What better time is there than Christmas to talk turkey? The movie kind, that is.
This year, turkeys once again outnumbered movies worth watching.
Hollywood also hit some alarming new lows in 2008. Most disturbing was the rise in the number of appalling "what were they thinking?" vehicles for major stars (are you listening, Mike Myers and Reese Witherspoon?) who should have known better.
Without further ado, let the turkey lambasting begin ...
1. College. A nasty, amateurish and shamelessly derivative alleged comedy about three dorky high school seniors -- a geek, a "normal" dude and the usual obnoxious fat guy -- who endure a weekend of debauchery at a college campus, complete with gratuitous profanity and gags about masturbation, used condoms, gay panic and binge drinking. This was such a raunchy, half-baked misfire it made Superbad, the teen sex romp it so pathetically ripped off, seem like high art.
2. The Love Guru. Having my wisdom teeth extracted was a more pleasant experience than watching this painfully unfunny vehicle for a regressive Mike Myers, expelling infantile double-entendres and mugging wildly as a lewd, delusional Deepak Chopra wannabe. For a movie about a spiritual master who spreads joy, this was one joyless journey. How the mighty have fallen! And Mariska Hargitay should sue for the way Myers lamely exploited her name as a fake Hindi greeting.
3. Over Her Dead Body. Noel Coward must be muttering killer bon mots in his grave for the way Hollywood bastardized his sparkling farce Blithe Spirit. In this feeble twist, Eva Longoria's performance as a bitchy bride-to-be who dies in a freak accident and returns as a ghost to sabotage her former groom's new romance was as bogus as her fake tan. Dead on arrival.
4. Fool's Gold. Speaking of tans, the buff, bronzed bodies of Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson couldn't save this foolish, tarnished and excruciatingly tedious romantic comedy-adventure about a divorce-bound couple who reunite to search for a shipwreck loaded with gold. There was little to treasure in a movie that had nothing going for it besides eye candy.
5. Mad Money. A big payday had to be the only reason Diane Keaton, Katie Holmes and Queen Latifah agreed to play three cheerfully amoral cleaning ladies who rob the Federal Reserve Bank in a counterfeit comedy that, unbelievably, was directed by Thelma and Louise screenwriter Callie Khouri. It wasn't just the bank that got robbed by these larcenous ladies; so did we.
6. What Happens in Vegas. This shrill, so-called comedy about two strangers who meet in Vegas, impulsively tie the knot after a boozy one-nighter and then bicker endlessly over a $3-million jackpot each lays claim to, was a gamble that failed to pay off. A screeching, mugging and unflatteringly presented Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher were fingernail-on-chalkboard irritating as they slogged through a minefield of mismatched newlywed cliches. This idea should have stayed in Vegas.
7. Four Christmases. No amount of shiny gift wrapping or an A-list cast that includes Jon Voight, Robert Duvall and Sissy Spacek could disguise the fact that this raunchy, mean-spirited comedy about a San Francisco couple (Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn) who reluctantly visit all four of their divorced, dysfunctional parents on Christmas Day, is a lump of coal. This humiliation-a-thon gets so revolting it makes Bad Santa seem like a charming Hallmark Christmas special.
8. The Happening. M. Night Shyamalan outdid himself this year -- and not in a good way. Like his characters who inexplicably kill themselves when a mysterious toxic substance blankets America, there were times I felt like putting myself out of my misery during this laughably preposterous and inert doomsday thriller. The scariest thing about this movie from the suspense-meister who has lost his freaky touch is that it even made it into theatres.
9. Saw V. What was once a grisly, twisted curiosity bolstered by Tobin Bell's creepy demeanor as Jigsaw, the sadistic, mind games-playing sociopath, has degenerated into a bloody bore. Watching this clumsy and incoherent bottom-of-the-barrel hack job with a Jigsaw copycat was torture akin to that inflicted on yet another batch of victims. Stop the madness!
10. Babylon, A.D. No wonder director Mathieu Kassovitz publicly disowned this silly, studio-butchered apocalyptic thriller starring Vin Diesel as a mercenary strong-armed into transporting a woman with a potentially deadly virus from an Eastern European convent to New York. This was a nihilistic, incomprehensible mess that not even a top-shelf cast including Gerard Depardieu could knock any sense into.
