While we all know Hollywood, like every other business, was affected by the pandemic,
what we didn't see coming was the deluge of bad movies that would be released afterwards.
From disappointing blockbusters to pandemic pictures that should've
never seen the light of day, these are the worst movies of 2021.
A decade after his film "Another Earth" became the talk of Sundance, writer-director Mike Cahill
added another reality-bending sci-fi romance to his resume. Released in February 2021,
Amazon's "Bliss" stars Owen Wilson as a man who suffers a breakdown when his marriage and job
implode in quick succession. Greg then gets sucked into a world of powerful hallucinogens after
falling in with a homeless woman named Isabel, played by Salma Hayek. She almost convinces him
that the place they're escaping to — a place where she's a genius scientist running a simulation and
the world's problems have largely been solved — is the one true reality. Those with the required
patience will eventually discover that Greg has actually become a homeless addict, or so it seems.
"Bliss" was made available to stream at a time when audiences
desperately needed an escape from reality, but the film only succeeds in dumbfounding viewers.
“Come on, baby. We have to exit this stupid simulation.”
IndieWire wrote in its review,
"Even the worst simulation would have more clarity than this."
Cahill's biggest error is spending way too much time explaining the mechanics of his universe,
though exposition overload is far from the only issue here. The truth is,
co-stars Owen Wilson and Salma Hayek lack the onscreen spark that "Bliss" sorely
needs. Neither seems totally committed, and it becomes increasingly harder to root
for them when the only thing that appears genuine is Wilson's look of bewilderment.
A handful of movies have been created and set within the pandemic, but for every "Host,"
a Zoom-set thrill ride, there's a total disaster like "Locked Down." Part heist caper,
part romantic drama, the film follows Linda and Paxton, played by Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel
Ejiofor. They are a struggling couple whose planned separation has to be put on hold due to
COVID-19 lockdown restrictions in London. Holed up together, they decide to plan an audacious jewelry
heist that will make them millionaires, using Paxton's delivery driver job and
Linda's access to the Harrods vaults. Then, they'll steal a diamond worth over $4 million,
give half the proceeds to the National Health Service, and go their separate ways.
Of course, things don't pan out that way — the heist just brings them closer together.
Writer Steven Knight and director Doug Liman imply that Paxton and Linda are going to use
the rest of lockdown to fall in love all over again. Both leads put in an admirable effort,
but "Locked Down" is too concerned with winks and nods to lockdown life, often
ignoring the whole heist plot for long stretches of time. The Times shared their opinion, saying,
"The entire film, in short, is an abominable mistake."
Sadly, we agree.
The second Doug Liman movie released in as many months during the early part of 2021,the
long-awaited adaptation "Chaos Walking" was another bust for the talented director.
The property was lauded as the next “Twilight” by Reuters when it revealed that Lionsgate had
acquired the movie rights way back in 2011. Liman boarded the project in 2016,
and by the end of the year, both Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland had signed on to star.
Filming went ahead, but early reactions to the movie were so bad, with execs at Lionsgate
reportedly calling it unreleasable after seeing the first cut, that major reshoots were ordered.
Unfortunately, Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland were too busy becoming huge names via the
"Star Wars" and Marvel movies. The brief obsession with dystopian YA films had long
since passed by the time "Chaos Walking" made it to the big screen in March 2021. However,
even if this intended franchise starter had been released alongside the likes of "The Hunger Games"
and "The Maze Runner," it would have struggled. Nobody really expected "Chaos Walking" to be a
game-changer after it spent so long in development hell, but it still managed to disappoint.
On paper, "Breaking News in Yuba County" was a surefire hit. However, this dark comedy about
a suburban housewife who strings the news media along with a lie about her cheating husband missed
its mark by a considerable distance. With Oscar winner Allison Janney leading the line, and a
great supporting cast, director Tate Taylor had a chance to do something special with the film.
But sadly, "Breaking News in Yuba County" comes off as a derivative version of the
films it aspires to rub shoulders with. Unfavorable comparisons to
Coen brothers classic "Fargo" were popular among the critics, unlike the film itself,
which was panned hard when it was released digitally and in theaters in February 2021.
Besides wasting a talented cast, the biggest sin
of "Breaking News in Yuba County" is overindulging in gratuitous violence.
“It’s not nice to point guns at people.”
The Hollywood Reporter shared,
"The bursts of brutality, explicit and suggested,
land somewhere on a spectrum between Tarantino and 'Looney Tunes,' and not in a good way."
Meanwhile, in a no-holds barred review, The New York Times questioned how a filmmaker like Taylor
came to direct this, quote, “amoral, repellent bag of sick.” Writer Amanda Idoko of “The Goldbergs”
clearly had something to say about tabloid culture, but her message gets bungled badly.
A sci-fi misfire that lives up to its name, "Cosmic Sin" stars a lethargic Bruce Willis as
a disgraced general who comes out of retirement to fight a hostile extraterrestrial race.
The action takes place in a far-off future where humankind has long since colonized planets outside
our solar system. War seems inevitable when one such planet is attacked by a hitherto
undiscovered civilization, and the odds are, of course, stacked against humanity.
Knowing it's their only shot, Willis and Frank Grillo of "Captain America:
The Winter Soldier" lead a preemptive strike on the alien army's home planet.
