Worst of 2014: Tony’s Bottom 10
- Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas: 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. The lowest rated movie of all time on IMDB.com. And Kirk Cameron, aka Mike Seaver of “Growing Pains” fame, would have you believe that this movie is being poorly received because the secular crowd just can’t take it. Really? The movie starts with Kirk Cameron sitting in an armchair explaining what the movie is going to be about. Then when it gets to the narrative, he plays a holier-than-hou dingbat (sound familiar) who decides to educate his Grinch of a brother-in-law of the TRUE meaning of Christmas. And they discuss this whilst spending most of the movie talking in a car. The dialogue is abysmal. The comedy is forced. There are running jokes that lead no where. The logic is flawed at best. The character development is broad. It’s self-serving and has no idea if it wants to be a documentary or a narrative. It’s an hour and 20 minuets long and it STILL needed to be padded out with…. A HIP-HOP SEQUENCE! Kirk Cameron, the poor response to your film has nothing to do with secular bias. It’s because it sucks. Period.
- Transformers: Age of Extinction: Where do I start? The incomprehensible action? The overuse of nauseating Slow Motion? The “script”? I honestly don’t know who I’m angrier with! Michael Bay for his complete and utter lack of effort or US… for falling for it over and over again! We were promised Optimus Prime on a T-Rex! Not only did we have two wait 2 and 1/2 hours for 10 minutes worth of Grimlock action, it’s tainted by Optimus holding the Dinobots hostage, so it’s not heroic. It’s actually 10 minutes of Optimus being an ASSHOLE! Again, Michael Bay I pose you this question. It’s giant robots fighting, how can you CONTINUE to fuck this up?!?!?
- Dumb and Dumber Too: To paraphrase Lloyd Christmas, “I hate it alawt.” The movie actually has a promising beginning and ending but everything else is the cinematic equivalent of a Facebook News Feed. Just a litany of who gives a fuck. Plenty of “Dumb” humor but bereft of the heart that fueled the 1994 original. I expected more from this movie and I didn’t go in expecting much to start with.
- Let’s Be Cops: This movie looks like “21 Jump Street”. It sometimes feels like “21 Jump Street”. Heck it even has Rob Riggle! But where “21 Jump Street” succeeded, this movie fails miserably. It’s misogynist, cliche, sophomoric and watching the forced chemistry between Damon Wayans Jr and Jake M. Johnson is downright brutal to watch. It’s an action-comedy that never blends it’s action or comedic elements properly and for a story that relies on sentiment, it never finds any heart.
- Tammy: You know when I am promised a comedy, I expect a fucking comedy. I expect to guffaw with laughter. I like Melissa McCarthy, but damn dude. This one was rough. I haven’t rewatched this movie since this summer, and I can’t honestly remember a goddamn thing about this movie. A single joke, a single character, a single line. Zilch.
- I, Frankenstein: Aaron Eckhart as Frankenstein’s monster with an Underworld remix. No, just… no.
- Divergent: Katniss- I mean Triss Prior lives in post-apocalyptic Chicago, where people are divided into Districts- I mean Factions. So… this isn’t a Hunger Games rip-off right? I’ve never read this novel so I can’t speak for how well they adapt the story, but it all seems very phoned in. Triss is a Divergent… but why should I care exactly? I’m also not crazy about any movie that makes Intellectualism something to be wary of. If Katniss Everdeen is James Bond, then Triss Prior is Johnny English.
- 300: Rise of an Empire: This and the last two films feature a series of great performances wrapped in shit. Eva Green is awesome in this. Seriously great. Aside from that, it’s terrible. You think “300” was historically inaccurate? Oh boy. The visual splendor of the first movie is still there but, and I can’t believe I’m about to say this, director Noam Murro doesn’t have Zack Snyder’s grasp of narrative. I know. I know right? This movie makes ZACK SNYDER look good! That ladies and jellyspoons is really all you need to know.
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Maleficent: A Disney movie focusing on one of it’s best villians? This could be great! I mean this is the Disney that gave us “Pirates of the Caribbean”! It’s also the Disney that gave us “The Lone Ranger.” So there’s that. Once again, a movie with a strong lead performance and is heaping hot mess everywhere else. The movie took away any potential for the story to have teeth. It could’ve added a new perspective on the “Sleeping Beauty”, but instead it chose to bastardize it. What a waste.
- Amazing Spider-Man 2: We suffered “Spider-Man 3” and somehow this movie repeated the sins of that film tenfold. too many villians, too many storylines, and no clear focus. Electro’s story is a bad ripoff of Riddler’s story from “Batman Forever”, and when a Joel Schumacher Batman film pulls something off that your film couldn’t, you’re in trouble. The only thing that saves this movie is Andrew Garfield. How varied the qualityof these films are, This was the first time in 12 years where I felt that I had seen the Spider-Man I grew up with. It’s just a shame the rest of the film couldn’t live up to that as well.