9 January 2010
Worst Films of the Decade!

Filed under film

Okay, after much deliberation, here are my worst films of the decade, beginning with the tenth-worst and working my way down to the worst of the worst.

The Tuxedo. On the surface, an ideal crossover vehicle for Jackie Chan’s brand of physical comedy. The movie suffered from stupid dialogue, idiotic musical sequences, James Brown, and a boring plot. Wait, I take that back. It’s not the movie that suffered from all of that.

Gone in 60 Seconds. This film’s main problem is that it’s just boring. There isn’t enough of the stuff that could have made it interesting. “Gone in 60 seconds” could almost describe my attention in this ridiculously brainless movie.

Year One. Yes, there are a few laughs, but very few, and pretty much all in the trailer. The film is a dreary voyage, highlighted with crassness mostly in the form of David Cross, who must have been Harold Ramis’s friend in high school or something because he’s far too major a character in this movie. It’s bad enough when a movie drags and drags; it’s beyond bad when you know the talent on the screen and behind the camera is capable of so much better. You’re supposed to root for a main character who tells a princess that he would like her to “sit upon his poley of polies?”

Bubba Ho-Tep. It was an interesting movie until I realized, in the midst of trying to wrap my brain around its strange plot, that I just didn’t care enough to wrap my brain around its strange plot. This movie is not trash; you can tell there’s something intelligent going on here. Unfortunately, I’ll never decipher it because I just don’t care.

Carolina. You know, there is a reason certain films are released directly to video, and I’d like to say that if I’d known that such was the fate of Carolina I’d have passed on it, but I can’t say that because I love Julia Stiles too much. Julia is actually pretty good in this movie; alas, not even she is good enough to save this romantic comedy. Her radiance is overshadowed by the overacting of Shirley MacLaine, who plays Carolina’s eccentric, rude, headstrong, irritating mother. The movie would like you to be first offended (or something) by this ridiculous character and then it wants you to realize that every crude thing she does is motivated by love and practicality, because of course she really does have a heart of gold, ‘though she suffers no fools. It’s more than a caricature, the way this character is written and acted. MacLaine really should have been ashamed of herself.

Town & Country. Chances are very good that this 2001 film escaped your notice. Oh, if only it had escaped mine. I saw it at the video store and convinced my companion that it was the one we wanted to take home for pizza and movie night. Warren Beatty, Andie MacDowell, Diane Keaton, Jenna Elfman, Goldie Hawn, and Garry Shandling! And I don’t remember what was written on the box, but if you’d seen it you would have thought it sounded interesting, too. It wasn’t. The film cost ninety million dollars to make and grossed ten million, making it one of the biggest economic flops in Hollywood history. You know, the masses cannot be counted on to get it right, but in this case they were dead-on. This movie is just awful.

Tomcats. Okay, from now on, I am calling the level of badness which a movie reaches when it crosses over from awful to truly sucky the Tomcats Line. ‘Cause you know; let’s be honest. You go to a movie like this for a couple of specific, non-admirable reasons, and the movie doesn’t even come close to delivering enough of even that. When all you expect are ribaldry, off-color humor, and nudity, and the movie fails to present that in sufficient amounts, it has crossed the Tomcats Line. This movie sucks.

Men in Black II. A boring movie doesn’t have to suck, but it sucks when it should have been so much better. The original Men in Black took advantage of the character and screen presence of its stars; the sequel seemed to rely on that star-power to propel the movie without giving it any kind of story to stand upon. I’ve seen movies that were much more offensive in their content; this was offensive in how boring it was, in how uninterested it made me in characters I’d previously been interested in. One of the worst films I’ve ever seen for this reason.

Dead Man. Like Bubba Ho-Tep (which, amazingly, some of us Village Idiots saw on the same night as Dead Man at Penny’s house one night), this is no stupid movie. It’s just long. And dreary. And boring. And aimless. And baffling. There is a very good chance that this film doesn’t belong anywhere near this list, but if that’s so, it was intended for an audience I have very little in common with, because I don’t get it, I don’t like it, and I don’t wanna know anything more about it.

The Real Cancun. You know how disappointing it is when a good television show is somehow made into a bad movie? The Real Cancun is based on reality television programs (which tend to suck anyway), but in movie-length form. Who thought this was a good idea? And why did I go see it? I’ll admit that I’ll occasionally watch trashy television for half an hour at a time, but I always feel contaminated and sullied when the half hour is up. I will never understand what made me think a movie-length version of similar material would not leave me feeling the same way, but much, much worse. One of my students mentioned wanting to see this the week after I’d seen it. I said: “Okay, think about what your number one reason is for seeing this movie. You got it? Okay, now trust me when I tell you that there is a teeny-weeny amount of that and the rest of it is boring housemate drama.” That scared him away from the film; I wish someone had given me the same review.

2010-01-09  ::  me