Hate – it’s an ugly word for an ugly emotion, but some hate lingers longer than it should.
For a film critic, that means hating movies months – and sometimes years – after you’ve left the theater.
A great movie stays with you forever. So do lousy movies.
The following five clunkers just won’t go away.
- “The Mist” – My hate for this insipid movie goes beyond the utter lack of scares, the beyond cliche Bible thumper character and an ending that tries to be ballsy but ends up being laughable. Some critics rallied around this movie, as did the story’s original author, Stephen King. I hate that most of all.
- “The Family Stone” – It’s enough to say this is the worst Sarah Jessica Parker movie ever, isn’t it?
- “Hitch” – I got into a fight with Mrs. WWTW after seeing this stiff precisely because she didn’t hate it as much as I did. Embarrassing storytelling with only one redeeming quality – a smart comic turn by Kevin James, an extended cameo which likely launched his movie career.
- “P.S. I Love You/How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” – This torturous tag team represents everything that’s wrong with today’s romantic movies.
- “Million Dollar Baby” – I lose sleep over the fact that this movie won the Best Picture Oscar in 2005. It’s a perfectly acceptable movie … until it takes an absurd twist and then carries on for what seems like a year.
(Photo: Thomas Jane, center, leads a band of survivors battling against a mysterious foe in “The Mist.”)
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{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
i agree with all of these except for ‘The Mist’ i loved the film i loved the original short story even though the film has a completley different ending i still liked it. i couldn’t remember how well the critics liked it and i just checked out RT and it has a 72% fresh rating which is pretty damn good for a film like this. i can appreciate your reasoning even if i don’t agree with it. i bought the film on blu-ray and it looks amazing in hi def probably looks better in B&W in my opnion.
I’m trying to figure out if I hate a movie because I hate its message or the movie just flat out stinks. So, here are a few.
The Happening: I literally watch 15 minuets of this before I bailed. I know I didn’t watch the whole movie – but somehow, I think it the time was better spent watching House Hunters!
Diary of the Dead: I knew that Romero was losing it but, holy crap! I was was really ticked because I know I’ll never get that hour and a half of my life back.
Volcano: Need I say more?
Hancock: Am I wrong, or are the bad guys, returning Iraq war vets that take over a bank? Really? I think there may be some people more worthy as being portrayed as criminals. Like – - I don’t know – - terrorists. This is a pure ’set up the franchise’ movie if ever there was one. No story arc worth mentioning, loaded with one dimensional characters. Will Smith is a major talent and he does what he can, but the whole ‘I’m gonna change the world’ bumper sticker message from Jason Bateman’s character was laughable. We can’t possibly fool the public with a simple bumper sticker message, can we? Oh wait: ‘Yes We Can’.
People I know and respect liked “The Mist” – I just can’t wrap my head around it!
The ‘hate’ thing is so very personal. I don’t hate bad movies … they’re just awful and you move on. But certain films simply trigger a gag reflex in me …
The movie always at the top of my hate list is “Carlito’s Way.” I am sure that many people like it, like the performances, etc, but the ending hit my gag reflex (good way to describe it WWTW) so hard that I cannot even bear to watch any moment of that film ever again. It’s existence offends me.
I haven’t seen any of the others on your list, except “Hitch,” and I have to side with Mrs. WWTW on this one.
One movie that that left me unbelievably p*ssed off was ‘The Life of David Gale’. The way that the reporter and the audience were manipulated into sympathizing with the David Gale character for almost the entire movie only to find that this was the whole point, and that***spoiler alert*** he and his friend (played by Laura Linney) in essence committed suicide (David’s character did so by masterminding his own murder conviction & death sentence) so that an innocent man was put to death. The mind that would come up with this plan (even as a story) is scary – there are no boundaries if you think that undermining the rule of law is an acceptable way to sway opinion against your pet cause (in this case, the death penalty).
