Worst Film of the Decade
NPR’s Bob Mondello selects his worst films of the decade. The ground rules are that at least 4 million Americans (approximately $30 million) have seen the film. I’ll have to think about mine. If you don’t want to go to the link, here’s his picks
Romantic comedy: Fool’s Gold
Sci-fi: Battlefied Earth
Blockbuster: Pearl Harbor
Worst film of the decade: Love Guru
I haven’t seen any of these films, but I can tell that Battlefield Earth is pretty bad just from the clips they played. It’s one of those that is so bad, it could be sort of good. (Well, not really.)
I’ll have to think about what my worst films of the decade are and report back.
I happened to enjoy Battlefield Earth. And not in a so-bad-it’s-good way. I found it entertaining even when I didn’t really like the idea of adding to L. Ron Hubbard’s estate’s coffers.
Richard Roeper is counting down his 100 worst of the decade here, but it’s not all in one place. He’s alternating those posts with his 100 best of the decade in the same place.
Oh, I just noticed that he’s appending each day’s twenty titles to the previous (already shared) titles, so if you can wait a few days the entire Worst 100 should be readable in one post.
John Travolta sounded and looked pretty ridiculous.
I checked out Roeper’s list. I didn’t think League of Extraordinary Gentlemen warranted a worst of the decade pick.
I also really disagree with his top two picks of the 2009. It’s not that I hated the top two picks (I liked Brothers), but I just found his comments really off base–at least imo. I did like The Hurt Locker.
On a side note, what do you think about the parameters of choosing ten best films? I don’t really care for it because I don’t really care about the ten best. I just care about really good films (i.e. films that you could say are comparable to other good-to-great films). If there are twenty films, two or even zero films like that in a given year, that’s what I want to know.
Wow, I’m happy to say I haven’t seen any of those films, either. I wonder if it’s worth it to screen these 4 together? Probably not, huh?
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.
I loved the zany concept behind Bubba-Ho-Tep, but they really failed to take the concept in an interesting direction. It wasn’t crazy enough, and the plotting was bad (if I remember correctly) to the point where you just lost interest in the characters and the film. Still, I feel like it’s a just a little unfair to call this the worst film of the decade.
I feel somewhat the same for Dead Man. Yes, I didn’t like that film, too–but I felt I really didn’t understand it and I felt the film could have actually been good. In other words, perhaps, I was more to blame than the film. There are a bunch of films like this for me, and, personally, I don’t like putting them in the “worst” category (although I have no problem saying I didn’t enjoy the film at all).
I agree that Men in Black II was really bad, and that part of the reason was that I loved the leads in the first film, but didn’t like them at all in the second. All the charm, chemistry and what made them likable wasn’t there. I couldn’t believe the change. I also left the theater asking: “Is this the best story they could have came up for the sequel.” Then again, given the characters/performance, a better story might not have mattered.
However, as bad as Men in Black II was, I think Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes was worse. Yes, it was boring and stupid, but let me talk about the reasons it was worse than the zillions of boring-stupid films out there. The original Planet of the Apes was a good film, so you better have a good reason(s) for remaking the film. By at least the half-way point, I started to wonder why he wanted to remake this film. There wasn’t any interesting variations in the story or concept (e.g. making it more relevant to today’s society); there wasn’t even better fx or action sequences (other possibly valid justifications for remaking the film). By the end of the film, I couldn’t detect any good reason Burton might have had for making the film. Every change to the film made it significantly inferior than the original–and there didn’t seem to be any good idea or reason for these changes! I just got the distinct feeling that Burton needed money, but it was like he was purposely trying to make a bad film–in a kind of biting-the-hand-that-feeds-him sort of way.
For some of the other films you’ve chosen (Gone in the 60 Seconds, Tomcats, Town and Country), I’m a little curious about what makes them that much worse than other Hollywood genre films. I know you tried to explain what made those films so bad, but I guess I don’t get a clear enough sense. I guess what I’m saying is that I gotta believe that there are ton of movies that are just as bad (i.e. these movies aren’t significantly worse).
For example, one of the films I’d choose is the thriller, Gothika starring Halle Berry. This was a bad film that so dumb, I was bored. But I suspect that there are many other films like this, and so I don’t feel confident saying this is the worst of the decade. Then again, if we’re just talking about the worst film we’ve seen out of the films we saw, then Gothika would probably make it.
Another that might make it is a German film called Das Experiment. Basically, it is a cheesy dramatized version of an experiment where some people are made guards and others prisoners. I believe this was a real experiment and the film tries to re-create this in a fictionalized setting. Even if you didn’t know about results of the actual experiment, you could sort of guess what the results were.
