They say that Hollywood is a bulk business, and 2023 is not shaping up to be an exception.
We're only halfway through the year, and there are already some truly awful movies out there.
These are the worst of the worst.
The world is still trying to make sense of the COVID-19 pandemic.
One of the purposes of art is to unpack the emotions, lessons, and impact of shared human
experiences like this.
It's unsurprising, then, that a curious sub-genre of pandemic movies has developed in recent years.
By and large, these somber, anxious, and surreal movies have been met with savage critical assessments.
Perhaps not enough time has passed to gain an interesting artistic perspective, or maybe
nobody wants to relive the most painful days of 2020.
Either way, movies like "Locked Down" and "The Bubble" were not well received, and in
2023, "Life Upside-Down" joined them.
"Life Upside Down" consists of intertwining stories about a few hard-to-root-for Los Angeles couples.
Art gallery owner Jonathan is stuck quarantining with his wife, but he misses his mistress,
Clarissa, who lives solo and interacts with the world at a distance.
Sheltering at home makes everyone sad, mad, and upset, feelings that audiences will certainly
remember experiencing themselves not that long ago.
This did not land well.
Nell Minow of RogerEbert.com had this to say:
"The characters are shallow and tiresomely needy, not to make any point or learn any
lessons, just due to a lack of imagination."
Minow was far from alone in this opinion.
Critics absolutely lambasted the film.
Released in 1990, the original "House Party" is a modern comedy classic.
The light-hearted, likable, and low-key ensemble film starred then-popular rap duo Kid N' Play
as a couple of high school friends who pull off an epic rager despite numerous setbacks
that threaten to derail things at every turn.
It spawned a couple of okay sequels, and, in 2023, a remake.
The new film ups the stakes, the wacky comedy, and the celebrity branding, which results
in an incongruous jumble.
This time, the partiers are adults, best friends, and failed promoters, Damon and Kevin.
About to lose their low-paying jobs as house cleaners and on the verge of financial ruin,
they decide to throw a shindig in the last house they're scheduled to clean: A mansion
belonging to NBA superstar LeBron James.
The rest of the movie consists of material celebrating and lightly teasing James, drug-fueled
party hijinks, and rapper cameos.
Critics didn't outright loathe the new "House Party" across the board, but they were largely
unimpressed and confused as to why it needed to exist.
As Richard Roeper of "The Chicago Sun-Times" put it,
"The bash at LeBron James' mansion ends up feeling more exhausting than exciting."
Brian Richards of "Pajiba" agreed, writing,
"This version wasn't as funny or as good as it could've and should've been, and it doesn't
even have the same level of heart as the original."
Reinventing the romantic comedy is a noble and ambitious effort.
Attempting to explore a love story through the lens of modern technology is even more enticing.
Millions of people spend their whole lives on sophisticated smartphones, but it's hard
to make staring at screens, smiling, particularly romantic.
That's the trouble with "Your Place or Mine," a Netflix original starring the usually charming
Reese Witherspoon and Aston Kutcher, both of whom have extensive rom-com experience.
Their characters, Debbie and Peter, had a fling 20 years ago.
They're now best friends who live on opposite coasts.
After they get a taste of each other's lives by switching houses, she goes to Los Angeles,
he regroups in New York, they wind up falling in love.
Almost the entirety of their relationship unfolds via phone calls.
"Your Place or Mine" couldn't quite overcome its own restrictions, earning a critical shellacking.
Rex Reed of the "Observer" wrote,
"About as romantic and funny as a root canal."
"Is it safe…?"
Others agreed, calling the movie a flat exercise in rom-com tropes cutting-edge technology
can't save.
In 1978, horror master Stephen King published the short story "Children of the Corn" in
the anthology "Night Shift."
Before long, Hollywood adapted the creepy tale of a tiny Midwestern farm town populated
entirely by sacrifice-obsessed children.
After making the first "Children of the Corn" movie in 1984, the filmmakers never stopped.
The latest "Children of the Corn" is the 11th entry in the franchise.
This time, the story unfolds a little differently.
The terrifying cult leader is a 12-year-old girl instead of a boy, and it's a plucky high
school student who dares to stand up to her and her army of adult-killing kids.
This latest take on the story has additionally differentiated itself by earning truly execrable reviews.
Richard Whittaker of "The Austin Chronicle" said,
"It's all so ridiculous and implausible."
Sara Michelle Fetters of "Moviefreak" concurred, writing,
"The only emotional response this 'Children of the Corn' scares up is boredom."
A daringly sinister slaughter of a sacred cow, "Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey" boasts
a simple premise: It's a horror version of A.A.
Milne's classic stories of the Hundred Acre Wood, famously populated by Pooh, Piglet,
Tigger, Eeyore, and their human friend Christopher Robin.
The work entered the public domain in 2022, so it's fair game for interpretation.
"Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey" doesn't do much to analyze or satirize its well-known
source material, however.
The movie is a by-the-numbers slasher dressed in Pooh's clothing, and that novelty wears
off quickly.
