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!
Big Daddy – Adam Sandler’s infantile shtick was funny in Happy Gilmore. It hasn’t been very funny since, but it’s never been less funny than in this colossally insipid movie. We think it’s high time Sandler’s daddy spanked him right on his stupid ass.
Black Mask – The Japanese title of this Jet Li martial-arts flick is “Hak Hap.” Does that mean “Haphazard Hack Job” in English? It should. Robbed of the balletic beauty of Li’s better films by lousy fight choreography and worse editing, this film was a black mark on the wushu master’s resume.
End of Days – Trading on Y2K hysteria, this Ahnuld-versus-Satan showdown was a diabolical disaster of Biblical proportions. Director Peter Hyams compensates for a lack of ideas by showing bare titty and lots of explosions, one of which happens courtesy of the Devil’s highly flammable piss. Too bad he didn’t splash some on the negative of this film.
Entrapment – The cinematic equivalent of a black velvet Elvis, this movie was dumb and tacky, and featured a star way past his prime. Sean Connery dodders his way through as an aging jewel thief whose attraction to Catherine Zeta-Jones, 39 years his junior, is just as creepy as it sounds. Anna Nicole Smith probably liked it, but we didn’t.
Life – Eddie Murphy used to be funny, and Martin Lawrence never has been. Put them together in a flick about two guys who grow old together in prison, and you have what amounts to your own life sentence in a theatre.
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace – No, it wasn’t one of the worst movies this year, but it did feature the worst character of the year, amphibious hands down. Whether or not you agreed that “synthespian” Jar Jar Binks was an offensive racial caricature, you couldn’t help hating him. Even if that is the path of the Dark Side.
Wild Wild West – One of the worst movies ever made, Barry Sonnenfeld’s cowboy catastrophe was a watery bowel movement of a film, the apotheosis of summer event-dreck. Starring Will Smith and his egregious ego, it left those few who sat through it gaping in awe at the spectacle of someone who has bought too much of his own hype.