I sense a ripoff in the force | Netflix
10. The Adam Project
What’s worse than Ryan Reynolds playing the same sarcastic hero we’ve seen him play a dozen times at this point? Two Ryan Reynolds characters smarming it up for the camera! Albeit one is a kid version, but they are equally grating. Trying to ape every Amblin film and every bit of 80s nostalgia it can, The Adam Project comes across as the flavorless generic cereal that your mom used to get as a kid (but I want the Cinnamon Toast Crunch!). It’s a new cynical strategy that movies are doing where they will rip off the lightsabers in Star Wars, but because a character has a cheesy line about how they are ripping off Star Wars, the producers think nobody will care. The cast tries to inject some emotion into the characters and their journey through time, but it looks and feels flat. By the time it got to the end confrontation with a horrifying de-aged Kathryn Keener lookalike, the movie had lost any goodwill the movie built up. The “A-Dumb Project” lives up to its title.
Forcing a turtle to be in this movie is animal cruelty | Netflix
9. Me Time
Netflix originals are very hit-and-miss, with most falling in the latter category. Me Time is a raunchy family comedy that wants to reach all quadrants so badly and, in doing so, hits none of them. Its two stars fall into the category of likable actors who are hilarious in press junkets but are promoting terrible films. Mark Wahlberg, Kevin Hart, and Regina Hall are all comedic talents, but they’re saddled with a script that doesn’t do them any favors. Hart and Wahlberg play longtime friends who are at odds with their current place in life. Wahlberg is an aging bachelor whose careless lifestyle is financially catching up with him, and Hart is the stay-at-home dad who never gets enough “me time.” Writer-director John Hamburg’s I Love You, Man is a gem that tackles male relationships, but it does so because its characters feel real and are not just weak archetypes. The ridiculous antics get old really fast, and then it switches up at the end to give the audience a grown-up lesson. The real lesson is not to trust Netflix movies anymore (see #2 on this list).
Photo: Briarcliff Entertainment
8. Blacklight
Liam Neeson has been coasting on his name for the past decade with forgettable action movie after forgettable action movie—Blacklight is his worst. A faux political thriller that is just a backdrop for Liam Neeson to run throughout the streets of Washington, D.C. (the movie was really shot in Australia) with a gun, it’s a movie we’ve seen done better a dozen times before. It’s a Liam Neeson movie, too, so you know his family will be kidnapped at some point. And the conspiracy is so by-the-numbers that even the shaky cam won’t be able to keep you from nodding off. I don’t know why people keep paying to see the same tired Neeson movie over and over again, but the results are only getting worse.
“Do you know what this movie’s about?” “No clue.” | Courtesy of Reiner Bajo/Lionsgate
7. Moonfall
If you’ve seen one Roland Emmerich movie about the end of the world, you’ve seen them all. What distinguishes this one from the rest is the dumb extra-terrestrial component that is just plain unnecessary in a movie that is about a moon falling on the Earth. Even the basic plot makes no sense: Astronaut Brian Harper is shunned from the community after his partner dies from an unknown entity in space. Why that would be the case is anybody’s guess. Then Samwell Tarley (John Bradley) from Game of Thrones is a conspiracy theorist who is proven right, and Halle Berry is giving a dramatic performance that has no levity given the material. The Day After Tomorrow and 2012 are fine for being visual effects showcases flexing how far technology has come, but Moonfall and Independence Day: Resurgence show just how far Roland Emmerich has fallen.
#Girlbossthemovie | Universal Pictures
6. The 355
Producers for the movie: Yes, let’s put the guy responsible for Dark Phoenix in front of another female story and let him waste Jessica Chastain’s (and everyone else’s) time again. This movie felt 355 hours long, and the camera was shaking so much that even the action couldn’t save it. I hope all these talented ladies got paid!
Even Venom wasn’t this bad | Sony Pictures
5. Morbius
It’s Morbin Time! Morbius earns the award for the film that tortured me the longest. First, it was the dogshit trailers that played for years due to pushbacks and COVID (“I’m Venom. Just kidding, it’s Dr. Morbius!” is a “joke” that actually made it in the final film), then the online memes making fun of it, and then me actually seeing it and realizing that it wasn’t as fun as the jokes made about it. Finally, I paid to go to a How Did This Get Made? show on Morbius that got canceled because of a COVID emergency, and then the person I was supposed to go with on the rescheduled date backed out at the last minute, forcing me to sell my tickets at a loss.
