Every year, I say it can be fun ripping really bad movies to shreds, but I hate that I wasted so much time watching these, the ten I most disliked in the last twelve months. My capsule reviews are below, and you can read my full reviews by clicking on the title of each movie.
#1) “Challengers.” When I reviewed this movie in April, I gave it a 1 out of 10, so it was the odds-on favorite for my Worst Movie Of The Year selection. It’s a story of the romance between Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor as talented tennis players. It would be a cheap cliché to invoke the word love over and over. But the more apt tennis term to describe “Challengers” is fault. As in “this whole mess is the fault of director Luca Guadagnino.” He took what should have been a relatively simple story of a love triangle and botched it in nearly every way. Switching between time periods so the story isn’t told in a linear fashion. Shooting the tennis scenes from the side of the court, swooping back and forth between the players, making it impossible to follow the action. The only person who came out of this debacle unscathed is Zendaya, but she’s not good enough to save the movie.
#2) “Janet Planet” stars Julianne Nicholson, who remains the most-freckled performer on any screen. It’s her first lead performance, after years of supporting roles in movies and TV series like “Mare of Easttown,” “I, Tonya,” “Masters of Sex,” “Boardwalk Empire,” and the first thing I noticed her in, “Tully.” Here she plays the mother of an 11-year-old girl spending the summer at home. Unfortunately, during those three months, nothing interesting happens. Want some examples? Two people walk very slowly to and from a mailbox. Someone licks an ice cream cone. A tick gets removed from a girl’s hair, then flushed down the toilet complete with watching the full swirl all the way. Two blintzes defrost in a microwave. “Janet Planet” is so boring you could actually nod off for 20-25 minutes at any point and when you woke up, you would not have missed anything worthwhile.
#3) “Babygirl.” This one got in just under the wire, as I posted my full review a mere three days ago and it won’t open until Christmas day. Nicole Kidman stars as the tightly wound and always in control CEO of a tech company who is frustrated by her unsatisfactory sex life with husband Antonio Banderas. She becomes fascinated with an intern who has just joined the firm and, despite the risk to her career and position, begins an affair with him. She gets turned on by having him tell her what to do in the bedroom, but their antics aren’t fun or sexy to watch. Rather, they are cut from the same humiliation-porn cloth as “Fifty Shades of Grey.” Feh.
#4) “Suncoast.” It’s one thing to waste Woody Harrelson, but when you can’t make a good movie with Laura Linney as your lead, we have a major problem. “Suncoast” is the story of a Florida teen who wants to be accepted by her classmates and shown some affection by her mother. But Mom is overbearing and obsessed with her son, who is restricted to a wheelchair because he’s suffering from brain cancer. It’s not bad enough the boy eventually is moved into a hospice, it has to be the same one in which Terri Schiavo spent her last days in 2005. If you don’t remember that story, I’ll let you go look it up on Wikipedia because I wasted way too much time discussing it on my radio show as it dominated the news cycle for days on end. Every one of the teen characters in “Suncoast” looks and acts like they’re from a cheap knockoff version of “Mean Girls,” with dialogue that sounds like what an adult thinks teenagers would say but never have. And did I mention the movie wastes Laura Fucking Linney?
#5) “I Saw The TV Glow.” When I leave a theater after a movie screening, I always have some ideas about what I’ll say about it in my review. But I can’t remember exiting a screening with no idea what I might write. But that’s exactly how I felt after viewing “I Saw The TV Glow,” which has to do with two teens in 1996 obsessed with a sci-fi TV show, “The Pink Opaque.” The movie explores themes of teenage insecurity, sexual identity, and gender dysphoria amidst a plethora of surreal images even David Lynch didn’t consider when he made “Twin Peaks” (e.g. did that guy just stick his head and neck inside the TV screen?). The second half, especially, made me wonder if I had accidentally taken ketamine earlier in the evening, because I had no idea what was going on.
