 |
|
|
|
|
MOVIES FRONT | MOVIE REVIEWS | INTERVIEWS | COMING SOON | BOX OFFICE PREDICTIONS & REPORT | NEWS | LINKS |
 |
|
Every once in a while you’re bound to find a stray weed in a field of blossoming daisies. Well, such is the case for a prolonged movie season where the trances of stinkeroo cinema can convincingly upset what ambitiously was meant to be a flawless movie-going experience. But as we all know that things in all walks of life aren’t perfect so this is a reality that we have to live with and enduring insufferable movies is certainly one of them. So how about we all sit back and reluctantly revisit the crappy creativity that tried to pass itself off as box office worthiness, okay? So let’s recall the mawkish moviemaking moments that weren’t so memorable, shall we? In alphabetical order, here’s what Frank perceives as the top ten worst films of 2003. And please try to wash the disagreeable aftertaste out of your mouth afterwards, alright? Boat Trip [ click for review ] Boat Trip was a forgettable and flaccid farce worthy of making a starfish seasick. Cuba Gooding, Jr. apparently was “shown the money” to appear in a shiftless romance romp where two opportunistic buddies (Gooding and current SNL regular Horatio Sanz) mistakenly and unexpectedly cruise aboard a ship that caters to homosexual males. And thus a wave of predictable high sea high jinks abound with the run-of-the-mill tiresome gay jokes and other feeble slapstick happenings that continuously go on and on in monotonous fashion. This lethargic “Love Boat rip-off for the prissy pants sect” was ghastly in its unfunny skin and only reminded us how much the likes of so-called Oscar winner Gooding, Jr. could down spiral in terms of his fleeting acting career. Boat Trip does give off this sinking feeling and it didn’t take a massive iceberg to do the job either. Cold Creek Manor [ click for review ] The big name casting of screen siren Sharon Stone or the durably underrated Dennis Quaid couldn’t keep Leaving Las Vegas director Mike Figgis from coughing up a laughable, tainted terror tale in the haunted house mishap macabre Cold Creek Manor. Generically conceived and about as scary as a pouncing ride on your Aunt Gertrude’s beefy lap, Figgis clumsily provides some empty-minded chills for a psychological scarefest that wouldn’t raise the hair of a petrified Chia Pet. The edginess behind Figgis’s boofest thriller is painfully formulaic and uninvolved. The actors are going through the motions in a fright fable that’s sketchy and Richard Jeffries’ spotty script does no favors to heighten the hair-raising hokum to an acceptable means necessary to give life to this numbing narrative. Cold Creek Manor is not only a poor man’s version of the classic chilly caper Cape Fear, it’s just plain poor…period! Darkness Falls [ click for review ] Director Jonathan Liebesman misguided and cheesy horror flick Darkness Falls ridiculously brings the notion of careless creepiness to its agonizing knees. Vapid and incompetently executed, Darkness Falls is an anemic and poorly constructed (albeit excitable) take on screenwriter/filmmaker Joseph Harris’s short film on The Tooth Fairy. Because the lapses in plausibility are too blatant to ignore and the cockeyed craziness renders Liebesman’s narrative utterly fraudulent, Darkness Falls missed a truckload of opportunities to instill some genuine bone-crushing mayhem into a flick that could have put a decent spin on the ghoulish genre. Instead, this silly-minded spookfest about an old hag predator terrorizing a barren community at nighttime during a power outage never seems to gain any momentum given the perfect premise where one would expect the bloody turnout to be inspired. This supernatural stinker wants the audience to jump in giddy fear but fails to give them a sound reason to do so with its dopey dimensions of despair. The evil-minded Fairy wanted to pull some serious teeth in Liebesman’s dull shocker but ironically almost everything that appears in his harried and hair-brained fable is unquestionably toothless. Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd [ click for review ] Was New Line Cinema THAT desperate to capitalize on the decade-old Farrelly Brothers’ phenomenal nutty hit Dumb and Dumber by trying to stroke some of the same box office flames for millennium-based misfits to appreciate? Apparently so since they was eager to present an updated prequel concerning the beginning bond of this doofus-minded duo. Director Troy Miller was out of major step with trying to elaborate on the past madcap mania that made screen scoundrels Harry and Lloyd the lovable losers the first time around in the early 90s. So let’s quickly examine the reasons why Dumb and Dumberer wasn’t a smart idea to bring back to the forefront, shall we? For starters, the fact that original D and D players Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels weren’t available to lend some of that moronic magic that made the original flick gel so effortlessly. Secondly, the Farrelly flavor to the zany exploits was lacking. Thirdly, this cobbled together material is woefully lacking any comical bite that could be considered clever or wickedly wacky. The consensus is that Dumb and Dumberer should have been left as a kooky concept that never should have materialized into a script. Lightening certainly didn’t strike twice for this ill-advised and wasteful sequel, huh? From Justin to Kelly [ click for review ] No doubt that Fox-TV’s American Idol had become the megahit event that took the country