Just when you think we’re done with the cumulative joys of year-end lists, another one pops up to remind us that hindsight, along with being 20/20 (yeah, that’s what I meant), is also never-ending. The fine folks at New York magazine have recently posted their poll of the "nation’s top critics," a combination of solicited responses and close-readings of archived reviews that calls out many of the expected offenders — Speed Racer, The Love Guru, The Women – and provides the complete "ballots" of each writer. (This is especially useful so I know who hated the X-Files sequel and can avoid them at parties.)
We’ve all got our own opinions on this sort of thing. (If I were to name my worst, it would be one of those tiny piece of crap indies I was forced had the pleasure of seeing at Sundance that never made it to the multiplex, since I tend to not bother with stuff like 88 Minutes once I’ve been warned.) But to me, the real fun of this list is two-fold. First, I love reading a brilliantly-crafted evisceration, like Roger Ebert on The Spirit: "To call the characters cardboard is to insult a useful packing material." Hee-hee. (Are you reading Ebert, people? Please be reading Ebert.)
Secondly, and perhaps in some way reassuringly to the filmmakers in question, I suddenly find myself wanting to see the badness for myself. And thus do I guarantee you that, before the week is out, I will have purchased a ticket to this list’s No. 1 Worst Movie of 2008, Will Smith’s Seven Pounds (pictured), provided it is still playing somewhere around here. Because anything EW critic Lisa Schwarzbaum deems an "unintentionally ludicrous drama of repentance as an extreme sport" and the New York Times’ A.O. Scott calls "One of the most transcendently, eye-poppingly, call-your-friend-ranting-in-the-middle-of-the-night-just-to-go-over-it-one-more-time crazily awful motion pictures ever made," I simply must see for myself.
What about you, PopWatchers? Care to weigh in with your worst pictures from 2008? I also invite you to put on your writing caps and explain your reasoning in the most enticing way possible. I don’t just want to know what’s bad, I want to know why it sucks and if that suckage is in any way magical. Sell those train wrecks!
More on the year’s worst:
Moviefone’s 50 best (and 10 worst) films of the year
I saw it so you don’t have to! archive
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My vote is for “The Happening,” their #7 choice. While I’m pretty sure “Lady in the Water” will deservedly go down in history as Shyamalan’s magnum crapus, what he did with “The Happening” was basically watch Hitchcock’s “The Birds” and decide that he, too, could craft a nature-attacks-humans-for-no-reason flick only that plants were a much more cinematic agressor than birds. Not to mention, Mark Wahlberg spent the entire duration of the movie with a constipated look on his face.
Hey, RayT! Say hello to your mother for me.
LOL! “Now I’m gonna talk to a chicken!”
DISASTER MOVIE. The movie is a disaster (no pun intended). This movie made me like Meet the Spartans more.
10,000 BC. Made me realize how i liked dumb cavemen more
worst movie I have seen “fast forwarded” through – House Bunny. That was horrible, I was hoping for a “legally blonde” type movie instead I got the classic dumb blonde character that was really dumb.
1.Hancock
2.No Reservations
3.The Women
4.Sex and The City (because of Carrie’s storyline)
Totally disagree with the number 1 choice… Seven Pounds was a very touching, heartfelt movie… it had it’s faults… but, by no means, was it anywhere near horrible.
My pick… The Happening. What should have happened is that movie should not have been made!
THE WOMEN! I laughed the whole time… and not in a good way. I almost left the theatre.
To say that movies like Australia and Changeling were WORSE than that movie is craziness. Craziness!
Hancok – Just the worst!
7 Pounds
The love guru
The Happening
Five years from now, people will point to Speed Racer as the turning point where people realized that old-school critics were being laid off because they were so far out of touch with the new media. Almost every critic that dissed it pointed out that it was based on a “crappy old Japanese cartoon,” showing they were sharpening their knives before they entered the theater. Speed Racer is a wonderful film and the dinosaur critics just flat-out missed it.
Hands Down Disaster Movie. One day I made a decision to go see this movie. We had to rush to the theatre,but we got there on time. It turns out that desicion to see Disaster Movie may very well be the worst descion I’ll ever make in my life. I’m pretty young but I’m pretty sure that nothing will top this. Unless I marry a chimpanzee or something.
The worst ones I saw this year were Mongol, The Wackness, and Tropic Thunder.
The Women
Hancock (just awful)
The Happening
Quantum of Solace (sorry…. I luv luv luv Daniel Craig, but this movie was just awful)
I will strongly agree with the number one choice – Seven Pounds was insanely awful. I also hated My Best Friend’s Girl, with Dane Cook and Kate Hudson, though I probably should’ve seen that coming. Rich is also right – people were way too hard on Speed Racer. It was a fun, enjoyable movie, though it probably could’ve been about 30 minutes shorter.
