The end of the year is a great time to reflect on the good and bad things that the previous 12 months have brought. Tomorrow we name our favorite films of 2007. But in the meantime, here are 16 films we hope never to see the likes of again.
1. Norbit (dir. Brian Robbins)
His surly public appearances certainly didn't help, but Eddie Murphy may have blown his Oscar chances by appearing in this hateful comedy, in which he single-handedly attempts to restore several aged stereotypes to their former glory. It's a victory for political incorrectness, but a big step back for those hoping we were past the days of Mickey Rooney playing a buck-toothed Asian landlord in Breakfast At Tiffany's or the image of obese women as something akin to the heavy-footed monsters in a Godzilla movie. Humor forgives a lot of offenses, but Norbit furthers Murphy's decline from one of the sharpest comedians alive to a lazy panderer who will do anything for a paycheck. If Spike Lee ever releases a director's cut of Bamboozled, he's got a wealth of material for his "reel of shame."
2. Epic Movie (dir. Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer)
Spoofeteers Friedberg and Seltzer (Date Movie) confirmed their status as cancerous boils on the face of comedy with this insulting compendium of cheap pop-culture references, scatological humor, and Mad-Lib-level comic juxtapositions. Friedberg and Seltzer subscribe to the formula that hip-hop + anything=hilarious, but they're also firm believers in the people-falling-down-or-getting-hit-with-things school of comedy. Until these movies start flopping, this not-so-dynamic duo will keep riffing on last week's box-office hits. Stop them before they spoof again!
3. The Ten Commandments (dirs. Bill Boyce and John Stronach)
This first in a proposed series of computer-animated biblical epics looks like it was made for a Nintendo 64 and borrows liberally from Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments and Dreamworks' animated Prince Of Egypt. (Just because you're using the same source material doesn't mean you have to use the same shots.) But the big question is this: Who's more miscast: Christian Slater as a Moses who sounds like he's ready to party even when bringing on the plagues, or the never-authoritative-sounding Elliott Gould as God?
4. Good Luck Chuck (dir. Mark Helfrich)
Not since the Lindsay Lohan vehicle Just My Luck brought together the luckiest and unluckiest people in the world have two high-concept ideas collided as joylessly as they do in this feature-length ode to Dane Cook's ego. Cook plays a studmuffin who turns one-night stands into someone else's marriage material, Jessica Alba plays a walking magnet for painful slapstick, and together they have the comic chemistry of bleach and ammonia. In one sequence, Good Luck Chuck even manages to produce a creature more nauseating and cruel than Eddie Murphy's Rasputia in Norbit: As a test for Cook's powers, he beds a morbidly obese woman with severe acne and gas who feasts all day on a garbage bag full of donut holes. This and Cook going down on a stuffed penguin are apparently what passes for funny here.
5. Sydney White (dir. Joe Nussbaum)
This modern campus-comedy retelling of Snow White, starring Amanda Bynes in the title role, aims depressingly low to begin with, and even even fails to eke out the few meager laughs and minor "Awwww"s it's trying for. It's dumb, clumsy, obvious, poorly staged, poorly written, and poorly acted, and on top of all that, it cheats relentlessly at its own stupid formula. It essentially reads as a snobs-vs.-slobs film created by people who have never met an actual snob or a slob, and have never visited an actual college campus, but have watched Revenge Of The Nerds way too many times.
6. Daddy Day Camp (dir. Fred Savage)
To be fair, this joyless, crude sequel to Daddy Day Care was scheduled for a discreet direct-to-DVD burial before Sony figured it might be able to make a quick buck foisting it on moviegoers. In a rare display of good judgment, the public wasn't having it. It stiffed at the box-office and is currently ranked the third-worst film of all time on the Internet Movie Database. Even Mr. Boat Trip himself, walking punchline Cuba Gooding Jr., deserves better. He's just lucky Oscars can't be angrily rescinded.
7. Lions For Lambs (dir. Robert Redford)
For years, American films have remained strangely silent about the Bush Administration's amorphous, never-ending war on terror, at least outside the lefty-friendly documentary ghetto. Then came a deluge of muddled anti-war films that suggest that the only thing worse than Hollywood not taking a stand is Hollywood taking a stand. The worst of the lot is this leaden, stilted off-Broadway play masquerading as a political drama. Director Redford, Tom Cruise, and Meryl Streep are among the luminaries doggedly working their way through thick, unedifying forests of verbiage, but no amount of star power can hide the stagy emptiness of this dead-on-arrival chatfest. There are episodes of The Charlie Rose Show that are more visually dynamic.
8. Georgia Rule (dir. Garry Marshall)
Even if Lindsay Lohan hadn't been a tabloid fixture by the time Georgia Rule appeared, her cracked-out appearance would have set tongues wagging. Not that a clean-and-sober Lohan could have helped Garry Marshall's film, which aims to be a heartwarming comedy about incest and alcoholism, and probably comes as close to hitting that impossible mark as any film could.
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