28 December 2000

THE RUNNERS UP (in alphabetical order)

BATTLEFIELD EARTH
A spectacular disaster that managed to fail over and over and over again. Yet it misses The Bottom Ten because it is so bad that it is, in fact, almost comical.  In writing this list, I think to myself, "What would I do if it came on TV tonight while I was channel surfing?"  The answer here was that I would watch the carnage.  It will never be an Ed Wood film, but its stupidity warms the cockles of a cynical heart.  That's got to be worth
something.

DANCER IN THE DARK
Just because it made my "Movies I Didn't Get" list doesn't mean that it can't be one of the worst movies of the year as well.  This one note dirge wastes the talent of a lot of excellent actors and robs the grave of a real talent, Dennis Potter, with the result of making a lot of intelligent people believe that they saw something original.  What they saw was bad singing, bad dancing, intentionally poor camera work and more pretense than a poetry reading at a college coffee house.  The film starts strong… not with the outrageously self-aggrandizing orchestral prelude, but with the opening seeming to be a movie rehearsal, lasting a few minutes before the audience realizes that this is the movie itself.  The movie also ends strong, as the Bjork character finally breaks the fourth wall of her mind, singing her way to the gallows in a powerful turn… one for which we waited the entire length of the movie.  But the middle, like the middle of American Film in 2000, was soft and shallow and not worth the trip.  Remember, some people loved… LOVED… Mission: Impossible 2.  Bjork's character in Dancer is going blind. All you need to love this film is a little myopia.

DINOSAUR
They talk!!!  That's all you really need to know to know how bad Dinosaur was.  Yes, they made some technological breakthroughs in CG… in Mighty Joe Young and The Perfect Storm.  When Dinosaur started, it was the most ambitious CG movie ever.  By the time it was in the market, it was just another dinosaur movie, outshone by the TV show about dinos on The Discovery Channel.  And they talked.  If you are going to have talking dinosaurs, you can't try to make a realistic movie.  Once they are talking, they might as well sing and dance, because reality is in the toilet.  But instead, they just talked slowly.  And walked slowly and bored us to tears.  The best line about this film came from Paul Verhoeven, who was the progenitor of the project, two regimes back at Disney.  "In this movie, a meteor hits earth and they go to another place to live.  In MY movie, the meteor hits… And everything DIES!"  We should have been so lucky.

DUETS
They sing!  Just kidding.  The singing in this film was not the problem, though I still do not believe that the track that they used for Andre Braugher was actually sung by Andre Braugher.  The problem with this film can be found in the synopsis.  "Four sets of people, looking to improve their lives and themselves, seek life's meaning in a national karaoke contest."  That's my version of the synopsis.  Sucks, huh?  But it gets worse, as the way the stories interconnect is pulled off with all the crispness of Hugh Hefner without his  Viagra.   Perhaps father/daughter team Huey Lewis and Gwyneth Paltrow can double date with brother/sister team Chris O'Donnell and Robin Tunney from Vertical Limit and we can have an unfunny preview of the Farrelly Bros.'s incest comedy Say It Isn't So. Creepy.  And quick, someone shoot the one person in the movie who really seems to have some honor!  (BLAM!)  Thanks.  That always leaves them whistling on their way out the door.

GUN SHY
I have Jeff Wells to thank for getting me to see this one.  Thanks, Jeff. Did you find the lump of coal in your Xmas stocking?   I've just been trying to forget this mess so I could go back to enjoying the work of its talented cast in the many years of work they will be giving us. Meanwhile, Jeff wants Miss Congeniality to be burnt on a bonfire and embraces this thing.

HAMLET
I had a great idea.  Set Hamlet in modern-day New York.  Turn the kingdom into a media empire.  Let Hamlet rage against the hypocrisies of modern life instead of just the internal hypocrisies of his family.  Work with really interesting young actors, like Ethan Hawke, Julia Styles, Jeffrey Wright and Steve Zahn.  Add great veterans like Diane Venora, Sam Sheppard and Bill Murray.  Tremendous!  So why is this film a big, blurry mess that seems to miss every target at which it shoots?  Well, director Michael Almereyda seems to be a better salesman than a filmmaker.  He has this great idea for Hamlet to give the "To be or not to be" speech in a Blockbuster video store. Very clever.  But as Hawke rambles through the video store, there is no rhyme or reason to the shots or the imagery.  Great ideas never formed, never achieved.

LITTLE NICKY
In yet another example of incest turning ugly, this inbred Adam Sandler comedy was missing that 15 percent of edge that it needed to rise above the sophomoric jokes that the boys so dearly love.  Henry Winkler was funny as a schlub the first time.   Kathy Bates was a brilliant choice to turn into a braying jackass of a comedy character.  I still say, "You can do it."  But who needs to see something they haven't seen before over (Big Daddy) and over (Little Nicky) again.  CG will not save Sandler's soul.  He needs to make a movie or two with some other filmmakers and to then return to the friends who helped make him a star.

LOST SOULS
It sat in the can for a long time and I know why.  There was a big, ugly dent on the side and New Line knew that there was a good chance that the film had a case on botulism.  And they were right.  And it's a damned shame, because this was the kind of role that Winona Ryder really needs to play… not a victim or a waif, but a tough, somewhat sexy, woman with something to do.  Too bad the movie was overshot and underwritten.

MISSION TO MARS
Much ado about absolutely nothing.  This movie, from a great filmmaker, has more set-ups that never pay off – not pay off poorly, but NEVER pay off – than any movie this year.  Despite some very pretty set pieces, there is no point to this mission.

REINDEER GAMES
Many critics bent over backwards to embrace an action film from John Frankenheimer.  They weren't doing J.F. any favor.  This was a bad, bad movie.  And even though it had some good moments with good actors, the willingness to say, "he's working in the genre" when they want to like a film always disappears when the decision is made to kill it.  (see: What Lies Beneath)  Nonetheless, the much talked about, edited down  sex scene between Charlize Theron and Ben Affleck will likely make for brisk DVD sales if Miramax decides to include the sequence.

THE REPLACEMENTS
Junk is junk is junk.  This was a good idea, based on a true story, turned into a brassy, meaningless, unbelievable paycheck exercise, directed with all the skill of your mailman by Howard Deutsch.

THE SKULLS
Maybe Rob Cohen and Howard Deutsch should start a club for directors who keep working despite a clear lack of skill behind the camera.  These two Hollywood friendlies make schmoozehound Brett Ratner look like Billy Wilder. But at least Universal didn't have to build any special sets for The Skulls, which looked like a generic dungeon straight out of the studio tour.

SOUTH OF HEAVEN, WEST OF HELL
This was not a major release, but it did close Slamdance last year and I took it off the Bottom Ten so that the hit wouldn't be quite as hard.  But this film deserves a spot in the pantheon of terrible films.  Dwight Yoakum may be a great guy and his friends certainly came out to support him on his project.  But you won't see a worse film anytime soon.

PAGE THREE:  The Bottom Ten