The 10th Annual Reel Stinkers Awards
Happy New Year, everybody! And happy 10th anniversary to the Reel Stinkers Awards, where I jot down my thoughts on the very worst films that stole my time in the past year!
2015 was a pretty good year overall, and of the 135 movies that I watched during that time, there weren't as many huge stinkers as in some past years. I actually had kind of a hard time coming up with the Top 10 picks for the year's worst, as a lot of the stuff I didn't like was more mediocre than flat out terrible. Of course, there was a lot of good stuff too, great stuff even! As always, my "Best of the Year" article will likely come around February or so, as there are some late year releases still stuck in limited release at the moment, and will go wider during January and February. I want to see and review as many of them as I can, so I always hold off on my Best list until then.
So, with all that out of the way, it's time to carve some cinematic turkeys! Here's hoping that you didn't waste your money and time on them, and let us also hope that everyone involved with them will get to work on a good movie in 2016!
And now, I'm proud to give you...
THE 10 WORST FILMS OF 2015:
10. MORTDECAI - This movie makes a big mistake early on, and then it just keeps on making that mistake over and over. It thinks that a comedy can get laughs just by having people acting funny, instead of actually being funny. This is a stunningly tone deaf farce that seems like it was made by amateurs, which is why it's shocking to see pros like Johnny Depp, Gwyneth Paltrow, Paul Betany and Ewan McGregor involved. The main culprit behind the film's failure is Depp, who plays Charlie Mortdecai, an art dealer and part-time con artist. His portrayal of Charlie is that of a cartoonish British aristocratic buffoon. He speaks with a silly accent, has a paper-thin handlebar mustache above his lip, and behaves kind of like a cross between Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow and Austin Powers. Depp is constantly up on the screen, expelling energy and throwing himself completely into the bizarre performance, but we do not laugh, because he never actually does or says anything that is funny. Mortdecai also has a large cast of supporting characters, played by recognizable actors like Jeff Goldblum and Olivia Munn. But again, the screenplay gives them nothing to do, so they often come across as actors who just happened to be passing by the set on the day they were shooting. Everybody here is either personality deprived, or built around a single visual gag that the movie repeats every time the character is on screen. Just like Depp, everyone is forced to speak in silly accents, projectile vomit and get slapped around in broad slapstick fights that don't generate laughs, because there is nothing behind the joke. The filmmakers were obviously going for a Pink Panther tone with its comedy, as the slapstick farce mixed with the detective story often brings to mind the films that featured Peter Sellers as the bungling Clouseau. But the movie misses the point completely in just about every way.
09. HOT PURSUIT - There was no reason that Hot Pursuit needed to be made, just like
there is no reason to watch it. It doesn't have a single original
thought, there are no laughs, and it contains nothing that we haven't
seen dozens of times before. It exists solely to rob the time and money
of the audience, and to waste the talents of Reese Witherspoon. Here, she stars in a witless buddy action comedy that teams her up with Sofia Vergara, who gives the single most obnoxious screen performance of 2015, if not the most unlikable performance I have seen in quite a
while. Vergara seems to find it necessary to be as shrill as possible,
and shriek most of her lines at the highest decibel. She is shrill,
unfunny, and completely unlikable. She is supposed to be the comedic
live wire of the film, but her character and Vergara's performance had
the effect of nails on a chalkboard to me. Maybe these two women could act well together, but that would require
them to be in a movie that gave them character development. This is a
movie that likes to make jokes about how short Witherspoon is, and is
under the mistaken impression that having women screaming during non-stop car chases and shootouts are
funny. Could the movie have been saved by some clever dialogue? Perhaps, but
nobody in this movie is allowed to talk about anything that doesn't
advance the plot. The filmmakers seem to have stripped Hot Pursuit to the most basic essentials, but in the process stripped away the characters and laughs.