I too hated “The Mist” but for one single reason, the ending. The short story from Skeleton Crew is one of favorite King stories. The movie matches the story quite well until the end. Then, King, I guess, decided he had been too optimistic and charitable with the original ending. He decided to make it as bleak and nihilistic has possible. That ending rendered the entire movie, which I had enjoyed, completely unwatchable again.
Grofe,
I don’t remember the badguys in HANCOCK being returning Iraq War vets.
Where did they mention that?
Kit,
I could have sworn that just before Hancock gets let out of prison, there’s a news report stating that the bank was being held by Iraq war vets. As I sated, I could be wrong – it goes by real fast. So, please let me know if I missed the point. Thanks Kit.
I may be alone in this, but I hated the new Star Trek movie. It sucker punched fans who loved the original tv show. The special effects alone nearly gave me a migraine and the script was an utter mess. Such a shame considering the fact is was pretty well cast.
At last, at last, someone agrees with me about Million Dollar Baby. I bought the super 3-disc DVD version to watch it…and promptly gave it away after watching the film. I’ve not only lost sleep, I’ve almost engaged in armed combat with lovers of the film. ZOMG, I do so hate this film. I think it’s because before “the twist,” I was really invested in the characters and the story. After “the twist,” it falls apart, starts lying through its teeth, and completely turns on everything that came before. Really, off the top of my head, nothing else comes close.
Well, maybe LOTR: The Two Towers. I demand those hours of my life back. What a waste.
And Crash (the Haggis thing, not Cronenberg’s). My gut twitches just thinking about it.
Grofe:
I pulled out the DVD and watched the scene in question. The news announcer is describing the female officer who is trapped. She’s a widow, her husband having been KIA in Iraq. The robbers are not described as Iraq war vets. Your other points are valid, or at least debatable, yet I still loved the film.
bob – LOTR The Two Towers, REALLY? Like the Star Wars trilogy, the middle part was the best one. (There were no prequels, there were no prequels.) I thought it was the only LOTR movie that never dragged and was a complete story all on its own.
Bob,
Thanks for straightening me out. Sorry to everyone (especially the film makers) for the misunderstanding. Won’t be shooting my mouth off next time. Lesson learned.
AI is the movie I bring up when I want to distract my wife from crep like Machinegun Girl.
the mist was awesome. i could feel the bugs crawling on me in the theater. and i loved the ending. it was an extended twilight zone episode.
i agree with the others – except million dollar baby. have no say on that one as i never bothered to watch it
I cannot understand the loathing for Million Dollar Baby. I thought it was a reasonably thoughtful study of a difficult social issue.
The last scene struck me as weak, yes. It was a not particularly successful use of what short story writers sometimes call “a stinger.” (A more successful, but equally obvious, example is the final typed phrase that ends Stand By Me.)
I could understand someone saying that this was not among the best of Eastward’s films and that its Academy Award was due to the film’s political viewpoint (as was the case for Brokeback Mountain, Milk, and so any others of late), but the very extreme negative reaction suggest an equal pull of politics in the opposite direction.
I’m so glad I’m not the only one who didn’t like “Million Dollar Baby.” I thought I was the only one!
Saw “MDB” with a great fellow movie critic … and we had the same reaction to it. Then, weeks passed and the film started gaining critical momentum. Unbelievable.
I have to vote for the dreadful Colin Farrell vehicle, “Alexander.” After the flick, my fellow moviegoers were forming impromptu support groups in the hall, commiserating with each other and vociferously bashing the movie. Seriously! It was an absolutely horrible movie from start to finish.
Ditto “Catwoman”and — a shudder from the distant past — “Waterworld.”
fozzy,
Really. Really can’t stand the film. To put it politely, I’m not a fan of the books, yet I was hooked by the first film. I walked out of Two Towers shell-shocked. To be sure, I watched it on DVD when available. To be really, really sure, I watched the extended cut DVD. No more of my life will be given over to The Two Towers, a movie that starts and ends in exactly the same place, the middle of nowhere. Its one accomplishment was making me hope that in the end, Sam would toss Frodo into the pits of Mount Doom right behind Gollum and the One Ring. Alas….
