Movie Minutiae - Johnny Betts' Worst of 2005
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Anybody who includes movies like Bewitched and
Stealth on their "Worst of 2005" list clearly hasn't seen enough bad
movies this year. While those movies may not be great, they're nowhere near the bottom of the 2005 barrel.
Below are what I feel are truly the crap of the crop. Some are only on here because of how disappointing they were,
others are here because they're so bad they're laughable, and others are just so bad or boring that a second viewing
would be impossible.
I set higher standards for myself this year, so there are some movies that I refused to see even for free that probably
would've made the list had I seen them (The Honeymooners and Deuce Bigalow: European Jigalow for example).
That makes this list even worse - I was expecting or hoping for some entertainment value from these entries. But the
good thing is they influenced some of my funniest reviews! I highly suggest rereading them because you'll find more
entertainment value from the reviews than the movies.
DISCLAIMER: I could have easily included films on this list such as Racing
Stripes, Zathura, Son
of the Mask, Herbie: Fully Loaded and
Chicken Little. These movies were certainly difficult for me to
sit through, however, since they're all clearly aimed at children (and seemed to entertain that target audience), I will
leave them off my Top 10 list.
"Uninspired acting, a lack of an imaginative story, no strong villain to root against, weakly-rendered CGI,
and a pace that my dead pet turtle could keep up with aren't my ideal ingredients for a fun night at the
theater."
Let me get this straight - Aeon Flux features Charlize Theron
sashaying around in a sexy, tight black outfit, and she's playing an action hero who is supposed to take out
all sorts of baddies, and I STILL fell asleep? Yeah, I'd say that alone warrants an addition to this
list.
I love watching hot chicks wearing cool outfits kicking Kirstie Alley-sized buttocks, but that requires
a believability factor. Hand-to-hand combat that employs extreme close-ups to prevent people from
recognizing that Charlize doesn't know how to fight simply doesn't get the job done.
This is absolutely the worst waste of Charlize Theron in sexy clothing that I've ever seen.
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"This movie is so bad that Ray Bradbury wishes he could invent a time machine so that he could go back in
time and NOT write the short story, thus preventing this movie from ever being made."
From a technical standpoint, A Sound of Thunder is probably
the worst movie of the year. The film had an $80 million budget, yet we can obviously tell that actors are
walking on a treadmill in front of a green screen? It's just downright embarrassing that so much money was
spent on this and the special effects were literally worse than a Sci-Fi Original with a $1 million
budget.
It's probably the biggest financial disaster of the year as well, considering it made less than $2 million at
the box office. But I have to admit that I was thoroughly entertained in a "so bad it's funny" kind of way.
My hats off to the movie for helping me come up with some of my best one-liners of the year (just read my
review for examples).
I actually recommend this as a rental if you and your friends love to make your on MST3K versions of movies
that provide loads of unintentional laughter.
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"Who on earth thought it was a good idea to get a close-up of Ice Cube's amorphous butt?"
This is another example of a movie that's so bad I couldn't help but be entertained. Poor Samuel L. Jackson,
it was so obvious he was just fulfilling a contractual obligation.
I must warn you, however, that you'll most likely be a little bit dumber after watching this. Prepare to
lose a few brain cells every time Ice Cube spits out something like "truf" or "kick you in the teef."
Don't worry; it's a problem that can be solved by immediately concentrating on something intelligent.
I recommend that you reflect on some of my past reviews.
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"Sorry, but I fail to see the humor in 11 year olds running around saying God-d**n and the like."
Laslo won't be happy about this addition, but after much thought and research I decided I had to add it to the
list. Billy Bob's other disaster The Ice Harvest almost
made it instead, but I found that Bad News Bears had a
little less to offer.
When a movie that's supposed to be about underdogs has me actually rooting against the underdogs then I have to
declare the film a failure. This is the biggest collection of annoying kid actors I've seen in a long
time, and I hope to never see any of them in another film ever again.
