The Worst of the Worst (Half-Star Ratings)

Quite possibly the worst movie I've ever seen. Terrible writing, cheap special effects, bad continuity, illogical plot devices, unforgivable errors, and a heavy-handed, left-wing political message on top of it all.

If not for the even more dreadful "Superman 4", I'd rank this abomination as the worst comic book movie of all time. Just as "Batman Returns" is over-the-top Tim Burton, "Batman & Robin" is over-the-top Joel Schumacher. After doing reasonably well with the tolerable "Batman Forever", Schumacher went completely off the deep end with this, his second Bat-flick. Far from being an accurate, worthy portrayal of the true and modern Batman, "Batman & Robin" comes off more as an extension of the campy, silly 1960s TV show, complete with ludicrously flamboyant costumes (the Bat-nipples have become infamous), horrendously cheesy situations, and groan-inducing dialog. It's beyond me why Warner Bros. ever thought this would go over well.

My pick for the dubious honor of "Worst Remake of All Time". Tim Burton completely butchers the concept.

So, let me get this straight. Throughout the movie, Jack Sparrow tries to kill Will Turner and steal his girlfriend, and then, at the end of the film, when the voodoo priestess asks the heroes if they'd be willing to risk everything in order to bring Sparrow back from the dead, Will says yes?! This is just one of many baseless, nonsensical plot contrivances that demonstrate that this film and "At World's End" were only thrown together in order to take advantage of pirate-mania, and should never have been made at all.

Like "Dead Man's Chest", this movie is just a slapdash, half-assed sequel whose sole purpose was to make money off of the inexplicable state of pirate-mania that gripped the country in the wake of "The Curse of the Black Pearl" (the only good installment of the trilogy). The characters are out of character and the convoluted plot devices are hugely contrived. And to top it all off, the filmmakers actually had the nerve to cast "big business" (the tea shipping company) as the ultimate villain. Yup, that's right. In a movie populated by characters who rob, rape, and murder, the Hollywood liberals backing this movie could see no greater evil than that presented by big business. What a load of crap.

If you took a time machine back to the year 1978 and tried to tell the people you met there that "Robert De Niro + Dustin Hoffman = shit", they'd never believe you. These are melancholy times indeed.

Not a single fresh, funny joke in the whole film. (Honestly, how many times have you heard that lame joke about letting the gays marry so that they can be just as miserable as the rest of us?) Robin Williams lays an egg with this stinker, and, as is typical with Hollywood movies these days, there's some unnecessary left-wing propaganda forced in as well.

"Aqua Teen Hunger Force" was genuinely funny in its first season, but shortly after that, the makers of the show began a trend of brutal/morbid humor, resulting in at least one of the characters dying a horrible, blood-soaked death each episode (think Kenny of "South Park", only much worse). That kind of humor just doesn't appeal to me. In its earlier days, it was just pure, inane fun, more on a par with "Family Guy" (although that show, too, has since become unwatchable), and I wish they had kept it there.

Two points that are a true testament to the arrogance of Warren Beatty:

1. He thought dressing like a "gangsta" and rapping about liberal politics for two hours would thrill moviegoers.

2. He thought it would turn moviegoers into Democrats.

I guess he really is "so vain" after all.

Bill Cosby's atypically straight, macabre performance here is mildly amusing, but this film is still a steaming pile of awfulness.

Let me be clear about this; I really, really like Charlie Chaplin's feature films. "The Kid", "Modern Times", "City Lights", "The Great Dictator", et cetera, are at once funny, poignant, emotional, well constructed, and sophisticated. Unfortunately, that's more than I can say for "By the Sea", or most of Chaplin's other simple shorts. These rarely consist of anything more than Charlie repeatedly slapping someone in the face, kicking someone in the ass, or tripping someone with his cane. 1915 audiences might have been amused, but this sort of mindless, repetitive slapstick just doesn't age very well, I'm afraid.

If "Pet Sematary" isn't the most disgusting movie I've ever seen, then "Kids" definitely is.

The grotesque "torture porn" was bad enough, but what I found most offensive was the implication that, deep down inside, most people secretly long for the "exhilarating" experience of horribly torturing someone to death. Call me a cock-eyed optimist, but I happen to believe that the sick bastards who actually get off on that sort of thing are aberrations that deviate far from the norm of humanity. I don't know about you, but if I was presented with the opportunity to strap someone to a chair and disembowel them for shits and giggles, I'd decline the offer.

Quite possibly the most revolting, grotesque movie I've ever seen.

Flat, boring, and completely lacking in invention or story. It's literally nothing more than a man giving his mother an overdose of pills. Seriously, that's it. No plot, no tension, no character, no point! A "Dateline" special about assisted suicide is just as entertaining.

The original film was tense, frightening, and featured characters we actually cared about. This awful remake boasts none of those elements. It's trite, convoluted, derivative, and perhaps worst of all, the villain doesn't even kill the kids!

A very unpleasant movie. While there's not nearly as much blood or boobs as "Hostel", it operates on the same assumption; specifically, that hurting people is a barrel of laughs. If you don't feel disposed towards watching ninety minutes of home invaders inflicting physical and psychological trauma upon their victims, then skip this film.

A completely inaccurate retelling of the story of Noah and the flood. Apparently, the filmmakers thought that they needed to flesh out the story with out-of-context events from other places in the Old Testament (I'm rather surprised Goliath didn't show up somewhere, actually). The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is here, along with Abraham's nephew Lot, who, in perhaps the most unforgivable bastardization of all, is portrayed as a ruthless, amoral cutthroat. (In the Bible, Lot was the one good inhabitant of Sodom, and God spared him from the destruction of that city.)

There are a lot of good Biblical epics out there. Don't bother with this misbegotten tripe.

As a child, I was a huge fan of the "Indian in the Cupboard" series of books, and this movie is a complete and utter misfire. It lacks all of the magic and wonder and whimsy of the books, and comes out as nothing more than a really stupid kids' movie.

I've never been a big Scooby fan, but even I was offended by the way the characters were portrayed in this sham of a movie. It seems to me that the filmmakers harbored a genuine, condescending contempt for the cartoon show, and went out of their way to make the most disrespectful, most irreverent adaptation they could, complete with a slutty Daphne, an arrogant Fred, and a monstrous Scrappy Doo as the villain.

I'm a huge TMNT fan, but...this is just terrible.