Ten Worst Movies, 2008
The Absolute Dreck of Film Released So Far This Year
10- Rambo
Stallone adds nothing new to the tough guy killer formula except an excess of gore in the disgusting Rambo. An hour is spent watching villagers brutally massacred followed by an hour of watching the “bad guys” brutally massacred. While watching Stallone rip a man’s throat open with his bare hands, a viewer may think, isn’t there something wrong with demonizing violence and then having the “hero” perform violence nearly as cruel for entertainment? The answer is yes.
9- College Road Trip
Martin Lawrence and Raven Symone mug their hearts out to increasingly pathetic payoff in this lame attempt at a road trip comedy.
8- Jumper
Hayden Christensen may be doomed to be miscast as a leading man the rest of his career. He really excels as self-loathing anxiety-prone characters, like he played in Shattered Glass. But in matinee idol roles like he plays as a teleporting man in Jumper he is bland and boring despite director Doug Liman’s best efforts to surround him with action.
7- The Other Boleyn Girl
This period piece (written by The Queen’s Peter Morgan) never quite decides whether it wants to be a serious reflection on the costs of power or a soapy guilty pleasure. It ends up being neither.
6- 27 Dresses
Katherine Heigl told Vanity Fair she felt Knocked Up was sexist, but 27 Dresses is more so. It sets up a successful attractive woman who can only be happy if she gets married. The men of the 1950s would have loved it. It’s also predictable, sappy, and irritating aka the Date Movie From Hell.
5- 88 Minutes
Not as bad is it was made out to be, but not too much better, Pacino stumbles badly in this wrongly-accused thriller. It’s dull and idiotic, and raises concerns because director Jon Avnet also helmed Pacino’s next film, Righteous Kill, with Robert DeNiro.
4- Semi-Pro
Laughs are hard to come by in the belabored Semi-Pro, which apes other, better Will Farrell-as-inept-athlete vehicles like Talladega Nights. The runtime drags as much as the jokes fall flat.
3- Prom Night
It’s exactly what viewers expect. Every time someone runs from the killer they manage to trip. The killer apparently has himself on mute, because no one ever hears him coming. And characters routinely stand alone in a room, hear a noise and say variations on, “Billy? Is that you?” Audiences made the film a hit, so Homecoming Night likely isn’t far off either.
2- 10,000 B.C.
Everyone speaks English. There’s more mascara around lead Camilla Belle’s eyes than there are leaden idiotic dialogue exchanges. In other words it’s a perfectly historically accurate rendering of 10,000 BC.
1- Strange Wilderness
It seems nearly impossible that a film starring Steve Zahn, Jonah Hill, and Justin Long could be by far the least funny comedy of the year. But somehow director Fred Wolf and his writing partner Peter Gaulke have managed to concoct a feature length comedy whose trailer literally contains (with maybe a smidge of exception) every funny joke in the movie. Even potentially funny scenes are rendered inept by Wolf’s casual, almost willfully dull direction. At 87 minutes, it performs the feat of feeling like a double-bill of Lawrence of Arabia. There are essentially two minutes of funny in this movie, and they’re available for free in the trailer.