08. PAN - Director Joe Wright has had a great amount of success adapting books like Atonement and the 2005 film version of Pride and Prejudice
to the big screen. But when he tries to come up with an origin story
for Peter Pan, the result is a soulless 3D thrill ride that does little
to enchant and even less to entertain. Pan is easily the loudest and one of the most cumbersome movies of the year. This is one of those movies where things are constantly happening, but
they seldom make sense, or they're potentially good ideas that aren't
fleshed out. Pirate ships fly through the air, complete with bungee
jumping pirates who look like something out of a Cirque du Soleil
show, mermaids swim, martial arts fighters bounce off of and battle one
another on massive trampolines, crocodiles leap out of the water to
snatch their prey, and fairies flitter about. At the center of it all
is Hugh Jackman, unrecognizable under a lot of make up and weird facial
hair, as the leader of the pirates, Captain Blackbeard. Jackman has a
twinkle in his eye, and he seems to be trying his hardest to sell this
stuff, but it gets lost in the clutter of all the CG and gimmicky 3D
effects that overpower the human characters. There's little to care
about, and it doesn't take long before the movie starts to feel like an
overproduced assault on the senses. From the overblown and pointless action scenes (including an unnecessary dogfight between a flying pirate ship and a World War II plane), to out of the blue musical numbers of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit (and no, I'm not kidding), the film is simply a huge budget run amok. In fact, this movie is so obsessed with throwing gobs of special effects
at us, it forgets that it's supposed to be telling us the backstory of
Peter Pan. All Pan wants to do is bombard you with so much junk you can't even think straight while watching it.
07. JUPITER ASCENDING - It takes a certain kind of talent to pull off a movie this inept. Lesser filmmakers would have stopped at just merely making a bad movie. Jupiter Ascending shoots for the moon when it comes to awfulness, and reaches it. Sure, the movie looks like it cost a few hundred million to make. But if you strip away the big budget and name actors, make it black and white and replace the complex alien worlds with cardboard cutout sets, this script would be right at home on Mystery Science Theater 3000. The movie is the brainchild of Andy and Lana Wachowski, who got their start in indie films, then hit it big with The Matrix. Here, the filmmaking duo strike out completely. It's not just the fact that there seems to be no detectable heart or soul behind the picture, and that it often comes across as a really expensive technical demo that leaves no impression on the audience. It's also the fact that the dialogue is some of the worst I have heard in a Sci-Fi movie since the Star Wars prequels. It''s clear that the movie wants to be about something, and dazzle our imaginations with its massive alien worlds. But look behind the visual splendor and droning dialogue about purpose and destiny, and you will find very little. I will be honest, the only thing that kept me in my theater seat was seeing just how wrong the movie was going to go next. And then there are the performances. The lead stars, Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum, both give such wooden and lifeless portrayals, you wonder if they were a little embarrassed to be involved with this project. (The fact that Tatum refused to do any publicity for the film offers support to this theory.) And then you have Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne, giving what is easily the year's most hilariously awful over the top performance as the villain, where he alternates between whispering and screaming his lines at a moment's notice with no rhyme or reason. Some people tried to defend this movie's completely off tone and off the wall plot by saying it was intended to be some kind of comedy, but I don't buy it. This was simply a misguided Sci-Fi epic that was supposed to spark our imaginations, but wound up getting laughed right off the screen by audiences and critics with its overall goofiness.
06: SCOUT'S GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE - I must report that I did not laugh once while watching this movie. It is not funny, thrilling or exciting at any point of time. The obvious inspirations for the screenplay (credited to four different writers) are Zombieland and SuperBad, with perhaps a bit of Shaun of the Dead thrown in for good measure. Those movies had smart and funny dialogue, plus characters we could get behind. This movie gives us non-stop gross out jokes and obnoxious characters that we want to see get chomped by the zombie hoard. It's an annoying movie that seems to think graphic slo-mo shots of heads exploding is the height of comedy. This movie's idea of a joke is to have a zombie suddenly start singing a Britney Spears song for no reason. Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse might have worked if it had a sense of satire, just as the previously mentioned Zombieland and Shaun did. Instead, it's comprised of nothing but lame physical comedy that director and co-writer Christopher Landon (best known for writing the last few Paranormal Activity movies) doesn't know how to stage or pull off. None of the jokes hit, and the audience ends up watching with stone-faced silence as the actors try to pretend that this is funny, instead of actually saying or doing things that are funny. There were a number of scenes that I think were intended to get laughs, but honestly, I was just puzzled as to what the joke was supposed to be. This is the kind of movie where you laugh at the title alone. Maybe the poster art brings out a chuckle. Those two aspects are clearly where all the creative energy behind this project went. Everything else about it is dead in the water. This is a repellent and ugly little comedy that never really shocks like it wants to. It just offends us with its stupidity.
