A Look at '07's Most Pungent Film Moments
By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 29, 2007
LOS ANGELES
'Tis the season for critics to brighten our lives with earnest little lists of their favorite films of the year, to celebrate the tippiest toppiest cinematic achievements that have blessed our big screens -- however fleetingly -- with tales of star-crossed love, psychotic mayhem and quality French medical care. But we have decided to go in another direction. My, what is that smell?
Gather round, haters, there's a turkey in the oven. Welcome to the annual review of the Worst Movies of 2007, as scientifically tabulated for The Washington Post by the pallid gnomes at Rotten Tomatoes, the aggregating Web site that gathers thousands of movie reviews penned by more than 250 critics (online and off) and then through a complicated, weighted logarithmic formula (math) assigns the rating of "fresh" or "rotten." (To play fair, we include only films that have been widely released.)
Even so, what a fiesta of the fetid. Just get your minds around this: A much-loathed piece of female mutilation fantasy, "Captivity," doesn't even crack the Top 10 Worst. Nor does the operatically lame "Epic Movie," which impressed the critics so completely not. The cloyingly odious tweener offering, known optimistically as "Bratz: The Movie," as opposed, say, to "Bratz: The Past-Expiration Date Poultry Product"? So steep is the competition in the annual race for the bottom that these dolls are only the 16th stinkiest.
So hold your nose. Drumstick please. First, the good news. Diane Keaton will always be beloved for "Annie Hall." No one can take that away from her, though they are trying, actually, to take that away from her. Because it is with no joy that we announce that her mom-rom-com "Because I Said So" is the worst movie of the year. But don't take our word for it.
"Unusually toxic waste" is the blurb from the usually decorous Wall Street Journal. The Christian Science Monitor used the term "wince-inducing." The general lament: Why, Diane, why? As in, "Diane Keaton has a lot to answer for," according to the Toronto Star. Richard Roeper called it "the worst performance of Diane Keaton's career." Or as the Rotten Tomatoes "critical consensus" puts it: "an unfunny cliche-ridden mess that manages to make Diane Keaton temporarily unlikable." Temporarily, we must hope. (Early next year Keaton bows in "Mad Money," a bank heist caper with Katie Holmes and Queen Latifah that, well, pre-smells.)
"Her work had an unbearable finger-across-the-blackboard effect on me," wrote the film site Internet Reviews. "It's so derivative, unfunny and thuddingly bad that it's one of the more cringe-inducing movies of a genre chock-full of clunkers," thought USA Today, which just had to remind us that the film "sinks to a new low when it resorts to humor employing a good-natured golden retriever who gets excited when Keaton stumbles on an online porn site." Yikes.
Though the condemnation was almost universal for a film that the site Metromix called "the worst date movie since 'Saw III,' " there was a lone voice in the cream of the crop of "decent." Time's Richard Schickel liked it. "If you don't expect too much of it," he wrote, as coy as a schoolgirl, "you may find yourself pleasantly -- all right, soothingly -- surprised by it." Or as soothing as a family pet watching some porn can be.
Speaking of beloved national treasures, how many of us want to see Jim Carrey having sex? Anyone? Apparently not the critics, who placed his creepy (literally) thriller "The Number 23" -- which is, umm, about the number 23 -- in the No. 2 spot. "It's so cheesy that it's almost transcendent," marveled the Minneapolis Star Tribune, looking on the sunny side of the Joel Schumacher project. Or not. "As scary as Britney Spears in a hair salon." That was the Fresno Bee. The entity known as "Rex Reed" in the New York Observer wrote, "contrived, incomprehensible gibberish that exists for the sole purpose of exposing a miscast star in a career stretch for which he is pathetically unprepared. It's the worst kind of flop, a flop for its own sake."
Of course, the title also proved irresistible to the pack. The Houston Chronicle: "How do we loathe thee, 'The Number 23'? Let us count the ways." The Salt Lake Tribune: "There are 23 letters in . . . 'Joel Schumacher can bite me.' " Finally, the Boulder (Colo.) Weekly might have hit just the right note when it said, "There are any number of ways to scare audiences, but numerology isn't one of them."
Speaking of numerology, a close examination of the Top 10 Worst list reveals some conclusions, unfortunately:
1. There are movie stars who should consider changing agents. These movie stars include Oscar winners Hilary Swank, Halle Berry, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Diane Keaton.
2. Robin Williams now appears to be almost radioactive.
3. And Dane Cook is his heir.
Funny, the choices these actors make. Apparently, it is hard. For example, not too many years ago, wasn't Sandra Bullock smart? Or smart-ish? That's what we read. So why did she go off and make "Premonition," a kind of "Groundhog Day" gone wrong? "Sandra Bullock," the Arizona Republic reports, "plays a woman going through a horrifying experience. She keeps waking up in this movie." Hurts, doesn't it?
