My good friend the Doctor said that I should do a parallel list to my Kal-El Awards that reflect to worst in pop culture from the year. He suggested that I call them the "Lenny Luthors" after the horrible Jon Cryer character from Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. The rational for choosing Lenny was that "he is terrible in every way that Superman is awesome."
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 mostly 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. So I only have two TV categories:
-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
Turning Red
At the end of the story Melin has come to accept the panda part of her life. She is about leave with her friends when her mother that has her tail showing. When Ming says "You're not going out like!" Melin rolls her eyes and says:
"My panda my choice, mom!"
And there it is.
When I heard it I honestly could not believe it. I suppose I should be grateful that writing this morally wrong is also very horribly done.
The entire journey of the movie is to get you to this moment where Melin accepts bodily autonomy and so spouts the abortion slogan in panda terms.
Even before this moment, the movie was terrible. In the first act, Melin begins to develop hormonally charged feelings for boys for the first time. I'm remembering a much better PIXAR movie, Inside/Out, where they made a joke reference to puberty, but were smart enough to avoid it. Handled with intelligence and care, you could tell an excellent story as a metaphor for adolescents. But it fails horribly for two reasons:
The first is that the writers abandoned the idea of subtle, symbolic story-telling. Melin turns into a giant panda and comments on how she smells, is hairy, and feels no longer at home in her own body. Ok, super-obvious analogy, but it could still work. But instead of leaning in this direction, the movie begins moving into the biological realities of female development. Again, this is not necessarily unworkable, but this is a movie directed at small children. I don't know how many parent were aware that these things would be talked about in a kids movie.
The second is that Ming is the WORST Disney mother I have ever seen in a movie (and that's saying a lot). When she discovers that Melin has drawn a shirtless merman that looks like the 17-year-old who works at the local convenient store, Ming drags her daughter to the crowded store, throws the pictures at the boy and tells him to leave her daughter alone. What human parent would ever do this?!? Your daughter draws a FANTASY MERMAN bears a resemblance to someone and you go out of your way to humiliate him and your daughter? This is only done because they are working backwards from the punchline. Melin must be so overwhelmed emotionally to trigger the change.
And then later, Melin is at school, Ming creeps around outside by the window to her class. A security guard tries to tackle her. Ming breaks free and runs to the window, shouting Melin's name and holds up a pack of menstrual pads announcing to everyone that her daughter needs them.
Again, in what world did the writers think that this would make any sense. If your child forgot their lunch, would you find the window their class and shout at them like a lunatic while pelting pudding packs at the school?!?
This is once again done to put Melin into an emotional crisis for her to change.
Now, I will admit that there are other reasons why I couldn't connect to the material. The movie centers around Melin and her friends wanting to see their favorite boy band in concert. There is such gravity placed on it that I could not grasp. To be fair, I know that this is a common experience for many teenage girls, but this was completely lost on me.
The movie his no moral compass. Everything works on pure, irrational emotion. For example, there is a boy who acts as the "bully" to Melin and her friends. Never mind the fact that they are as bad to him as he is to them. But towards the end of the movie, they notice that he is also at the concert. As soon as they know him as a fan, they accept him as one of their own and all is forgiven.
It is true that friendships begin because people see the same truth together. But in this case, it was simply a matter of this boy liking the "correct" thing. There is no character growth, arc, learning for this boy or this group of girls.
TOP TEN WORST MOVIES
10. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
9. Jurassic World: Dominion
8. Me Time
7. Honor Society
6. Easter Sunday
5. Senior Year
4. Noel Diary
3. The Fabelmans
2. The Bubble
1. Turning Red
WORST ACTOR
WORST ACTRESS
More than anything, this was such a disappointing script. Here at last was a chance to really capture the quirky nature of Filipino life through humor both universal and culturally specific. We can see this work out very well in hits like My Big Fat Greek Wedding. But Easter Sunday is hampered by a script that has no real intelligence. It simply wants to get from one Filipino joke to the next without making any sense. Would a priest on Easter Sunday ever hand over the microphone to a comedian during mass? Yes, I know the scene is meant to show how Koy can use his comedian skills to bring his family together through humor. The problem is that he does THE EXACT SAME THING AGAIN later on when they are singing karaoke. It's like the writers did not have enough ideas to fill a feature film, so they kept adding more fluff.
