What's wrong with Hollywood? Three words: Here On Earth.
It’s happened to everyone. You see a movie trailer, you think, “hey, that looks cool.” You wait in anticipation for the movie to come out. When opening night finally arrives, you get all your friends together and go to the movie. And you leave the theater two hours later lamenting your lost time and money, because you picked a no-good, stupid, piece-of-crap movie to watch.
There are two kinds of bad movies: those that suck, but are fun to watch and laugh at, and those that are so painful that you get absolutely no enjoyment from watching them or even making fun of them, and you feel like you’ve wasted two hours of your life afterwards, and you quite possibly want to poke out your own eyes with a rusty spoon.
And so, it is in this spirit that I present to you my list of the Top 10 Worst Movies of the Last Year. Read this list and be afraid. Some of these fall into the “bad but fun” category, and some fall into the “no enjoyment at all” one. And remember, if I catch you watching any of the latter, or (heaven forbid) admitting you liked any of them, I may come after you with that spoon myself.
#10 - The Skulls
This movie was bad in a fun way. I admit I only went to see it because of the sexy Josh Jackson, who is one of the two good actors on Dawson’s Creek, and Leslie Bibb, who is very pretty and talented and stars on my favorite show (at the moment), Popular. Elinor came along because she was bored and wanted to see if she recognized any of the locations, as it was filmed in Toronto. The movie was unremarkable (in fact, I can’t even really remember what happened in it). It was a waste of a couple hours, but it was a good waste. Elinor and I made fun of it (loudly), and laughed with the woman in front of us who was doing the exact same thing. We had fun.
#9 - Whatever it Takes
This movie falls into the “painful” category. And, since I fell asleep halfway through and can’t remember anything about it, I’ll just include snippets of Thomas Hunt’s State Hornet review.
“Are you looking for a movie with no surprises? Are you looking for a movie that openly steals from and tramples on great works such as "Cyrano De Bergerac" and "Taming of the Shrew"? Is your IQ equal to or less than a chimpanzee's? If the answer to any of the above questions is yes, then "Whatever it Takes" is the movie for you!
The plot is so predictable it makes me wonder why they bothered with it at all; I mean, it was taking important time away from the next attempt at a joke. Anyway, here is the plot: The girl has a crush on her best (male) friend. Guess what! He does not realize it until he has wronged her so much that it seems like a relationship with her will be impossible. Quite a cliffhanger, is it not? I’ll bet you’re right on the edge of your seat. Well let me be the big bad spoiler and tell you, he gets her in the end!
The ending was a total shock to me. When they took 10 minutes randomly introducing the gym floor that moved to reveal a pool, I had no idea that someone would use it to dump the prom into the pool. Not even Nostradamus could have seen that one coming; it was truly a work of a comic genius.
"Whatever it takes" is a pitiful excuse for a movie, from start to finish, and I’m not surprised that the director, David Hubbard (esteemed director of "Trippin’") had his name credited as David Raynr. It’s OK, David, we understand; I wouldn’t want my family and friends to know that I directed that movie either.”
#8 - The Watcher
Um, Keanu “Woah” Reeves as a serial killer. Need I say more? No? Didn’t think so.
#7 - Boys and Girls
Okay. This movie stars Freddie Prinze, Jr. (with bad hair), that annoying Jason Biggs from American Pie, and some chick with a really weird accent. That’s really all I remember about this movie. No, wait, I remember being sorry I drove for 45 minutes and then paid $9 to see it. I also remember thinking that Freddie and the chick with the accent had absolutely no chemistry whatsoever. And I remember predicting the utterly brainless and saccharine ending within the first five minutes. Blah. I wish I could forget.
#6 - Me, Myself, and Irene
The trailers for this movie made it look funny.
Guess what? They lied.
#5 - Hollow Man
I dragged Luke and Kevin to this movie because I thought the trailers looked cool. Turns out we should have just gone to see Coyote Ugly like Luke initially wanted to, because after watching the trailers we’d already seen EVERY SINGLE GOOD PART of this movie. And there weren’t many. The CGI effects were the stars of the film, and they kind of took the place of, you know, good acting and an actual plot. The ending was disgusting and gory and unbelievable. The movie was too damn long. But the saddest thing of all was that this could have been a great film if it had been a little more light-hearted and shown Kevin Bacon having fun with his invisibility instead of moping around feeling bad for himself and going on an eventual killing spree. Anyway. This movie sucked. Don’t watch it.
#4 - Where the Heart is
Elinor and I rented this after I read the book by Billie Letts and decided it was good. This movie was not good. This movie was the opposite of good. This movie (to quote Sarah "Sars" Bunting) does not even know in which zip code good resides. This movie was sappy, melodramatic, manipulative, and just plain BAD. It had all the classic “chick flick” ingredients - tortured romance, death, a brave but down-on-her-luck heroine, a wisecracking best friend, an emotionally abusive boyfriend, an eccentric and spunky older woman who acted as a mentor to the aforementioned heroine. Ugh.
