Ronin’s Top 10 Worst Movies of 2018
Good lord, what an eventful year. A year of betrayal, backroom dealings, exposed corruption, golden opportunities, and turmoil upon turmoil. And before you ask, I’m referring to the world at large and my personal life. I’m a little sad that I wasn’t as active a reviewer as I’ve been in previous years, but here we are at the end of the line and you know what that means. Time to tackle the worst of the worst as we purge the food poisoning of yesteryear before we sweeten our palettes again. As always, I have to have reviewed the movies, so despite Slender Man, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, and Holmes and Watson getting critically fisted from all angles, you’ll not see them here. With all that, let’s count down the crap of the crop.
This one’s a tricky entry because a lot of the positives and negatives balanced out for me. Ultimately, it earned its place on this list because of one line. But oh… what a line…
Just… cannot forgive that one.
Ah, welcome back, Mr. Sandler. We’re not surprised to see you on our list again. Still, your movie was not as offensive and had a lot more heart than your previous entries, so we’ve given you a better seat this time around. Hope you continue to improve. Next!
It seems that every year, I come across a movie so forgettable that when I look over my old reviews, I find myself saying, “Oh yeah, I remember seeing that… what happened in it?” That’s Tomb Raider in a nutshell, just in one ear and out the other. I pride myself in having a decent memory, but I have to really squeeze my brain to recall anything about it. Still, just being bland puts it leagues above most video game movies, so that’s something.
Let me tell you why “friend zone” movies irritate me: they help people buy into the myth that if you pump enough kindness into a woman, she’ll reward you with romance and/or sex like some kind of slot machine. That’s far from the only reason I look down on this film, which was bland, cheap, and just really… dumb. There’s a reason for the Season and this ain’t it.
#6: God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness
But as bad as dumb gets, it can’t quite hold a candle to frustratingly delusional and it doesn’t get any more delusional than the God’s Not Dead series. Now I’ve sung the praises for the ending and I do mean it, but there’s this sense that the people behind this movie yearn for the days when Christians were fed to lions because it gave them sympathy and some weird, twisted high ground. For crying out loud, one of the news programs that covers the events is actually called Lion’s Den News! But it’s also interesting to note that this is the first of these movies to bomb at the box office, so either audiences are wising up or its attempt to find a middle ground alienated its base. Either way, I’m really looking forward to not doing these again. Next!
“Hey, I’m doing some heavy thinking on the script and wanted your input.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, the main people are surrounded by the ghosts who died violently to Winchester rifles, so I was thinking that the solution should be something really thought out that doesn’t rely on violence and instead forces ghost and mortal alike to confront the complex issues of vengeance and responsibility inside them all. What do you think?”
“…”
“…”
“Pfft, naw! Let’s have the male character that was invented for the movie shoot the big bad ghost with a love bullet!”
“By Jove, you’re a genius!”
And then they sniffed glue and giggled on the floor like rhesus monkeys.
Hey, J.J. Abrams, if you’re reading this, I’ve got a great idea for what you could do with the Cloverfield franchise: ANYTHING! Like, it’s been three movies and it feels like you’ve been jerking us along with hints and teases about the mystery of what’s happening in this shared universe… or possibly multiverse. But a mystery isn’t enough to sustain an audience’s interest without payoff unless it something like the identities of Jack the Ripper, the Black Dahlia, or the Zodiac Killer. I hear you’re making a “true sequel” soon and you’d better deliver because after singing the praises of 10 Cloverfield Lane, you’ve made me feel like a total boob.
You know what’s funny? In a series about bondage, it takes until the third movie for someone to end up gagged. Also, for something that advertises itself as edgy and sex crazy, it always seems to chicken out in regards to showing private parts. Seriously, if Jason Segel can have his dong out in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, why is this movie so shy? Whatever. The series is over, so we don’t have to pretend abuse is kinky anymore. NEXT!
Ohhhhhhhhh… there’s the Happy Madison I know and loathe. Thankfully, my mental barriers have kept me from needing a shower every ten minutes, so that’s good. Then again, that could be because this movie is just that forgettable. Like, what actually happened in this movie? I remember penis jokes, David Spade’s penis, this old lady who wanted to ride a youngster’s penis, something about sperm donation… no, wait, that was Ted 2… jeez, no wonder this got 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. I guess that’s not much of an ending, but then again this wasn’t much of a movie.
Before we get to Number One, I decided to give out a novelty award for this and future lists, kind of like the Most Improved Award in last years Best Of List. So for this list, it’s…
Worst Moment in a Good Movie Award
While people are divided on their opinions of the movie (and remember, I rather enjoyed it), one part seems universally loathed: the completely out-of-place Pitbull song “Ocean to Ocean.” It has next-to-nothing to do with the plot, clashes horribly with the epic feel, and the hook is a bafflingly bad sample of Toto’s “Africa” sung in dreadful autotune by singer Rhea. It’s just astounding how much it doesn’t fit or sound good. Pitbull says in the song’s opening that “they tried to get rid of him” and the song proves whoever they are are right for doing so. At the very least, the band Weezer can sleep easier because after the rocky reception of their cover of “Africa,” this took all the heat right off of them. Long story short, the song’s a dead fish and Pitbull’s career is lost at sea. To quote a better artist, “Thank you, next.”
All right, let’s do it.
It was either going to be this or Father of the Year, but while giving it to a Happy Madison film would have been too obvious and kind of unsatisfying for me, there’s something about this movie that really gets under my skin. Part of it is that I have no patience for inane drama, especially from middle and high schoolers, but it’s really the privilege of it all that boils me. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but sexual harassment and objectification are kind of hotly discussed nowadays and this movie comes off treating it with a “tee-hee-hee” and a sense that it finds that stuff flattering.
Is someone worried about you being objectified? Strut half-naked through the boys’ locker room to show that you can take care of yourself. Did someone grab your butt? Did the principal say it was your fault for wearing too short a skirt? Make the offending groper model your skirt and all is forgiven! Does your boyfriend have some serious anger issues? That just means his passion for you is boundless! EAT ME!
It’s Twilight levels of problematic for essentially glorifying the middle and high school delusions that girls have, which makes sense because the original story was written by a fifteen-year-old. The writer hadn’t realized that there’s a bigger world out there than BFF oaths from when you were kids or dangerous boys, so the movie doesn’t either. Look, people can have their little fantasies. That’s what harlequin romance and trashy airport novels are for. But when you throw these ideals into a movie with what looks like a sizable budget for mass consumption, it’s practically giving them a societal stamp of approval and that’s where I draw the line.
You fail, Kissing Booth. No soup for you. NEXT!!!
***
All right, all the toxins are out of my system. Now let’s get ready for the palette cleanser that is the Best Movies list and we can move onto better things. As always, if there are entries you disagree with or thought I missed something particularly heinous, feel free to discuss it in the comment below and keep it civil. See you in the year’s best!
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