The Worst Films of 2010

Film: The Last Airbender

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Cast: Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz, Jackson Rathbone, Dev Patel, Shaun Toub, Aasif Mandvi, Cliff Curtis

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List number: 10

Display Width: 200The Last Airbender
Paramount

Every time we think M. Night Shyamalan can’t get any worse, he proves us wrong. After The Happening demonstrated how bad a big-budget horror movie can be, Shyamalan apparently set out to do the same with the summer action spectacle. He took a popular, beloved cartoon series (Avatar: The Last Airbender) and created a simultaneously reverent and tone-deaf live-action adaptation. The Indian-American director incited controversy by using Caucasian actors in the three lead roles while leaving nearly the entire rest of the cast to actors of Asian and Inuit descent. Then he attempted to compress roughly 10 hours of story into a two-hour movie mostly by having the characters stand around reciting piles of exposition. And since this is a Shyamalan production, he managed to coax stiff, wooden performances out of all his actors, leading to the year’s most overblown snoozefest. Chris Conaton

 

Film: Leap Year

Director: Anand Tucker

Cast: Amy Adams, Matthew Goode, Kaitlin Olson, Adam Scott, John Lithgow

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List number: 9

Display Width: 200Leap Year
Universal

When it comes to romantic comedies, some moviegoers need only the basics: a meet-cute, a handful of embarrassing episodes, a half-hearted reversal before the inevitable third-act climax where the unlikely lovers are united (preferably at a wedding that only one of them was invited to). Leap Year accomplishes the impressive feat of not successfully handling any of those genre basics. Also, while it’s at it, this egregiously painful piece of work -– the kind of thing that makes you think, They should be paying us to sit here –- manages to squeeze not a single decent chuckle out of stars Amy Adams and Matthew Goode, two of the more charming actors working today. There’s a plot here, something about a woman’s misguided attempt to propose to her fiancée in Ireland, only to fall for a grumpy hotelier / cabbie (don’t ask), but the less remembered about this film, the better. Chris Barsanti

 

Film: Valentine’s Day

Director: Gary Marshall

Cast: Julia Roberts, Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Kathy Bates, Bradley Cooper, Eric Dane, Patrick Dempsey, Hector Elizondo, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Alex Williams

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List number: 8

Display Width: 200Valentine’s Day
Warner Brothers

Cliché-ridden and bursting with C level star power, Gary Marshall’s latest rom-com comes up short in both its genres. Real romance is nowhere to be found, and the comedic elements are laughable instead of laugh-worthy. The film made more than half its $110 million U.S. haul by blatantly pandering to lazy couples on Valentine’s Day weekend, but the film only delivered a good excuse to make out and miss the movie. Even the best stories in Valentine’s Day (and these are still mediocre) leave a bad taste in your mouth by the time their prolonged narratives sum up. Will they stay together past Feb. 14? Is he gay? Who is Julia Roberts visiting, and why is she in this movie? These are the pointless questions you’re forced to think about for a butt-numbing 125 minutes, but all Valentine’s Day leaves you with is a chronic case of mental soreness. Ben Travers

 

Film: Killers

Director: Robert Luketic

Cast: Katherine Heigl, Ashton Kutcher, Tom Selleck, Catherine O’Hara

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List number: 7

Display Width: 200Killers
Lionsgate

Devoid of suspense or laughs, this action-comedy, doesn’t do its two leads, Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl, any favors. In a tired attempt to bring together comedy and thrills, the viewer is left contemplating how such beautiful international locations, could be so, well, boring. It is a genuine shame. Both stars are charismatic figures loved by the camera. Especially Kutcher, who recently sparkled in David Mackenzie’s overlooked 2009 drama, Spread, which saw the actor in his best role yet as an American gigolo. Unfortunately, neither star glimmers much here. With little chemistry between the pair, or a narrative crutch to lean on, Killers leads both its stars to a most resounding flop. Omar Kholeif

 

Film: Splice

Director: Vincenzo Natali

Cast: Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley, Delphine Chanéac

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List number: 6

Display Width: 200Splice
Warner Brothers

Bearing the dubious distinction of being a bad “B” horror movie prancing about in A-list clothes, Splice taps the collapsed vein of sci-fi / horror cautionary tales that warn of the disaster that awaits those who choose to “play God.” In this instance, two DNA-splicing scientists and lovers, Clive and Elsa (played by Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley, respectively) are held up as a prime example when they merge their DNA with that of other creatures from the animal kingdom to create a new species. Splice becomes even more laughable when Clive and Elsa effectively chuck their Linus Pauling textbooks out the window in exchange for the complete works of Dr. Spock and T. Berry Brazelton, doting on the creature and turning a blind eye when (s)he becomes murderous. As if dangerously entwining emotion with science wasn’t bad enough, things take a further ludicrous turn when the creature matures and its creators engage in pseudo-incestuous relations with it. The result is more schlock than shock. Lana Cooper

 

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Film: Clash of the Titans

Director: Louis Leterrier

Cast: Sam Worthington, Gemma Arterton, Mads Mikkelsen, Alexa Davalos, Danny Huston, Pete Postlethwaite, Hans Matheson, Ralph Fiennes, Liam Neeson

