January 21, 2012 by Vinnie Leduc
- Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
- Creature
- Dylan Dog: Dead of Night
- Footloose
- Jack and Jill
- Mars Needs Moms
- The Roommate
- Shark Night 3D
- The Sitter
- The Smurfs
- The Three Musketeers
- The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1
- Zookeeper
2011 was another good example of Hollywood’s recent trend of upping the quantity of films at the expense of quality. That’s also indicated here by our set of unlucky 13 nominees for the dubious title of Worst Movie of 2011 and the sizable list of dishonorable mentions.
You’ve got your annual iterations of crappy family films of course, like box office mega-bomb and studio-killer Mars Needs Moms. Little blue guys made plenty of green as they tricked nostalgic parents into taking their kids to see The Smurfs. None of us saw Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, but it doesn’t look any better than the two previous childhood rapers.
Unsurprisingly, Happy Madison was responsible for a couple of disasters. While Jack and Jill had a great self-parodying supporting performance from Al Pacino and a handful of other decent self-referential jokes and cameos, none of that could save what would’ve been better off as an SNL skit. Zookeeper was Exhibit B (after Paul Blart: Mall Cop) in the case for Adam Sandler to stop giving Kevin James starring roles in movies.
Jonah Hill couldn’t carry The Sitter in his first headlining role either, and after The Three Musketeers let’s hope Paul W.S. Anderson’s return to sci-fi/action/horror is permanent, though that doesn’t guarantee anything good. The horror/thriller genre suffered some horrible movies as well, like Dylan Dog: Dead of Night (say goodbye to your movie career, Brandon Routh), The Roommate (you too, Leighton Meester and Minka Kelly), and Shark Night 3D (same goes with everybody here, including the sharks).
But none of those were as dreadful as our “winner”, Creature. If not for this overwhelmingly bad monster movie, our pick for the worst would’ve gone to either of the only films I truly hated all year, MTV’s dance remake abortion Footloose (rage-dancing? LOL WTF?) and vampire/werewolf-tarnisher The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1. Haven’t heard of Creature? Goes to show you how much little faith they had in marketing the POS, even though it opened in over 1,500 theaters. Box Office Mojo reported that it had the 5th lowest opening ever for a nationwide release and the 2nd worst in terms of per-location average. With only an average of six people per showing, Creature had no business being a direct-to-DVD bargain bin dweller or as campy filler on the small screen, much less the silver screen. Like its advertising efforts, Creature never felt like anybody was trying or even cared. “Winner”: Creature
Dishonorable Mentions: Abduction, Arthur, Drive Angry, A Good Old Fashioned Orgy, Johnny English Reborn, I Don’t Know How She Does It, Monte Carlo, No Strings Attached, Trespass, Your Highness