#6) “Axel F” is the new entry in the “Beverly Hills Cop” universe, which began with a bang in 1984, but should have been left for dead after the terrible third installment in 1994. It’s the same kind of nostalgic cash grab as Murphy’s “Coming To America” sequel three years ago. And his “Doctor Dolittle” sequel. And his “Shrek” sequels. And his “Nutty Professor” sequel. In fact, I just looked through Murphy’s filmography and realized he hasn’t made a good original movie in the last fifteen years except “Dolemite Is My Name” (which I reviewed very favorably). The plot is paper thin, built purely to give Murphy an opportunity to walk through the unchallenging title role while meeting up with old pals, including Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Paul Reiser, and Bronson Pinchot. I’m not even going to bother telling you the story because a movie like this relies entirely on recreating scenes almost identical to those in the original. You’d be better off re-watching that instead.
#7) “Fly Me To The Moon” stars Scarlett Johansson as a marketing whiz brought into NASA to be the publicist for the Apollo program. Channing Tatum plays the Launch Director at Cape Kennedy. They can’t stand each other so, of course, they’re going to end up a couple. Woody Harrelson makes a second entry on this Worst Movies Of 2024 list as a guy working for President Nixon who wants to make sure that the USA beats the USSR to the moon, no matter what. To ensure that, he forces ScarJo to prepare a fake moon landing which can be shown to the world if something goes wrong with the mission. “Fly Me To The Moon” depends entirely on the chemistry between Johansson and Tatum, each of whom qualifies for any list of The Most Attractive Human Beings On Earth. Unfortunately, there are more things wrong than right. Think of it as one sideways step for a romcom, but no giant leap for anyone.
#8) “Land Of Bad.” Speaking of good-looking people, this stinker stars Liam Hemsworth as the youngest member of a four-man special ops team sent to find a CIA operative being held by a terrorist group in the southern Philippines. He’s assisted by Russell Crowe as a drone pilot working from Nellis Air Force Base in the Nevada desert. When Hemsworth’s mission goes wrong, Crowe has to guide him to an evacuation point and supply cover with missiles fired at enemy vehicles and caves. “Land Of Bad” reminded of another war movie from 1988 that similarly wasted two good actors. In “Bat 21,” Danny Glover was a pilot helping a high-ranking officer played by Gene Hackman get to safety from a plane crash site in the last days of the Vietnam War. To avoid detection by North Vietnamese troops, Hackman uses a special code to tell Glover where he’s headed — based on the layout of famous golf courses. Yes, you read that right. And it was still better than this dreck.
#9) “Treasure.” Lena Dunham wants to know more about what it was like for her father, Stephen Fry, to grow up in Poland in the 1940s and be the only member of his family to survive the Auschwitz concentration camp. She was going to make the trip by herself, but he insists on going with her, in part to distract and keep her from discovering some of the horrors of his young life, because he doesn’t want that trauma dug up again. At virtually every step, he upends Ruth’s plans, insisting on visiting places he remembers fondly instead of the depressing ones she insists on seeing. Unfortunately, “Treasure” is a big disappointment. If you want to see a movie with a similar theme, I recommend “A Real Pain,” the Jesse Eisenberg/Kieran Culkin movie which made my Best Movies Of 2024 list.
#10) “The Instigators.” Casey Affleck (who co-wrote the script) and Matt Damon get chased all over Boston by cops and some bad guys after trying to steal the corrupt mayor’s stash of cash. The whole thing is dumber than your average Mark Wahlberg movie, with a ridiculous subplot involving Hong Chau as Damon’s psychiatrist. It also wastes such money-in-the-bank supporting actors as Ving Rhames, Michael Stuhlbarg, Alfred Molina, Paul Walter Hauser, Toby Jones, and Ron Perlman. Despite being directed by Doug Liman (“The Bourne Identity”), “The Instigators” is nothing more than a two-hour time suck. The only reason to watch it is to guess which cast member will not be able to maintain a Boston accent through the entire story.