TNMC
This site’s design is only visible in a graphical browser that supports web standards, but its content is accessible to any browser or Internet device.
The Worst of Cinema in 2002
Finally, today we unveal the worst of 2002 as selected by myself and my TNMC buddies John Shea, Dr. Strangelove and Miss Jones. I hope you enjoy reading about all the bad movies released this past year. We'll follow next week with my top 10 best films of 2002.
The Top Ten Worst Films of 2002
10. Mr. Deeds
Adam Sandler's horrible dirty secret is that he's a nice guy. His movies keep getting nicer and nicer until finally he bottoms out with this loose remake of a Capra film. The very fact that Capra and Sandler can turn up together should have been your first clue that this one was going to be a bottom feeder. Oddly enough, another of this year's Sandler films, Punch-Drunk Love manages to take that niceness and flip side of rude and aggressive behavior and weave a good story. Mr. Deeds on the other hand shows just how badly those two sides of him can clash.
9. Juwanna Mann
A guy in drag becomes a WNBA star. Run now...
8. The Time Machine
This movie made the list purely on its brains, or more specifically, its total lack of them. Highly anticipated because of the famous novel it's based on, that anticipation turned to horror at the final product. Guy Pearce basically blows all the buzz around himself after Memento with this turkey.
7. Men in Black 2
I hated this movie. There were no redeeming qualities and it should have been a lot better. A movie based off the orginial MIB had a great deal of potential and someone involved dropped the ball.
6. Halloween: Ressurection
A sequel to H2O was a bad idea. Another Halloween movie was a bad idea. However, Busta Rhymes actually was not a bad idea and he is the movie's only redeeming quality. Jamie Lee, you let me down.
5. Queen of the Damned
Years ago, Neil Jordan did a great job of adapting the Anne Rice novel Interview with the Vampire into a nice little film. Fans of Rice's Vampire novels looked forward to similar efforts for the next book in the series, The Vampire Lestat. For reasons known only to Warner Bros., the sequel never followed. They eventually found themselves facing a tight deadline to make another movie or lose the rights to Rice's novels entirely. So they churned out a sequel based on the third book in the series, Queen of the Damned. It combined elements of the second novel and rewrote large sections of both to arrive at a film that bore only a vague resemblence to the books and also didn't make much sense on its own. Stuart Townsend inherits Tom Cruise's character Lestat and entirely fails to emulate any of the former actor's solid work. The late singer Aaliyah played the title role. The great tragedy is that this bust is her last appearance on film. She showed too much potential to have this be her legacy.
4. Pluto Nash
Who the hell greenlit this film? It wasn't released for almost two years. I think Warner Bros. should have sent it directly to video. An expensive waste of time and talent. How can a project with John Cleese and Luis Guzman be this bad?
3. Swept Away
A disaster of epic proportions. Guy Ritchie, one of the most exciting British directors in decades almost destroyed his career. All of this thanks to his very untalented acting wife, Madonna. Someone should stop that evil woman from ever making movies. If someone in Hollywood should divorce, it outta be these two. She's ruining his talent with her inept thespian skills. Guy, i don't care whatever she offers you (in bed perhaps?) but PLEASE do not ever cast her in one of your movies AGAIN!
2. Rollerball
The original was an over rated cautionary sci-fi tale starring a young James Caan. John McTiernan modernizes the film but adds nothing new in terms of message. What he does add is a great sense of confusion. This is one of the most incoherent films that I've seen in many many years. The film has no flow and seems mostly to have been shot for maximum confusion. There is virtually nothing to praise in the film. It was so bad that I almost want to go back and watch it again to try and appreciate some of its more subtle badness. There are so many big things going horribly wrong that I'm quite sure I missed some of the smaller ones. One of the worst things about the film is that it was directed by McTiernan who directed one of the all time great action films in Die Hard. How he could apparently lose skill in the intervening years is baffling. I can only pray that this was a fluke and he can get back on track with his next movie.
1. Resident Evil
Anytime you base a movie on a video game, trouble is bound to follow. The two formats have such wildly different strengths that it's virtually impossible to turn a game into a good movie. Resident Evil, helmed by Paul Anderson, a director with a long line of uninspiring films to his credit, is exactly why this type of adaptation shouldn't be attempted. Characters are so thin as to be non-existent. Dialogue is pitifully sparse. Any sense of a story is evident only to fans of the many incarnations of the game. With so much wrong you hope for some genuine horror to add something to the film but again you would be disappointed. One neat little scene with killer lasers is the only thing keeping this from reaching higher on the list.
Worst Directors of 2002:
Barry Sonnenfeld (Big Trouble, MIB 2): This guy never recovered from Wild Wild West. Please go back to dark comedies NOW...
George Lucas (Star Wars:Episode 2): Another dissapointing three year wait. You're a lost cause.
Guy Ritchie (Swept Away): Gone from promising to annihilating. See what happens when you wed Madonna?
Worst Actors of 2002:
Tom Green (Stealing Harvard): the hair and the glasses were funny, but you weren't.
Eddie Murphy: (Showtime, Pluto Nash and I Spy): Need we say more?
Matthew Perry (Serving Sara): Won't Hollywood ever learn that this man is a GOOD TV actor. Stop casting him in lead movie roles. Enough already.
Worst Actresses of 2002:
Michelle Rodriguez (Resident Evil, Blue Crush): Girlfight seems like a lifetime ago...
Madonna (Swept Away): She could possibly be the worst actress ever. I've seen better acting than hers in a porn flick.
Winona Ryder (Mr. Deeds): The worst actress they ever matched with Adam Sandler. This girl used to be amazing... Well 10 years ago...
Stay tuned...
That's all folks...
Jean-François Allaire (aka DeadPool)
Questions, comments, praise etc. Email me at deadpool@tnmc.org
Jean-François Allaire is TNMC's first columnist. At only 24 years old he has become a respected entertainment journalist, with his columns appearing in Corona's Coming Attractions and Scr(i)pt magazine. He also writes a monthly column in Screenwriters Monthly entitled 'The Last Word.' Hailing from Montreal this young writer is determined to dig up all the details on the movies before they hit your local theater. If you're part of a movie production then you really need to be talking to him.
