We’re at the point of no return, people. Let’s find out what five films were deepest into the dung heap this year…
5 – BLACKLIGHT
While Liam Neeson is often a reliable action lead, not even he could do anything to lift up this absolute stinking corpse of a political thriller, which to call “dumb” and “incompetent” would be to severely undermine how stupid and lazy it actually is.
It’s a movie that plays so heavily into far-left conspiracy theories and ideologies that nobody on either side of the wing would ever buy the level of absurdity that it projects onto its captive audience. Woodenly-acted characters will utter some atrocious dialogue that is designed specifically to trigger a faux-political response, in a plot that makes insultingly less sense by the minute, with action which is so badly edited that not only are you unable to tell what is actually supposed to be happening, but makes the famous split-second editing in Neeson’s Taken 3 look like award-winning cinema. It’s filmmaking that you would expect to see in a direct-to-video Steven Seagal movie, but the fact that a movie with this bad production quality was actually projected onto the big screen (in the US, at least; UK audiences mercifully got it through the more appropriate streaming option) makes it feel so much more of a middle-finger to the paying audience.
The critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes perfectly sums it up: turn it off…
There’s nothing more uncomfortable to sit through than a bad comedy, but when it’s one that also features two comedically-talented actors working with material that is so far beneath them it’s practically at the Earth’s core, all backed up with millions of dollars from a major streaming service, it’s somewhat depressing to even think about.
Kevin Hart and Mark Wahlberg have certainly starred in their equal share of bad movies, and certainly bad comedies, but their painfully forced partnership in Netflix’s entirely laugh-free raunchy outing certainly takes the cake. Filled with juvenile gross-out gags that aren’t even shocking in the moment since they’re heavily telegraphed, and an endless parade of eye-rolling set pieces that only serve to show the amount of money that Netflix bafflingly spent on this movie, there’s no enjoyment to be had for the adult audience it’s aiming for since it feels just as childish as a bottom-of-the-barrel Happy Madison movie. Watching it, you just feel drained from all the non-laughing you’re doing, and wishing that you were literally doing anything else other than wasting your own precious “me time” on this miserable turd.
Amazingly, though, it’s still not Netflix’s worst comedy this year – you’ll find out soon enough what trumps even this…
The signs were all there for this one to be a real stinker – it’s about a sketch comedy character who’s way past their peak in popularity, contains juvenile and un-PC humour that wouldn’t even have gone over well in the early-to-mid 2000s, and it doesn’t even have a credited director (not even Alan Smithee would touch it) – and Catherine Tate certainly did not disappoint.
It’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect if you’ve ever seen any film starring a one-joke comedy character, from endless scenes of them repeating the same schtick over and over again with painful ad-libbing, to so much farting and pissing that even an infant would look on in disgust. God bless Tate, though, who seems to be having a reasonable amount of fun under all that OAP make-up, but nobody else around her – whether it’s Matthew Horne as her long-suffering grandson, or the poor viewer – seems to be half as engaged as she is, making for something that frequently tests your patience with how poorly edited, shot, and especially written it is.
What’s truly flabbergasting, though, is how The Nan Movie – of all movies – feels like it has a much better movie happening underneath the surface, one that is constantly being butchered by the far lazier and more juvenile one. Flashback sequences with a younger version of the title character, which also feature Katherine Parkinson as her sister and Parker Sawyers as the American GI they form a love triangle with, seem like they’ve been spliced in from a completely different film, one that has better cinematography, production values, and most of all is written to have actual characters and drama (which still aren’t astounding, but are still far superior). Perhaps it was these scenes that were done by Josie Rourke, the director who was originally credited for this film until there ended up being no directing credit whatsoever, but then the powers that be decided that there just wasn’t enough footage of Nan getting high at a rave or teaming with an IRA terrorist, and so it became this weird Franken-movie made up of different parts from completely separate movies.
It’s like watching a YouTube edit where someone splices scenes from Brooklyn into Keith Lemon: The Film, and that’s a combination that nobody should ever have to endure. What a f**king liberty, indeed…
After everything we’ve been through over the last two years with COVID-19, it’s safe to say that all of us would be better off if it didn’t rear its ugly face within the main circulation of society ever again – much like, in a very similar fashion, each and every one of us would benefit from never, ever having to deal with Judd Apatow’s utter embarrassment of a COVID-sploitation “comedy” for as long as we have left to live.
