Last week I made my top
10 list of the best films of 2016, which means I have to pay the
price of being a movie-goer and cover the bad stuff. However, this list will only be five
long instead of ten. I try as best as I can to avoid seeing bad movies in theaters because I don't
like wasting my time or money. When I choose to see a movie in the theater, it's because I see some kind of potential for it to at least be entertaining. But even then some stinkers manage to slip
through the cracks, or morbid curiosity gets the best of me. So if
you're wondering why infamous turds like Gods of Egypt, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and
God's Not Dead 2 aren't here, it's because I knew that them sucking was going to be a foregone conclusion and I didn't want to waste my money. (Also, if you're the
kind of person who needs me of all people to tell you those movies
are garbage, then there's nothing I can really do for you.) Alright, enough beating around the bush, let's get
this over with.
5. Assassin's Creed
I've
already went into detail about why this movie doesn't work in my
initial review, but I will say this: the biggest sin Assassin's
Creed commits is wasting its potential. You have a cast of
incredibly talented actors (one of whom is also a producer), a
talented director, source material and a concept that should make for
at least an interesting story, and what do they put out? A half
baked, poorly edited, sloppily written bore-fest that keeps pulling
our attention away from what should be the coolest part of the movie.
Maybe I had my hopes up since I want to see a good video game movie
sometime before I die and this had everything lined up for it to be
at least competent, but I went in with high hopes and low
expectations, and I still left the theater feeling hollow. What a
disappointment.
4. Norm of the North
I
have my reasons for seeing this. Sure, those reasons all basically
fall under the umbrella of morbid curiosity, but they're reasons
nonetheless. I wasn't expecting anything out of this movie at all
(the fact that Rob Schneider is our lead should tell you everything
that you need to know), but I was thinking that it could at least be
so bad it's good, like the spiritual successor to Foodfight!
or the animated Titanic movies or something. Nope. It couldn't
even be that. I can barely even recall any major details other than
that Schneider plays a twerking polar bear, there's this plot about
people wanting to build condos in the arctic for some reason, and
there's this group of lemmings who are more obvious Minions ripoffs
than the elves from Rise of the Guardians. It's unfunny, the
animation is terrible, it's child pandering, it's the embodiment of
just about every bad animated children's film of the past twenty
years. Everything about Norm of the North screams
direct-to-DVD, which is apparently what it was supposed to be, but
somehow it got a wide release at the last minute while superior
animated films like Anomalisa, When Marnie Was There,
and The Little Prince get relegated to the indie theaters and
Netflix. That's the thing about this movie that really gets under my
skin. Don't waste your time with this one.
3. Yoga Hosers
I'm
not as hard on Kevin Smith as most people. He seems like a decent
enough person, and even though he's made some great movies, his overall filmography is kind of hit and miss for me. But when he hits it out of the park, he hits it out of the park. Which is why this movie hurts so much. The best way I can really describe Yoga Hosers
is “Nepotism: The Movie.” This isn't so much a movie as it is a 5
million dollar birthday present for his daughter. The plot is
basically a rehash of Clerks if
Clerks were about two
obnoxious teenage girls who are on their phones all the time, had
tiny bratwurst Nazis that shoved themselves up people's butts (don't
ask), and was peppered with a bunch of lame Canadian stereotypes. If
you can't get enough jokes about how Canadians say “eh”, “aboot”
and “sory”, then do I have the movie for you. I will give it to
Harley Quinn Smith and her real life BFF Lily Rose Depp since they're
pretty good actors and do kind of capture the spirit of the original
Clerks, but there's
only so much they could've done with this material. Kevin Smith, I
love you and your work, I have no doubt in my mind that this was a
big bonding experience for you and your daughter, or maybe this is just some
elaborate dig at your critics and I'm not in on the joke, but you can
do so much better than this. My advice: stop getting baked before
writing your scripts.
2. Collateral Beauty
The
trailer is a lie! The fact that this is Will Smith in a December
Oscar-bait drama should already be a red flag, but while films like
The Pursuit of Happyness and Seven Pounds are merely
just overly sentimental, emotionally manipulative tripe, Collateral
Beauty goes the extra mile. Will Smith plays a man who loses his
daughter and begins writing letters to Love, Time and Death as a
coping mechanism, only to be visited by and receive a pep talk from
the personifations of those concepts. Or at least that's what the
trailer would have you believe. In truth, this is actually part of a
gaslighting scheme devised by Will Smith's co-workers who are trying
to get him fired since his depressive state is ruining their
business. So they hire a group of actors to pretend to be the
personifations of Love, Time and Death, talk to Will Smith, record
them doing it, edit them out of the video, and use that as evidence
of him being crazy so that he'll get fired and they can take over the
company. I don't have enough middle fingers to properly convey how I
feel about this. Not only is this a horrible thing to do to someone
who is in grief, but it's one of the most stupidly convoluted schemes
I've ever heard of in a film. The fact that there were hundreds of
people working on this that thought this was okay just blows my mind. But I do have to
give it to whoever edited the trailer for at least trying to make it
seem palatable, even if it means he has to sell the movie on a lie.
1. Suicide Squad
Where do I even begin?
I'm probably one of the few people who didn't see Batman v
Superman: Dawn of Justice, mostly because I knew from square one
that was going to be a joyless, infuriating slog. But despite all of the
horrible mistakes that Warner Bros has been making with their DC
properties, from their inability to properly market a superhero that
isn't Batman to mistaking darkness and grittiness for realism to
taking time out of their movies to promote other movies to constantly
hiring Zack Snyder, I thought that maybe there was something
salvageable. And some of the mistakes they made here should work for
Suicide Squad, but somehow they even managed to fuck that up.
I kind of get what they were trying to go for here, but the execution
is all wrong. The editing is atrocious. The plot is completely
unstable. The characters are poorly written. The actors, bless their
souls, are trying their best to make the best of this material with,
to put it politely, varying results. The soundtrack consists of a
bunch of classic rock and pop songs used in the most obnoxious,
obvious ways imaginable. This movie had a pretty troubled production
with David Ayer given only six weeks to write the script, last minute
editing done by the people who did the trailers, and last minute
reshoots to give the movie more of a sense of humor, but even if the
production process was smoother and not rushed out in a hubristic
attempt to compete with Marvel, I highly doubt there was some sort of
Oscar level masterpiece hiding in this mess. I would tell Warner Bros
to just cut their losses and start over in about five years (or at
the very least, get rid of Zack Snyder), but it looks like we're in
this pain train for the long haul whether we want it or not.
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