Top 10 Most Disappointing Movies of 2008

So instead of pasting the same blog into this blog, why don't I just hotlink you to my Top 10 Favorite Films of 2008.

But for being such good boys and girls and reading this ill-advised, and generally abandoned blog (what was Keiko thinking? Nobody reads or updates this sucker) I'll give you a special gift!

Top 10 Most Disappointing Films of 2008

A number of factors go into being disappointed by a movie. Obviously you don't like it very much, but to be disappointing, a movie has to first elicit some kind of expectation, an interest in quality that will be utterly dashed by the level of sucktitude, or in most cases general mediocrity, that the film delivers.

So I'm going to structure this list in descending order of crappy disappointment, from the highs of "meh," to the mids of "huh?" to the depths of "WTF IS THIS SHIT???"

10) Man On Wire

This is a lovely documentary about an incredible historic event, but it is also the only movie this year that put me to sleep. Literally. I fell asleep during this movie for like 5-7 minutes. In the afternoon.

The film has the unfortunate side effect of squirming and stretching its run time while trying to appear suspenseful, but we already can tell the outcome of the documented event; namely a man walking a tight rope between the twin towers in 1974 New York City. Despite the colorful subjects and the unbelievable true story itself, Man On Wire feels like a special you DVR'd on Cable due to your distant Uncle's reccommendation. This film has been unneccesarily hailed as the best documentary of the year when it just isn't the case.

It's a good doc on par with something you'd watch on The Discovery Channel. No more, no less.



9) The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

What can I say? I just didn't care. It's a beautiful, lavish, exquisitely photographed motion picture with some of the best special effects I've ever seen.

But after a while, I just stopped caring. Maybe it was Brad Pitt's vacant expression. Or the film's snobby refusal to indulge me in the least bit of sentimental fashions (commence trite Forrest Gump bashing by insecure film nerds desperate for anti-establishment cred.)

This is a long, beautiful movie that absolutely did not hold me emotionally, and for that, I wound up walking out of the movie theater feeling just as empty and uninspired as any typical Hollywood blockbuster. It is not the masterpiece we were hoping for.

Oh well. It really did look pretty.



8) Wall-E

Go ahead and throw stones. I'll still die disappointed in Pixar's latest effort. Once again, what looks like a masterpiece doesn't quite live up to Pixar's heavenly standard of flawless quality.

Which isn't to say the film is bad. It's not bad. It's very good. In fact, for the first half it's nearly perfect, a near silent love story between isolated robots sharing a dying planet together for a chance at a magical connection.

Then the film jumps to a spaceship and everything drops a few notches.

The people. The people screw this movie up. Okay, everyone is so fat and lazy that they cannot read, write, walk, prepare food or even communicate on their own without robotic support.

Then out of nowhere, these flaccid, flabby, giant babies go MacGuyver against rogue sentry machines and decide to rebuild a post-apocalyptic planet?

No. No that makes no sense. By switching the focus from Wall-E's quest for companionship to a contrived redemption of a fat, lazy, hopeless human race feels like a cheat, precisely because it isn't earned. If the humans' return to accountability was to be believed, their initial incompetent existence should have been scaled back. You can't go from cartoony, exaggerrated satire to realistic ray of human achievement in thirty minutes. It didn't work and it damaged the already charming story of Wall-E and Eve.

Still a good movie. Just not the masterpiece the trailers and critics promised...



7) Doubt

The best acting on the face of the earth can't help a story that refuses to go anywhere. This movie is so lacking in story you find yourself wondering if you missed whatever brilliant scene full of detail and complexity would have pulled it all together.

It doesn't exist. Evil puritan accuses noble progressive of something. They argue. The end. Literally.

There's a great write up on why the translation from stage to screen fails here




6) The Reader

The Reader reminds me of those empty BBC telefilms about sour, angst-ridden ugly European men feeling sorry for themselves for decades.

Maybe I'm a heartless prick, but I simply did not care about some guy's inability to get over the first Nazi he ever slept with. I know, I know, Kate Winslet is an unforgettably sexy Nazi, but I'm calling a spade a spade. This movie bored me. I cared less and less as it went along, checking the time, hoping we had reached some kind of conclusion again and again, counting sheep by the number of times Ralph Fiennes or Kate Winslet made pained faces in silence.

Oh, and the atrociously overwrought score didn't help either.



5) Synechdoche, NY

I went in prepped for a frustrating, downer of a mind-fuck, and I still walked out disappointed.

Charlie Kauffman decides to spend two excruciating hours whacking us with a hammer to get us to understand that death and decay really sucks. And to prove it, he's constructed a film devoid of emotional complexity or variety, only misery and ineptitude. Phillip Seymour Hoffman spends the entire movie crying. Women throw themselves at him and he can't get it up. Bizarre dream logic interjections. And funerals. Lots of funerals.

At least Benjamin Button had the grace to deal with Death using a little humor, a little joy, a little bit of peaks to go with the valleys.