All in all, the vampire Morbius sucked up more of my time and money than I’m willing to admit and is another solo supervillain movie that nobody wants to see (Looking at you, Venom). When will studios learn this? Apparently, not any time soon, as Sony took the online traffic of everyone dunking on the film as a sign to rerelease it, causing it to flop twice. Other than Matt Smith having campy fun in his role as the villain, the film fails on numerous levels. Jared Leto is miscast as the lead, and he has no chemistry with his love interest; the bullet-time effects have been done for decades at this point; his powers are unclear, and other than staying alive on blood, there’s no motivation for the protagonist, antagonist, or any other character for that matter. Add Morbius to the ever-increasing list of boring superhero slogs that I am happy to never think about again.
Blue Adam | Warner Brothers
4. Black Adam
The Rock is on a mission: he wants to convince you that he is the biggest movie star in the world. While the numbers might support that, his film choices have been predictably safe and indistinguishable from each other. His first foray into the superhero genre is a straight-up disaster. From the first moment he arrives onscreen and takes out an army of soldiers without any effort (you can almost see him yawning through it), it was a good bet that nobody would pose a real threat to him—it doesn’t help he has that practically written in his contract. Cut to him kicking Hawkman’s ass repeatedly and the D-list array of knockoff superheroes that are tasked with containing him—which we know they won’t. It all made for a tedious experience. Add to that human characters that are only there for exposition, a misplaced message about overthrowing your oppressors, shoddy visual FX fights that will give you flashbacks to The Rock as a giant Scorpion, and a villain who doesn’t show up until an hour into the movie, and you will understand why James Gunn is hitting the reset button on the DC universe after this dumpster fire.
A dinosaur’s only weakness: a human hand | Universal Studios
3. Jurassic World: Dominion
It was tough to decide which film I hated more, the dinosaur movie that isn’t interested in putting the dinosaurs front and center or the parody making fun of the shitty dinosaur movie. I ended up going with the parody (see below) because of the soul-crushing experience of watching actors behave like no human did during lockdown for the sake of laughs and falling on their faces due to an aimless script. But that doesn’t mean Jurassic World: Dominion, the movie they were making fun of, was any less awful.
The third entry in Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World series promised a world ruled by dinosaurs after the cliffhanger that came from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. A promise that was undone with the opening montage, which basically said dinosaurs are among us, but it’s totally fine! The shocking miscalculations would only grow from there, with locusts becoming the animal antagonists and the biggest sin of all: bringing back the original cast but giving them nothing to do. Chris Pratt, his dino daughter, and Bryce Dallas Howard are also back and bland as ever.
There are a few decent chase/fight sequences with the dinosaurs, but 2 hours in, and I was jealous of the dad behind me who was loudly snoring through the last 30 minutes of this overlong snoozefest. Hopefully, this means the franchise is officially extinct because this was a steaming pile of dino shit.
Netflix
2. The Bubble
Judd Apatow was recently on Bill Maher’s new YouTube show Club Random, a show where Bill gets shitfaced until he’s giddy and incomprehensible, which is a shame because he will book interesting Hollywood guests like Quentin Tarantino and Woody Harrelson. That tension of actors being subject to stupidity is The Bubble. It’s a mystery how a script could find a way to make comedic talents like Pedro Pascal (The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent), Leslie Mann (This is 40), Maria Bakalova (Borat Subsequent Movie Film), and Keegan Michael-Key (Keanu) unfunny, but Apatow certainly found a way. Despite her best efforts, the lead actress Karen Gillian (Jumanji: The Next Level) and others flail to generate any sort of laugh in this tonally random and frustrating experience; most of it feels like bad improv.