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List number: 5

Display Width: 200Clash of the Titans
Warner Brothers

What went wrong with Clash of the Titans? Well, first there was the whole 3-D thing. The movie became the poster child for bad 3-D conversions when Warner Bros. decided, in the wake of Avatar‘s success, to slap 3-D onto a movie that had not been conceived or shot that way. So even though the film made money, there was plenty of grumbling about the way it looked. But really, it’s the movie itself that’s the big problem. Louis Leterrier’s film is full of action spectacle but little substance. The plot is difficult to follow, with seemingly random character motivations both from the men and Gods leading to a big mess of a story in between the action sequences. Ultimately it makes for an action junkie’s worst nightmare: a boring movie. It’s really no surprise, then, that there’s apparently a much saner cut of the film somewhere at Warner Bros. that actually makes sense. That version sounds like a pretty good movie. Too bad we’ll probably never see it. Chris Conaton

 

Film: Cop Out

Director: Kevin Smith

Cast: Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, Kevin Pollak , Seann William Scott, Jason Lee, Rashida Jones

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List number: 4

Display Width: 200Cop Out
Warner Brothers

Kevin Smith’s Cop Out is an example of what happens when an artist steps outside of his bounds, and does so with reckless abandon. While Smith has always, and rightfully so, maintained he is a writer above all else, Cop Out seems to say that for him should he ever feel the need to never utter that statement again. While the direction he provides isn’t terrible, the script by Robb and Mark Cullen is riddled with clichés and predictable contrivances, and Tracy Morgan’s overacting is so oppressive, the specter of his performance permeates even the scant portions of the film he’s not in. Kevin Brettauer

 

Film: Sex and the City 2

Director: Michael Patrick King

Cast: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon, Chris Noth, John Corbett

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List number: 3

Display Width: 200Sex and the City 2
Warner Brothers

Of the many sins that Sex and the City 2 commits against its fans — and there are many in the film’s grueling two-and-a-half hours, including the minutes wasted on the endless tour of an Abu Dhabi hotel — it’s the sound, thorough beating of the series’ greatest romance. Carrie was our heroine. Big was her fairytale prince. John Preston is, well, just a guy. He likes to curl up on his couch and watch TV — not horrid by any means, but nothing to make you clutch your hand to your chest and breathe a heavy sigh. Sex and the City 2 shows that Big is all limousine with nothing inside, a revelation that actually goes back and makes the entire series a little worse. And when Carrie berates him for wanting to hole up with take-out instead of squiring her away to a fancy restaurant, it diminishes her, too. Forget their relationship to each other – it’s our view of both of them that the movie tarnishes Marisa LaScala

 

Film: The Tourist

Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Cast: Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Paul Bettany, Timothy Dalton, Steven Berkoff, Rufus Sewell, Christian De Sica

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List number: 2

Display Width: 200The Tourist
Columbia Pictures

One goes to some films really, really wanting to like them, only to find one’s expectations inexorably crushed by long, desolate stretches of painful mediocrity. The Phantom Menace comes to mind. This wan, lazy waste of scenery comes with an attention-grabbing pedigree, being the first feature by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck since 2006’s phenomenal Lives of Others, and a script by Christopher McQuarrie and Julian Fellowes, not to mention a batch of top-notch Brit actors like Paul Bettany and Rufus Sewell. Unfortunately, the actual film is Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie creaking stiffly through a padded, contrived scenario that fails woefully at being Charade in Venice. Undeniably pretty to look at, The Tourist has perhaps five minutes of engaging drama in its whole running time, and exactly two good jokes — both of which are run into the ground long before it all wheezes to a halt. Chris Barsanti

 

Film: Skyline

Director: Brothers Strause

Cast: Eric Balfour, Scottie Thompson, Brittany Daniel, David Zayas, Donald Faison, Crystal Reed, Neil Hopkins, Robin Gammell

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Display Width: 200Skyline
Universal

Skyline comes courtesy of the brothers Strause, a duo best known for its special-effects work in films such as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. One of Skyline‘s protagonists, is in fact — if you are able to parse it out — also in charge of special effects on a big-budget film. So, when it came time for the film to deliver its aliens-vs.-humans story, what, apart from budget concerns, possessed the directors to ignore a special-effects-heavy, military-on-alien explosion-fest in favor of a smaller, human drama? Not that the latter would be bad in the hands of others — Monsters, for example, handled similar themes with intelligence — but it’s clear that this type of constricted storytelling is not the Strauses’ forte. In the few scenes when fighter planes engage in an out-and-out battle with alien invaders, the movie is pretty enjoyable (and looks pretty great, to boot). Yet the film fails to find a believable way to explain why two characters would bring a third’s digital camera into a bathroom to document a secret tryst, and why a separate fourth character would come across the photos in passing. The fact that Skyline is mostly these kinds of machinations, taking place in an isolated apartment, makes us wonder if there was a better Skyline movie going on just outside Marisa LaScala