Were the Matrix sequels in this decade? If so, they were some of the worst
All of this thinking about the worst film has caused me to think about the criteria for worst film. Here are some thoughts off the top of my head:
Reid, I haven’t kept the kind of diligent notes you have on the films you’ve seen these past several years. For your best and worst of the decade lists, especially given a 100-point scale, couldn’t you just list the films with the highest and lowest scores? You have 2013 films rated at Criticker. Why not just give us the top 20 ratings from the decade and the bottom 10? Even if in your heart you felt that wasn’t a fair representation of the best and worst, it would give us a good idea of what you thought was great and what you thought sucked. Yes?
I think there are at least two ways to think about the fairness issue. In one way, fairness depends on seeing a sufficient number of films. In this way, we’ll never be fair because neither of us has watched a sufficent number of films.
However, fairness can also occur when comparing a film based on standards, i.e. the qualities that make a film the best or the worst. As long as a film meets the standards, calling the film the best/worst could be considered “fair”–even if one didn’t see many films. Does that make sense? (Perhaps, fair is not the best word to use here. How about reasonable or appropriate?)
This leads me to your suggestion of listing my top/bottom ratings at criticker. I think it’s a good idea, but let me mention a few caveats. First, the ratings combine my objective (is a film great?) and subjective (did I enjoy the film?) assessments. Second, in this discussion I’ve been mulling over the idea of identifying essential qualities for best/worst films. These qualities may be different from the qualities I used in my criticker ratings. With these qualifiers stated, here’s some of the films that would make the list:
Worst
10. Men in Black II (24)
9. Garfield (24)
8. Atlantis: the Lost Empire (23)
7. Equillibrium (23)
6. The In-Laws (22)
5. Gothika (21)
4. Das Experiment (20)
3. Once Upon a Time in Mexico (20)
2. Planet of the Apes (16)
1. What a Girl Wants (12)
When I look at all these films, I know that I strongly disliked all of them. So if you want to know the films that I really didn’t like, this is an accurate list. But for worst of the decade in an objective sense, I’m not quite sure.
What a Girl Wants might not make the list, just because I could see some people like the film and the ideas behind the film aren’t completely without merit. Also, I think I’d have to see the films again to know for sure–something I have no interest in doing.
As for the essential qualities of the worst film, here are some possible suggestions:
1. The film has almost no interesting ideas and it’s so dumb that you can’t think of any good reason for making the film;
2. The miserably fails to deliver entertainment or artistic worth of the lowest common denominator. This is from your justification for choosing Tomcats.
3. The quality of the filmmaking (e.g. direction, acting, etc.) is atrocious, while the filmmakers and resources are considerable.
What else should be on there?
I like the idea of choosing films that meet the criteria above. You’re not trying to choose a specific number of films. There might be fifty films on the list or none. In some ways, a list like that is more meaningful. (Of course, I’m also really interested in hearing about films that people just loved/hated, too.)
Re: Airplane you said,
Right, but is there even an objective way to judge this? I guess that’s my underlying question: is it possible to objectively evaluate a comedy. Just because I don’t like the type of humor in Airplane! or Mel Brooks’ films, does that mean they’re bad?
No, just becuase Reid does not like the type of humor in Mel Brooks’ films, it does not mean that they are bad. Young Frankenstein, Space Balls, Robin Hood: Men in Tights. *sigh* All classics. “We’re men…men in tights. We’re butch!” Love it!
Gothika was not one of the worst films of the decade. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t horrible. If you want to go after a Halle Berry movie, please, pick “Catwoman.” ((shudder)). Same for “What a Girl Wants.” Cliched, but not horrible. Not “The Brown Bunny” or “The Room” horrible. To me, those movies set the standard. Oh, along with “Event Horizon.”
Let’s put the question in a different way: if someone finds a film unfunny, does that mean a film is objectively bad? The question tries to determine if objectively evaluating a comedy is possible.
I’ve heard bad things about *Catwoman*, and if it’s way worse than *Gothika* that’s saying something. *What a Girl Wants* was not only cliched, but it was unbelievable. I’m mainly referring to the performance of the lead actor. Her acting was atrocious. Then again, I can see some teens liking the film or at least not being as appalled as I was.
I need to see Event Horizon, just so that I can understand what you guys are saying.
But Mr. Darcy…er, Colin Firth is in it. *sigh* He’s dudelicious.
?