As good a movie year as 2011 was there was, of course, many films that either didn’t live up to expectations or were just plain bad. As much as I enjoy writing articles like my last one, about the best films of the year, it equally depresses me to have to write an article like this one.
For one, it forces me to put even one second thought into films I truly disliked. It reminds me of the 90-120 minutes of time I have lost forever times ten (plus the many I don’t list here). It reminds me of the squirming and eye rolling that occurred at the time. People have asked me why I never walk out on a movie? The answer is simple: To a flaw I look for the good in anything and when I suffer through a bad movie I continually convince myself that there has got to be some good in the movie I am viewing. Occasionally I am correct. Almost every film will contain at least one scene, one moment that I either enjoy or find well filmed or funny. For that moment I can almost accept the agony I go through before and after that moment. At least it is not a 100% total waste of time.
Those that know me well know that my annual worst list will almost always contain an Adam Sandler comedy. I used to think that I didn’t get him and his brand of humor. Someone suggested that perhaps, at 46, I am too old for his humor. To the former I almost bought into that but I am reminded of his stint on Saturday Night Live and how truly funny he can be in bits and pieces. His humor cannot and does not sustain a full length feature. Plus I have very much enjoyed Sandler’s films that steered him away from his broad style of comedy (Punchdrunk Love; Spanglish; Funny People).Even though I wasn’t a huge fan of Reign Over Me, I found Sandler’s performance the most satisfying in the film to a point that he even made me cry. As for the latter? Hogwash. Funny is funny at 16, 46 or 76. I have never found his childish bathroom humor the least bit amusing. It’s offensive, actually. I wouldn’t have found it funny at 16 and, God willing, I won’t find it funny at 76.
So it will come as no surprise that there is an Adam Sandler movie on my ten worst list. What may come as a surprise to you is that the Sandler movie is not the recently released Jack and Jill, in which he played twins (a man and a woman) and somehow roped Al Pacino to be in it. No you won’t find it there. Is he going crazy? Yes I would wonder that too. No the truthful answer is that I couldn’t bring myself to go see it. I can usually be roped into seeing his films because the trailers are cleverly edited enough to allow myself to believe that maybe, maybe this is the one that will make me laugh. I haven’t been right yet. No I couldn’t convince myself to waste even a moment on a film that, judging from the reviews and even comments from other people, was going to be a worse experience than root canal.
I should also note that there were a few other movies that I skipped for the same reasons including Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star. So why, do you ask, did I see many of the films on this list? Some of them I thought (hoped) would be better than they ended up being. Often I will see two to three movies in a day and sometimes the bad one just fits in to the schedule enough so I can see the other two.
Before I list the ten worst films of the year I want to make a list of the films that disappointed me the most in 2011. These were the films that either I had high hopes for that didn’t make the grade or should have been better based on the talent on screen or the director or story or some combination of them.
The Most Disappointing Films of 2011:
Carnage; Cowboys and Aliens; Dreamhouse; Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; Green Lantern; Larry Crowne; Our Idiot Brother; Real Steel; The Thing; Tower Heist.
And now, without further adieu, here is a list of the ten worst films of 2011. I pray none of you suffered through these as I did and that I am doing you all a service. Avoid these movies with your life. Watching paint dry for two hours will likely be more entertaining than any of the movies listed below.
You have been warned.
10) BAD TEACHER – Cameron Diaz starred in what was supposed to be a female version of Bad Santa but came closer to being a female version of Porky’s. In fact that may be an insult to Porky’s. Diaz plays a teacher who is lazy, foul mouthed and greedy. All she wants in life is a breast job to win back the sugar daddy that dumped her. She treats the students badly and offends the other teachers. The problem with the movie is that she IS offensive but she has no heart. It’s impossible to like her because of her selfishness. Her want her to be fired. You don’t want nice guy substitute teacher Justin Timberlake to like her. And you REALLY don’t want gym teacher Jason Segel to like her. You root for her to be fired and end up alone. Not a good thing for the main character of a supposed comedy.
9) THE ROOMMATE – Essentially this is a remake of Single White Female taking place at college. Our heroine gets a dorm room and a psychopathic roomie who becomes obsessed with her to a point of sabotaging the girl’s romantic life and soon begins to even dress and act like her. And don’t you just know what’s going to happen to the cat our heroine adopts. The movie doesn’t spare us a single graphic moment. This was an ugly movie that was predictable and had no imagination. It followed the slasher handbook to the letter.
8) THE SITTER – Jonah Hill has proven to me he can be funny in movies like Superbad, Cyrus and Get Him To The Greek. Director David Gordon Green made the astonishing Snow Angels and the entertaining Pineapple Express. He also made the poorly received (and unseen by me) Your Highness earlier this year but now both have hit rock bottom with this brief (barely 75 minutes) and almost unwatchable comedy. This is essentially a remake of Adventures in Babysitting with Hill as the sitter taking the kids out to the city so he can have sex with his girlfriend (apparently she couldn’t wait a few hours) and soon finds himself in deeper trouble. The kids are obnoxious (especially the Asian American who was adopted – he likes to set off mini-bombs in bathrooms and don’t you think THAT will come in handy later?) to a point you almost hope Hill will leave them behind. But in the end the film is totally unrealistic. Hill’s character makes decisions no rational (or even breathing) human would make. There are virtually no laughs in this film and one hopes Hill made this mess a long time ago and, as a reward, got the role in Moneyball for which he is an Academy Award nominee this year. Either that or the voters, like most people, didn’t see this film.