MOST ANTI-CHRISTIAN MOVIE
The Fabelmans
If you look back on Spielberg's canon he is incredibly respectful of religious faith, both Jewish and Christian. But this movie was awful in that regard. In the last third of the movie, Sammy meets a Catholic girl (I say Catholic based on the imagery in her home) named Monica (Chloe East). She takes Sammy to her bedroom where she has pictures of Jesus on a wall along with other pin-up celebrity boys. It reminded me of an article I read years ago in Entertainment Weekly which compared Christian images in the home to immature teens hanging posters of their idols. Anyway, Monica talks about how Jesus is "sexy" and then pulls Sammy to the floor to "pray." What was horrid about this moment was that it was clearly equating evangelization with seduction. It goes all the way to Monica dragging Sammy onto her bed as they begin making out with a gigantic crucifix staring down at them.
In the past I made excuses for Spielberg by blaming Kushner. But the scene is not just written in an anti-Christian way, it is filmed in that way as well. Christ is reduced to a school-girl crush or he is an ogre staring down in judgment.
Turning Red
Yes, there were other movies that were more vulgar or anti-Christian.
But Turning Red is marketed to children. And for that reason it is particularly pernicious. A movie like this is meant to corrupt the innocence of the young. Is there anything more horrific that a movie can do. It targets children to behave in horrid ways. As I noted in my review:
But one of the most disgusting moments comes towards the end. It turns out that Ming also had the panda curse. When she loses control in the third act, she turns into a Godzilla-sized panda. Melin has to distract her and get her riled up. So Melin confronts her and they get into a verbal confrontation about Melin growing up. In a fit of rage, Melin begins to dance in such a grossly inappropriate way that if she had done it in human form, I'd be worried that the movie was illegal. But make no mistake, this movie depicts a 13-year-old girl dancing in a horribly sexually provocative way, but they cover her in her "panda form," so we are meant to find it endearing and funny.
It isn't.
It's sick.
As I said, all of this is about creating a culture where Melin embraces her own desires, irrational or not, immodest or not. The point is that she has complete autonomy over her own body and gets to make her own decisions about being a panda or not. This takes us to the horrid punchline. Turning Red is attempting to indoctrinate its audience (children) into accepting a worldview where you can do anything you want with your body because it is your body.
You will read reviews on this blog where movies deal with abortion, sexuality, and other moral issues. And on some of those, I will often find positive things to say, even if I disagree with the messaging. Sometimes people are trying to work out their own thoughts through their storytelling. But those are movies that are made for adults.
Turning Red is made for children.
WORST TV SHOW I STOPPED WATCHING
Pivoting
The most frustrating part of this show is that there is actual talent behind it. The writing was fairly sharp and the actresses are funny. The problem is that the story they were pushing was so disgusting, I could no longer watch. The show was about four women, one of whom dies. The other three then reevaluate their life choices. The worst of the storylines involved Jodie (Ginnifer Goodwin), a housewife who develops a crush on her young and stupid personal trainer Matt (JT Neal). Now, this could be mined for some wonderful comedy. But the show made the HORRIBLE mistake of trying to NORMALIZE ADULTERY. Ginnifer cheats on her husband and we are meant to take this as a whacky situation instead of the soul-crushing, family-destroying act of selfishness that it is. Once this happened, I noped out.
WORST SHOW I STILL WATCH
Willow
You have no idea how excited I was for this show. But seeing as how Disney doesn't know how to manage its biggest properties anymore, I should not have gotten my hopes up.
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