grade: A-

Not sure if or when we'll get a sequel to this because this was the big event that this cinematic universe was building up to.  Don't really see this being a long-term cinematic story, but if they can find more ways to continue this, then yeah; consider me intrigued.  It was at least one of the more cohesive attempts at studios outside of Marvel being able to build a larger story more successfully.  Hope we see more.

Thank you all for reading as always.  Sorry this is late.  Expect more reviews on the way and more projects in the works.  Until next time, take care.