Picture yourself walking into a movie theater expecting to be reasonably entertained, now picture yourself walking out of the theater with a look of disgust on your face. These are the movies of 2012 that had that effect on people.
A Thousand Words starring a degrading Eddie Murphy is a perfect example of a movie gone wrong. In this film, a mystical tree gives Eddie Murphy a limit of only a thousand words to say or the tree will die, and if the tree dies he will die. In an age of phenomenal comedies such as The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and The Other Guys, there is simply no place for second rate actors in a second rate movie. Almost all comedies these days will not succeed unless they have an actor that is popular at the time, or a well written plot. This movie has neither. This coupled with bad acting and over zealous reactions makes a formula for a grade D movie. The character of Eddie Murphy is supposed to be a cool, calm, and collected book publisher, but while he shows this at the beginning of the movie, he constantly contradicts himself with his overreactions. It was supposed to be a comedy but turned out to be the opposite of that.
The reboot of the 1960’s show of the same name, Dark Shadows, claims a spot as one of the worst movies Tim Burton has directed. While this film has a great cast, (Johnny Depp, Chloe Grace Moretz, Eva Green, Helena Bonham Carter) it still ends up failing. Tim Burton, director of Alice in Wonderland, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, delivers great visuals, but there is a lack of character and actor recognition. The movie wastes no time putting Johnny Depp in the spotlight, even though he put up a half hearted performance the entire movie, but fails to address its other characters. It literally felt like Green and Depp were the only characters that mattered in the movie. Chloe Grace Moretz, and Helena Bonham Carter, both great actors, did not get the screentime they deserved. Instead they got character rolls that didn’t fit their acting style and ended up making their appearance in the movie look like a thrown-in addition. In the end, this movie is not horribly bad, but fails to make full use of its cast. Cheesy plot points and some unneeded steamy scenes make the movie look like it ran out of material. It delivers great sets with good effects, but still leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth.
John Carter had a lot of potential for a good film, but ended up failing in not only its ad campaign but also it production. The poor advertising is demonstrated by trailers that delivered no information about the cast or the plot. Bryan Cranston, the actor who plays Walter White in the popular television series Breaking Bad, makes a brief appearance in this movie, which is funny because fans would have seen it if it would have shown just one snippet of him in the movie’s trailers. To top this off, Andrew Stanton, the director, had only directed movies such as Finding Nemo, and Wall-E, so why is he directing a live-action film? Stanton clearly did not know how to make action scenes look good because every time there is one, there is just a blur of movement that lasts a second and then a quick transition to the next clip. This goes on for at least the first twenty minutes of the movie. The CGI is decent, and the voice actors do a great job. But while it delivers these positives, it only highlights the negatives. For instance, Tyler Kitsch, the actor who plays John Carter, is terrible in this film. He literally sounds and acts like a mindless brute the entire length of the movie. Even though he was the main character, I still found myself liking the dog alien that follows Carter around more than Carter himself, which says a lot. In the end, I wanted to like this movie, but it was just delivered in the wrong way. Bad actors and poor plot points left the movie with a sour ending and a feeling that it could have been done better.
That’s My Boy, starring Andy Samberg and Adam Sandler, delivers one of the worst cinema experiences of all time. This movie makes Cool Runnings look like a masterpiece. First of all Happy Madison, Sandler’s production company, produced the film. Which is already saying a lot because of how they havent been known to pick the best films to produce. Movies such as Joe Dirt and Click, have found themselves in their roster as well as That’s My Boy. The acting in this movie is atrocious, even for Adam Sandler. Leighton Meester, who plays Samberg’s wife, is probably one of the worst actresses allowed to be on the big screen, as her facial expressions are terrible, her character is not believable. The plot is so messed up that it is hardly relevant to talk about it unless you’re willing to be utterly shocked. For instance, the main character, Donny Berger, played by Sandler himself, is a high school father who became a deadbeat, after wasting all his money after becoming famous for getting a woman pregnant. I kid you not, this is the premise for the movie. The script is filled with inappropriate jokes which end up falling short of a high school freshman’s standards. The movie is just bad. It is put together terribly and just had a couple of known actors to attract audiences. This is one, if not the, worst movies in the history of film.
