The stinkers of summer

[one...two...tree 2,762]

William Booth

The Washington Post

LOS ANGELES - Ahh, summer, how it smelled.

Twas the most lucrative season ever for Hollywood, with more than $4 billion in gross domestic ticket sales. Yet it was also a summer for some serious slop. Ladies and gentlemen, we bring you the Ten Worst Summer Movies of 2007, as scientifically tabulated by the review-aggregating Web site Rotten Tomatoes.

First, hey, here's some good news for Academy Award winner Cuba Gooding Jr., whose "Daddy Day Camp" was not the most fetid pile of the summer, as we might surmise from reading the critics. It was only third worst. "Poison ivy would be less painful," wrote the Hollywood Reporter.

"Not quite as funny as a perforated ulcer," piped the Toronto Star. The Philadelphia Daily News suggested screening the film for death row inmates - to make their final hours feel like weeks. Richard Roeper urped: "Just horrible."

Of the 61 reviews of "Daddy Day Camp" counted by Rotten Tomatoes, 60 were (deeply) negative. That is quite a feat. Think about it. The positive response was not quite 2 percent. The lone applause line comes from a critic named Fred Topel on Hollywood.com, who awards the August bomb two (of four) stars. "If you loved Daddy Day Care,' " says Topel, seemingly without pity, "you might find Daddy Day Camp' a mildly amusing sequel, even if Eddie Murphy isn't in it." And if Eddie Murphy were in it? What is that, Fred, a threat?

Rotten Tomatoes, owned by News Corp., tracks all film reviews from its list of more than 250 critics in print and online and rates their appraisals as either "rotten" or "fresh." The site provides an instant groupthink rating for a movie and also allows a viewer to graze through the work of some of the best (and dumbest) reviewers in the business.

The RT engineers were happy to crunch the summer numbers for The Washington Post. To make the Ten Worst list, Rotten Tomatoes required that a film receive at least 50 reviews (thereby sparing generally ignored indie film turkeys). In addition, the RT engineers employed a weighted Bayesian formula to account for the variation in the number of reviews per movie - meaning if Movie A and B are equally appalling, but B has more reviews, then B is worse. By that formula, the winner is "License to Wed," starring Robin Williams as a cordless power drill boring holes into your forehead.

How vile? The San Francisco Chronicle began its "License to Wed" review: "There's bad, there's awful and there's horrible, and then somewhere beyond that. ..." Even Christianity Today got in a punch: "If ever there was a ceremony or ritual that needed to be called off, it is the one that begins with the act of buying a ticket for this movie."

Scanning the Ten Worst, you notice a disturbing pattern, and that pattern is Lindsay Lohan, who manages to appear in not one but two of the worst-reviewed films of the summer. First, there was Lohan in "I Know Who Killed Me," which was very quietly released while Lohan was in (or out, depending on the time of day) of Malibu rehab. Please, couldn't the media allow her to heal in private during this difficult time? Clearly, that's what the studio preferred.

"Sony dumped this sleazy, inept and worthless piece of torture porn into theaters yesterday without advance screenings for critics," starts the New York Post review. No matter. According to the New York Daily News, "The truth is, no review could really do justice to the monumental trashiness of this mess; it really has to be seen to be believed."

Perhaps this summer may mark the beginning of the end for the once-popular torture porn genre, because not only did Lohan bomb in the bra-and-panties slasher, so did "Captivity," which comes in at No. 4 among the most critically reviled. Imagine the blurb on the DVD: "A spirit-sapping exercise in female degradation fantasy! - Los Angeles Times."

Now we all fully expect a cynical piece of tweener trash like "Bratz: The Movie" to be evil. "O.M.G!" the Houston Chronicle critic raved. "This movie is SO BAD! I can't believe I just spent an hour and a half of my life, like, watching it, when I could have been totally trying on hairbands instead!"

But what about "Georgia Rule," which was directed by Garry Marshall ("Pretty Woman") and stars Felicity Huffman (Emmy) and Jane Fonda (Oscars) - and Lindsay Lohan? Eek, is it a curse? The Boston Globe called the film "a whimsical incest melodrama," making it sound like something produced by Max Bialystock. "A humiliation," the Globe continued, and for Lohan, "it's something worse: hard evidence she can't act."

