Among a veritable farm-yard of turkeys, Woody Allen combined all his worst characteristics in a single movie.
Woody Allen has made his share of dreadful comedies (Hollywood Ending), misogynistic grumpy-old-man movies (Deconstructing Harry) and many an off-putting romance about dating someone less than half your age, but this is the first time all three subcategories have converged to yield a single unbearable fruit. It ends all discussion about what his worst film is. It’s this. Larry David’s limping, sour literature professor could hardly be worse company, even before he shacks up with Evan Rachel Wood’s dim-bulb Southern nymphet and proceeds to patronise her, in cahoots with Allen’s ghastly script, for the rest of the film.
Hypothetical Oscar bait, until we actually got a look at it, Peter Jackson’s stab at the Alice Sebold novel tried to shove the whole rape element under the carpet. This just left us looking at the carpet itself, a hideous digitised afterlife of endless kitsch.
3.Old Dogs
Barely anyone saw this surreally atrocious Robin Williams/John Travolta harassed-father “comedy”, the kind of film you thank critics for suffering through so you didn’t have to.
Very obviously blitzed in post-production to rush it onto the 3D bandwagon, Tim Burton’s chaotic “reimagining” of the trippy classic capsized horribly amid pointless battles and gurning star cameos.
Save for the immortal line “I always knew you were a bender”, M Night Shyamalan’s opulently awful kiddie-comic fantasy adventure has already disappeared into the cultural waste disposal.
The Hollywood remake of the hit French comedy Le dîner de cons had a shockingly poor script, gave Steve Carell his worst role ever as a gawky freak and tarnished the winning streak of co-star Paul Rudd into the bargain.
7.The Girl Who Played with Fire
The whole Stieg Larsson phenomenon hit a nadir with this appalling second movie, trimming the book in such a botched, frazzled way as to make it all but incomprehensible. A tasteless fiasco, well beyond the others.
Masterpiece cinema this beige always bags a few acting nominations, so Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer got some spurious credit for making it. But did we have any other reason to watch it? These squabbling Tolstoys and their stilted histrionics were conceited and exasperating.
About three people paid to see this, so might be in a position to clarify what it even was. Uma Thurman’s stressed Manhattanite has a Van der Graaf hair day, ignores her children and taps out a blog. That was about it.
Nothing wrong with an A-list action-romance, except when it’s as shoddily put-together as this, and dominated by Cameron Diaz shrieking.
- 2:45PM GMT 14 Dec 2010