05: FANTASTIC FOUR - If you have ever wanted to see a superhero movie where everybody seems to be on downers or depressants, here is Fantastic Four.
This is a drab-looking movie, shot mostly in dull grays and blues, and
set almost entirely in the colorless walls of a military base. This is a
dour movie, where the superheroes, villains and side characters can
hardly seem to muster any enthusiasm for themselves. But most of all,
the movie's just not fun at all. This is the third attempt to bring these comic characters to the big screen (not counting the ultra cheap straight to video film from the early 90s that never got released), and probably the worst effort yet. What's that? You say you've never read the comics or seen the earlier
movies, and you have no idea who these characters are, or even their
relationship to each other? Tough luck, says director Josh Trank (who
did a much better movie about people with powers a few years ago called Chronicle) and his team of writers. They assume you hold advance knowledge, and don't need to know such things. Fantastic Four is quite odd for a superhero movie, as it seems
tailor made to have its central characters not use their powers whenever
possible. There are no thrilling adventures, no daring escapes, no
witty banter between the heroes...All they do for a majority of the film is sit in a military prison and mope over how they'll never be normal again. Heck, the Fantastic Four barely get to
interact with each other in this movie, even when they're sharing the
screen together. This is the
cinematic equivalent of buying an adventure book, and having the pages
be blank. In this day and age of The Avengers, Iron Man, the Dark Knight movies and Guardians of the Galaxy,
do we really need a superhero movie that seems to have the very essence
of joy drained out of it? If the movies I listed above represent some
of the top of the genre, then this exists somewhere in that strange
lower region where nobody involved seems to have cared much.
04. UNFINISHED BUSINESS - Here is a real sad sack of a movie. Nobody looks like they had fun while they were making it. The movie is lifeless and gloomy. Even the screenplay can barely muster any enthusiasm for itself, and is built of a bunch of scenes where little to nothing happens. Unfinished Business just kind of sits there, looking at its feet for 90 minutes, and then quietly asks us to leave. The ad campaign for the movie is a total bait and switch. The trailers would like you to believe that this is a raunchy comedy with Vince Vaughn, Tom Wilkinson (who should have known better than to appear in this) and Dave Franco playing uptight guys who cut loose during a business trip to Germany, and get into a lot of crazy alcohol-fueled situations inspired by The Hangover. What you should know is that all those scenes of the characters partying is taken from a five minute montage that happens about 70 minutes into the film. What the movie really is, or at least wants to be, is a heartfelt drama about Vaughn as a concerned dad trying to help his overweight preteen son overcome the bullies at school who are harassing him on line. He's on this business trip so he can sign a deal that will give him the money to send his kid to a private school. There are some attempts at humor during the trip, but every single joke falls flat. There's not a single laugh to be had. Believe me, I counted. A lot of the movie hangs on the chemistry between the three leads, and the actors have none. It's not that they're not trying, they just seem kind of defeated by the material they've been given. Vaughn and Wilkinson, in particular, seem tired and unfocused. And the movie's main running gag is that one of the guys is named Mike Pancake. If you laughed at that name, you'll bust a gut here, as they repeat it a dozen times. Unfinished Business certainly feels unfinished on just about every level. It delivers no laughs, the dramatic moments are schmaltzy, and everybody within it seems to just be cashing a paycheck so they can wipe this movie off their resumes as quick as possible.
03. POINT BREAK - Here is a rare last minute addition to the list, as this was literally the last movie I happened to see in 2015. Point Break is easily the most unnecessary remake we got this past year. And no, I'm not forgetting the equally unnecessary remake of Poltergeist we got this past summer. Nobody was asking for a remake. There was no reason it needed to be made. And judging by the box office returns and the vacant theater I saw my screening in, nobody wants to see it. Watching this remake of the 1991 cult hit action film that originally starred Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze is like staring for almost two hours at a dusty, dried up husk of something that was once living. It has no thrills, no personality, and probably the most uncharismatic and lifeless cast assembled for any movie I've seen in a very long time. It takes a special kind of skill to build a movie around surfing, base jumping, rock climbing, and high speed motorcycles diving out the window on the upper levels of a skyscraper, and make it come across as boring. And yet, through some warped miracle, director Ericson Core and screenwriter Kurt Wimmer have achieved just that. There's absolutely nothing to be invested in. We're watching a stunt reel, with occasional moments of dialogue that's so banal and dry, I don't know if any actor could have spoken it successfully. The characters have no life, and the actors look like they have no idea what they're doing half the time. I felt for them, as I had no idea why I was watching this movie. Everything about it feels dry and lifeless. The relationships between these characters are given little attention or focus, and there's not a single scene where anyone gets to display a personality. There's no joy or emotion in this movie. There's really little of anything. It's a cynical enterprise designed solely to ride on the title of a popular movie, and maybe play on the nostalgia of the fans of the original.
02. JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS - This is an overly long, lethargic and cheaply made mess of nostalgia. It completely misses what made the 1980s cartoon such a big hit with girls at the time, so much so that Jem was briefly able to dethrone the all-mighty Barbie as the queen of the fashion dolls. The cartoon was a wild and raucous mix of MTV and Sci-Fi, with the kind of corniness only a show aimed at kids in the 1980s could get away with. This live action film is a meandering and dull story about a Youtube star who almost loses her friends, and goes on a scavenger hunt set up by her dead father with the aid of an R2-D2 knockoff. What's strange is despite the sluggish nature of the film, the plot rushes through itself at breakneck speed, almost as if director Jon M. Chu (who brought us both Justin Bieber documentaries) was as anxious for the movie to be over with as I was while I was watching it. The plot of Jem takes place within the time span of a month or so, by my estimate. And what happens to these characters during this one month? Let's see...Our heroes become Internet celebrities, become a cultural phenomenon, get a record contract, create a rock band image and perfect dance routines, perform three concerts, break up with each other, get back together, go on a treasure hunt with a robot, fall in love, break into a record studio, receive a holographic recorded message from beyond the grave, inspire millions of young people to stand up for themselves, and change the course of the music industry forever. The characters in this movie are so devoid of life and personality, it doesn't matter what crazy stuff happens to them, it still manages to be utterly dull. Jem went on to be one of the biggest and most notorious bombs of 2015, as the movie changed so much from the original cartoon that fans were outraged just by the trailer alone, and refused to see it. And thanks to how banal and uninspired the whole enterprise was, it couldn't attract any new fans. Even with an extremely low budget of just $5 million, the movie barely made $2 million at the box office, and was gone in about a week from most theaters. I truly wish everyone involved has better luck in the future, but honestly, I'm glad this terrible thing bombed so hard.
01. HOT TUB TIME MACHINE 2 - To me, there was no question what movie would earn the top spot on my "worst of..." list this year. The unmistakable stench of flop-sweat permeates from Hot Tub Time Machine 2, as actors who seem to know they're in a doomed project struggle to rise above the material. The actors make their way through dialogue and scenes that the movie somehow thinks are funny, but they know are not. This is a movie where only one question needs to be asked - What were they thinking? This movie, an unnecessary sequel to 2010's Hot Tub Time Machine, features the same director and writer, as well as most of the same cast, except for John Cusack, who claims that he was never asked to appear in this sequel. He should thank his lucky stars. The talent may be mostly the same here, but the energy is gone. The returning stars are trudging through this material. They're gloomy, they're spent, and they seem to know they're trapped in a turkey. This movie is what happens when a bunch of people are called back to make a sequel, but nobody really wants to do it. In the history of bad comedy sequels, this ranks right down there with 1988's infamous Caddyshack II. This is a movie without purpose. It generates a bunch of scenes that are supposed to be comic, but simply are not. This is due to two reasons - One being that we have no interest in these characters, and the other being that the movie is not once funny at any point in time. This is simply a dispirited production in every sense of the word. Not only is the script pathetic, but the cast can barely seem to hide their doubts about it up there on the screen. Nobody wants to be there, and it doesn't take long until the audience shares their misery. I'm the sort who tries to look for something good in even the biggest bombs - a spark of life, or maybe a performance that stands out. Here, I have nothing, because the movie gives nothing. It's clear that everything that needed to be done with this idea was accomplished the first time around. Here, everybody seems dumbfounded by this encore, and rightly so. At the very least, we can take hope in the knowledge that there won't be a Hot Tub Time Machine 3.
