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.
Evolution – Ivan Reitman’s attempt to recapture his Ghostbusters glory went bust. Watching David Duchovny and Orlando Jones struggle to be funny as alien-busters was about as enjoyable as being slimed by a gigantic extraterrestrial asshole.
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – In the tradition of such cinematic triumphs as Super Mario Bros. and Street Fighter, Simon West’s Tomb Raider was based on a mega-selling videogame. But instead of providing audiences with hours of entertaining action, it left them with an Indiana Jones. West and star Angelina Jolie should have read the box for the Tomb Raider computer game. It says, “Sometimes, a killer body just isn’t enough.”
Monkeybone – This catastrophic failure from Henry Selick was a Freudian flop, a bargain-bin Beetlejuice trapped in limbo somewhere between dark comedy and stultifying boredom. It did, however, confirm our long-held theory that Brendan Fraser has the lousiest agent in Hollywood, and made us wonder when Whoopi Goldberg was last funny.
The Mummy Returns – Stephen Sommers’s follow-up to his surprisingly successful 1999 remake of The Mummy was so Rock-bottom, Boris Karloff is still doing pirouettes in his sarcophagus. It had all the entertainment value of watching a slack-jawed skateboarder play a videogame for two hours.
Planet of the Apes – The year’s biggest disappointment was Tim Burton’s “re-imagining” of the 1968 sci-fi classic. Despite Rick Baker’s expressive ape makeup and Tim Roth’s snarly chimp villain, the movie suffered from a script seemingly hammered out by monkeys on typewriters, and ended up being a damn dirty shame.
Rat Race – This would-be zany stinker from Jerry Zucker, a large-cast chase caper like 1963′s It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, was a bad bad bad bad movie. It also extended Whoopi Goldberg’s unfunny streak.
Swordfish – The year’s most gratuitous stunt wasn’t the bus-airlift chase scene in Dominic Sena’s pyro masturbation fantasy of a movie; it wasn’t even Hugh Jackman trying to hack a government server while getting a blowjob. Nope, the year’s most gratuitous stunt was the two seconds of Halle Berry’s tits that way too many young males paid way too much money to see.