Trending will be a hot topic when scholarship surrounding 2009 finally settles in. The prevalence (and studio Kool-aid consumption) over 3-D. The rise of ridiculously overpriced sequels which either soared or stunk. The final nails in the coffin of for the long suffering attempt to repeat Harry Potter’s success. The wealth of wonderful animation and Disney’s return to pen and ink glory. Similarly, when decided the worst films of the year, we can cast similar aesthetic aspersions. Most comedies are crap. Last year’s famous funny man is this month’s flash in the pan. Fright films, for the most part, are quick, cheapy cash machines that offer little of the requisite fear fans expect, and when a movie is unceremoniously dumped in a dozen markets before hitting DVD, you know you’re in trouble.
Still, it took a lot to end up at the bottom of this particular compilation. Not even the woefully misguided efforts of Will Ferrell and the brothers Krofft (Land of the Lost) could find purchase here. There was no room for Planet 51, A Perfect Getaway, or The Ugly Truth. We had to overlook the horror that was Whiteout, Outlander, and The Time Traveler’s Wife. Heck, we even had to bump that abysmal post-modern relationship ruse, He’s Just Not That Into You (mental note – romances, and their humorous Harlequin-lite interpretations are also on life support) from consideration. What ended up as part of the final tally represents the ultimate in anti-entertainment, literal hours lost in the watching, the remembering – and most painfully – the writing.
Sure, you may disagree (especially with a couple of the unfathomably “popular” box office choices below), but the truth is that all such judgments are personal. Your particular taste may not match ours, and that’s perfectly fine. Still, one expects the filmic fur to fly. So settle in and enjoy some really awful cinema, starting with:
10. Brüno
Director: Larry Charles
When Sacha Baron Cohen arrived on these shores with a movie made from his hit HBO TV series, many were clearly convinced he was NOT the future of comedy. He may have modified the face of post-modern humor – briefly – over to Judd Apatow and the gang with Borat but this time around, all he changed was his star status. With its junk gender politics and shock value penis propensities, Brüno is far from brilliant. Instead, it points out very clearly that all proposed ‘kings’ are dethroned – in this case, before the fake foreign correspondent concept settled in.
9. Next Day Air
Director: Benny Boom
It’s no secret that most filmmakers have their muses. While some consider it a complimentary homage, others argue that copying another auteur’s style is nothing more than a creative rip-off. Of course, when you do steal, you really should steal from the very best. In the case of videographer Benny Boom, there had to have been better references to crib from than the entire Guy Ritchie catalog. For his first film, he decided to make his very own version of the UK maverick’s celluloid rocknrolla. The result is nothing more than Lock, Stock, and Two Pot Smoking, F-Bomb Dropping, Hip Hop Barrels – and awful.
8. Nine
Director: Rob Marshall
If the movie musical dies a second death, Rob Marshall will clearly be one of its assassins. While many enjoyed his interpretation of the Bob Fosse infused work Chicago, the Broadway choreographer turned filmmaker has yet to figure out the difference between stage and screen. This is blatantly obvious with his second stab at song and dance significance – Nine. A loose adaptation of Federico Fellini’s classic film 8 1/2, this big fat bomb offers no memorable songs, a strip club conceit for staging, and enough quick cut editorial nightmares to give even borderline epileptics fits. Italian cinema of the ’60s – and the showtune genre – deserve better.
7. The Unborn
Director: David Goyer
The Unborn is like a scary movie sentence without the necessary linking verbs. It’s all genre gears and no motivational motor. There is not a single character we care about, not a single moment of genuine fear or dread. As he proved with The Invisible, David Goyer sure knows how to dumb down the standard horror concepts. He manufactures a narrative with all payoffs, but with none of the mandatory set-up to get you invested in the terror. And just when you think things can’t get any weirder, along comes a sidetrack through the Final Solution to make the whole thing ethically questionable.
6. Paranormal Activity
Director: Oren Peli
Overhyped to the point of hysteria and lacking anything remotely redeeming for the seasoned fright fan, Paranormal Activity is all smoke and one too many mirrors. It’s an accurate reflection of an audience incapable of separating truth from trickery, shock from scary, and a waste of time from a well-marketed fad. Kudos to writer/director Oren Peli and the various dread websites that have successfully ballooned this minor movie all out of proportion. With a low rent approach attempting to mimic reality, we get a typical scary movie gussied up with too much media expectations and too little onscreen substance.
5. Pink Panther 2
Director: Harald Zwart
This one is so bad, so egregiously awful, that the rest of the list looks like 2001, Citizen Kane, and The Dark Knight by comparison. Someday, perhaps when he’s dead, a tell-all tome will come out about Steve Martin, and at that time, the bile soaked grudge he has against the late, great Peter Sellers, and the reason he keeps pissing all over the man’s memory with a vengeance, will be revealed. There is no excuse for this film save for one – money. The first remake was an unfathomable hit, so following the Hollywood maxim, the more cash you make, the more copies you’ll create. Horrid.
4. Did You Hear About the Morgans?
Director: Marc Lawrence
It’s clichéd country mouse vs. braying big city a-hole with just a dash of pointless crime procedural thrown in to make things even more scattered. While some might argue that stars Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant have the talent to salvage such a stink bomb, their recent cinematic resume might suggest otherwise. Both are really giving it their limited all here, trying to enliven director Marc Lawrence’s DOA dialogue and ideas with some manner of comic flare of panache. All they manage to do is insult middle American while confirming every known metropolitan stereotype on the planet. To answer the title’s question – we did, and it’s not good.
3. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Director: Michael Bay
Hey Messageboard Nation – why don’t you take all that pent up hate that you have for Rob Zombie and Paul W. S. Anderson and instead aim it at the mediocre mainstream hack that helmed this elephantine waste of space. Michael Bay may have crafted some decent action films in the past, but this is clearly not one of them. Taking the first film and adding 200% more mayhem is not a sign of quality. Middle-aged sex antics? Racially insensitive robots? A surreal obsession with Megan Fox’s slo-mo skeeziness? If it hadn’t made a mint, the fans would be picking on it – and rightfully so.
2. The Marc Pease Experience
Director: Todd Louiso
It’s not fair really. For most of you, this title will seem like Sanskrit. For others, it will represent that oddball offering that showed up on one screen in their local Cineplex and was gone before they even knew what it was. Dumped unceremoniously into 10 markets across the country (NY and LA? Nope.) as part of a contractual obligation, this Jason Schwartzman/Ben Stiller flop was so bereft of humor, so lacking in a reason to care, that it virtually changed genres. Advertised as one of those clever, quirky comedies featuring universally identifiable characters, it instead constantly transmogrified into a kind of droll drama. Not surprisingly, neither category succeeded.
1. I Love You, Beth Cooper
Director: Chris Columbus
In some ways, it wasn’t even close. As bad as Marc Pease and Transformers 2 really were, this movie wins the title of “worst” because of what it managed to do – that is, squander the talents of some otherwise solid people both before and behind the camera. Hayden Panettiere has done better. Paul Rust has done better. Director Chris Columbus handled the first two Harry Potter films, while writer Larry Doyle (who managed to figure out a way to f*ck up the adaptation of his own novel) was with The Simpsons. And yet all of them managed to deliver one of the un-funniest teen comedies EVER. No jokes. No insights. No good.