by storm, particularly for the millennium youth-oriented audience looking to engage in their own conglomeration of American Bandstand/Shindig/Solid Gold/Star Search. Anyway, American Idol was such a bona fide hit that there was no stopping this successful gravy train of ratings and riches. But unfortunately even the successful handlers perched on top of the heap can go to the well once too often in an attempt to be greedy and remain in the consciousness of fans’ psyche. Enter From Justin to Kelly, the terribly lame and saccharine-coated beach party flick meant to prolong the appetite of the AI television franchise. Texan tart Kelly Clarkson (winner of the first ratings-rich American Idol program) and her runner-up curly-haired contender and heartthrob Justin Guardini was hastily thrown into a transparent and cloying romantic vehicle to stimulate the AI enthusiasts at the box office. However, the bland bouncy pop tunes and lackluster dance moves, the schmaltzy situational plotlines and the concocted Clarkson-Guardini lovey-dovey connection amounted to nothing but perpetual pap. From Justin and Kelly wasn’t about trying to serve up a decent family-friendly entertainment for AI fanatics as much as it was for ensuring that the AI fascination manufacture itself into the medium of big bucks on the big screen. In this case both Kelly and Justin (and their hapless handlers for that matter) couldn’t carry off this tuneless venture. Where were Simon Cowell’s hearty barbs when you needed it? Gigli [ click for review ] I know…it’s almost an automatic impulse to brow beat the Bennifer factor that was the tremendously disastrous Gigli. But by the same token, it’s both fun and truly warranted. Surprisingly, filmmaker Martin Brest (Scent of a Woman) contributes to one of the most putrid and painfully detached romantic crime capers in memory. Celebrated superstar couple Ben Affleck and his luscious Latin companion singer-actress Jennifer Lopez co-starred in a film that will certainly be synonymous with shock cinema—but not of the Vincent Price variety. More or less, the shock is derived from how bad a contemporary flick could be in terms of acting, direction, scripting, storytelling…well, you get the point. Affleck and J-Lo team up as mob enforcers instructed to kidnap the mentally-challenged sibling of a tenacious federal prosecutor at the request of their felonious superior. Affleck’s Larry Gigli is not the brightest bulb in the lamp but he nevertheless tries to charm the panties off of J-Lo’s hot-looking Ricki, a confirmed lesbian that may have the questionable need to switch sides intimately with her putzy partner-in-crime. Whether it’s the dumb and demeaning dialogue (one will wince over Lopez’s dubious turkey talk concerning gobble-gobble via a smirking sexual reference) or the dim-witted execution of Brest’s scattershot screenplay, Gigli is one futile flick that should be shown to tortured prisoners on Death Row. Wonder whether or not the future Bennifer children will enjoy checking out their parents’ nauseating exploits on DVD in the future? Gods and Generals [ click for review ] Ronald F. Maxwell’s uneven and elaborate follow-up to the marathon-running 1993 predecessor Gettsburg is an overwrought and over-indulgent piece of cinema to overcome. Gods and Generals is based loosely from Michael Shaara’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Killer Angels. This aimless historical epic is nothing but a long-winded and lumbering account of Maxwell’s gun-powdering gaze into the pageant-style strife of the Civil War where Union and Confederate soldiers spilled their glorious guts in the name of honor and a divided country. Sadly, Gods and Generals fail to possess the intriguing psychological excitement or emotional punch that was so evident in the first installment. This tedious four-hour costume drama is dragged out amid the confusing battle sequences and other turbulent-based tidbits but nothing really registers that would captivate the casual moviegoer being subjected to this overextended, drowsy drama. Maybe some history buffs and Civil War re-enactors will find Gods and Generals palatable. But for the rest of us, we'll certainly be reaching for our surrendering white flags! Marci X [ click for review ] Richard Benjamin directing a woeful racial romantic hip hop musical/politically incorrect farce? Now we’ve seen everything. What next…John Boy Walton becoming a successful porn website mogul? In the staid and inconsequential Marci X, Benjamin is seriously out of touch. He awkwardly tries to mine laughs out of an outdated and uninteresting party-hearty piffle about a spoiled NY Jewish socialite princess (Lisa Kudrow) trying to save her sick father’s prosperous recording label business. Marci has to smooth over the volatile reputation of the label’s premiere star maker in controversial rap star Dr. S (Damon Wayans) so that the political conservative agenda can ease up on her rich daddy in the judgmental media. For starters, the premise in Marci X feels so trivial and lame in the world where mainstream hardcore rap has progressed and been accepted with such antagonistic personalities like the immensely popular Eminem and his mentor Dr. Dre. The mindless point concerning Benjamin’s feeble fable of gangsta rap versus the concerns of stiff-minded Capitol Hill wouldn’t make a crusading Tipper Gore blink with any care in the world. The whole set up is silly; both Kudrow and Wayans are way too old to be playing such characters in a rap romp reserved for people almost