But yes, re Star Wars, there are no prequels, there are no prequels….
Re Star Wars: These aren’t the prequels you’re looking for!
Movies I hate the most tend to be highly manipulative and intensely politically correct.
-”The Other Sister” – Preachy, Lifetime-esque .
-I second “The Life of David Gale.” If someone tried to remake “Dead Man Walking” today, it would end up “The Life of David Gale.”
- “Attack of the Clones.” An abortion of a movie.
- “Gangs of New York” the first to introduce us to Tough Leo, who ends up a whinier brat than Youthful Leo. Daniel Day Lewis was phenomenal , as was John C. Reilly, but Martin needs to get over the Leo fetish.
- Crash
-Ocean’s 13.
- The Horse Whisperer.
-Legends of the Fall – “It was a good death.” Yeah, mauled by a bear a thousand miles from nowhere. Fantastic. Kind of like sitting through this movie.
-Thelma and Louise.
I’m surprised nobody has brought up Little Miss Sunshine. I absolutely loathe the film, in large part because it sells itself as a quirky indie comedy, but it’s as steeped in formula as anything from Michael Bay or Tyler Perry. Heroin addicted grandfather? Check. Gay, depressed Proust scholar? Check. Precocious, eccentric kids? Check. Add to that a plot point or two that defy all reason… such as Steve Carell’s character running into the TA who spurned him at some random truck stop in Arizona (of course… that’s where all the lit crit types hang out)!
All the accolades and praise this film received totally flummox me. LMS has even created into its own mini-genre, including films like Juno and Away We Go (the latter of which apes that “too cool for school” vibe that LMS drips with).
After seeing Juno, I wondered why I liked it as much as I did when it was so closely compared to LMS. I think it comes down to humanity – Juno never treats its characters like rubes or cardboard archetypes to be knocked down at the appropriate time. LMS, on the other hand, takes the patriarch of the family and makes him into a complete rube – and invites the audience to laugh at his enthusiasm and naivete. His motivational pitch may be complete garbage, but he’s the only character in the film that believes in anything at all.
It’s that ironic distance and borderline nihilism that make so many independent films nearly impossible to penetrate. Thank God that Jason Reitman hasn’t fallen prey to those sensibilities yet.
Jason,
All great points and you’ve made me rethink LMS. I never fell in love with that film but kinda tolerated it. I thought there were moments that shined but I see your point about ‘cardboard archetypes’. Well said.
And I’d like to add another: Funny Games. If you’ve seen it, you know what I talking about.
-JohnFNWayne:
I agree with your list (at least insofar as the movies I’ve seen), with one exception: Legends of the Fall.
Not with your emotion towards the movie, with which I will gladly match your hatred with my own disgust. No, the point I disagree with is the choice of quotes. “It was a good death?” Actually, that’s the one point in the movie that I agree with (in an ironic sense). Mauled by a bear is a good (in the sense of far more than he deserves) death for a character that is an utter jerkwad waste of resources, womanizing, bootlegging criminal, wastrel and miscreant, for whom not a single bad thing happens to that can’t be directly traced back to his own poor (or amoral/immoral) choices, yet who nevertheless the movie and his father treats as the hero, who’s held up with a father’s love against the mostly upstanding (though still morally questionable) older brother, whom both the movie and father disdain and/or despise, mostly for siding with the law over family, even when family is wrong. Even to the extent that the movie tries to make his remove from society and eventual death some sort of heroic denouement (yes, I recognize that this point undercuts my point, in that it supports JohnFNWayne’s point – it was ironic, OK?).
So, yeah, FWIW, I would definitely put Legends of the Fall high on my personal hate list.