I like the Razzies, even more than I like the Oscars.  The Golden Raspberry awards don’t have a season, you see.  So while you need to scramble to the theatres to watch Milk, Benjamin Button, The Wrestler and so many others before the Oscars come and go, there is a much better chance that I will have seen several, if not all, of the worst movies of the year when the nominations are announced.  So here are my thoughts, the nominations having been announced yesterday.

Worst Picture:

Disaster Movie / Meet the Spartans:  They get crammed together because for all intents and purposes, they are the same movie.  I avoided both of these, having learned my lesson very quickly from Epic Movie and Date Movie.  As such I have no rating.  But I have no doubt that they are both giant turds.

The Happening (2/10):  An absolutely abysmal movie from one of the people who must be considered one of the worst directors working today.  Mark Wahlberg is terrible, and wind blowing through barley is not scary.  This movie is awful.

The Hottie And the Nottie (0/10):  I reviewed this one in conjuction with Jessica Simpson’s Blonde Ambition, because I couldn’t stand to devote an entire review to either piece of crap.  Of the two, this one was worse.  And that is really saying something.

In The Name of the King:  A Dungeon Siege Tale (2/10):  Jason Statham made fifty-eight movies this year.  Three were great, fifty-five were absolutely dreadful.  This was the worst of the bunch.  Uwe Boll continues to prove that he is deserving of his “Worst Director Alive” title.  This movie cost $60 million, and made $5 million at the box office.  Twelve of those dollars, sadly, were mine.

The Love Guru (2/10):  Not quite as awful as the others on the list…but it’s pretty bad.  In fact, it is downright abysmal. 

Who Should Win:  Really, this category comes down to “what do you consider to be a movie”.  If you consider The Hottie And The Nottie to actually be a movie, then that’s your winner.  If you consider it to be a half-assed attempt at nothing, then you go for the movie that was actually trying to be a movie, and that is In The Name Of The King.

What was left out:  Postal (1/10).

Worst Actor nominees:

Larry The Cable Guy:  Witless Protection:  Haven’t seen it.  Thank God.

Eddie Murphy:  Meet Dave:  Haven’t seen it.  Thank God.

Mike Myers:  The Love Guru:  Yes, yes yes.  Just putting on an accent doesn’t make you funny.  This was one of the worst, most irritating acting performances I have ever seen from someone who is supposed to be good.

Al Pacino:  88 Minutes/Righteous Kill:  Yes, for 88 Minutes more so than for Righteous Kill.  In Righteous Kill, he was phoning it in, sure.  But in 88 Minutes, he gave one of the worst acting performances I have ever seen from someone who is supposed to be great.

Mark Wahlberg:  The Happening and Max Payne:  I haven’t seen Max Payne.  But Wahlberg is absolutely dreadful in The Happening, one of the worst performances in one of the worst movies of the year.

Who should win:  Few characters and actors in any movie in the last few years have approached the irritation factor that Mike Myers achieves in The Love Guru.

Who was missed:  Ray Liotta in In The Name of the King:  A Dungeon Siege Tale

Worst actress nominees:

Jessica Alba:  The Eye and The Love Guru:  Certainly deserving for The Love Guru, although she isn’t in it enough to be specifically irritating.  And the rest of the cast is bad enough that her performance doesn’t specifically stand out as terrible.  I haven’t see The Eye.

The entire cast of The Women:  Annette Bening, who is normally great, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett-Smith, and Meg Ryan had me longing for the cast of Sex And The City.  And that, in itself, is quite a sad accomplishment.

Cameron Diaz:  What Happens in Vegas:  Haven’t seen it.  But I believe it.

Paris Hilton:  The Hottie and the Nottie:  A gimme.  Slam dunk.  Imagine she hadn’t got a nomination?

Kate Hudson:  Fool’s Gold / My Best Friend’s Girl:  Haven’t seen either.  Thankfully.

Who should win:  Paris Hilton wasn’t hired as an “actress”, nor is she supposed to be one.  Therefore she is disqualified, as far as I’m concerned.  However, the cast of The Women are all supposed to be actresses.  And they come off as cackling, ludicrous caricatures of First Wives Club knock-off imitators.  Garbage.

Who was left out:  Sigourney Weaver in Vantage Point.

Worst Supporting actor nominees: 

Uwe Boll (as himself) in Postal:  This one shouldn’t count, because at the very least he’s making fun of himself.  He knows he’s awful, and he is somhow able to revel in it.  I actually give him props for this god-awful performance.

Pierce Brosnan:  Mamma Mia!:  Haven’t seen it.  But I believe it.

Ben Kingsley:  The Love Guru, War, Inc and The Wackness:  I have yet to see the Wackness.  But Kingsley is AS irritating as Mike Myers in The Love Guru, and he is pretty annoying in War, Inc. as well.

