The Ten Worst Movies of 2009

People often ask to start with the bad news when given a good news/bads news option and this blog will be no different.   Besides, the worst movies will provide more humor than the best movies of the year.  For me it as also easier to come up with the list of 10 worst movies than the ten best.  Here they are,

10) Year One.  Jack Black, Michael Cera, Paul Rudd and Harold Ramis, to name a few, decided to take off from being successful and funny and make this terrible movie, which, like many liberal comics in New York, showed that making fun of the Bible does not necessarily make you as funny as George Carlin.

9) Friday The 13th.  It came out early this year, but was strong enough it in its shi*tiness to stick around.  This was actually the first horror film I have ever seen where the acting was actually better than the film.  That is like watching a WNBA game and saying, “Man these girls are awesome, if only they had better coaching to take advantage of their skills and athleticism.”

8) Funny People.  This film is here, not so much because it was a terrible movie (it was not), but because I have not been misled by a marketing campaign for a movie this much since I thought I was going to a sports movie called Jerry Maguire.  Late night show hosts and bloggers seemed to all be in on the scam – this was a movie that would show what being a comic is really like.  Instead it showed the audience what the lives of chubby, unfunny, overpaid Jewish guys is like.  It could have probably been called Goldman Nut Sachs (as a tribute to the genital humor that also abounds in this movie).

7) Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. Needless to say this was the #1 movie of 2009 in terms of financial success.  Racist robots were apparently the cure for the summertime blues of Obama fatigue.  This was also the worst movie experience of the year for me since I sat next to a guy who talked so much during the movie that I think he was conjured up in a stereotype machine invented by the Wayans Brothers a la Weird Science’s creation of Kelly LeBrock.

6) 2012.  The biggest disaster film of the year not starring Tiger Woods (I am almost done making Tiger jokes).  The effects were weak and at 2 1/2 hours long, the film was about 2 hours and 27 minutes too long.

5) The Proposal.  In a year where 500 Days of Summer showed how good a romantic comedy could be, this film showed how bad they could still be (and people ate it up).  Puritan sexual mores and too much religious fervor are some of the things that people point to to show how unenlightened America is compared to some of its less powerful, but equally Disney and McDonald’s craving European allies.  I think looking at the collective grosses of Sandra Bullock’s movies make the case much more strongly.  (I have not seen The Blind Side yet, but am looking to get a free ticket, which will allow me not to financially support a great white hope story that looks terrible).

4) X Men Origins: Wolverine.  My hopes ran high a year ago when I saw The Dark Knight for the 432nd time.  Perhaps people would demand higher quality action films.  And the trailers for this film looked promising.  What was delivered was the worst thing from Australia since Yahoo Serious.

Let’s take a breath here and recognize that the next three films are even dangerous to say out loud they are so bad.

3) Antichrist.  Here is the review I posted on Facebook after seeing this film:

I wanted to see this movie based on the preview, despite mostly bad reviews. Upon seeing the movie, here is who should see this movie:
1) Want to see a montage in which Willem Defoe sexually penetrates (shown) an actress while his character’s son (approx 4 yrs old) falls out a window to his death.
2) Want to see a fox eat its own wounds (take that Fantastic Mr Fox)
3) Want to see Willem Defoe receive a handjob and then ejaculate blood.
4) Want to see a woman self-circumcise herself.

If you have answered yes to more than one of these questions (I appreciate morbid curiosity in small doses) then please de-friend me. 🙂

2) Paul Blart: Mall Cop.  One of the surprise hits of the year and that is what made me watch it.  However whenever something that I am initially skeptical about generates popular success (Mamma Mia! the musical, The Fast and The Furious to name two) my initial skepticism is always correct.  This may be the greatest example of this in pop culture history.  It seemed to have the quality of a student film, but with far less quality work on the part of the actors.  A movie of truly devastating crappiness.  To paraphrase the Dude from The Big Lebowski: “Well, you finally did it America, you’ve killed fu-king comedy.”

drum roll please

1) Amelia.  Perhaps Amelia Earhart knew this movie was coming, because I would disappear too if this bag of sh*t were attached to my name.  Hilary Swank and Richard Gere both producing the worst film of their careers (yes I am counting The Next Karate Kid).  And here is the worst thing I can say about a movie.  This was not only worse than Paul Blart, but was worse than last year’s worst film – Twilight.  ‘Nuff said.