"That said, the vomiting does look great." That's a line from The New York Times about "The Invasion," which stars Nicole Kidman in a "Body Snatchers" remake (set, without irony, in Washington). It goes downhill from there. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer critic wrote, "I actually found myself rooting for the aliens."

But what do the critics know? They detested "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry," or "I now pronounce you terminally confused," according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. And "Rush Hour 3," which the Toronto Star called "a blockbuster sequel filmed with the enthusiasm of jury duty." And "Evan Almighty," which the Village Voice described as "the work of an angry God."

The three movies together went on to snatch $345 million in allowance money.

Yet overall, the movies loathed by the pros were also despised by the audience. So order in the universe may be preserved.

No single studio appears solely responsible for this waste dump. The blame for the Ten Worst was spread among Warner Bros., Lionsgate, Sony, New Line and Universal.

The critic at Newsday was reviewing "Chuck and Larry," but he could have been speaking for all the eggs of summer: "What were they thinking? Simple: They weren't."

[Jenn! 918]

I didn't think Evan Almighty was so bad, although it wasn't so good either. Chuck and Larry didn't capture my attention, so I only got through the first bit. The others I haven't seen.

I went to see Rob Zombie's Halloween last week and it was ok. Mr Bean's Holiday, well, was typical Mr. Bean. Now that I think of it, I haven't seen any movies that have blown me away in a while...

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I didn't think Evan Almighty was so bad, although it wasn't so good either. Chuck and Larry didn't capture my attention, so I only got through the first bit. The others I haven't seen.

I went to see Rob Zombie's Halloween last week and it was ok. Mr Bean's Holiday, well, was typical Mr. Bean. Now that I think of it, I haven't seen any movies that have blown me away in a while...

We watched the Bourne Ultimatum last weekend and I was disappointed...just seemed too formulaic.

[Mags 112]

The last film I saw that blew me away was Pan's Labyrinth. Haven't seen anything of that calibre since.

[GaryC 7]

Rush Hour 3 was OK. The new Potter movie was pretty good. The most entertaining movie we saw in the last few months was Wild Hogs. We laughed our azzes off!!

[one...two...tree 2,762]

The last film I saw that blew me away was Pan's Labyrinth. Haven't seen anything of that calibre since.

That was a good film. I'm trying to think of what I've seen since that movie, and I can't think of any either.

[almaty 19]

The last film I saw that blew me away was Pan's Labyrinth. Haven't seen anything of that calibre since.

That was a good film. I'm trying to think of what I've seen since that movie, and I can't think of any either.

i agree.. i really enjoyed that film

[LondonGooner 0]

We pretty much saw all the big blockbusters of the Summer and I would rank the movies we saw in the theatre in this order -

1) Ratatouille

2) Hot Fuzz

3) The Bourne Ultimatum

4) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoneix

5) Transformers

6) Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

7) Miss Potter

8) Stranger Than Fiction

9) TMNT

10) Becoming Jane

11) Shrek the Third

12) Spiderman 3

Haven't seen Ocean's 13 or Surfs Up yet but I have heard that they were both really good.

[Jenn! 918]

Oh yeah, I forgot about Ratatouille. That was really cute.

I thought Ocean's 13 was boring. It was too much like the first one

[almaty 19]

well, i am partial to burros..i like Shrek

[rclouse 0]

The last film I saw that blew me away was Pan's Labyrinth. Haven't seen anything of that calibre since.

That was a good film. I'm trying to think of what I've seen since that movie, and I can't think of any either.

Another great one: "Children of Men". Very very excellent movie.

[Jasman0717 8]

We didn't go to any movies so guess we didn't waste any money

[july052007 0]

we enjoyed watching Transformers here when hubby was in Manila... pretty decent.. turned out fine..

[MissStacey 1]

I haven't been to the movie theater in so long. There hasn't been much out there that I want to rush out and see.

Me and Mel are interested in seeing Mr. Woodcock- I think we will make an effort to go to that one.

[Jenn! 918]

I want to see Across the Universe. That seems right up my alley.