Top Ten Tuesday: Worst Movies of 2009

Another year has come and nearly gone, which means it’s once again that time of year to reflect on the cornucopia of movies released in theaters over the last 12 months. While we’re all eager to find out what movies rank amongst the best of 2009, the Movie Geeks prefer to start with the bad news and finish with the good news. So, this week we pull all the stops and lay out the Bottom Ten Worst Movies of 2009.

10. WHITEOUT

There’s pretty much only one thing this thriller (in name only) has plenty of.   White.   It’s not exciting.   It’s not suspenseful.   It doesn’t make you care one iota whether anyone lives or dies.   It’s really one of those movies that, at the end of the day, is just a waste of space, time, and money.   When your “thriller” gets its culminating action scenes and suspense derived from someone watching a line coming out of a snow storm (CG, to boot), it’s time to pack it in.

9. ALL ABOUT STEVE

ALL ABOUT STEVE is a crapfest that 20th Century Fox had sitting on their shelves for awhile, that is til Bradley Cooper became an A-List actor from this summer’s wildly successful THE HANGOVER… The latter – hilarious, the former – unbearable. It’s the story of Mary Horowitz, a crossword fanatic (Sandra Bullock), who after a blind date with a news photographer, Steve (Bradley Cooper), thinks they’re soulmates and begins a disgraceful jaunt around the U.S. to prove that they’re meant to be together. Don’t forget the goofy talent, Hartman Hughes, (Thomas Haden Church) prodding her along the way to blindly follow Steve. Oh, Bleck! Whoever greenlit this mess, thinking it had a funny script, was woefully misinformed . The idea that a modern-day woman would lower herself to this is disturbing and moronic. Sandra, stop taking these roles! Too bad that Church and Bullock apparently needed some extra stash for..?? mortgage payments perhaps?? Apparently the Golden Globes forgot about this looniness by awarding Bullock with a nomination for her far superior performance in THE BLINDSIDE. Will the Academy be so forgiving?

8. THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON

NEW MOON isn’t just a bad movie — it’s also bad for the fabric of human existence. As Kristen Stewart’s Bella sits and mopes for months (which are indicated on the screen in case we’re unfamiliar with weather changes!), it makes the audience want to claw their eyeballs out with a spork. Sure, NEW MOON is for the fans. That’s fine. Sure, it might be a gateway drug into bigger and better works of fantasy and horror. That’s fine as well. But there’s still no excuse for this sluggish, plotless mess of a motion picture.

7. THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT

The dreary A HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT is a textbook example of how movies that feature a scary premise and scary music aren’t necessarily scary, strengthening my theory that PG-13 horror films are almost always worthless (DRAG ME TO HELL being one choice recent exception). A HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT is particularly generic and neutered, playing like a bland TV movie (it’s based on a true story told in a Discovery Channel documentary that’s more frightening than this film). A HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT overuses all the tiresome tricks – phantom apparitions, sudden jumps, blurry images in mirrors, deafening sound design, and spastic editing but it’s all noise designed to hide the fact that the only thing scary in this movie is Martin Donovan’s wretched performance as the dad.

6. OLD DOGS

Very few films make me angry by their presence, but Walt Becker does everything in his cinematic power to make me hate OLD DOGS, a film that seems to only be made for people who still think John Travolta is cool.   There is very little comedy that works in this film, and that which almost pulls it off gets swept under the rug quickly.   This is becoming par for the course for Robin Williams, an actor who, just over ten years ago, was having a resurgence thanks to choice roles.   It’s time to get back to films like GOOD WILL HUNTING and leave the turkeys like OLD DOGS far behind.

5. X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE was a lot of things — none of them good. It was as if director Gavin Hood set out to make Brett Ratner’s X-MEN: THE LAST STAND look like the cream of the crop. Not only are peripheral characters like Gambit and Deadpool crapped upon mercilessly (the latter might have gotten the worst treatment in comic book adaptation history), but even the title character gets a poor showing. Adamantium bullets? What the Hell was that nonsense?

4. LAND OF THE LOST

Aside from a couple of scenes that stand out from the film as a whole, such as when Will Ferrell and Danny McBride sing Cher’s “I Believe in Love” with the help of the crystal obelisk’s auto-tuning, LAND OF THE LOST is 10% ridiculous humor and 90% just plain ridiculous. Rarely has there been a comedy that has produced such a deafening lack of laughter amidst a full theater. Seemingly making an attempt to capture the so-bad-its-classic feel of the original TV show, the movie ultimately became a Will Ferrell vehicle that stalls as it sputters around each and every turn.

3. TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN

Figuring out where to start with Revenge of the Fallen is the hardest part when writing about it. It is so littered with bad ideas and poor execution that it’s nearly impossible to sum it all up in such a short block of text. I could go on about the horribly stereotyped “ghetto-bots” or the giant testicles hanging from Devastator, or why John Turturro felt it was a good idea to come back when his character was even worse. Or, how about the half hour of film that’s wasted on Sam going to college and his mother getting stoned? Or what about Transformer Heaven? Seriously! This movie fails in almost everything it tries to do. Transformers 2 is easily the biggest critical failure in summer movie history.

2. DRAGONBALL EVOLUTION

Sure. Goku is white, Piccolo is Spike from Buffy and Yamcha sounds like a bad Paul Walker impersonator… but, it’s still Dragonball, right? Fox continues to show how little they care about the properties they buy the rights to, making one of the most ridiculous sci-fi/comic book/anime adaptations of all time. It’s almost hard to really make a movie this bad. It’s action is bland, boring and poorly filmed. It’s special effects are ten years behind the times, and the cast is just ridiculous. Do a side by side comparison of the anime with the live action film and you’ll be hard pressed to say they’re the same thing. Epic failure doesn’t begin to describe it.

1. YEAR ONE

The very definition of wasted potential. Directed by Harold Ramis (Groundhog Day, Caddyshack), starring Jack Black and Michael Cera, and written by the team of Ramis and two writers from “The Office”. This could have been incredibly entertaining and a whole lot of fun. Unfortunately, they forgot about the plot… and more importantly… the jokes. A failure of biblical proportions.