Also, It was long. Very long. And boring. And stupid. And cliched.
The sex scene is probably the best example of how much this movie sucks. The writers really pulled out all the stops with that scene. As Elinor wryly observed, “they used the hand holding, cheesy music, slow motion, back rub and slow kissing without tongues to show that this is good sex.”
This movie is not even one of those “bad, but fun to watch” movies. This movie is just painful. Friends won’t let friends watch Where the Heart is.
#3 - Urban Legends: Final Cut
I loved the Scream trilogy. I liked I Know What You Did Last Summer (if only because of Sarah Michelle Gellar). I tolerated Halloween: H2O because I like Michelle Williams (the other good actor on Dawson’s Creek) and Josh Hartnett so much. I even enjoyed the original Urban Legends. But I hated this movie.
This movie was bad. Very bad. And for a horror movie, it was not at all scary. The scariest thing about this movie, in fact, was the writer’s assumption that viewers would actually buy the convoluted, confusing, completely retarded storyline. I mean, come on. A guy dies and then his IDENTICAL TWIN BROTHER, who none of the dead guy’s friends have ever met (or even heard of), shows up to avenge his death (and seduce the movie’s heroine)? Um, right. Also, there was only one urban legend related death in this entire movie (the infamous “waking up in a bathtub full of ice with a missing kidney” one). Sam, who actually paid good money for both of us to see this, also noted that not one white male dies in this movie (on screen, anyway). No, the most gruesome death scenes in this movie involve, in order, a foreign guy, a woman, a black guy, and a lesbian. Rrrright. This movie was bad. We laughed all the way through it, even in the “scary” scenes, and so did everyone else in the theater. I don’t remember hearing anyone in the audience scream, not even once.
I think that Eric D. Snider of the Daily Herald sums this movie up best:
“It starts bad, is bad in the middle, has some more badness near the end, and then erupts into a grand finale of badness so bad it makes other bad things look good.”
#2 - The Astronaut’s Wife
Sam and I actually bought this movie when I went to stay at his house for a few days. The Blockbuster was so far from his house, and the movie was so cheap, that we figured it would be easier to buy it and never have to return it.
When we finally watched the movie, we figured out why it was so cheap. We also felt like driving the half-hour back to Blockbuster and returning the damn thing anyway. This movie SUCKED. IT REALLY SUCKED. This movie is one of the SUCKIEST pieces of incomprehensible CRAP I have EVER SEEN. I did not understand this movie at all. The acting was terrible. It had no plot. The ending made ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE. When I left Sam’s house at the end of my stay, I tried to leave it behind; he hid it in my bag when I wasn’t looking and I found it when I got home. I banished it immediately to the “bad movie shelf” in my living room. I may go find and burn it.
and finally...
#1 - Here On Earth
I’d like to get one thing straight before I even begin this review. Yes, Elinor and I saw the trailers for this movie. Yes, we read the horrible reviews. We knew it was going to suck. We knew. That’s why we snuck into it after paying for, and watching, The Skulls. We don’t think of this as breaking the law. As far as we’re concerned, Famous Players should have paid us $6 each to sit through this movie. And we only came to see Josh Hartnett, anyway.
How do I even begin to describe Here On Earth? Well, let’s start with the actors, shall we? Okay. Chris Klein, as usual, looked like he fell from the top of the ugly tree and hit EVERY FUCKING BRANCH on the way down. His acting was atrocious, not that he could have done a good job anyway, what with the horrible script. I’m just amazed he managed to keep a straight face during the scene in which he had to name all Leelee Sobieski’s body parts. Leelee herself did a good job of acting like a dying cancer patient, except for the whole “good job” part. There’s also just something about her I don’t like, so I find it hard to enjoy watching her anyway. Josh Hartnett looked HOT as usual, but even his presence couldn’t save this terrible excuse for a movie, and he wasn’t in it enough.
This movie rivals Where The Heart is as the sappiest and most painfully bad “chick flick” I have ever seen. Yes, I do like chick flicks. I have been known to watch them, and I have been known to enjoy them. But this one was too much for this chick. The romance was BORING. The cancer storyline was thrown in at the last second and was completely unbelievable. And Leelee dumped JOSH HARTNETT for CHRIS KLEIN!!! DAMN.
Elinor and I made fun of this movie the entire time we were watching, tying hard to ignore the sobbing coming from the prepubescent girls occupying the other seats in the theater. And we snuck out of the theater afterwards, not because we were still afraid of being caught without a ticket, but because we were afraid we’d run into someone we knew and have to explain what the hell we were doing there.
And there you have it - the top 10 movies I wasted my time and hard-earned money on over the last year. Scary, huh? Not as scary as the total grosses of some of those pieces of shit! Well, whatever. The public will keep paying to see them; Hollywood will keep churning them out. At least it gives me something to write about.
