We’re back for my rundown of some of the year’s dirt-worst films. It’s quite a mixture this year, ranging from random Netflix movies to some of the year’s biggest and most star-studded pictures. Just as a reminder for the countdown, we're starting from the least-worst, with #1 being the absolute crappiest filmic experience of the year.
10. Bohemian Rhapsody
People know that the actual footage of Queen’s Live Aid performance is easily accessible on YouTube, right? You can just watch that 25-minute clip, as opposed to watching a half-assed recreation sandwiched within two hours of just about every musician biopic cliche in the book. It’s an embarrassment that this was nominated for the actual Best Picture Oscar, and possibly even more embarrassing that it only just barely beat out another Best Picture candidate for the #10 spot on my list. (Looking at you, Adam McKay!)
9. The Mule
John Mulaney and Pete Davidson recently had an entire Weekend Update segment on SNL devoting to ripping on his ridiculous movie, and unfortunately I can’t find the clip online. (Damn you, Lorne Michaels’ stringent copyright policies!) I forget if Mulaney & Davidson mentioned this part or not, so if I’m repeating their bit, I apologize. But for me, the single most absurd scene was the head of the drug cartel inviting Clint Eastwood over to his mansion for a party, as a nod to all of Eastwood’s good work. Granted, I’m not an expert in how drug cartels operate, but I’m pretty sure the bosses don’t have an Employee Of The Month program.
8. Escape Plan 2
7. Ibiza
6. Small Town Crime
My “worst movies” list has been gradually getting shorter every year, which I attribute in part to a) Netflix, and b) my increasing lack of patience with garbage. If I find my attention waning after, say, 20-30 minutes, it’s easy to just shut down a movie and move on to something else. That said, I watched all of Escape Plan 2/Ibiza/Small Town Crime from start to finish, and for that I have no excuse. Was I too sleepy to bother hitting the stop button?
5. First Man
Click here for a more in-depth look on this snoozer.
4. A Wrinkle In Time
Many considered this classic children’s book to be unfilmable. They were right!
3. Den Of Thieves
Imagine “Heat,” except terrible yet somehow almost as long. And, imagine instead of the mano-a-mano acting showcase that is Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, you instead had Gerard Butler and Pablo Schreiber.
2. The Catcher Was A Spy
This one is a particular disappointment for me as a baseball fan, since I’ve heard of the Moe Berg story for years, and always felt it would make for an interesting film. (Especially since there’s no small chance that Berg was actually something of a fraud, making for a Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind-esque type of movie.) So I was excited to see that a Moe Berg movie was finally being made, and starring no less than Paul Rudd himself. The end result, however, was an absolute snore.
1. Like Father
I almost hesitated calling this my worst movie of the year since, really, it isn’t a movie. It’s a 90-minute commercial for Royal Caribbean cruises. This is the most egregious case of actors taking a bad job to get a paid vacation since Couples Retreat….which, it should be noted, also starred Kristen Bell. (Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a better movie, but also a pretty strong example of this phenomenon.) Everything in this movie felt completely hackneyed. The premise, the entire relationship between Bell and Grammer as estranged father and daughter, their steps towards reconciliation, their inevitable blowup, and their just-as-inevitable thawing by the end of the movie. This isn’t meteorologically possible for a Caribbean cruise, but I was rooting for an iceberg by the 40-minute mark.
ACTING AWARDS
Worst Supporting Actor: TIE! Chris Hemsworth/Bad Times At The El Royale, Lin-Manuel Miranda/Mary Poppins Returns
Everyone in BAATER is operating on some level of bad Tartantino pastiche, but Hemsworth really goes for it as a Manson-esque cult leader, and the result is yikes. Five points to Thor for effort, minus a thousand points for execution.
As for Miranda, I haven’t actually seen “Hamilton,” so obviously I hesitate in writing this guy off as a bad actor. But in everything I’ve seen him in, the hamminess and overly theatrical nature of his performances would make even Kenneth Branagh tell this guy to take it down a notch. It probably also didn’t help Miranda that MPR was maybe the single most “why is this happening?” movie of the year, so his performance was just icing on a cake of un-necessity.
