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January 01, 2007
Worst of 2006
You don’t really want to hear the WORST movies of 2006, do you? Why punish Pulse (or Another Gay Movie, BloodRayne, The Libertine or An American Haunting) any more than they already have by bombing in theaters? The best part about scaling back my 2006 moviegoing (I saw 200 new releases, instead of 250 the year before) is that it gave me license to skip the worst offenders. But that doesn’t mean the other movies all lived up to my expectations — far from it. Here’s a recap of the year’s biggest disappointments, the movies that promised the moon but delivered only cheese.
5 Biggest Disappointments of 2006
1. Running with Scissors
A tricky bestseller becomes a disastrous misfire in the hands of first-time director Ryan Murphy (the brains behind the smarmy-yet-addictive Nip/Tuck series). First, Murphy picks 20-year-old Joseph Cross to play his tortured 13-year-old hero, Augusten Burroughs. Then, he gives Annette Bening license to run away with the movie, inadvertently making her the star of Augusten’s memoirs (which means the middle hour doesn’t work, when she’s largely absent). Finally, he glazes the whole affair in production design so berserk (think Wes Anderson on crack) we’re paying more attention to the fact that Bening’s earrings match the retro yellow drapes than the scenes themselves.
2. For Your Consideration
On paper, it sounds like Christopher Guest & Co.’s best idea yet: A lame independent film gets wind that some online pundit called their movie “Oscar-worthy,” allowing the rumor to poison their production with delusions of grandeur. Alas, the troupe’s improv-styled mockumentaries have been in steady decline since Waiting for Guffman, and their latest satire abandons the format altogether by treating the conceit as a straightforward comedy (it would have been so easy to position the film as a Lost in La Mancha-like DVD extra gone awry). This dud not only misfires, but kills all hopes for their next collaboration, too.
3. Lady in the Water
Poor M. Night Shyamalan. Expectations are so high when critics declare you to be a genius after an early film, and even worse when you believe your own publicity. Here, Shyamalan has gone punch-drunk on old Ron Howard movies. Like a cross between Cocoon and Splash starring (who else?) Ron’s daughter Bryce Dallas Howard, this loony children’s fable concerns a washed-up “narf” (or sea-nymph) whose appearance mystically enriches the local residents. It’s a third-rate rip-off, and yet Shyamalan seems to think he’s concocted an original, visionary opus for the ages. At least he manages to ditch the obligatory twist ending.
4. Idiocracy
Office Space fans waited years for Mike Judge’s next movie (I did a set visit in summer 2004), only to get a badly maimed version dumped in theaters. Though a handful of critics jumped onboard to extol the genius of Judge’s super-cynical satire — an average Joe (Luke Wilson, steadily working himself into obscurity) awakens from a military cryogenics experiment to discover that he’s now the most intelligent person in a future world where evolution has favored the idiots who reproduce most often — the best that can be said about Idiocracy is that it’s no worse than the other comedies out there.
5. The entire summer
Talk about a letdown. It’s not that the movies were necessarily all terrible, it’s just that not a single thing stood out. From the flurry of disorganized energy and special effects run amok that was X-Men: The Last Stand to the lethargic and largely uneventful Superman Returns, it was sorry going most of the way. Pixar underdelivered with Cars, while the overloaded Pirates of the Caribbean sequel stopped being fun a full hour before its to-be-continued conclusion. Even August, when the indies typically swoop in to redeem blockbuster season, fizzled (only Little Miss Sunshine emerged unscathed). Better luck next year.
Posted by Peter Debruge on