Easily the worst film of Apatow’s directing career (so much so that this really should have been the one out of his films to have been called Trainwreck), this endlessly smug, empty-headed, and most of all aggressively unfunny take on inflated Hollywood egos and nightmarish productions attempted to make light of a time of genuine crisis for the film industry and the rest of the world, but did so in a way that left absolutely no redeeming qualities for itself. Barely strung together by a series of vignettes instead of a more thorough structure, Apatow strands his comedically talented ensemble cast – including Karen Gillan, Pedro Pascal, David Duchovny, Keegan-Michael Key, and even his own wife and daughter Leslie Mann and Iris Apatow – on thinner material than tissue paper, leaving them to power through this structure-free script without any sense of direction whatsoever.
Because there is nothing to this film – no joke lands, no scene feels naturally linked to one another, and none of the characters are interesting or likeable to be around – you feel so lost whilst watching it, to where you almost become furious that such talented people have come together to essentially do nothing substantial and still feel as though they can walk away with their dignities intact. Its satirical targets therefore come across as hypocritical; even though it’s about egotistical Hollywood personalities on a big blockbuster set (in this case, a fictional Jurassic World knock-off that’s only slightly more comprehensible than the actual Jurassic World movie this year) under extreme health conditions, it says nothing about these targets that films like Tropic Thunder hadn’t said already, and does so in a way where it feels as though it’s being high and mighty by being the one to point the finger at society. It feels far more smarmy than something like Don’t Look Up, which at least had some level of ambition to it; this movie is completely mirthless, and an insult that such a terribly contrived movie even exists to begin with.
It’s the ultimate capper of a bad year for Netflix, and a film that anyone who sees it would very quickly like to forget about – especially compared to our next film, which by stark contrast is unforgettable in all the wrong ways…
By each and every measure, this spy thriller from director/writer/producer/financier/lead star Michael Flatley – yes, the Lord of the Dance himself – is, critically speaking, the year’s worst film. The writing is atrocious, the acting is laughable, the level of filmmaking is exceptionally inept, and it’s every bit as vain-glorious as you could imagine a film with such a singular voice like this being. The thing is, though, while it is by every stretch awful, I would so much rather watch this film dozens more times than I would any other movie on this list – because in addition to being terrible, it’s also an unintentionally hilarious goldmine of bad movie treasure.
This is a bad film that, like The Room, Troll 2 and Fateful Findings before it, needs to be seen to be believed. It’s impossible to watch any scene from this movie with a straight face, because there’s so much bonkers stuff going on that you might be in danger of missing something due to laughing too hard at it. There are scenes in this movie where 64-year-old Flatley takes on opponents who are not only younger but far more physically fit than he is, and WINS each and every time with barely a streak of his own blood on him; at another point, a random woman will just walk into his bedroom and immediately disrobe without saying a word, implying that the retired dancer is also some kind of sex god with mesmerising seduction powers. That’s even before we get to the “plot” (in the loosest of terms), which involves Eric Roberts and a MacGuffin that can apparently cure all the world’s diseases – it’s at this point that you must be reminded: this is not a spoof, or even a comedy, and is every bit as genuine as some of the classic Bond movies, which makes it even funnier to behold.
The film is already beginning to leave its mark upon lovers of bad movies, with even the famed Prince Charles Cinema in London starting to have regular screenings of it alongside The Room, further cementing its growing cult status as a so-bad-it’s-good film that you just can’t miss. And, honestly, I really do recommend seeing it – weird to say, I know, about a film that ranks as the #1 worst film of the year, but it really is a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of bad movie that you can seek out and play drinking games along to with your pals (though the number of times that Flatley’s hat is tipped to one side or the other might leave you down for the count before the midway point). You’d still be watching a very bad movie, but it’s one that is so hilariously awful that you’re bound to have a good time regardless of that fact, which is more than I can say for the other movies that have shown up on this list, many of which are best left to rot in the void for the rest of eternity.
Not this one, though. Blackbird might be the year’s worst film, but it is by far one of the most unintentionally entertaining film-viewing experiences that you’ll have in a long while…
Blackbird is now available to rent/buy on most digital platforms.
Finally, we can wash our filthy hands of those foul movies, and shift our focus to the year’s best films!