The Happening but it was so bad that I had quite a good time seeing it!!! The best comedy of the year!!!
Sorry, but for sheer out and out disappointment, I would have to give the trophy to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Could This Title Go On Any Longer. Every critic seemed to give this film a pass just because an older Ford was doing it again. How about a decent script? and PLEASE George not a fifth. Just let it die a peaceful death.
5. Semi Pro – A little silly can go a long way. A lot of silly doesn’t go very far at all. Still very funny. Everybody sing, “Love Me Sexy!”
4. You Don’t Mess with the Zohan – I fell asleep on it twice before I finished it. It could have been just ridiculous – which can be very enjoyable, but it was bad at being ridiculous – which is no fun at all.
3. Journey to the Center of the Earth – Absurd. Implausible. Why would anyone take a child to the earth’s core to face possible consumption by a starved dinosaur? Uh – No.
2. Strange Wilderness – I really loved this one. But for me the successful journey to find Bigfoot was overshadowed by the fact that no one thought it was crazy that there really was a Bigfoot!
1. Mongol – Instead of enormous battle scenes leaving behind all of Khan’s defeated, we had an extended episode of Prison Break in which we watched a man go in and out of captivity for TWO HOURS!
“Seven Pounds” is emotionally manipulative and a bit extreme (and I figured out the ending with about 35 minutes to go), but Will Smith’s acting is top notch – there was not one person at the advance screening I attended that wasn’t riveted throughout the entire film.
I feel compelled to defend “Speed Racer” whenever I find it disparaged (I’ve been busy lately!), so I just want to put my two cents in here. As one of the nation’s non-top critics, I truly enjoyed “Speed Racer” all three times I saw it. Approached with the right mindset, it’s a really fun, cheesy racing action movie.
http://tgibrandon.blogspot.com/
WOW! Guess I’ll avoid reading anything from this guy from now on!
-Armond White, New York Press
“For me, the year’s worst is a toss-up: The Dark Knight, Slumdog Millionaire and Wall-E. This trifecta celebrates the reign of pessimism, the ubiquity of television, and the end of culture.”
Regarding “worst” movies of the year lists, it occurs to me that it’s sort of like picking the “sexiest man alive”. Obviously, it’s all subjective and there are probably a lot of sexy men and bad movies that just aren’t well-known. Whitney’s example of crappy indie movies she watched at Sundance is a case in point. I would guess some of those were much worse than anything on the official lists, but since almost nobody saw them, the critics talk about the studio films.
Have to say I am still reeling over last year’s Dan In Real Life, which I walked out of after 1/2 hour of incredulity at the rankness of the movie. Only movie I paid to see since then was the Dark Knight.
I have to agree with Ray T and Catherine about “The Happening.”
It’s both absolutely terrible and unintentionally hilarious in how spectacularly it fails. The movie was promoted to death as Shyamalan’s first R-rated movie, but the scariest, most intense stuff was in the trailer. In the movie, the deaths come off as more ludicrous and humorous than scary (I’m looking at you “guy in the lion pit.”)
Zooey Deschanel, whom I love, appears to have been given no direction other than “go out there and be Zooey Deschanel.” And Mark Wahlberg is so bad (“how bad is he?!”) that there’s a scene where he gets out-acted by a plastic plant. I wish I were kidding.
The thing is, I’m a BIG fan of Shyamalan’s. He’s WAY too good to be the force behind something that should’ve gone straight to sci-fi. For that reason it’s my worst movie of the year, but it’s also my second favorite comedy behind “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.”
My two cents:
Indiana Jones and the whatever it was.
The Day the Earth Stood Still-the ending left me with a “eh” feeling.
I thought House Bunny was a turd in a wet diaper. I can’t believe some people liked it. Went to a free preview. Please tell me, why would people pay to see some of these. To Marky Mark, LOL!
I assure you that marrying a chimpanzee is not a bad decision. I married one. It is a lot of fun. He threw poo poo at the screen during 7 Pounds. Made the movie more interesting.
10. Never Back Down
9. Charlie Bartlett
8. Semi-Pro
7. Four Christmases
6. Sex and the City
5. You Don’t Mess With the Zohan
4. The Women
3. Over Her Dead Body
2. Mamma Mia
1. Meet the Spartans
Four Christmases-no point whatsoever
The Incredible Hulk-i thought it was supposed to be good this time around
i try to avoid the ones that are obviously bad and take my time seeing the ones I’m curious about that receive bad reviews-like Seven Pounds or The Happening.
I’ll second You Don’t Mess with the Zohan…I fell asleep 1/2 way through, between the crotch, hummus, and sex jokes and the terrible accents. Adam Sandler you have fallen SO far.
I’d like to be between the crotch!