The Worst Films of 2002
Since I knew I was going to have to watch a bunch of these anyway, I figured I would make it my
mission this year to try to see as many terrible films that are released this year, and I'm well
on my way. For them to be on this list I have to have seen them, they have to suck, and they have
to have been released in 2002 (otherwise I can guarantee you that How High would be on here). There
are a few bad movies I'm not going to see this year, and they are generally the ones that are destined
to be runaway hits (like Scorpion King and XXX, etc...) I do not want to contribute to making
horrible films successful, I only want to go laugh at films that are clearly pieces of shit that
people will avoid.
| #1 Kung Pow: Enter the Fist -
Topping my list, this film was disgracefully bad. It was essentially one
joke (re-dubbing bad Kung Fu movies) with some total idiot as the main character. The main
thing that made this film so amazing was that the opening scene was the worst of the film. It
started with this fight between an infant, a genuine infant maybe a couple months old, and a whole
group of martial arts killers, and the baby wins. After that, I was pretty much disinterested and
annoyed for the rest of the film. If you want to see a truly terrible film, this is the one for
you. |
| #2 Rollerball -
Not the best film to remake in the first place, but what the hell was going on in this movie?
Possibly the worst casting I can imagine for a movie like this, the acting by LL Cool J and Chris
Klein was so bad that Rebecca Romjin-Stamos (a supermodel) stole the show with HER "acting". Even
Jean Reno was embarrasingly bad in this film. Most amazing was that John McTiernan directed this
mess, a guy who is in my opinion a fantastic filmmaker. This film was a disaster from start to finish
with something I had never seen before: an entire scene (10 minutes or so) filmed in NIGHT-VISION!
Bad acting, bad directing and a bad script made for the triple crown of shit with this film.
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| #3 Crossroads -
Britney Spears in her own movie! Wow, incredibly it was just as bad as you would have thought.
Britney can't act (not a surprise), the film took no risks at all (not a surprise), and for a movie
about three girls driving across country in a convertible, there were about four too many scenes
where the girls sing along with the radio (gee, never seen that in a movie before). The plot "twists"
were obvious, the dialogue was horrendous, and you needed a lot of suspension of disbelief for this
movie. For those who would say "yeah, but I just wanna see Britney in skimpy attire", well she does do
her first two scenes in her underwear (no nudity), but that's all you get.
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| #4 Windtalkers -
This year's offering from my least favorite director, John Woo, turns out to be unquestionably one of his worst. I mean
it wasn't as bad as Broken Arrow, but it was less enjoyable than Hard Target, just cause that one was funny. It was
about as dull and as unbelievable as MI:2 though. Nicholas Cage has never been worse than he was in this shitfest, and
that's saying a lot if you look at the turds he's been in the last 5 years or so. The whole premise of the movie is that
in WWII the US used these Navajo Indians and their language to base their military codes on, and used the Navajos as "codetalkers"
to communicate their military messeges back and forth. However, in this movie, there are only two instances where any
codes are used to talk back and forth, and in both cases its totally wasted, cause they only say stuff like "bomb that hill there"
and then seconds later it gets destroyed. So what's the use of the code, if the bunker they're talking about is gonna get
bombed in like 5 seconds? The movie is just a stupid excuse for John Woo to blow up a bunch of shit. The movie is a mess from
start to finish. The worst part was when they had the Navajo guy pretend he was Japanese to infiltrate the enemy base. They
did this because they all figured that nobody would be able to tell the difference between a full-blooded Native American Indian
and a Japanese soldier. And it wasn't a joke either. Just avoid this bomb, there's a reason that MGM lost over $100 million on it.
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| #5 High Crimes -
Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman, reunited after their fantastic first outing in "Kiss the Girls".
Gee, who could ask for anything more? What a pile of crap this movie was. Its yet another of Ashley's
seemingly endless string of "thrillers" with a "strong female lead", and this one was probably the
worst of them all so far. Once again its one of those movies where the "surprises" are everything
except surprising. Its also a film that gets more ridiculous, and less enjoyable as it gets closer
to the end. It wasn't so bad up until the last 30-45 minutes or so, but man, the end was just awful.
This one was worse than the movies after it on my list mainly because while those movies you wouldn't
expect much out of, with Morgan Freeman and a decent budget and all of that, you would expect more
than just a total rehash of any number of other movies exactly like this that are already out there.
Its one of those movies that just pisses you off while you watch it, and makes you wonder why the
studios keep going for these piles of shit. And they keep on coming too. J-Lo's new movie "Enough"
looks to be pretty much the same thing. Wow, I can't wait.
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| #6 Swimfan -
Don't you hate movies where the characters are hideously one-dimensional? I mean, come on, nobody is
purely good or purely evil. Except in this movie. The girl is a total psycho for no apparent reason.
I mean, she meets this guy, coerces him into having sex with him (and him being the angel he is, she does
have to force herself on him), she coerces him into saying "I love you" because she says "say it even if
you don't mean it." Then the next day she's a full blown stalker, trying to make him look bad in front of
his girlfriend, calling him over and over, paging him, sending him 80+ emails, showing up talking to his
mom, making copies of his car keys, etc... Meanwhile the guy is great, he works in a hospital helping the
elderly, he's liked by everyone, he never does anything wrong, and is just the random target of a psycho.
He's so good, in fact, that in the big final showdown, when she tries to kill him and his girlfriend, he
doesn't even kill her in self defense. No, instead she accidentally drowns in a pool. What a terrible
remake of Fatal Attraction this pile was. Why people keep making this stuff is beyond me.
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| #7 Collateral Damage -
Probably the only good thing to come out of the terrorist attacks was that they delayed the release
of this laughable bomb until 2002 so it could make this list. After 9/11 they should have just
destroyed this film, but oh no, we couldn't skip another Arnie action flick could we? In this one,
Arnie plays a fireman named, get this, Gordon "Gordie" Brewer, and they don't even bother to try to
explain his accent. His family gets killed and he singlehandedly tracks down the terrorists in
South America and cracks the case and saves the day. The film had everything, from Arnold saying
his classic lines like "Get down!" (after wrestling a guy in a minefield), Arnold wearing a silly hat
as "disguise", and the bad guy coming back to life for one last crack at our hero after he blew him
to bits with an explosion (Arnold kills him again, of course). Laughably bad, that's why its not
higher on this list, because at least it was entertaining accidentally.
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| #8 Jason X -
This one I clearly went into expecting to laugh, and laugh I did. I mean, Jason in the future, in
space, and he gets mechanically altered to be a better killing machine? How funny is that? Then
add to that the fact that everyone in the cast appears to be under the age of 25 (except for the
guy in charge who looks kind of like the male singer from the B-52s), and all of them could be
supermodels. There are some genuinely funny moments in this film, and at least a few of them are
on purpose, but most of the film is the standard Friday the 13th fare with Jason walking around
killing people who get in his way, etc... In other words, it sure was a crappy movie, but at least
it got some genuine laughter out of me.
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| #9 Resident Evil -
This one was actually somewhat entertaining with a premise that was sort of interesting. It did have
horrendous acting, and the queen of scowling Michelle Rodriguez (whos looks she gives the camera are
always good for a laugh). This movie's main flaw was that it ripped off just about every sci-fi/
horror movie I can think of, and really how good can a zombie movie be at this point?
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