And Hilary Swank. "The Reaping." Why? Alimony? Chad Lowe not working? "What, I shudder to think, were the projects Hilary Swank turned down in favor of this?" asks the Seattle Times. Nicely timed for an Easter release, to get its talons into -- what? -- the "Passion of the Christ" flyover demo? "The Reaping" is one of those biblical mumbo-jumbo Satan- spawners that was hailed for its well-executed locust attack. As noted by the New York Times, the "only remotely notable thing about this particular jumble of boos, bangs and door creaks, swaying Spanish moss, creeping blond kids and swelling decolletage, creatively presented from various angles in various contexts, is that it tries to wed the horror trend with the heated-up God market."
The Fresno Bee: "Think of it as 'The Omen' meets Oil of Olay." The satirical Onion raved, "For bad movie lovers, it's manna from heaven!"
Of course, Christianity Today was wise to the game: There are 10 plagues in "The Reaping," the reviewer wrote. "But you don't have to suffer through all of them, or wait for a deliverer. You are not a slave to Hollywood's clever marketing campaigns. You don't have to wait for an usher to yell, 'Let my people go!' You can get up out of your theater seat and go free at any time."
Is there a lowness that is too low? Perhaps. The critics thought their feet touched the murky bottom of raunchy fun with Dane Cook in "Good Luck Chuck," which features Young Chuck fornicating with a stuffed penguin. Or so we've heard.
Unlike the adolescent pleasures of "Knocked Up" and "Superbad," it appears that "GLC" was "ewww . . . gross!" Or so concludes the Quad City Times. Not convinced? "Yecch!" wrote the reviewer at Houston Community Newspapers. The dean of the film corps, the obviously bewitched Roger Ebert, harrumphed, "Here is the dirty movie of the year, slimy and scummy, and among its casualties is poor Jessica Alba, who is a cutie and shouldn't have been let out to play with these boys."
Dirty. Alba. Play. Interesting. "Alba is so exceptionally challenged as an actress, it almost seems politically incorrect to make fun of her," says the San Francisco Chronicle, which then makes fun. "It's worth mentioning for the third time that this movie is much closer to 'Caligula' than 'Sleepless in Seattle.' "
Entertainment Weekly: "Can we finally just admit that Dane Cook isn't funny?" The Chicago Tribune: "The film is some sort of humor-deprivation experiment." The cultural criticism Web site PopMatters asks: "Who are these people?"
Agents?
Anyway. Rounding out the Top 10 Worst is a cartoon ("Happily N'Ever After"); a Victoria's Secret advertisement masquerading as a feature film starring Halle Berry ("Perfect Stranger"); the Robin Williams thing ("License to Wed"); the sad and desperate Cuba Gooding Jr. vehicle ("Daddy Day Camp"); and -- yes -- "Norbit."
The Eddie Murphy-in-a fat-suit film really set the critics' teeth on bite, so much so that we found ourselves in the fascinating cultural tilt-a-whirl of reading critics accusing a black actor of racism because of his portrayal of a fat black woman (played by Murphy himself). "This movie belongs in the Black Stereotype Hall of Fame, from the three shiftless schemers to the two funky pimps," went the Boston Globe critic, who is black. "If we're not 500 pounds and insane, we're 50 pounds and stupid."
"There are so many problems with 'Norbit' that when you try to pin one down, another one splooges out elsewhere," suggested Salon. LA Weekly mused, "Original nut Jerry Lewis would say that comedy is at least half rage, and 'Norbit,' wherein Murphy plays a psychotic, gargantuan wife and the meek, battered husband of the title, is one mean movie." And the San Diego Union agreed: "A sort of compost pile of cellulite gags, and humor so broad it is almost a new dimension in physics."
Speaking of cellulite gags, we know from long experience that critical disdain cannot derail a film that the public thinks (wrongly) it wants to see, such as "Wild Hogs," the John Travolta buddy movie the reviewers trashed with an almost palpable road rage. According to the Rotten Tomatoes math, "Wild Hogs is the 15th worst movie of the year, yet it did more than $200 million at the domestic box office and rental market. So go figure.
No. The critics turn most savage not when presented with mere badness -- because, honestly, many movies are not very good. Being bad is normal. No, what the critics hate most is cynicism, when a movie appears to have been made solely to exploit (as the marketing department actually calls it) an audience. And so like guardians all along the watchtowers, the critics call out to us -- stop, listen, wait, think, nooooo! -- as we shove our dollars through the little window and say, "Two, please. We've come for 'The Reaping.' "
View all comments that have been posted about this article.