Saturday, January 5, 2008

My Eyes, My Eyes: The Worst of 2007

I like to make it a point to try to avoid absolute crap every once in a while, but sometimes something just calls to me begging me suggesting there is some glimmer of hope that I'm not about to subject myself to the 24 frames per second equivalent of a red hot poker to the eye. Sadly I can be wrong. Here are the eleven movies that wasted my time, money and brain cells. They aren't ranked as they all hurt my bowels pretty much equally.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters- I like the show but my God there's a reason it has a ten minute run time. An amusing opening sequence DOES NOT excuse this awful, awful mess.

Blades of Glory- The death knell of the Will Ferrel sports comedy formula? The box-office would suggest otherwise. It remains a frustrating missed opportunity that completely misuses villains Will Arnett and Amy Poehler and fills time with the same damn joke (look at the silly outfits and ice-skating moves) and all the lingerie wearing Jenna Fischer in the world can't reverse that.
Evan Almighty- Aren't comedies supposed to be funny? This was a miserable experience all they way through especially since it features one of my favorite actors in the world. Bland, uninspired direction is not hid by millions of dollars of effects and animal training. There is a point about 5 minutes into the movie where Steve Carell says "I feel like the indian crying in front of all that garbage." Truer words were NEVER spoken.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer- More like the rise of the bile in my mouth. "Dr. Doom" is even more embarrassing here. Its disgraceful the character even shares the name. Too childish and with too much slapstick completely undermining the stakes. Oh and another thing. The movie that adapts the GALACTUS storyline shouldn't kind of/sort of show a shadow of Galactus. That is RIDICULOUS! Galactus should be bigger, more threatening and more impressive than anything seen all summer and it is not. Shameful. And don't give me the whole it wouldn't adapt well in "the real world" of the film. This "real world" also has the world's smartest man punning like an idiot..frequently. And a giant rock man.

The Golden Compass- A movie so bad and an adaptation so boring that it made me like a book that I really wasn't all that enamored with in the first place. At least it's failure means we get a Hobbit movie.
The Last Mimzy- Ooooo the mom put the toys in the garbage in the front yard, how EVER will they get out of THIS jam? It's like ET, except for children too dumb to appreciate moments of awe, conflict, good child acting or any remotely challenging idea. So basically it's not like ET. This movie was painful. Bob Shaye should spend more time alienating directors who've made his company billions of dollars instead of making terribly incoherent childrens' films.

Live Free or Die Hard- Sir I've seen Die Hard and you are no Die Hard.
La Vie en Rose- In the cold hard light of I'm Not There and Walk Hard musical biopics seem silly and ridiculous. But if they make somewhat decent movies look rough imagine what it makes this unlikable, dull exercise about the life of Edith Piaf?

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End- Better then the second one but that's not saying much. A lot of pomp and circumstance that all the smuggled in-theater rum can't make interesting.
Shrek the Third- Ugh, re-heated leftovers of leftovers. Every single "theme" and "joke" in this film was presented with greater clarity and originality in the first one. I only give it any credit for the brief Mary Poppins shout-out and the hipster casting of Amys Poehler and Sedaris, Jon Krasinksi and Seth Rogen (all are wasted). I like Enchanted even MORE for how bad it took this movie to school.

Transformers- The movie that jammed a power cube full of awful into my chest. It doesn't make shouting LaBEOUF any less fun though.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Aqua Teen and Golden Compass? I have to say, I moderately liked them both. I don't think Compass is a masterpiece like Roger Ebert does, but I thought it was fun enough. And the bear fight was pretty cool.

As for Aqua Teen... I don't know if I can really defend this. When I saw five movies in one day at the theater over the summer, this and Hot Fuzz were the only ones I enjoyed. That day, I also saw 300, Grindhouse, and Blades of Glory, the last of which is definitely one of the worst I saw this year.