CHICAGO– Happy New Year’s Eve! The glorious life of the film critic – swimming pools, movies stars, etc. – unfortunately includes the necessary but cruel viewing of 2010’s worst films. Ten candidates made the low grade even after thankfully avoiding some of the more egregious sins (“Marmaduke” comes to mind). This list represents my personal worst from 2010.
To mollify the assignment, I’m adding a “mitigating factor” – a single piece of hope within each piece of dreck – to find the silver lining in losing precious time.
10. Sex and the City 2
Sex and the City 2
Photo credit: New Line Cinema
This über-popular HBO series, which started “innocently” enough as four single gals on the town in New York City, morphed into the type of relationships and situations that makes every sitcom jump the shark – marriages, babies, menopause. The first film breakout was a surprise hit in 2008, but had the aforementioned marriage of Carrie and Big to hang onto. This sequel has no sex, and very little city. Sending the gals on the road to Abu Dhabi smacked of desperation for writer/director Michael Patrick King, and consequently the whole collective legend suffered for it.
MITIGATINGFACTOR: Admittedly, it was pretty ballsy to have Samantha shove condoms into the face of the Arab patriarchy.
9. Easy A
Easy A
Photo credit: Screen Gems
Emma Stone is a pleasant enough ingenue, and with a better script or even a darker take on the main premise this might have worked. As films have erroneously done since its invention, teenagers are portrayed here as idealized superstars, with no adolescent awkwardness or unpleasant backlash. This high-school-from-another-planet has Stone faking a “bad” reputation for a reason I can’t remember now, even wearing the Scarlet “A” from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s famous novel (the reading of which in high school funded the Cliff Notes corporation for years). Would this have worked better if Stone weren’t so freaking fabulous. Who knows?
MITIGATINGFACTOR: At least there was the addition of Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as glib, wonderful parents.
8. The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Photo credit: Fox-Walden
Mostly this is a complaint about film series that don’t work if you haven’t read the books. This chapter of Narnia suffers from complexity (the story had something to do with swords), special effects that the flesh-and-blood actors don’t seem attuned to (the hunky King of Narnia can’t see to focus on the effects sight line) and the over-reliance of the effects over the story/character of the C.S. Lewis source. Outsiders don’t seem to be allowed into the magical world, with the only warning to me beforehand is that the lion (voiced by Liam Neesom) represents Jesus. I didn’t know what to do with that information, even when he appeared.
MITIGATINGFACTOR: The just-entering-into-adolescent girl character walks through a watery tunnel at the end.
7. Little Fockers
Little Fockers
Photo credit: Universal Pictures
Who is left to meet? Apparently no one as this latest “Meet the Parents” chapter strains to keep Jack (Robert De Niro) and Greg (Ben Stiller) at odds with each other, even though Greg seems to be the exemplary domestic daddy (the little Fockers are the kids, who despite the title remain in the background). This time Jack has decided, post a mild heart attack, that his side of a family needs a leader, and taps Greg as the “GodFocker” (hoo-ha). The conflict is when he suspects Greg, in a series of sitcom-ish misunderstandings, is having an affair. When the two highlights of the film are the comic stylings of Jessica Alba and Barbra Steisand’s curly perm wig, they’re focked.
MITIGATINGFACTOR: Realizing that De Niro, graphically “upright” after a misadventure with a erectile dysfunction drug, has done it all on film.
6. The Last Airbender
The Last Airbender
Photo credit: Oscilloscope
Winning the “Most Prophetic Title of the Year,” director M. Night Shyamalan might never touch a family movie again. This bloated, confusing mess makes no sense at several points during the story, even with characters stopping in mid action to strangely describe the narrative while it’s going on. The special effects, retrofitted yet again to take advantage of the 3-D craze, are murky and blurry, plus the glasses conspire with the imagery to produce a headache. Unlike Shyamalan’s previous mysterious themes, there is nothing cultish in this film to save it. Well, maybe the bald kid whose head glows.
MITIGATINGFACTOR: Aasif Mandvi, a senior correspondent on “The Daily Show, portrayed Commander Zhao. His line readings were exactly how he “acts’ when bantering with Jon Stewart, which I believe was his signal that the film stunk. Back to you, Jon.
