It almost seems to be an unwritten Hollywood rule that for every amazing, well-crafted
piece of cinema released in any given year, there must be at least one completely misguided,
poorly executed, lazily written slog of a film.
2019 is no exception - and these are the worst movies of the bunch.
Keanu Reeves is as in demand as ever, and has even cemented his action star bona fides
relatively late in his career thanks to the John Wick series.
Over the years, he's only appeared in a handful of sci-fi features, so we were psyched to
see his return to the world of trippy sci-fi weirdness with Replicas.
Then the reviews started to come in.
According to critics, the film was a complete mess, plagued by a clumsy script written in
service of an absurd storyline.
Even worse for an action star of Reeves' caliber, it also featured unexciting action sequences
and plot holes you could drive a semi through.
The Guardian's Charles Bramesco offered up a Roger Ebert-esque review that took everyone
but Reeves to task:
"If only anyone else involved could muster a fraction of the consummate professionalism
that Reeves brings to his dead-serious intonation of the word 'algorithm,' this DOA science
project might have had a pulse."
All we can say to that review is:
for its last-minute reveal: just before the credits rolled, audiences realized that Split
was a stealth sequel to Shyamalan's amazing 2000 film Unbreakable.
Shyamalan brought it all together for the third film in the sudden trilogy, Glass, which
promised us a superpowered throwdown for the ages.
Typical of many of Shyamalan's movies, a vocal minority of critics found it to be a misunderstood
masterpiece.
Everyone else, however, simply found it to be poorly written, ploddingly paced, and boring.
Critic Mahmoud Mahdy of Film Gamed summed up the film with one harsh sentence in his
review:
"A wagon carrying dramatic garbage advancing on rails at a constant pace to reach a destination
where nobody ever wanted to go."
Serenity, starring Matthew McConaughey as a fishing boat captain and Anne Hathaway as
an ex-wife who shows up seeking protection from her new abusive husband, is a seedy murder
mystery with a twist.
The problem, unfortunately, is that the mystery isn't so tough to parse out, and the twist
is absolutely ridiculous.
In case you think we're being hyperbolic, consider the words of the great critic Rex
Reed, who has seen a bad movie or two in his distinguished career.
Writing for the Observer around the movie's release in January, Reed argued:
"Serenity already qualifies as the worst film of 2019.
Both moronically written and directed with shocking, amateurish ineptitude by Stephen
Knight, it's a pointless bomb."
Say what you will about the movie, but that sure doesn't sound...
"Alright, alright, alright."
Gina Rodriguez is probably most familiar to audiences by way of her starring role on the
CW's romantic comedy series Jane the Virgin, so it's a little unclear why Miss Bala would
attempt to make her over as an action star.
A remake of the 2011 Spanish film of the same name, Miss Bala stars Rodriguez as a makeup
artist who gets caught up in an extremely convoluted cross-border drug trafficking plot
while attempting to help a friend win a beauty contest.
While the film itself was roundly panned, critics made sure to give Rodriguez some credit.
Bilge Ebiri writing at the Rolling Stone manage to ding the film and praise Rodriguez in the
same review:
"This Hollywoodized remake is mostly generic and uninspired, but it also proves that Rodriguez
has the makings of a true movie star.
It’ll be exciting to see what she does next […] so long as it’s not a sequel to this."
Another year, another entry in the seemingly unkillable Madea series.
Every new installment brings two different sets of lines around the block: fans who can't
wait to catch the latest outing, and critics who can't wait to take their shots.
Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral was certainly no different, garnering $72 million at the
domestic box office while reliably bringing out maximum snark in virtually ever reviewer
tasked with sitting through it.
Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter definitely didn't hold any punches:
"Considering how well the character has served him, Perry certainly doesn't return the favor
in this graceless installment combining raucous comedy and turgid melodrama to undigestible
effect…This film, like almost all of his others, has a tossed-off quality, giving the
impression it was written and shot over a long weekend."
John Travolta has accomplished many things in his career: he helped to cement the popularity
of disco, assisted Quentin Tarantino in reinventing the crime film, and traded faces with Nicolas
Cage, to name just a few.
But 2019 saw him notch perhaps his most dubious achievement: fielding a picture which scored
a big fat goose egg on Rotten Tomatoes for the third time in two years.
His misbegotten biopic Gotti and woefully inept speedboat-racing thriller Speed Kills
were considered by many to be the worst films of 2018.
Trading Paint, the story of father-and-son race car drivers pitted against each other
by an unscrupulous rival, is shaping up to be a strong contender for this year's title.
The 11 critics who bothered to review it trashed it mercilessly, none more so than Johnny Oleksinski
of the New York Post:
"The races of “Trading Paint”... are as exciting as a Ford Taurus trying to parallel
park."
The silver lining here: a losing streak this egregious usually means there's nowhere to
go but up.
Director Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy adaptation from 2004, and its 2008 sequel The Golden
Army were fine adaptations of the famous comic book character, and the two movies have plenty
of fans to this day.
That's largely thanks to the director's unabashed love for the material, as well as a lead performance
from Ron Perlman in a role he was born to play.