Well, that covers the Top 10, but I am far from finished. It's time to cover the Dishonorable Mentions, the films that were bad, but not quite bad enough to break into the top spots. Don't let that fool you into thinking these movies are somehow better than what's come before, however. You should avoid any and all movies that appear on this list. With that said, let's roll out the next batch of stinkers!
DISHONORABLE MENTIONS:
The Boy Next Door, Taken 3, Blackhat, Strange Magic, The Loft, Fifty Shades of Grey, The Lazarus Effect, The Gunman, Furious 7, Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, Little Boy, Poltergeist, Ted 2, Magic Mike XXL, The Gallows, Self/Less, Pixels, Hitman: Agent 47, Sinister 2, We Are Your Friends, Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, In the Heart of the Sea
INDIVIDUAL REEL STINKERS AWARDS:
WORST SEQUEL:
Hot Tub Time Machine 2
MOST UNNECESSARY SEQUEL:
Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2
WORST REMAKE:
Point Break
WORST PERFORMANCE BY AN A-LIST ACTOR/ACTRESS:
Eddie Redmayne in Jupiter Ascending
WORST OVERALL PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR/ACTRESS:
Sofia Vergara in Hot Pursuit
WORST IDEA FOR A MOVIE THAT NEVER COULD HAVE WORKED:
Sequels to movies that didn't need sequels like Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 and Hot Tub Time Machine 2
REPEAT OFFENDERS (ACTORS WHO WERE INVOLVED IN MORE THAN ONE STINKER IN 2015):
Kristen Chenoweth in The Boy Next Door and Strange Magic
Tom Wilkinson in Unfinished Business and Little Boy
Kevin James in Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, Little Boy and Pixels
David Henrie in Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 and Little Boy
Ryan Guzman in The Boy Next Door and Jem and the Holograms
Channing Tatum in Jupiter Ascending and Magic Mike XXL
WORST ON SCREEN TEAM:
Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Bell as the Fantastic Four
STUDIO THAT BROUGHT US THE MOST STINKERS IN 2015:
Warner Bros., for bringing us Jupiter Ascending, Hot Pursuit, The Gallows, Magic Mike XXL, We Are Your Friends, Pan, In the Heart of the Sea and Point Break
Well, that's the worst of 2015 in a nutshell. Time to look ahead to 2016, and hope for the best. Have a wonderful and safe new year, everybody!
2015 was a pretty good year overall, and of the 135 movies that I watched during that time, there weren't as many huge stinkers as in some past years. I actually had kind of a hard time coming up with the Top 10 picks for the year's worst, as a lot of the stuff I didn't like was more mediocre than flat out terrible. Of course, there was a lot of good stuff too, great stuff even! As always, my "Best of the Year" article will likely come around February or so, as there are some late year releases still stuck in limited release at the moment, and will go wider during January and February. I want to see and review as many of them as I can, so I always hold off on my Best list until then.
So, with all that out of the way, it's time to carve some cinematic turkeys! Here's hoping that you didn't waste your money and time on them, and let us also hope that everyone involved with them will get to work on a good movie in 2016!
And now, I'm proud to give you...
THE 10 WORST FILMS OF 2015:
10. MORTDECAI - This movie makes a big mistake early on, and then it just keeps on making that mistake over and over. It thinks that a comedy can get laughs just by having people acting funny, instead of actually being funny. This is a stunningly tone deaf farce that seems like it was made by amateurs, which is why it's shocking to see pros like Johnny Depp, Gwyneth Paltrow, Paul Betany and Ewan McGregor involved. The main culprit behind the film's failure is Depp, who plays Charlie Mortdecai, an art dealer and part-time con artist. His portrayal of Charlie is that of a cartoonish British aristocratic buffoon. He speaks with a silly accent, has a paper-thin handlebar mustache above his lip, and behaves kind of like a cross between Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow and Austin Powers. Depp is constantly up on the screen, expelling energy and throwing himself completely into the bizarre performance, but we do not laugh, because he never actually does or says anything that is funny. Mortdecai also has a large cast of supporting characters, played by recognizable actors like Jeff Goldblum and Olivia Munn. But again, the screenplay gives them nothing to do, so they often come across as actors who just happened to be passing by the set on the day they were shooting. Everybody here is either personality deprived, or built around a single visual gag that the movie repeats every time the character is on screen. Just like Depp, everyone is forced to speak in silly accents, projectile vomit and get slapped around in broad slapstick fights that don't generate laughs, because there is nothing behind the joke. The filmmakers were obviously going for a Pink Panther tone with its comedy, as the slapstick farce mixed with the detective story often brings to mind the films that featured Peter Sellers as the bungling Clouseau. But the movie misses the point completely in just about every way.