The film continued a dreadful run of form for Willis, who came under heavy
fire in the reviews. Christy Lemire of RogerEbert.com wrote of the film,
"To suggest that Bruce Willis is phoning in his performance in 'Cosmic Sin'
would be an insult to telephone communication,
which can be an effective means of conveying important information and genuine emotion.”
“It’s given me a lot to think about.”
The Los Angeles Times also noted that the faded action star was somehow more
lackluster than usual. Could a different, more interesting lead have saved this film?
In short, no. The criticism leveled at Willis was indeed valid, but co-writers Edward Drake,
who also directed, and Corey Large are equally guilty. They neglected to flesh-out the supporting
characters and lifted a little too liberally from the likes of "Battlestar Galactica."
It even fails as a straight-up action film, with choppy editing and uninspired battle sequences.
The relative success of 2019's "Detective Pikachu" and 2020's "Sonic the Hedgehog"
proved that there's an appetite for light-hearted live-action and CGI crossovers right now. However,
2021's "Tom and Jerry" failed to strike the same chord. While it was just about passable as a
mindless kids movie, unlike the aforementioned film, it gave teens and childless adults no
real reason to stick around until the credits. History's most famous cat and mouse duo get up to
all the usual trouble as they collide in New York City, and the animation looks fantastic. Even so,
the plot is paper thin, and the film's talented actors struggle to get anything from it.
The story unfolds in an upscale Manhattan hotel where Jerry has taken up residence.
When his presence puts a planned wedding reception at risk, new employee Kayla Forester,
played by Chloë Grace Moretz, suggests hiring Tom to help capture him, which the boss,
of course, thinks is a great idea. They fight, ruin the wedding, and then make
up to save it in predictable fashion, all to the backdrop of a jarring hip-hop soundtrack.
Sadly, even all features in supporting roles cannot help the lacking plot or save this misfire.
Released in April 2021, action thriller "Vanquish" has plenty of style, though
no amount of neon-hued shootouts can cover for the complete lack of substance here. Ruby
Rose stars as single mother Victoria, a former drug mule who managed to turn her life around.
She got a job as a caretaker for Damon Hickey, played by Morgan Freeman. He’s a
retired hero cop who lives a secret life as a crime lord. Victoria discovers this too late,
as Hickey kidnaps her daughter and demands that she collect some debts for him.
"Vanquish" is essentially a handful of forgettable gunfights, each followed by
an equally dull chase sequence. Victoria has to pick up cash at five different locations,
and the same thing happens every time. She meets resistance, resorts to force,
and then takes off on her motorcycle to deal with the next corny gangster on her list.
Ruby Rose does her best to make us care about what she's doing, but the sheer lack of character
development makes that a big ask of audiences, who hated the film almost as much as the critics did.
This was the third time that writer-director George Gallo had worked with Freeman in as
many years, yet he still hasn't figured out how to write for him. Richard Roeper at The
Chicago Sun-Times boldly said that Gallo burdens Morgan Freeman with stupid lines. Meanwhile, Peter
Travers, via ABC, called Freeman's participation in the project a, quote, “form of actor abuse."
The Paramount+ film "Infinite" lives up to its name in that it feels like it's never
going to end. Mark Wahlberg stars as Evan McCauley, a man suffering with what he
mistakenly believes to be hallucinations. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teen and
has been attempting to come to terms with his visions ever since. But everything he thinks he
knows about himself is thrown into doubt when a secret group of so-called Infinites seek him
out and reveal that he's actually one of them. The Infinites explain that his hallucinations
aren't really hallucinations at all — instead, they're memories from countless past lives.
Explaining away a debilitating mental illness as some kind of sci-fi deja vu isn't a good look for
any film, and that's far from the only issue here. "Training Day" director Antoine Fuqua
does his best to make the film flow, but he's working with a muddled, "Matrix"-lite
script that's more interested in world-building than character development. The presence of the
miscast Mark Wahlberg certainly doesn't help matters. In fact, he makes them decidedly worse.
"Infinite" was hammered by critics when it dropped on Paramount's streaming service in June 2021,
and the leading man was in the firing line. Polygon argued that
Marky Mark and sci-fi simply don't mix, asking,
"Did we learn nothing from Tim Burton's 'Planet of the
Apes' or M. Night Shyamalan's 'The Happening?'"
The original "Space Jam" didn't exactly blow the critics away when it hit cineplexes in 1996,
but thanks largely to a memorable supporting turn from Bill Murray, it went on to become a cult
favorite among millennials. There's no Bill Murray in the 2021 sequel "Space Jam:
A New Legacy," and in place of Michael Jordan, LeBron James leads the line. Like his predecessor,
James portrays himself in the film, in which he has to rescue a fictionalized version of
his son from a villainous artificial intelligence played by Don Cheadle.
You might be wondering how such a premise ever got past Warner Bros. execs until you see the film
and realize that it's 115 minutes of the studio aimlessly mashing its IPs together.
After his boy is somehow sucked into the Warner Bros. servers, King James must act. He follows
him into a virtual reality world created by Cheadle's character, who promptly sends
James to Tune World and orders him to create a basketball team made up of its inhabitants.
When he arrives, however, they're all missing — all except for Bugs Bunny. James and Warner
Bros.' iconic carrot-chomping rabbit set out to locate the other toons. Both James and Cheadle do
their utmost to elevate this glorified commercial for WB properties, but it's beyond them both.
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