I liked the idea, but I thought instead of Lenny Luthor we would name the awards after the true opposite of Superman:
Bizarro.
Bizarro is the anti-Superman, literally. He even maintains speech patterns that are the opposite of what he means. "Good-bye, me am not Bizarro. Me like you! Live!" said by Bizarro actually means "Hello, I am Bizarro. I hate you! Die!"
So since Superman is my mark of excellence. Bizarro will be my mark of utter awfulness. Unlike the Kal-El awards, these will be focused only on movies. The reason is that serialized work like television and comics require a longer time commitment in order to understand the material. You may have to watch a show or read a comic for several months before you discover if it is truly bad or good. It took me a few episodes to understand the logic behind Vincent D'Onofrio's performance in Daredevil. The investment of time and/or money also precludes a lot of unnecessary sampling, so my exposure to bad material is a bit less.
With a movie, you can have a complete understanding of the product after 90-180 minutes
There will be 2 new categories that I will add:
-Worst TV Show I Stopped Watching
-Worst TV Show I Still Watch
In both of these cases I will be giving my critical condemnation of shows about which I have some significant experience and thus have a basis for calling them critical failures
So now, here are the Bizarro Awards for movies this past year. (based on the movies I have seen).
WORST MOVIE
A Simple Favor
To say that I hated this movie is an understatement.
This movie is a failure at almost every level. It is a cynical piece of garbage that I feel has made my life slightly worse by the experience of it. It does not work as mystery. It does not work as drama. It does not work as comedy. It is so expressly and directly opposed to anything resembling common decency and good film-making that I can't help but believe that this was its intention all along: to make something trashy. Movies like this reflect a worldview in the film-makers that disturbs me deeply. What makes it even more infuriating is the smug sense of superiority that radiates out of this horrid film. It is condescending while it is itself so lowly that it can only sneer at its betters. Avoid at all cost!
TOP TEN WORST MOVIES
10. Ocean's 8
9. Tag
8. A Wrinkle in Time
7. Skyscraper
6. Welcome to Marwen
5. A Star is Born
4. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again
3. Life of the Party
2. Life Itself
1. A Simple Favor
WORST ACTOR
Pierce Brosnan- Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again
Brosnan is a very good actor. But this performance is so phoned-in that I'm surprised it wasn't outsourced to customer service. He walks around the set delivering his lines as if he is doing the read through for the first time. At least Colin Firth and Stellan Skaarsgaard look like they are having a silly good time with the script, but Brosnan looks so bored by it all.
WORST ACTRESS
Melissa McCarthy- Life of the Party
If you give McCarthy the right material, she can make it soar to comedy gold. But this movie does the opposite. It trusts McCarthy to lead the comedy instead of leading the comedy to McCarthy. It is a subtle difference, but important. In this movie she is outrageous without being humorous. She is sincere without being endearing. And in a movie that depends completely on the personality of the lead, this was a fatal mistake.
WORST DIRECTOR
Paul Feig - A Simple Favor
From my review of A Simple Favor:
Feig fails at every level to tell a good story. He wants to say something about powerful, empowered women, but it comes off as so completely uninspired. When Stephanie first enters Emily's house there is a nude painting of Emily hanging that thrusts her genitals towards the viewer's face as if Feig is trying to make some super awkward "girl power" statement.
Feig also fails at making anything out of the mystery of Emily's disappearance. In fact, he reveals the truth way too early. The denouement tries to copy the movie Gone Girl, but fails at that too. The final confrontation is intent on making shocking twists and turns that it defies all logic. If you ever watched the show Community, they did an episode where characters kept pulling out guns in a parody of twists on top of twists. It worked on the show because they were doing comedy. It fails in the movie because you are supposed to take it seriously. And the ultimate take down of the villain is something out of a Will Ferrel movie and has no place in anything we've seen before.
Feig also fails at making anything out of the mystery of Emily's disappearance. In fact, he reveals the truth way too early. The denouement tries to copy the movie Gone Girl, but fails at that too. The final confrontation is intent on making shocking twists and turns that it defies all logic. If you ever watched the show Community, they did an episode where characters kept pulling out guns in a parody of twists on top of twists. It worked on the show because they were doing comedy. It fails in the movie because you are supposed to take it seriously. And the ultimate take down of the villain is something out of a Will Ferrel movie and has no place in anything we've seen before.
WORST SCREENPLAY
A Simple Favor
Nothing in this script makes any logical sense. The characters are not only completely shallow, but their motivations lack any clear rational. When they turn on a dime, it is less shocking than it is annoying as we wait for the next >gasp< twist that our simple, plebeian minds did not see coming from the genius of this screenplay.
MOST ANTI-CHRISTIAN MOVIE
A Simple Favor
This dishonor is not very enthusiastically given in that the movie did not seek to actively attack Christians. The most that it did was portray the Christian summer camp as very lame. However, in this year's movies that I saw, this was the worst instance of anti-Christian bias. That is a very good thing.
MOST MORALLY OFFENSIVE
A Simple Favor
This film is a cesspool. When people talk about how Hollywood creates moral rot, this is Exhibit A. Rather than saying something universal about women or relationship, all this film does is show us the jaundiced moral world-view of people like Paul Feig and all you can do is thank God that you do not live in his morally messed up world.
WORST TV SHOW I STOPPED WATCHING
Murphy Brown
The Roseanne relaunch was a ratings juggernaut. So naturally people looked to other popular mid-90's shows with strong female leads and came to Murphy Brown. However, the original series does not have the same nostalgic place of affection in the TV audience's hearts. Whereas Roseanne's tribute to working-class families seems more and more universal and relevant, Murphy Brown's original run seems too tied to the politics of the era. Does anyone really care about the Dan Quayle controversy? And the new version came off as strident and shallow. This was a show not so much with a universal comedic message, but a political axe to grind.
WORST SHOW I STILL WATCH
Saturday Night Live
(Below are my comments from last year, but they still apply to this year)
I still hold out hope that in 90 minutes of television there may still be at least 5 minutes of good humor. But it takes a lot of endurance through horrible sketches to come across a gem like "Crucible Cast Party."
The show has two major problems in its current era.
1. The Election of Donald Trump. If you watch the skits before the election they were harsh but there was still a great deal that was funny. But after the election, especially after that somber cold open (and it is not an exaggeration to say that it was the most somber cold opening since 9/11), with Kate McKinnon playing a heartbroken Hillary Clinton, something broke in the show. Donald Trump is the president and he models incredibly unusual behavior, so there is fertile ground for jokes. But the writers don't seem to be interested in jokes and are instead only interested in attacking someone they hate. That's all well and good, but you need to at least make it funny.
2. The Anti-Comedy skits. Pete Davidson and Kyle Mooney seem to be hellbent on making the most un-funny comedy sketches on the show, particularly with their digital shorts. I was never a big fan of Andy Sandberg's digital shorts, but you could tell he was working hard on trying to get you to laugh no matter how silly he was. Davidson and Mooney present sketches that are so odd that they fail to do anything but make you say "What the hell was that?" And that might be their point, but it makes for incredibly bad television.
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