07. JUPITER ASCENDING - It takes a certain kind of talent to pull off a movie this inept. Lesser filmmakers would have stopped at just merely making a bad movie. Jupiter Ascending shoots for the moon when it comes to awfulness, and reaches it. Sure, the movie looks like it cost a few hundred million to make. But if you strip away the big budget and name actors, make it black and white and replace the complex alien worlds with cardboard cutout sets, this script would be right at home on Mystery Science Theater 3000. The movie is the brainchild of Andy and Lana Wachowski, who got their start in indie films, then hit it big with The Matrix. Here, the filmmaking duo strike out completely. It's not just the fact that there seems to be no detectable heart or soul behind the picture, and that it often comes across as a really expensive technical demo that leaves no impression on the audience. It's also the fact that the dialogue is some of the worst I have heard in a Sci-Fi movie since the Star Wars prequels. It''s clear that the movie wants to be about something, and dazzle our imaginations with its massive alien worlds. But look behind the visual splendor and droning dialogue about purpose and destiny, and you will find very little. I will be honest, the only thing that kept me in my theater seat was seeing just how wrong the movie was going to go next. And then there are the performances. The lead stars, Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum, both give such wooden and lifeless portrayals, you wonder if they were a little embarrassed to be involved with this project. (The fact that Tatum refused to do any publicity for the film offers support to this theory.) And then you have Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne, giving what is easily the year's most hilariously awful over the top performance as the villain, where he alternates between whispering and screaming his lines at a moment's notice with no rhyme or reason. Some people tried to defend this movie's completely off tone and off the wall plot by saying it was intended to be some kind of comedy, but I don't buy it. This was simply a misguided Sci-Fi epic that was supposed to spark our imaginations, but wound up getting laughed right off the screen by audiences and critics with its overall goofiness.
06: SCOUT'S GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE - I must report that I did not laugh once while watching this movie. It is not funny, thrilling or exciting at any point of time. The obvious inspirations for the screenplay (credited to four different writers) are Zombieland and SuperBad, with perhaps a bit of Shaun of the Dead thrown in for good measure. Those movies had smart and funny dialogue, plus characters we could get behind. This movie gives us non-stop gross out jokes and obnoxious characters that we want to see get chomped by the zombie hoard. It's an annoying movie that seems to think graphic slo-mo shots of heads exploding is the height of comedy. This movie's idea of a joke is to have a zombie suddenly start singing a Britney Spears song for no reason. Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse might have worked if it had a sense of satire, just as the previously mentioned Zombieland and Shaun did. Instead, it's comprised of nothing but lame physical comedy that director and co-writer Christopher Landon (best known for writing the last few Paranormal Activity movies) doesn't know how to stage or pull off. None of the jokes hit, and the audience ends up watching with stone-faced silence as the actors try to pretend that this is funny, instead of actually saying or doing things that are funny. There were a number of scenes that I think were intended to get laughs, but honestly, I was just puzzled as to what the joke was supposed to be. This is the kind of movie where you laugh at the title alone. Maybe the poster art brings out a chuckle. Those two aspects are clearly where all the creative energy behind this project went. Everything else about it is dead in the water. This is a repellent and ugly little comedy that never really shocks like it wants to. It just offends us with its stupidity.