Burt Reynolds:  Deal / In The Name of the King:  Haven’t seen Deal.  But he certainly qualifies for In The Name of the King, since everyone in that movie appears to be competing for Who Can Suck The Most.

Verne Troyer:  The Love Guru / Postal:  Again, not really fair.  All he is being asked to do in both films is play a really little guy.  And that’s supposed to be really funny in and of itself.  The fact that it isn’t says more about the film makers than it does about Troyer.  The fact that he is, actually, a rotten actor is irrelevant here.

Who should win:  Ben Kingsley.  Mostly because he should be so much better than this.

Who was left out:  The rest of the cast of In The Name of the King.

Worst supporting actress nominees:

Carmen Electra:  Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie:  Give her a break, these are the only movies in which she can find work.  Just because she’s a generally terrible actress, we like to dump on her.  And that’s fine.  But I assume she was in each of these movies for a total of nine sucky seconds.

Paris Hilton:  Repo, the Genetic Opera:  Again, she isn’t an actress.  Shouldn’t count.

Kim Kardashian:  Disaster Movie:  Still…not an actress.  But I am certain that she is awful a la Paris Hilton.

Leelee Sobieski:  In The Name of the King / 88 Minutes:  Everyone in In The Name of the King was truly horrible.  But next to Pacino in 88 Minutes, how could anyone do a good job?

Jenny McCarthy:  Witless Protection:  Shouldn’t really be considered an actress either, but she is, so she counts.

Who should win:  Jenny McCarthy.

Who was left out:  Bette Midler, in The Women.

Worst screen couple nominees:

Uwe Boll and any actor in any movie
Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher, What Happens in Vegas
Paris Hilton and either Christine Lakin or Joel David Moore in The Hottie And the Nottie
Larry the Cable Guy and Jenny McCarthy in Witless Protection
Eddie Murphy, inside Eddie Murphy, in Meet Dave

Who should win:  Paris Hilton and anyone else, for The Hottie And the Nottie.  The others are supposedly real actors.

Who was left out:  Pacino and DeNiro in Righteous Kill.

Worst prequel, remake, rip-off, or sequel nominees:

The Day the Eartth Stood Still (5/10)
Disaster Movie / Meet the Spartans
Speed Racer
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (6/10)
Star Wars:  Clone Wars (5/10)

Who Should win:  It’s about time someone gives a little love at this year’s razzies for what are probably the worst movies of the year – Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans.

What was missed:  The Mummy:  Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

Worst director nominees:

Uwe Boll:  Postal, In The Name of the King, 1968:  Tunnel Rats:  Well, you know he had to make it in here.  He IS, after all, receiving a Lifetime Achievement Golden Raspberry Award this year from the Razzies.

Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer:  Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans:  Two of the worst movies ever, in the Epic Movie and Date Movie mold, surely deserve Worst Director nominations.

Tom Putnam:  The Hottie and the Nottie:  The guy was asked to helm a Paris Hilton starring vehicle.  Even Scorcese couldn’t have made this watchable.  It isn’t the director’s fault that he is so low on the Hollywood totem pole that he was asked to do this.

Marco Schnabel:  The Love Guru:  A truly dreadful directorial effort, but much of the blame for this turd has to fall on the shoulders of Mike Myers.

M. Night Shyamalan:  The Happening:  This guy is really heading for enshrinement in the Lifetime Achievement Razzie awards if he keeps making movies like his last few.

Who should win:  Shyamalan.  He really deserves to be considered, alongside Boll, as one of the Worst Directors alive.  It has been a long time since The Sixth Sense.

Who was left out:  Jon Avnet, Righteous Kill.  Anyone who has DeNiro and Pacino to work with had better come up with something better than that.

Worst Screenplay nominees:

The Hottie and the Nottie (Heidi Ferrer)
The Happening (M. Night Shyamalan)
Disaster Movie / Meet the Spartans (Friedberg & Seltzer)
In the Name of the King:  A Dungeon Siege Tale (Doug Taylor)
The Love Guru (Mike Myers & Graham Gordy)

Who should win:  In The Name of the King owes most of the blame for it’s suckiness to Uwe Boll.  The Hottie and the Nottie owes much of it’s suckiness to Paris Hilton.  Really, this comes down to a two-way race between The Love Guru and The Happening, since the people behind the movies are also the ones who wrote them.  I will give the edge to The Love Guru, because by now Mike Myers ought to know how to play to his strengths.  And he sure doesn’t.

That’s it for the Razzies, still the most accurate and best awards of the year.  The Oscar nominees were announced while I was typing this – but I think I will wait until right before the awards to discuss them, because I still haven’t seen half the movies on the lists.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 at 8:17 am and is filed under Administrative stuff, Lists. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.