half their age. Secondly, this flick feels routinely ancient and dismissive for those who care to revisit retro-mawkish material that may recall the decade-old flack where singer Luther Campbell and his 2 Live Crew act caused a sensation with lewd lyrics that had the uptight older public opinion in an uproar. Marxi X is about as caustic and clueless as Bambi accidentally smoking weed in the woods. My Boss’s Daughter [ click for review ] David Zucker, the one-time clever master of spoofy cinema that generated the classics Airplane! and Naked Gun, chugs out this faceless sexual romp in the zany but idiotic comedy My Boss’s Daughter. Media boytoy sensation Ashton Kutcher plays an up-and-coming publishing company staffer that longs to please his quirky yet nonsensical boss (Terrance Stamp) for career-related opportunistic reasons. More importantly, getting close to his superior means becoming cozy with his sexy curvy siren daughter Lisa (Tara Reid), the object of his lust (and our disinterest). Kutcher, as a disguised favor to his boss, elects to housesit his employer’s place while hoping to parallel park with the giggly Lisa in the process. And of course one crazy happening leads to another as comic chaos ensues with all sorts of nutty visitors and their foolishness causing havoc to the boss’s home not to mention interrupting Kutcher’s plans to play some footsies with the desirable Reid’s alter ego Lisa. All in all, this cockeyed stew that Zucker stirs up is predictably tepid and tiresome especially in a time where over-the-top and shamelessly raw and suggestive fare like the America Pie movie series rules. Hence, American Pie and its raunchy copycats make the loony and lukewarm My Boss’s Daughter look like a burp on the scale of teen-driven sex comedies. We should have made sure that this “Boss” was fired right on the spot. The Real Cancun [ click for review ] Producers Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray may be able to transfer their magical methods onto the small screen with favorable adolescent fare such as The Real World and Road Rules for the MTV mindset to appreciate but they fail considerably in terms of the big screen. The tandem tried to use the same luring titillation tactics of parlaying their reality TV outrageousness on film in the aimlessly provocative peep show The Real Cancun. All the drunken exploits and recorded despair in Cancun couldn’t capture the inexplicable spirit or generated sensation that folks can check out for free in The Real World on cable TV right in the intimacy of their own home. The concept for trying to bring the Reality TV craze to movie theaters must have been intriguing and exciting in concept. But you wouldn’t really know it from director Rick de Oliveira’s vacuous venture as he tracks the goings-on of 16 college-aged young people going through the angst-ridden motions while chilling out on the sunny beaches and clubbing during Spring Break. By just letting the cameras roll and hoping on catching something worthwhile in the anxious moments of these diverse and divisive individuals, de Oliveira doesn’t necessarily establish anything revealing or stimulating here that hasn’t already been conquered in the television territory conjured up by Bunim and Murray’s creative juices. The Real Cancun isn’t as flashy or insightful as one would have hoped. In fact, the drama is more compelling and spontaneous in a meager episode of Road Rules than anything witnessed in the belaboring 97 minutes of The Real Cancun’s running time. Unimaginative and rudimentary at best, this fleshy showcase is drunk in its own self-indulgent pointlessness. HONORABLE MENTION: The In-Laws [ click for review ] The simplistic notion of having riotous funnyman Albert Brooks and Oscar-winning actor/producer Michael Douglas updating the classic pairing of the hilarious 1979 Alan Arkin-Peter Falk vehicle is nothing short of blasphemy. Twenty-four years ago, the rollicking antics behind The In-Laws were subtly kooky and inspired in all its nuttiness. But twenty-four years later, the millennium version of this lauded 70s laugher only proved how much we took for granted the genuinely funny veneer of the under-appreciated original. Director Andrew Flamming (“Dick”) helms a madcap remake that is more showy and has better toys to play with in terms of the exaggerated foreplay that takes place with Brooks and Douglas in tow. However, the give-and-take shenanigans in this convoluted caper feels so forced and unbalanced as if the handlers involved are winging it in a random prayer to be as outlandishly smirking as they can. The In-Laws (2003) violates that golden age rule: never try to retool the package of a beloved original that was preciously conceived to begin with. The pacing and timing of the Brooks/Douglas forgettable dud is about as accurate as a smashed wristwatch. Serpentine, Shelley, Serpentine! Click here to comment on this list or post your own top list. Frank Ochieng © TheWorldJournal.com |
|
|
MOVIES FRONT | MOVIE REVIEWS | INTERVIEWS | COMING SOON | BOX OFFICE PREDICTIONS & REPORT | NEWS | LINKS |
|
|
|
|
Sponsored Links |
| Web Hosting Forum - Web hosting, marketing and webmaster related issues. Find the best hosting for your website! |
| Top
Box Office Movies © TheWorldJournal.com, All rights reserved. Student News Network For the best advertising rates at TheWorldJournal.com (120x600 - new banner format by the Interactive Advertising Bureau), click here. Back to top |
e-mail: info@theworldjournal.com sales: sales@theworldjournal.com |
||