04. UNFINISHED BUSINESS - Here is a real sad sack of a movie. Nobody looks like they had fun while they were making it. The movie is lifeless and gloomy. Even the screenplay can barely muster any enthusiasm for itself, and is built of a bunch of scenes where little to nothing happens. Unfinished Business just kind of sits there, looking at its feet for 90 minutes, and then quietly asks us to leave. The ad campaign for the movie is a total bait and switch. The trailers would like you to believe that this is a raunchy comedy with Vince Vaughn, Tom Wilkinson (who should have known better than to appear in this) and Dave Franco playing uptight guys who cut loose during a business trip to Germany, and get into a lot of crazy alcohol-fueled situations inspired by The Hangover. What you should know is that all those scenes of the characters partying is taken from a five minute montage that happens about 70 minutes into the film. What the movie really is, or at least wants to be, is a heartfelt drama about Vaughn as a concerned dad trying to help his overweight preteen son overcome the bullies at school who are harassing him on line. He's on this business trip so he can sign a deal that will give him the money to send his kid to a private school. There are some attempts at humor during the trip, but every single joke falls flat. There's not a single laugh to be had. Believe me, I counted. A lot of the movie hangs on the chemistry between the three leads, and the actors have none. It's not that they're not trying, they just seem kind of defeated by the material they've been given. Vaughn and Wilkinson, in particular, seem tired and unfocused. And the movie's main running gag is that one of the guys is named Mike Pancake. If you laughed at that name, you'll bust a gut here, as they repeat it a dozen times. Unfinished Business certainly feels unfinished on just about every level. It delivers no laughs, the dramatic moments are schmaltzy, and everybody within it seems to just be cashing a paycheck so they can wipe this movie off their resumes as quick as possible.
03. POINT BREAK - Here is a rare last minute addition to the list, as this was literally the last movie I happened to see in 2015. Point Break is easily the most unnecessary remake we got this past year. And no, I'm not forgetting the equally unnecessary remake of Poltergeist we got this past summer. Nobody was asking for a remake. There was no reason it needed to be made. And judging by the box office returns and the vacant theater I saw my screening in, nobody wants to see it. Watching this remake of the 1991 cult hit action film that originally starred Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze is like staring for almost two hours at a dusty, dried up husk of something that was once living. It has no thrills, no personality, and probably the most uncharismatic and lifeless cast assembled for any movie I've seen in a very long time. It takes a special kind of skill to build a movie around surfing, base jumping, rock climbing, and high speed motorcycles diving out the window on the upper levels of a skyscraper, and make it come across as boring. And yet, through some warped miracle, director Ericson Core and screenwriter Kurt Wimmer have achieved just that. There's absolutely nothing to be invested in. We're watching a stunt reel, with occasional moments of dialogue that's so banal and dry, I don't know if any actor could have spoken it successfully. The characters have no life, and the actors look like they have no idea what they're doing half the time. I felt for them, as I had no idea why I was watching this movie. Everything about it feels dry and lifeless. The relationships between these characters are given little attention or focus, and there's not a single scene where anyone gets to display a personality. There's no joy or emotion in this movie. There's really little of anything. It's a cynical enterprise designed solely to ride on the title of a popular movie, and maybe play on the nostalgia of the fans of the original.
02. JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS - This is an overly long, lethargic and cheaply made mess of nostalgia. It completely misses what made the 1980s cartoon such a big hit with girls at the time, so much so that Jem was briefly able to dethrone the all-mighty Barbie as the queen of the fashion dolls. The cartoon was a wild and raucous mix of MTV and Sci-Fi, with the kind of corniness only a show aimed at kids in the 1980s could get away with. This live action film is a meandering and dull story about a Youtube star who almost loses her friends, and goes on a scavenger hunt set up by her dead father with the aid of an R2-D2 knockoff. What's strange is despite the sluggish nature of the film, the plot rushes through itself at breakneck speed, almost as if director Jon M. Chu (who brought us both Justin Bieber documentaries) was as anxious for the movie to be over with as I was while I was watching it. The plot of Jem takes place within the time span of a month or so, by my estimate. And what happens to these characters during this one month? Let's see...Our heroes become Internet celebrities, become a cultural phenomenon, get a record contract, create a rock band image and perfect dance routines, perform three concerts, break up with each other, get back together, go on a treasure hunt with a robot, fall in love, break into a record studio, receive a holographic recorded message from beyond the grave, inspire millions of young people to stand up for themselves, and change the course of the music industry forever. The characters in this movie are so devoid of life and personality, it doesn't matter what crazy stuff happens to them, it still manages to be utterly dull. Jem went on to be one of the biggest and most notorious bombs of 2015, as the movie changed so much from the original cartoon that fans were outraged just by the trailer alone, and refused to see it. And thanks to how banal and uninspired the whole enterprise was, it couldn't attract any new fans. Even with an extremely low budget of just $5 million, the movie barely made $2 million at the box office, and was gone in about a week from most theaters. I truly wish everyone involved has better luck in the future, but honestly, I'm glad this terrible thing bombed so hard.
