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.
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.
4A. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
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:
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.