The plot involves little more than murderous incarnations of Pooh and Piglet attacking
Christopher Robin and several young women staying in a nearby cabin.
Kyle Turner of "The New York Times" laments,
"It's not funny enough to have anything clever to say about its gag, and it's not exciting
enough to be a competent horror movie."
It's as if the makers of "Paint" set out to make a biopic about big-haired public television
art instructor Bob Ross but then couldn't get the rights, so they decided to make a
different movie about a guy who just looks like Bob Ross.
"Paint," written and directed by Brit McAdams, best known for his work behind the camera
on Comedy Central's "Tosh.0," seems to want to make fun of Bob Ross for no discernible reason.
The usually charming and effortlessly funny Owen Wilson stars in "Paint" as Carl Nargle.
He's a man very satisfied with his life and appreciative of it too.
Carl has everything an enlightened man of the 1970s could want, like his own painting
show on Vermont public TV, adoring fans who paint along with him at home, and laudable hair.
He then falls into an ugly but predictable movie-style existential crisis when another,
younger, better painter comes along, threatens his comfortable existence, and makes him confront
some ugly truths.
To compete in a crowded marketplace of special effects-laden, intricately-plotted, and would-be
blockbusters, action and sci-fi filmmakers have to lay out as many new ideas as possible.
But "65," written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, the team responsible for
the screenplay for "A Quiet Place," went simple, assembling recognizable tropes from well-known
sci-fi properties.
The action begins on the futuristic planet of Somaris.
A pilot named Mills volunteers for a two-year space mission to get the money for the miracle
cure for his daughter's illness.
But he gets lost in space and crash-lands on an unfamiliar planet, along with a child
named Koa.
It's no big surprise to the audience when the planet turns out to be Earth, but it's
65 million years in the past, hence the generic title of the movie.
Do the two run for their lives from giant dinosaurs and then also falling space rocks?
Of course they do.
Unfortunately, the end result isn't any fun, and it doesn't feel particularly inspired.
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, then didn't stop
to ask if they should."
You've seen this movie before with different names and different characters.
On Rotten Tomatoes, "65" cobbled together a mediocre 35% critical score.
Rex Reed of "The Observer" savaged it saying,
"'65' is a gruesome thing to watch, even for dinosaur lovers — and not much fun, either."
Actors are supposed to be performance chameleons, disappearing into their roles to tell a compelling story.
"Ghosted" stars two actors so famous, radiant, and associated with other roles that it's
nearly impossible to believe them in this romance-action-comedy that cribs from so many
other movies.
Chris Evans, best known for his multiple outings as Captain America, unconvincingly plays a
regular guy named Cole.
He goes on a date with a mysterious and captivating woman named Sadie, who's so secretive that
it's off-putting.
It's almost as if she's a spy.
She is a spy, of course, and as their young relationship develops, they fall into the
midst of a dangerous international caper.
Sadie sternly and violently fights the couple's way out of trouble while Cole can't believe
the craziness around him, even after wild things keep happening every five minutes.
As a result, "Ghosted" is essentially a greatest-hits collection of familiar action movie tropes.
With a 26% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, "Ghosted" is a frothy frivolity that didn't leave a
good impression on critics.
Wenlei Ma wrote on Australia's "News.com,"
"This was the leftover scraps cobbled together from better scripts."
Clarisse Loughrey of The Independent accused "Ghosted" of "trying to brainwash its audience"
on account of the lack of spark between the leads.
"Love Again" is a movie out of its time, an earnest but ultimately dull and dated throwback
to '90s romantic comedy movies.
But it's got a little something extra in the form of grief and sadness, which the film
can't quite ever overcome.
That makes for a tonally weird movie, flitting from Priyanka Chopra Jonas' Mira mourning
the death of her fiancé to Mira going on a wacky date with a doofus played by Chopra
Jonas' husband, Nick Jonas, a prolonged wink to the presumably in-the-know audience.
The plot kicks off with a heartbreaker of an inciting incident.
Mira sends lovey-dovey text messages to her deceased fiancé's old phone number, unaware
it's been given to Rob, a journalist who just so happens to be an attractive man roughly
Mira's age.
At the moment, he's spending an inordinately long time profiling Celine Dion, presented
as a contemporary mega-star.
As you might guess based on that bit of info, "Love Again" leans hard into the '90s vibes.
Celine believes in love, and so she plays Cupid for Rob and Mira.
"You okay?"
Kate: "I, uh, just threw up in my mouth a little bit"
A 24% score makes "Love Again" a Rotten Tomatoes dud, with critics decidedly not charmed by
the movie.
David Ehrlich of "IndieWire" bemoaned,
"Most of the laugh lines in 'Love Again' are stale enough that even just hearing them kind
of hurts your teeth."
At least two critics had pretty much the same complaint, with Marah Eakin of the Chicago
Reader saying she didn't enjoy the movie's "Hallmark-level plot" and Rex Reed of The
Observer negatively comparing the whole thing to "a Hallmark card."