5. Yogi Bear
Yogi Bear
Photo credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
This is an instance where a film of the pitch for this movie would undoubtedly be more interesting than one second of the final product. “It’s time to bring back Yogi Bear.” “The cartoon?” “No, a live action film…in 3-D.” “Get out of my office.” Unfortunately the last line never occurred because this partially animated waste got the green light. After the green light, it became a paycheck cashing derby, as some genius decided that Dan Aykroyd and Justin Timberlake would be perfect to voice Yogi and Boo Boo. B-list stars like Tom Cavanagh and Anna Faris also ran to the bank, and still had problems focusing on what became the animatronic representations of the bears. And Aykroyds’s “perfect” Yogi impression? You could hear his distinct Canadian accent in every third line.
MITIGATINGFACTOR: Watching the old Yogi Bear cartoons from the 1960s proves you can never go home again.
4. Life As We Know It
Life As We Know It
Photo credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Someone must stop Katherine Heigl before she releases again! Her formula has gotten so familiar she has birthed her own genre. She’s always a single gal – although in real life she couldn’t walk a block and stay single – who is plucky and/or misunderstood, which is why she’s single. This film is very high concept, her married best friends die and through a series of legal gymnastics (that would make the Supreme Court faint) Katie gets custody of their daughter, shared with a mutual male friend of the couple (Josh Duhamel) who she finds repulsive. Will they eventually be a couple? Spoiler alert: Yes. This forgone conclusion is set up by 110 minutes of wackiness, including the worse stoner scene put to celluloid.
MITIGATINGFACTOR: If theater managers offered samples of the wacky tobackee, a couple laughs may have been generated. Maybe.
3. MacGruber
MacGruber
Photo credit: Rogue Pictures
In my original review, I theorized that Will Forte had intentionally written a horrible film so he would never have to characterize MacGruber again. Mission Accomplished. After watching the Saturday Night Live short films of the character, a slimly funny take-off of the old TV show “MacGyver,” I don’t think anyone would have guessed that MacGruber would be a foul-mouthed, sexually offensive weasel, which is how Forte drew him. This was a career killer for all involved, including a Val Kilmer so bloated he could have floated in the Macy’s Parade. Ryan Phillippe, once on Easy Street as the spouse of Reese Witherspoon, is reduced to shoving a celery stalk in a lower orifice (yes, you read that right).
MITIGATINGFACTOR: No more…MacGruber!
2. Love and Other Drugs
Love and Other Drugs
Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.
Not only did this film stink, it was borderline offensive. It seemed to be written (three male screenwriters) by people who needed to get back at women somehow, because the background humiliation of women in this film is epic. The miracle of the “drug” in this movie is not anything that cures cancer. It’s Viagra. Make sure your heart is prepare for that shock. Truly one of the weirdest scenes was a montage celebrating the sex drug breakthrough, in which the extras looked like they were having a big “O” onscreen. And Jake Gyllenhaal joined up with Bobby De Niro in the I-can’t-get-it-down club, circa 2010 film year. Oh yeah, and Anne Hathaway had Parkinson’s Disease.
MITIGATINGFACTOR: Hathaway dropped her no-nudity clause for this film. Yes…she…did.
The Dreaded 1. The Back-up Plan
The Back-up Plan
Photo credit: CBS Films
In three years of reviewing films professionally, I’d never given a score of ZERO to any movie. Hell, in the 15 years before that, combining blogging and year end overviews, I never gave a zero. It took J-Lowest to finally break the streak. Jennifer Lopez, about five years beyond the appropriate age for this role, portrays a pet store owner who never works, which is why she is artificially inseminating herself to have a baby (why couldn’t Sex and the City had thought of that?). Of course, despite her tight clothing, she is single, and meets the perfect man just as the juice does it’s bizness! Her perfection is a goat farmer who makes cheese (Alex O’Loughlin), but still finds time to do serious pec work and what looks to be laser hair removal. Three veteran actors – Tom Bosley (who passed away this year, RIP), Linda Lavin (called Nana) and Robert Klein (spouting the most embarrassing dialogue of his long career) – watch their careers and this film sink into the tarpit of 2010.
MITIGATINGFACTOR: On behalf of the staff at HollywoodChicago.com, here’s hoping you avoid the cinematic pitfalls in 2011. Happy New Year.
 | By PATRICK McDONALD |