"Code red."
"Hey, hey, hey.
They're playing our song.
Let's go fight some monsters."
A third del Toro-directed installment was rumored for years, but fell apart due to the
producers' desire to go the reboot route, much to the disappointment of Perlman and
many fans.
But with Stranger Things' David Harbour in the lead, The Descent's Neil Marshall in the
director's chair, and a hard R rating, the 2019 edition of Hellboy looked promising.
That is, right up until it landed in theaters with a resounding thud.
While there was plenty of praise for Harbour's take on the character, critics found it to
be a performance in service of a terrible film.
Spencer Perry at Coming Soon let it fly in a brutal review:
"The new Hellboy wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t so boring and ugly to look at.
Moments that happen just for the sake of moving the plot could be forgiven, but its garish
visuals hinder it and its plodding plot doesn’t come together in any satisfying way."
At first blush, a gender-flipped take on the 1988 comedy classic Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,
which featured Michael Caine and Steve Martin as dueling con men vying over the territory
of a seaside resort, seemed like a premise with a lot of potential.
The Hustle also had a lot going for it: Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson in the lead roles,
along with Veep veteran Chris Addison in the director's chair.
But something must have gone wrong between the conception and execution, because The
Hustle debuted to some of the harshest critical thrashings of the year thus far.
Onetime Roger Ebert cohort Richard Roeper channeled his old friend in his blistering
review for the Chicago Sun-Times:
"So predictable.
Just like everything in this movie.
If you don’t see the long con coming in this story, either you’re not paying attention
or … No.
That’s the only possible explanation.
Your mind wandered to thoughts of better movies playing elsewhere, perhaps right next door
to this debacle."
Meanwhile, The Detroit News' Adam Graham perhaps nailed the film the hardest:
"Who's conning who here?
In The Hustle, everyone's a sucker, most of all the audience."
The Intruder is a bit of an anomaly: a film featuring a widely-praised performance from
a veteran actor that was nevertheless mercilessly dragged by critics.
The performance in question comes from square-jawed, generally nice Dennis Quaid as Charlie Peck,
a seemingly nice older dude who sells his family home to a young couple only to creepily
insinuate himself into their lives.
Quaid's against-type, wildly over-the-top performance might have been remembered as
one for the ages by thriller aficionados.
If only it had been in the service of a better film.
Film Frenzy's Matt Brunson took particular issue with how poorly the film set up its
protagonists:
"If the protagonists in this film were any more dense, they would only exist as a thick
fog."
Nearly every negative review similarly lamented the film's utter predictability and ham-fisted
jump scares while admitting that seeing Quaid play a complete psycho was pretty fun.
The Critical Movie Critics' Frank Ochieng said:
"Unimaginative and clumsy, this generic groan-at-home sideshow’s only genuine appeal is watching
veteran screen star Quaid overly ham it up as the intruding, nutty nemesis hellbent on
reclaiming his territory."
Poms billed itself as an "uplifting comedy" about a group of women who start up a cheerleading
squad in their retirement home, and with a premise like that, casting is everything.
Fortunately, screen legends Diane Keaton, Pam Grier, and Rhea Perlman were all on board,
and the reviews certainly had no problems with the cast.
Instead, the critics' issues were with virtually everything else about the film.
It probably didn't help that Poms was the debut feature for both director Zara Hayes
and screenwriter Shane Atkinson.
Critics took the movie to task for everything from wasting its brilliant cast to disrespecting
the age group it was meant to uplift.
Ella Taylor at NPR pointed out a particularly grim plot point in her review of the film:
"... By hitching Martha's imminent death to the innocuous frivolity of a comic cheerleading
plot, Hayes and screenwriter Shane Atkinson take on responsibilities they can't follow
through on without getting into a tonal and thematic tangle…
As a fable of end-of-life empowerment, the movie has all the existential heft of an extended
L'Oreal commercial."
Rex Reed of the Observer succinctly pointed out the biggest problem in the film, and it's
not any of the talented cast:
"It’s the witless script by Shane Atkinson and the petrified direction by Zara Hayes
that lands everyone in traction."
The films of the Conjuring universe have certainly made their share of box office bank, but critically,
they've been a bit of a mixed bag.
In just the last couple years, reviewers have swung from hot, in the case of 2019's Annabelle
Comes Home, to ice cold for 2018's The Nun.
Unfortunately, the response to The Curse of La Llorona, based on a creepy bit of Mexican
folklore that seemed ripe for cinematic exploration, came down firmly on the "cold" side of that
equation.
Focusing on a social worker who incurs the wrath of a supernatural entity that preys
on children, Llorona turned critics off with its extreme reliance on formulaic scares.
Making things worse, some felt it failed to do justice to the true creepiness of the legend
on which it's based.
According to Alternate Ending's Tim Brayton:
"It can only barely get jump scares right; every single one of them for the film's first
hour is set-up, staged, and timed exactly the same way, so that they start to feel less
like visceral sucker punches and more like a baffling and unfunny running gag."