01. HOT TUB TIME MACHINE 2 - To me, there was no question what movie would earn the top spot on my "worst of..." list this year. The unmistakable stench of flop-sweat permeates from Hot Tub Time Machine 2, as actors who seem to know they're in a doomed project struggle to rise above the material. The actors make their way through dialogue and scenes that the movie somehow thinks are funny, but they know are not. This is a movie where only one question needs to be asked - What were they thinking? This movie, an unnecessary sequel to 2010's Hot Tub Time Machine, features the same director and writer, as well as most of the same cast, except for John Cusack, who claims that he was never asked to appear in this sequel. He should thank his lucky stars. The talent may be mostly the same here, but the energy is gone. The returning stars are trudging through this material. They're gloomy, they're spent, and they seem to know they're trapped in a turkey. This movie is what happens when a bunch of people are called back to make a sequel, but nobody really wants to do it. In the history of bad comedy sequels, this ranks right down there with 1988's infamous Caddyshack II. This is a movie without purpose. It generates a bunch of scenes that are supposed to be comic, but simply are not. This is due to two reasons - One being that we have no interest in these characters, and the other being that the movie is not once funny at any point in time. This is simply a dispirited production in every sense of the word. Not only is the script pathetic, but the cast can barely seem to hide their doubts about it up there on the screen. Nobody wants to be there, and it doesn't take long until the audience shares their misery. I'm the sort who tries to look for something good in even the biggest bombs - a spark of life, or maybe a performance that stands out. Here, I have nothing, because the movie gives nothing. It's clear that everything that needed to be done with this idea was accomplished the first time around. Here, everybody seems dumbfounded by this encore, and rightly so. At the very least, we can take hope in the knowledge that there won't be a Hot Tub Time Machine 3.
Well, that covers the Top 10, but I am far from finished. It's time to cover the Dishonorable Mentions, the films that were bad, but not quite bad enough to break into the top spots. Don't let that fool you into thinking these movies are somehow better than what's come before, however. You should avoid any and all movies that appear on this list. With that said, let's roll out the next batch of stinkers!
DISHONORABLE MENTIONS:
The Boy Next Door, Taken 3, Blackhat, Strange Magic, The Loft, Fifty Shades of Grey, The Lazarus Effect, The Gunman, Furious 7, Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, Little Boy, Poltergeist, Ted 2, Magic Mike XXL, The Gallows, Self/Less, Pixels, Hitman: Agent 47, Sinister 2, We Are Your Friends, Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, In the Heart of the Sea
INDIVIDUAL REEL STINKERS AWARDS:
WORST SEQUEL:
Hot Tub Time Machine 2
MOST UNNECESSARY SEQUEL:
Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2
WORST REMAKE:
Point Break
WORST PERFORMANCE BY AN A-LIST ACTOR/ACTRESS:
Eddie Redmayne in Jupiter Ascending
WORST OVERALL PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR/ACTRESS:
Sofia Vergara in Hot Pursuit
WORST IDEA FOR A MOVIE THAT NEVER COULD HAVE WORKED:
Sequels to movies that didn't need sequels like Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 and Hot Tub Time Machine 2
REPEAT OFFENDERS (ACTORS WHO WERE INVOLVED IN MORE THAN ONE STINKER IN 2015):
Kristen Chenoweth in The Boy Next Door and Strange Magic
Tom Wilkinson in Unfinished Business and Little Boy
Kevin James in Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, Little Boy and Pixels
David Henrie in Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 and Little Boy
Ryan Guzman in The Boy Next Door and Jem and the Holograms
Channing Tatum in Jupiter Ascending and Magic Mike XXL
WORST ON SCREEN TEAM:
Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Bell as the Fantastic Four
STUDIO THAT BROUGHT US THE MOST STINKERS IN 2015:
Warner Bros., for bringing us Jupiter Ascending, Hot Pursuit, The Gallows, Magic Mike XXL, We Are Your Friends, Pan, In the Heart of the Sea and Point Break
Well, that's the worst of 2015 in a nutshell. Time to look ahead to 2016, and hope for the best. Have a wonderful and safe new year, everybody!
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