My, my, my, isn’t this a lovely thing! The sun is shining, the birdies are singing, and my fellow Screengrabbers are raving about their favorite movies from the first half of 2008. So far, Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark and Leonard Pierce have all weighed in with their rainbows and pretty, pretty ponies, so I guess it’s up to me to poop in the punchbowl.
Don’t get wrong – it’s not that this year’s first half has been completely worthless as far as cinema is concerned. I enjoyed Wall-E as much as the next guy – I’m not made of stone, you know! (Not entirely, anyway.) Iron Man was about as good as it gets with the superhero genre, which still makes it a movie that ends with one guy in a big metal suit beating the crap out of another guy in an even bigger metal suit, but an awful lot of fun up until that point. Like Mr. Pierce, I’ll go to bat for the terrifying first hour of The Strangers, as well as most of Baghead, the offbeat indie Wellness (screened at SXSW) and the documentaries Crawford and The Unforeseen. But let’s be honest – so far 2008 has been overflowing with crap, and as the resident movie janitor, it’s my job to dig through it. Without further ado, here are the five least watchable movies I’ve seen this year.
1. The Love Guru. Everything you’ve heard is true. This isn’t a case of mass hypnosis or the critical brotherhood sticking together – it really is that bad. Mike Myers described this comedy about a self-help guru’s attempts to help a hockey player win a championship as “a delivery system for some wonderful ideas.” Actually, it’s a delivery system for dick jokes, each one dumber than the last.
2. First Sunday. So bad that I’ve already covered it here as part of the Unwatchable series. Nuff said.
3. Step Up 2 The Streets. A movie that raises many questions, not least of which is: “There was a Step Up 1?” A teenage street dancer (Briana Evigan, the next Demi Moore, if we needed one) is forced to enroll in an upscale school for the performing arts, leaving her old crew to accuse her of NOT KEEPING IT REELZ. This can only be settled with a dance-off! A thoroughly unconvincing dance-off that looks like an outtake from Night of the Living Dead: The Musical.
4. The Ruins. Reviewed here at the time of its release. At least, it was in theaters when I started writing the review; I think it had been pulled by the time I posted it. A gripping, intense read becomes a dead teenager movie with laughable CG effects.
5. Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show. You loved The Original Kings of Comedy! You tolerated The Blue Collar Comedy Tour! Now run and hide, because Vince Vaughn’s Indistiguishable Frat Dudes of Comedy are coming to town! Vaughn’s brainstorm was to bring unknown comics from L.A. to heartland cities where folks apparently never get the opportunity to laugh in person at jokes about bumper stickers and apple martinis. And we wonder why middle America hates Hollywood.
Related:
SXSW Review: Wellness
Screengrab Review: The Unforeseen