7) A VERY HAROLD AND KUMAR CHRISTMAS IN 3-D – I admit it. I was mildly charmed by Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. The follow up film was awful and this mess is just a step above it. And it’s in 3-D no less. There is no reason for this film other than for a few executives with fat pockets trying to make them a little fatter. Nothing went into the script and I wouldn’t be surprised if much of it wasn’t improvised. The film doesn’t deliver on laughs or even the raunch you would expect from the series. The only saving grace is the return of Neil Patrick Harris as himself. He IS raunchy. He lets go like he did in the first two films and he is genuinely funny. His scene is the loan bright spot in what I hope is the final entry in a trilogy that has gone on for two movies too many.
6) BATTLE L.A. – I don’t know about you but I am sure getting sick of alien invasion movies (and we have Battleship to look forward to this summer). Here Aaron Eckhart wastes his considerable talents a marine who goes out on one more mission to help save the title city from aliens. A word I seem to be using a lot in these reviews is imagination. These films have a total lack of it. This film is no exception. We have seen it all before. The visual effects, for the most part, are shockingly bad. Had this been made in the 1940’s it would have ended up on the bottom half of a double feature with the new Abbott and Costello movie.
5) JUST GO WITH IT – Ah, yes, the moment I have built up to. The Adam Sandler movie comedy to make my worst list. Actually this movie kills two birds with one stone as Jennifer Aniston (herself no stranger to worst movie lists) co-stars in this dreadful comedy where Sandler plays a plastic surgeon (are you kidding me?) who meets a beautiful younger woman and, to impress her, pretends to be divorced with children. He then enlists the aid of his faithful assistant (Aniston) to pose as the ex and supply her kids to the mix. Naturally pretending to be a dutiful father is alien to Sandler but he commits mistakes that a 17 year old pothead would never make. The film doesn’t take its subject matter in the least bit seriously so the situations can never be believed. Thank you Adam!
4) THE CHANGE-UP – Probably the most shocking film on the list is this comedy starring Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds in the old body switching genre that has been done many times since Freaky Friday back in 1977. Now I am an unabashed fan of Bateman’s. His mannerisms make me laugh without saying a word. Reynolds is hit and miss with me but when he is funny and charming he can be very funny and charming. Here neither one is either. They are saddled with a lazy script that asks us to believe that because the two of them wish out loud to have the other’s life (while urinating in a public fountain) that it happens. But from then on the film tries to be raunchy but is over the top and quite repulsive in its offensiveness. The film even ends with them urinating in the same fountain that is now located in a mall. The fact that there were kids and families watching didn’t seem to mind the filmmakers who, apparently, believed this to be funny. Most of it isn’t.
3) ZOOKEEPER – I totally forgot to give credit where credit is due. Adam Sandler not only voices an animal in this film but also served as the executive producer. Even off camera he pollutes what was supposed to be a wholesome family comedy. Kevin James plays the title character, a loveable lug who loses his girlfriend and plans to leave his job. The zoo animals decide to break their vow of silence and do everything they can to bring James together with his love and keep him at the zoo. Perhaps there was a foundation for a nice, sweet family film but nothing prepared me for the awfulness of what I witnessed. It’s 90 minutes of bathroom humor and animal jokes older than the hills. Where was that root canal when I needed it?
2) THE HANGOVER PART II – I really didn’t expect much from this sequel to the hit comedy from a few years ago but I certainly expected a lot more than the awfulness that is this movie. Basically it is the same exact movie as the original only taking place in another country. A monkey is thrown in for good measure and he likes to make obscene gestures. Isn’t that a scream? Characters from the original are thrown back into the mix for no good reason and I never heard a groan from an audience like this one when Mike Tyson made his appearance. Had the number one film not been released in 2011 this would have easily been my choice for the worst film of the year.
1) CREATURE – There is little to no chance you have heard of this movie – and with reason. It was released with no fanfare into theaters for one week last summer. I saw it with two other brave souls. It’s about a group of friends who are terrorized by a swamp creature while camping. The swamp creature is played by an actor wearing a suit so phony looking it makes The Creature from the Black Lagoon look like Alien. It’s a cheaply made, poorly photographed and directed movie. The acting is awful and the script is predictable. Can you guess that the final shot of the movie shows there is another creature waiting in the wings for a sequel that will never even be made for You Tube? This film is so bad it’s not even funny bad. You sit there astonished that anyone put even a dollar into its making. I would bet it’s budget wasn’t much bigger than that.