But National Post's Chris Knight put the final nail in La Llorona's coffin:
"Some horror films, like last year's Hereditary, are flat-out horrifying.
Others, such as the recent Halloween or Pet Sematary reboots, are legitimately frightening.
The Curse of La Llorona… is neither of these.
The best you could say is it's startling."
Dark Phoenix was supposed to be a lot of things: an epic sendoff to the heroes of the Fox-produced
X-Men series, a proper film adaptation of one of the greatest Marvel storylines of all
time, and, ideally, a hit movie.
But because of an extensive reworking of its third act and the inexperience of first-time
director Simon Kinberg, it ended up being exactly none of those things.
Matthew Lickona of the San Diego Reader seemed nearly disappointed when he wrote his review:
"It didn’t have to end this way - in such thoroughly standard smash ‘em up fashion,
with minor heroes dutifully duking it out with faceless hordes for punchy-power bolt
minute after punchy-power-bolt minute until the mayhem quotient has been met and the principals
can finally square off for their climactic lightshow.
More reviews, like Michael Calleri's of the Niagara Gazette seemed to echo the melancholy:
"Much of the cast actually looks exhausted.
Some of them seem as if a pall of ennui had settled over their persona.
Dark Phoenix is a dull money grab and nothing more."
Fielding a fourth installment in the Men in Black series seven years after the previous
installment, without franchise stars Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, was always a bit
of a risky proposition.
Still, Men in Black: International had two charismatic leads in Chris Hemsworth and Tessa
Thompson who had already proven their amazing screen chemistry with Thor: Ragnarok.
"I am Thor, Son of Odin, I need to get back to Asgard."
"Many apologies, your majesty."
Unfortunately, it takes more than just a couple of funny and talented actors to make a good
movie.
Even with the participation of Iron Man scribes Art Marcum and Matt Holloway and Friday director
F. Gary Gray, Men in Black: International fell woefully short of past installments of
the franchise.
Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal barely seemed willing to review the film at
all:
"No need to huff and puff about the idiocy of 'Men in Black: International.'
It is what it is, an industrial product recycled from the remnants of an exhausted franchise
and aimed at a young audience that may not know or care what a joy the original was."
While many reviewers had praise for Hemsworth and Thompson's comedic stylings, the movie
as a whole was roundly trashed.
Oliver Jones at The Observer spared some brief praise for Kumail Nanjiani's alien character
Pawny before blasting away at the film:
"Certainly, Pawny is mildly cute and, wielding a tiny sword that looks like it might struggle
to mince garlic, mostly harmless.
Those are also the nicest things you can say about the movie he is in, a largely toothless
and wit-free reboot that empties the last of the originality and vivacity that has been
steadily leaking out of the franchise with each subsequent installment.
On paper, it sounded Shaft-tastic: Richard Roundtree reprising his role as John Shaft
from the iconic 1971 original; Samuel L. Jackson returning as his son, John Shaft, Jr., from
the well-received 2000 sequel; and Jessie Usher as J.J.
Shaft, the latest in the line of famous badasses.
Unfortunately, it didn't live up to any of its potential, and critics generally agreed
that Shaft 2019 was a throwback in all the wrong ways.
Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called the film shamelessly regressive in his review:
"Rough justice is back to stay.
Women are out of the picture, except for sex.
Dinosaurs again walk the earth with misogynistic and homophobic impunity.
These are the laughs, folks.
Don’t be surprised if they stick in your throat."
RogerEbert.com's Odie Henderson was arguably even harsher on the film, saying:
"This movie is 'ruin your childhood' bad, right down to the hideous auto-tuned end credits
song they chose to use instead of the original 'Theme From Shaft.'"
But Jason Bailey of Flavorwire summed it up the best, writing:
"If you know one thing about John Shaft’s history and legacy, [the film is] downright
depressing"
French director Luc Besson has made a career out of making ultra-stylized flicks featuring
extremely formidable women, from 1990's Nikita to 1997's The Fifth Element to 2014's Lucy.
For his latest exploration of this theme, he recruited Russian supermodel Sasha Luss
for the title role in Anna, the story of an everyday woman who happens to look like a
Russian supermodel and somehow becomes a cold-blooded killer for the KGB.
If it all sounds a little familiar, critics agreed - many found the film so highly reminiscent
of Besson's previous work that it bordered on self-parody.
This may have been fine if the picture were serviceably made, but most observers found
Besson to be stuck firmly in neutral with Anna, a sparsely-plotted film with a distinct
lack of imagination.
The Guardian's Benjamin Lee said that:
"What ultimately sinks the film is its overwhelming blandness, from the lack of creativity employed
in Anna’s many kills to Besson’s inability to choreograph a pulse-racing action scene,
and the script’s belaboured attempts to jump back and forward in time to wrongfoot
us only highlight how little it brings to the table."
Meanwhile, Peter Sobczynski of RogerEbert.com critiqued the film for not living up to Besson's
previous works:
"...Even long-standing fans of his will find it hard to muster much enthusiasm for this
startlingly lazy bit of by-the-numbers hackwork."
In short, most critics' responses were best summed up in one line:
"I am very disappointed!"
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