Worst Supporting Actress: TIE! Claire Foy/First Man, Mindy Kaling/A Wrinkle In Time
Mindy Kaling has pretty much just play “Mindy Kaling,” which is a persona that (surprise surprise) doesn’t translate super-well to playing a cosmic entity. As for Foy, if you took a shot every time she looked at her husband with pensive worry, you’d be dead within about a half-hour. If you gave yourself a dime every time she didn’t have a look of pensive worry on her face in the film, you’d leave First Man with a total of zero dimes.
Worst Actor: Clint Eastwood/The Mule
Eastwood was a pretty limited actor even in his prime, and now it’s safe to call him completely over the hill, to the point that his age actively detracts from the plot of the movie. He’s 88, for pete’s sake! Eighty-eight years old! Again, I didn’t intend for this post to focus on how I’d do things if I operated a drug cartel, but while there’s some logic in the “hire old people as mules because nobody looks twice at them” plan, enlisting an 88-year-old has its own unique set of issues. Chiefly, there’s the whole HE COULD DIE AT LITERALLY ANY MOMENT obstacle. Casting even a 70-year-old in the role would’ve made more sense. Hell, Dianne Wiest is right there, in the completely thankless role of Eastwood’s ex-wife, just use her as the lead instead. Wouldn’t this movie suddenly be way better if Dianne Wiest is The Mule?
Worst Actress: Kristen Bell/Like Father
Keeping it all in the family, Dax Shepard won my worst actor award last year. On the bright side, I like Good Place and the podcast!
BEST PERFORMANCE IN BAD MOVIES
Supporting Actor: Tom Hardy/Venom
Wait, supporting actor? That’s right, this is a real thread-the-needle situation where I’m specifically awarding Hardy not for his role as Eddie Brock, but as the voice of the symbiote. I’m convinced that Tom Hardy hates the sound of his own voice, and only takes roles where he is allowed to deploy whatever weird accent or vocal tick he wishes. In this case, his choice for the symbiote is halfway between Shredder on the old Ninja Turtles cartoon show, and Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors. It is so absurd and over-the-top that it turned all the way around into being entertaining as the film went on — I admitted laughed out loud when the symbiote referred to itself as “a bit of a loser.”
Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway/Ocean’s 8
Her character is, essentially, Everyone’s Perception Of What Anne Hathaway Is Like, so it’s kind of a clever bit of casting to simply cast Anne Hathaway. This movie, by the way, ran a close second to Mary Poppins Returns in the “most unnecessary film” race.
Lead Actor: Rami Malek/Bohemian Rhapsody
Let’s see, how many qualifiers can I put on this award? I would’ve much rather seen what Sasha Baron Cohen would’ve done in the role. Malek absolutely shouldn’t win the Oscar. It is nigh-impossible for any actor to properly play Freddie Mercury, though I guess technically Malek isn’t playing “Freddie Mercury” as much as he’s playing a watered-down, audience-friendly version of the man. Other than all that, Malek is fine?
Lead Actress: Toni Collette/Hereditary
Academy, if you’re going to nominate an actor from a bad movie, maybe throw Toni Collette a bone? She doesn’t make my personal ballot, but she does her level best at carrying this completely overrated and overblown horror movie. Raised expectations are partially to blame, since the critics praised this one as a real landmark in the horror genre and I went in thinking I was going to see something special.
WORST PERFORMANCE IN A GOOD MOVIE: Rafi Gavron/A Star Is Born
You might remember this guy as the sleazy producer/record company exec who signs Lady Gaga, turns her into a generic pop star, and also more or less encourages Bradley Cooper to kill himself. I daresay that last item kind of took the whole movie down a peg — narratively, it’s more powerful if Cooper decides for himself that he’s holding Allie back, rather than have someone else spell it out for him. This isn’t exactly a subtle movie, but Gavron might as well be twirling a mustache and tying a puppy to railroad tracks.
