It’s time once again to let you know just how low I go when
it comes to the pictures. In 2013, these are the depths I went to bring you an
entertaining viewpoint from some pure and utter crap.
10. AFTER EARTH
M. Night Shymalan must have found a monkey’s paw with about
a dozen fingers on it, because despite 7 years and 4 films worth of failure,
studios keep giving the old boy a chance at delivering another chin scratching
blockbuster. This time, he had some Big Willie Style in his corner with now one
but TWO hit making Smiths. Will Smith after a long hiatus made a
decent return to popcorn fun with last summer’s MEN IN BLACK 3 and his little
boy whom he named after his wife, Jaden somehow made a hit out of a remake of
THE KARATE KID, so they were both in good standing with audiences before Night
got to them and now who knows what will happen to them. Let me see what I can
remember from last May. So there is a future world where animals smell fear and
Jaden is a huge pussy just because he watched his sister get killed by a cgi
tiger while he was kept safe in a glass no smell bubble. WHAT A WIMP. His
father is an emotionless war hero and takes his son back to the polluted
garbage Earth to find a something or maybe they crash land because Will Smith
ends up stuck in the ship for the whole movie while Jaden squeaks through the
adventure of the After Earth, learning not to give off fear smell so he can
kill the fight beasts. Even with everything I just said, the movie still
manages to be miraculously boring. Leaving so much goof potential on the table.
Night has also forgotten to write dialogue that human beings can say. It’s kind
of funny that this whole thing was designed to be a franchise with movies, tv
and a book series to lull children around the world to sleep so their parents
could have a moment to think a single thought for once in their now miserable
lives. Oh, well parents. Gonna have to lean on Ritalin for just a little bit
longer.
9. ESCAPE FROM
TOMORROW
A film that was secretly filmed in not just Disneyland but
also Walt Disney World theme parks, filmed so well that it looked like they got
full permission to do so with the shots they managed to get but in the hurry to
seem like little sneaky petes, they forgot to write a story so they very likely
just made everything up as the cameras rolled because the result was an
incomprehensible embarrassment that wasn’t much more entertaining than some 8th
grader’s first cam corder snuff film. Made much more frustrating by the missed
opportunity of making a movie in the most famous amusement parks in the world
with any sort of interesting thing about it, and the realization that probably
nobody will ever get this chance again.
8. A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD
I guess it’s a lot to ask for five movies in a row to be
good, but I’m not entirely sure it’s the fault of franchise fatigue. Having
watched the first Christmas classic recently, it’s so disheartening to see
Bruce Willis at his prime and see the one that stars in seven movies a year
now. I think a lot of it has to do with Bruno’s complete lack of interest in
being the wise cracking everyman anymore. The John McClane in this movie is
visiting his son in Russia (cinematically, and scientifically, the most boring
country in the world) and he gets caught in yet another terrorist scheme but
this time, the McClane boys get to battle it out together, and sometimes THEY
BATTLE THEMSELVES, TOO. But really, even the fish out of water element they
could have done here wouldn’t have been able to save it. McClane stayed in
America and whoever Willis was playing in this movie wasn’t even a cool
grandpa.
7. PLANES
Not even as entertaining as Jay Jay The Jetplane, the
preschool targeted cartoon that used to air on TLC that kept the lonely hour of
4am not so lonely for this dude. Set in the world of Cars, but something Pixar
had no interest in making, we FINALLY get to see what all the planes were up to
while Lightning McQueen and Tow Mater were hogging the spotlight. The main
plane is voiced by Dane (!) Cook and is a crop duster but in his heart, just
wants to race. Stacey Keach plays the old veteran racer that got his friends
killed or something and vowed never to race again so they didn’t even bother
changing the CARS storyline too dramatically. The rest of the voice cast
includes Teri Hatcher, a cameo from the Top Gun cast members that aren’t Tom
Cruise and Sinbad himself. So I can appreciate how this is a bizarro version of
CARS from a nether universe where all Pixar movies were direct to video but I
live in this dimension where it’s a piece of crap.
6. ENDER’S GAME
No more adapting teen fiction please. It’s getting much to
painful to care about the allegory of fighting aliens with lasers and how it
relates to getting hair on your parts. This one suffers from STUDIO 60itus
though in that it hypes itself and the characters so much that the result can’t
not be a hilarious joke. Also, seeing a bunch of doughy pre-pubescent faces in
IMAX is not ideal.