The COVID parody tried making fun of the production troubles of Jurassic World: Dominion, which was trapped in a bubble during the production of Cliff Beasts 6, with lame references to swabs up the nose that are just a way of saying, “remember how much that sucked?” Yep, and we don’t need to relive it in parody form or any other, as it’s been beaten to death on social media over the past three years. The Bubble continues patronizing by making a character a Tik-Tok star who choreographs a viral dance, but I’ve seen Tik-Tok’s funnier than this, and they didn’t have to spend 2 hours to do so. Just like Adam McKay thinking he is saving the world with his preachy political comedies, you will be lectured on how spoiled and rich actors are in making pointless, time-wasting content. What The Bubble fails to realize is that it’s also pointless time-wasting content for Netflix.
“The fuck is this shit?” – Me watching Clerks III | Photos: Lionsgate
1. Clerks III
No film in 2022 made me angrier than Clerks III—and I say that as a defender of Kevin Smith’s work. After a heart attack that almost killed him in 2018, Smith started becoming more conscious of his health by becoming vegan and living a healthier life. He’s almost unrecognizable now with the amount of weight he’s lost (although he hasn’t stopped wearing those baggy hockey jerseys). After this life-changing event, it seemed to light a fire under his ass, and he immediately got back to work.
In 2019 he made Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, a meta “reboot” of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back where the two redo the plot of their 2001 film. While it doesn’t all work, the sweetness that was injected into the story with Jay finding out he’s a father (with Smith’s own real-life daughter in the role) made for a more mature approach from Smith. He was almost coming to terms with the fact that Hollywood has changed and where the independent origins of Jay and Silent Bob fit in in the IP-driven landscape. It was a pleasant surprise and one that made me anticipate what he would do with Clerks III since Clerks is the film that gave him his start. Nothing could have prepared me for how much he would miss the mark.
To start, while I was waiting for the previews on the DVD to play, Smith instead took it upon himself to talk for several minutes, thanking the audience for buying the physical copy. He also plugs the plethora of special features that he created for the movie. While this wasn’t a dealbreaker, I was a little annoyed that he couldn’t save that for the bonus material, and I proceeded to start the movie. What proceeded was 100 minutes of some of Smith’s least inspired and unfunny material to date.
The first mistake is that Randall is now the lead instead of Dante. I like Randall, but only because he is a brash side character who doesn’t have to hold the emotional weight of the films. This time he has a heart attack like Smith did in real life (get it?) and makes it his life’s mission to make a film after Dante poses the idea. The second mistake is making Elias, that nerdy religious kid from the second film, come back as an adult. It’s the tragic error Bad Santa 2 made where the oblivious precocious kid from the first is brought back years later. Unfortunately, as adults, their behavior becomes annoying and sad. None of his material is funny in this. Not when he’s religious, not when he becomes a devil worshipper, and not when he invests in NFTs—an already dated joke.
The third is in making the movie a drama. Nobody watches Clerks for the acting! We watch it because these are regular working-class people we can relate to who have conversations about Star Wars and if it’s ok to go ass-to-mouth (you never go ass-to-mouth!). So when Dante gets several dramatic monologues and scenes where he’s forced to cry and act like this is a drama, not only is it baffling, but it exposes just how limited they are as actors. Even Jay and Silent Bob can’t save it. I couldn’t get over Jason Mewes’ fake teeth that look like Matt Dillon’s dentures from There’s Something About Mary. It was so distracting that it took away any potential comedy to be had from the two.
Then the icing on the cake: When the film was over, I was just happy that the credits were rolling and I no longer had to put up with the movie when here comes Kevin Smith’s omnipresent voice once again. It’s almost like he can’t help himself. He’s the person that wants to be your friend and begs for your approval so desperately that it makes you not want to hang out with them. What was so important that he couldn’t save for the bonus features? He just HAD to tell us about the alternate ending that he almost went with but didn’t. To add insult to injury, I was almost considering checking out the mountain of special features he talked up at the beginning of the movie to see if the cast had any fun making this, at least, and there were no fucking special features at all! Zero!! (I’m guessing they’re on the Blu-ray version.)
Clerks III is infuriating on so many levels. Smith purely coasts off of nostalgia and cameos, like that is enough to carry a feature-length movie, and the new creative choices he does make are the absolute worst ones that you will never see coming. This is far and away the worst movie of 2022.
