The Sordid Seven
(The Worst Movies of 2003)
Not since Battlefield Earth has one film been so loathed by so many. But to tell you the truth, Gigli isn’t even the worst film on this list! That dubious honour goes to The Cat in the Hat, a movie so awful it had us asking, “Mr. Brown can boo! Can you?”
The Sordid Seven
(The Worst Movies of 2002)
When it comes to bad movies, 2002 will be remembered as the Year of the Rehash. All seven of the creativity-deprived films on this list are either adaptations, remakes of older films, or sequels.
We also came very close to including another Eddie Murphy film (The Adventures of Pluto Nash) and another Adam Sandler film (the animated Eight Crazy Nights), but that would have meant ditching the rehash theme. Besides, Murphy and Sandler deserve their own separate worst-of lists.
We’d love to say it doesn’t get much worse than this, but next year would only prove us wrong.
The Sordid Seven
(The Worst Movies of 2001)
As much as we hate to dwell on films that didn’t succeed for whatever reason, it’s just too damn much fun to pick on them again at the end of the year. As usual, summer flicks (which now begin screening as early as May) were some of the most egregious offenders (and to make matters worse, at least two of our picks will almost certainly spawn miscreant sequels).
On the bright side, the events of Sept. 11th made a lot of people (briefly) examine their taste for idiotic popcorn flicks, and the sure-to-be-horrid Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Collateral Damage was delayed until 2002. On the not-so-bright side, the trailer for Sam Raimi’s sure-to-be-spectacular Spider-Man, which prominently featured a certain pair of towers, was hastily edited in a display of knee-jerk oversensitivity that affected many other imminent and existing films. Critics everywhere, used to having their chorus of boos ignored by studios and moviegoers alike, dared to hope the ripples from the world-shaking disaster might reach all the way to Hollywood, ushering in a new age of meaningful, artistic American cinema.
Fortunately, Hollywood’s period of introspection was over by mid-November, which means we’ll have lots of crappy movies to pick on next year, too.
The Sordid Seven
(The Worst Movies of 2000)
Although it didn’t signal the end of the world, the year 2000 was an exceptionally poor year for movie lovers. Coming after a year of such quality that pundits were predicting a revival of the 70’s auteur boom, this year’s sudden downturn bore a strange similarity to the fate of dot-com startups on the NASDAQ index. Faster than you could say “poor notices,” a wave of crappy movies washed over us like that towering breaker in The Perfect Storm. The most disheartening trend this year was the Pointless 70’s Remake—witness Shaft, Gone in 60 Seconds, Bedazzled, Charlie’s Angels, Get Carter, etc., etc.—a trend that proved last year’s pundits only half right. Also enjoying a resurgence was gross-out humour. The Farrelly brothers traded on the success of their 1998 smash There’s Something About Mary with Me, Myself & Irene, while the Wayans brothers scored a huge hit with Scary Movie, which featured a man getting spiked through the head with an erect penis. Come to think of it, maybe 2000 was the end of the world.
The Sordid Seven
(The Worst Movies of 1999)
In our Best of 1999, we said we didn’t like to dwell on crap. But here goes anyway. Though it may have been a banner year for good movies (and even great ones, like American Beauty and The Sixth Sense), there were enough clunkers, dogs, and miserable failures to make even the most dedicated pessimist think the new millennium might be a better one for the movies.
There was a noticeable trend this year: the bigger the star, the harder the fall. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Will Smith, and Adam Sandler all figure prominently on the list, and the litany of big names in the cast of Terence Malick’s The Thin Red Line just added up to a more spectacular train wreck (cinematography and ambitious direction are all that kept it off this list).
The films that follow are so bad, we’re confident that if you’ve made the mistake of seeing them, you’ll agree with our opinion. And if you haven’t seen them, consider yourself lucky—and consider this a warning!