5. WARM BODIES
I’m not even sure this is even an interesting idea, this
girl falling in love with a zombie thing. Sure she can fall in love with a
vampire, by stretch a mummy and maybe even a frankenstien. But zombies are
pushing it. And I still don’t see why zombies are that interesting anyway. But
to America, they are, and that’s why we get WARMS BODIES. Once in awhile, a
comedy comes along and you’ve sat there for at least 15 to 20 minutes and you
realized that you haven’t laughed once. Not because you’re being a snob, but
because the movie literally hasn’t attempted to make a joke or introduce a
funny situation once. I call it DARK SHADOWS syndrome because funny trailers
mixed with this 15 to 20 minute lag can lead to some very dangerous follow
through that will include naps, checking of watches and wondering if you just
leave now, maybe you can catch some SEINFELD reruns before bed.
4. TURBO
Having just rewatched RISE OF THE GUARDIANS, THE CROODS and
recollecting how shocking it was that future FRANCES HA writer, Noah Baumbach
made the third MADAGASCAR movie decent, it’s a real shame what TURBO does to
us. A fucking snail that just wants to race and gets drowned in some Fast and
Furious juice and gets a magic shell that makes him go fast. Fine, I can’t wait
for the dramatic arc to make me weep. Ryan Reynolds snail, ok, I guess. And
then they let the snail compete in the Indy 500, okay I’m pretty sure this is
against some sort of rule. You at least need a car to race in the car race,
right? Do we really blame the villain race car driver for not wanting to lose
to a FUCKING SNAIL? Dreamworks partnership with China probably lead to a lot of
smooth transition when making KUNG FU PANDA, but the handling of Mexicans and
their fascination with the big metal vroom vrooms was pretty surprising for a
cartoon. Also, they ape CARS even harder than PLANES for the final act. I guess
we can spot Dreamworks a mulligan every once in awhile.
3. THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY
Ben Stiller desperately wants to be taken seriously and
he kind of ruined this movie in order to further this agenda. Original take is
an ordinary guy who gets lost in his daydreams and that has the potential for
many cool action set pieces with an array of comedic talent. But in this, he
changed it to a guy that day dreams for a bit and then goes on an actual
adventure in search of a picture from a dick photographer that can’t follow
layout protocol. I get that Mitty finally got to live the adventures he always
had in his head, but playing soccer with a bunch of brown people and
skateboarding down a mountain is pretentious insurance commercial bullshit.
Kristen Wiig gets to play the girl he pines for, and even though Walter does
all that stuff for her, her feelings for him stay pretty much the same. What a
waste of a lady. And every song that has shown up in an inspiring cellphone ad
shows up in this because Stiller hasn’t heard a song since creating the REALITY
BITES soundtrack. Long and unfunny and I never want us to speak of this again.
2. FREE BIRDS
We’ve been having quite a few years with animation lately.
It’s often been surpassing the live action movies for action, humor and story.
Doing what can’t be done in the real world but still being seen as a kiddie
venue. FREE BIRDS does animation no favors and highlights just how much crap
has the opportunity to be made after a few successes in the medium. The story
is of a turkey that gets pardoned by the President and then recruited by these
turkey renegades to go back in time and stop Thanksgiving from ever including
turkey. First of all, I am not behind this endeavor at all, and b, why are
you trying to ruin Thanksgiving, FREE BIRDS? Why are you taking advantage of
the lack of Thanksgiving themed movies and fooling me into seeing you? Why are
you wasting Owen Wilson and Woody Harrelson’s time when they could be voicing
Dreamworks non-mexican characters? Why did the marketing make such a big deal
out of this being the first movie Chuck E. Cheese deemed acceptable enough to
feature their pizza in? Hey, guess what food replaced turkey in the new Thanksgiving
timeline? Fuck you, FREE BIRDS.
1. A HAUNTED HOUSE
Luckily for me, the first movie I saw of 2013 was the worst,
getting that over with right quick. Marlon Wayans, wanting to keep his family’s
once powerful strangle hold on parodying scary movies, set off on his own to
create this mostly parody of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY. Along the way, he also gave
it to most of Screen Gems January releases of the last few years (Actually,
JANUARY MOVIE would be a pretty good parody if you’re me and two other people).
It wasn’t long into this movie that I realized I was in for a doozy and to it’s
credit, it did make me laugh exactly once, but when I witnessed a full 3
minutes of Marlon Wayans fucking a stuffed animal I knew in my heart that this
movie, first out of the gate, was the worst thing I will see this year.
Coming next: The top 25 in all of its glory. Stay Tuned
- D