10. Bohemian Rhapsody
People know that the actual footage of Queen’s Live Aid performance is easily accessible on YouTube, right? You can just watch that 25-minute clip, as opposed to watching a half-assed recreation sandwiched within two hours of just about every musician biopic cliche in the book. It’s an embarrassment that this was nominated for the actual Best Picture Oscar, and possibly even more embarrassing that it only just barely beat out another Best Picture candidate for the #10 spot on my list. (Looking at you, Adam McKay!)
9. The Mule
John Mulaney and Pete Davidson recently had an entire Weekend Update segment on SNL devoting to ripping on his ridiculous movie, and unfortunately I can’t find the clip online. (Damn you, Lorne Michaels’ stringent copyright policies!) I forget if Mulaney & Davidson mentioned this part or not, so if I’m repeating their bit, I apologize. But for me, the single most absurd scene was the head of the drug cartel inviting Clint Eastwood over to his mansion for a party, as a nod to all of Eastwood’s good work. Granted, I’m not an expert in how drug cartels operate, but I’m pretty sure the bosses don’t have an Employee Of The Month program.
8. Escape Plan 2
7. Ibiza
6. Small Town Crime
My “worst movies” list has been gradually getting shorter every year, which I attribute in part to a) Netflix, and b) my increasing lack of patience with garbage. If I find my attention waning after, say, 20-30 minutes, it’s easy to just shut down a movie and move on to something else. That said, I watched all of Escape Plan 2/Ibiza/Small Town Crime from start to finish, and for that I have no excuse. Was I too sleepy to bother hitting the stop button?
5. First Man
Click here for a more in-depth look on this snoozer.
4. A Wrinkle In Time
Many considered this classic children’s book to be unfilmable. They were right!
3. Den Of Thieves
Imagine “Heat,” except terrible yet somehow almost as long. And, imagine instead of the mano-a-mano acting showcase that is Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, you instead had Gerard Butler and Pablo Schreiber.
2. The Catcher Was A Spy
This one is a particular disappointment for me as a baseball fan, since I’ve heard of the Moe Berg story for years, and always felt it would make for an interesting film. (Especially since there’s no small chance that Berg was actually something of a fraud, making for a Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind-esque type of movie.) So I was excited to see that a Moe Berg movie was finally being made, and starring no less than Paul Rudd himself. The end result, however, was an absolute snore.
1. Like Father
I almost hesitated calling this my worst movie of the year since, really, it isn’t a movie. It’s a 90-minute commercial for Royal Caribbean cruises. This is the most egregious case of actors taking a bad job to get a paid vacation since Couples Retreat….which, it should be noted, also starred Kristen Bell. (Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a better movie, but also a pretty strong example of this phenomenon.) Everything in this movie felt completely hackneyed. The premise, the entire relationship between Bell and Grammer as estranged father and daughter, their steps towards reconciliation, their inevitable blowup, and their just-as-inevitable thawing by the end of the movie. This isn’t meteorologically possible for a Caribbean cruise, but I was rooting for an iceberg by the 40-minute mark.
ACTING AWARDS
Worst Supporting Actor: TIE! Chris Hemsworth/Bad Times At The El Royale, Lin-Manuel Miranda/Mary Poppins Returns
Everyone in BAATER is operating on some level of bad Tartantino pastiche, but Hemsworth really goes for it as a Manson-esque cult leader, and the result is yikes. Five points to Thor for effort, minus a thousand points for execution.
As for Miranda, I haven’t actually seen “Hamilton,” so obviously I hesitate in writing this guy off as a bad actor. But in everything I’ve seen him in, the hamminess and overly theatrical nature of his performances would make even Kenneth Branagh tell this guy to take it down a notch. It probably also didn’t help Miranda that MPR was maybe the single most “why is this happening?” movie of the year, so his performance was just icing on a cake of un-necessity.
