If the summer of 2008 proved with the Dark Knight that people weren’t afraid to see a film that was, on top of being action packed, dark, disturbing and intelligent then the summer of 2009 didn’t really take notice. One film after another played like an empty, bloated, stupid special effects marathon that paid no notice to character, story, acting, anything. The worst offender being the Transformers sequel, proving that audiences’ needs have become so shallow and simple-minded that studios can just sloppily throw over $200 million at the screen and people will eat it up.
If 2009 had an abundance of bad movies (and it certainly did), few of them were inspired enough in their awfulness to warrant second thought. 2009 was the year Hollywood went on autopilot. Still, there was six culprits that managed to stink above all the rest. Here they are:
6. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian- This sequel to the slight but serviceable first film played like it's bigger, dumber brother. Putting story to the side, the film was instead a collection of episodes in which the hero played by Ben Stiller ran through the world’s biggest museum without a single security guard noticing, basically destroying the place while encountering exhibits that make current pop culture in-jokes, all of which fall terribly flat.
5. College- It’s been 31 years and people are still making desperate attempts to mimic Animal House. However, what every subsequent film has gotten totally wrong is that Animal House was based on a funny situation and was filled with funny characters played by funny people. College on the other hand is a collection of gross-outs that feel like they missed the mark by at least 10 years.
4. Fired Up- Like College, Fired Up is a shallow, juvenile, sexist supposed comedy about unlikable morons trying to get laid: this time by signing up for cheerleading camp instead of football training. Laughs do not ensue.
3. Unborn- Sometimes one gets the sense that filmmakers are simply making it up as they go along. That’s the only explanation for Unborn which has a plot so dense with nonsense that no meaning or explanation could ever be extracted from it. Random creatures appear and disappear without explanation and the nature of the evil force and what it wants is never explained, leaving the film feeling like a mash-up up of The Exorcist, The Amityville Horror and many others without the slightest clue what it is trying to be about.
2. Disaster Movie- Hack spoofesters Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer once again return with a film devoid of any sort of humour at all. Their problem is that they believe simply presenting impersonations of characters from movies will be funny. It is not, as the heart of a spoof is taking a genre and flipping it upside down and turning it inside out like Naked Gun and Airplane did. Disaster Movie is simply a clothesline of impressions of current popular films that are not accompanied by any joke. And when there is a joke, it is juvenile potty humor that borders on infancy. Please people: STOP SEEINGS THESE GUYS’ MOVIES.
1. Miss March- Miss March is the stupidest, vulgarist, shallowest, most juvenile, offensive, sexist, racist, unpleasant, unfunniest comedy in quite some while. That a movie like this can be made in 2009, the year of Adventureland and The Hangover, boggles the mind. Do people really still want to see movies like this: movies with poopy jokes and body part jokes? Even worse is that one of the stars, writers and directors Trevor Moore (a bargain basement Jim Carry imitator) plays Tucker, one of the most unlikable characters in all of movie history. When his friend falls into a coma his solution is to wake him up with a baseball bat, which works, eventually leading to a scene where a doctor tries the same thing with opposite results. This film and this actor are a travesty to the face of the American film.
Mike Lippert - I am 22 years old and am currently living in the small town of Walkerton Ontario. I Spent fours years at Wilfed Laurier University in ...
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