Plus, Sammi Kraft and Jeff Davies put in such amazingly bad acting performances that I determined there was
no way I could give this film a pass.
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"Real life can be pretty boring also, so I guess the movie was trying to capture that aspect. Good job!
Success! It's too bad that the movie seats were as uncomfortable as some of the subject matter; that
prevented me from getting more sleep than I did."
Dull, dull, dull. The only thing The Weather Man
accomplished was to cause me to pay careful attention to what I waste my time on in the future. It also
taught me that just because Nicolas Cage has entertained me in the past does not mean he'll always do it in
the future.
Talk about an uninspired performance. I'm not sure who was more bored - Nicolas Cage in the movie or me
watching the movie. There's no way I could force myself to sit through this again.
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"Cursed, huh? Well, that appropriately describes what a
lot of moviegoers did when the final credits started to roll."
Irrelevant. Insignificant. Unoriginal. All words to describe Cursed.
Unfortunately, they don't seem strong enough. The combination of bad acting, unimpressive special effects, and
characters I couldn't care less about add up to deliver a movie without a single element worth recommending.
Cursed? It should've been titled Sucked.
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"Folks, I've seen Troll 2, and Alone in the
Dark - you are no Troll 2."
Alone in the Dark is a huge disappointment but
not in the way you might expect. This is a rare breed of movie that fails to live up to the hype of its
ridicule. Since Uwe Boll was directing this I just knew that I was in store for some "entertainingly awful
badness." Unfortunately, it's nowhere near as cheesy as it should be. It tries way too hard, and as a
result is just more incompetent than anything.
There are a few moments of enjoyable craptitude, but mostly it's just a chore to sit through.
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"I already gave this movie two hours of my life, and I really don't feel like giving it much more, so I'll
make this short and sweet: I'd buy Kevin Federline's (what up, K-Fed?) upcoming CD before I ever sat
through Syriana again."
Based on the highly misleading trailer, I walked into the theater expecting a fast-paced, engaging,
nail-biting, possibly controversial thriller. What I got was a convoluted, uninspired mess of unemotional
characters and pointless storytelling. I wonder if I could sue the movie studio for false advertisement?
I don't care what the movie snobs say, this is flat-out the dullest movie of the year. George Clooney
receiving an Oscar nomination for his wooden performance is a farce.
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"Easily one of the 10 worst movies of the year, Yours,
Mine, and Ours should be more aptly titled Suck, Suck, and Suck."
If you'll remember from my review, I declared that this is a movie so the opposite of hilarious that I was
forced to come up with a new word for it - lolarious (pronounced "low-larious"). You know a comedy isn't
working when you can easily count the number of times you laughed (two).
I used this line once, but I like it so much that I'll use it again. *ahem*
Yours, Mine, and Ours ain't mine, I'm pretty sure
you don't want it to be yours, and if we made it ours then we'd only end up arguing over who would be the one
to get rid of it.
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"It was Augustine who defined evil as 'the absence of the good.' Well, it's Johnny Betts who is defining
The Man as the absence of the humor."
Bad horror movies and bad action movies have a distinct advantage over bad comedies - despite their level of
incompetence, they still have the chance to be so laughably horrible that they're entertaining. A comedy, by
definition, is supposed to be funny. Therefore, when it isn't funny then it's just plain bad. There is
no value whatsoever in watching it.
The fact that The Man was possibly the unfunniest theatrically
released "comedy" I have seen in at least 10 years is precisely the reason it stands as the worst movie of
2005. During its 83-minute runtime I laughed ZERO times. For those of you keeping score, that's two less
laughs than the paltry standard set by Yours, Mine, and
Ours.
There were a couple of times when I reluctantly smiled, but I was so bored into a stupor that I couldn't
even muster a polite chuckle.
Samuel L. Jackson either owes a lot of people a lot of favors or he has some mighty big debts that he's
desperate to pay off.
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