Worst Supporting Actress: TIE! Claire Foy/First Man, Mindy Kaling/A Wrinkle In Time
Mindy Kaling has pretty much just play “Mindy Kaling,” which is a persona that (surprise surprise) doesn’t translate super-well to playing a cosmic entity. As for Foy, if you took a shot every time she looked at her husband with pensive worry, you’d be dead within about a half-hour. If you gave yourself a dime every time she didn’t have a look of pensive worry on her face in the film, you’d leave First Man with a total of zero dimes.
Worst Actor: Clint Eastwood/The Mule
Eastwood was a pretty limited actor even in his prime, and now it’s safe to call him completely over the hill, to the point that his age actively detracts from the plot of the movie. He’s 88, for pete’s sake! Eighty-eight years old! Again, I didn’t intend for this post to focus on how I’d do things if I operated a drug cartel, but while there’s some logic in the “hire old people as mules because nobody looks twice at them” plan, enlisting an 88-year-old has its own unique set of issues. Chiefly, there’s the whole HE COULD DIE AT LITERALLY ANY MOMENT obstacle. Casting even a 70-year-old in the role would’ve made more sense. Hell, Dianne Wiest is right there, in the completely thankless role of Eastwood’s ex-wife, just use her as the lead instead. Wouldn’t this movie suddenly be way better if Dianne Wiest is The Mule?
Worst Actress: Kristen Bell/Like Father
Keeping it all in the family, Dax Shepard won my worst actor award last year. On the bright side, I like Good Place and the podcast!
BEST PERFORMANCE IN BAD MOVIES
Supporting Actor: Tom Hardy/Venom
Wait, supporting actor? That’s right, this is a real thread-the-needle situation where I’m specifically awarding Hardy not for his role as Eddie Brock, but as the voice of the symbiote. I’m convinced that Tom Hardy hates the sound of his own voice, and only takes roles where he is allowed to deploy whatever weird accent or vocal tick he wishes. In this case, his choice for the symbiote is halfway between Shredder on the old Ninja Turtles cartoon show, and Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors. It is so absurd and over-the-top that it turned all the way around into being entertaining as the film went on — I admitted laughed out loud when the symbiote referred to itself as “a bit of a loser.”
Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway/Ocean’s 8
Her character is, essentially, Everyone’s Perception Of What Anne Hathaway Is Like, so it’s kind of a clever bit of casting to simply cast Anne Hathaway. This movie, by the way, ran a close second to Mary Poppins Returns in the “most unnecessary film” race.
Lead Actor: Rami Malek/Bohemian Rhapsody
Let’s see, how many qualifiers can I put on this award? I would’ve much rather seen what Sasha Baron Cohen would’ve done in the role. Malek absolutely shouldn’t win the Oscar. It is nigh-impossible for any actor to properly play Freddie Mercury, though I guess technically Malek isn’t playing “Freddie Mercury” as much as he’s playing a watered-down, audience-friendly version of the man. Other than all that, Malek is fine?
Lead Actress: Toni Collette/Hereditary
Academy, if you’re going to nominate an actor from a bad movie, maybe throw Toni Collette a bone? She doesn’t make my personal ballot, but she does her level best at carrying this completely overrated and overblown horror movie. Raised expectations are partially to blame, since the critics praised this one as a real landmark in the horror genre and I went in thinking I was going to see something special.
WORST PERFORMANCE IN A GOOD MOVIE: Rafi Gavron/A Star Is Born
You might remember this guy as the sleazy producer/record company exec who signs Lady Gaga, turns her into a generic pop star, and also more or less encourages Bradley Cooper to kill himself. I daresay that last item kind of took the whole movie down a peg — narratively, it’s more powerful if Cooper decides for himself that he’s holding Allie back, rather than have someone else spell it out for him. This isn’t exactly a subtle movie, but Gavron might as well be twirling a mustache and tying a puppy to railroad tracks.
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