Kauffman's film loses the audience and winds up feeling like yet another uppity auteur trying far too hard to be different.

Blecch.




4) Slumdog Millionaire

I believed the hype. That was my first mistake.

I'm all for magical realism, but a film that takes place over an episode (or two) of (Indian) "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" for the majority of the film, and decides to fit as many contrivances into one story as possible, and feature a bland, naive protagonist being nothing of interest besides naive and innocent, well, it just doesn't feel right to me.

The first third is first rate, detailing Jamal's childhood in India with his big brother, but that's primarily because filmmaker Danny Boyle is using real Indian children who speak their native tongue. Once he switches actors and languages (subtitles too much for you?) the film loses it's touch, turning into a gruesome hodgepodge of realistic, cruel violence and corny, over the top sentimental schmaltz. Now, I like a sentimental film that tugs at the heart strings as much as the next cineaste, but this film violated a cardinal rule of the INTERESTING CHARACTER DOCTRINE:

Jamal is boring. He isn't smart, or crafty, or cool or charismatic. The hero basically gets the girl because he's lucky. Because shit happens and luckily, he remembers details about said shit that has occurred, thus becoming a champion at the stupidest game show ever made (that's harsh, I'm sure Hollywood Squares or anything ever aired on MTV sucked much worse.)

But it's true. He's another of these old timey, naive dreamer heroes who simply loves a beautiful girl while getting beaten up by nefarious villains.

The movie literally has the nerve to include this cringe-inducing bit of dialogue:

Jamal: "Run away with me."
Litka: "Run away with you? What will we live on?"
Jamal: "Love."

Aaaaaaaaaand vomit. I wanted to fall in love with this movie, I really did. I'm happy for audiences who are fooled by a violent movie with a happy ending. But I'm not. I'm frustrated and disappointed and I hope it doesn't win best picture, because it really doesn't deserve it.

Rent City Of God if you're looking for a slumdog masterpiece, kids...



3) Hellboy II

This is my fault for not going with my instincts and avoiding the movie altogether. A bright, shiny trailer that did absolutely nothing for me should have been enough. But then there were the glowing, salivating reviews, once again singing the same old song: "Del Toro the genius," "Del Toro's limitless imagination," "Del Toro's beautiful sense of design and detail!"

So I payed eleven bucks and proceeded to feel like an idiot for two hours.

Look, I get it, Ron Perlman is a good fit for the character. Unfortunately, the movie isn't. Bad editing. Hokey writing. Repetitive fight scenes. Selma Blair trying to act again (CRINGE.)

It's just a lousy, unimpressive movie. It's just as empty and meaningless as any Vin Diesel or Nicholas Cage action-blasphemy, but it gets a pass because critics like Guillermo Del Toro so much. I suddenly remember another slight sequel Del Toro made that got loads of internet press fellatio: Blade 2. Also filled to the brim with an absence of substance.

Nobody gives a shit about Hellboy. Iron Man, The Dark Knight, these are iconic heroes who hold our attention and imaginations with a firm, iconic grip.

Hellboy just doesn't translate to film. Mignola's books were creepy, macabre thrillers dripping with atmosphere. Del Toro's Hellboy is a neon-light effects show without any regard for pacing or subtlety. These scenes don't breathe, they dissolve into one another at rapid speed and high impact melodrama in order to get to the next fight scene, creature, or fight scene.

And I find myself not giving a shit. I should have just caught it on basic cable like everyone else will, because make no mistake, this big-budget flick disappeared, and we can be thankful that it is the last chapter in the live action Hellboy saga.

I hate myself.



2) Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull

Are you serious? You're joking, right? You waited 20 years to make this?

20 years for CGI gophers? 20 years for CGI Aliens? 20 years for Indiana Jones to ony use his whipe TWICE??? (once to help hoist up his fat friend who is only three feet away??)

20 years for boring, fifteen minute scenes of yawn-inducing exposition? For Karen Allen to be embarrassingly reintroduced as grinning third banana? For Shia to get to do more than Indy? For Indy to act stupid and not even attempt to outsmart the bad guys?

CGI ALIENS??!! SERIOUSLY??

And you didn't even give us a cool archaeological funhouse with booby traps and death-defying stunts to make Indy look cool.

Oh, and a stupid-ass, contrived wedding was a great way to end the series. Bravo.

Thank you for doing the impossible, George Lucas. I am now an internet troll shouting that you've raped my childhood.



1) American Teen
I'm not even going to bother to restate the fabricated, manipulative bullshit attempt at a "documentary" that is American Teen. I can only link you to my original, boiling mad reaction and to a concurring (one of many!)
review by the esteemed Alexandra DuPont.

This film is the plague, sent down by God as punishment for all those who dare watch faux-reality series and in turn become more vacant and false themselves.

The Breakfast Club had jocks, geeks, freaks and beauty queens. Today's generation are just terrible actors searching desperately for a part...