2012 has seen some great movies come out of Hollywood, but it’s also seen its fair share of turkeys too. From board game based banality to well, anything with Adam Sandler in it, there have been some truly awful experiences on offer at your local multiplex over the last month.
So to share in your pain, and help you to avoid any of these duds that you might have missed, here’s our countdown of the 10 worst films of 2012.
5. Battleship
Who’d have thought that a film based on a board game that involves yelling out alphanumeric codes in a bid to sink each other’s imaginary armadas would have been a flop? Of course the main problem with Battleship wasn’t that it was a bad idea in the first place - although that probably didn’t help. No, the real issue was that in spite of a flimsy premise and a script that read like it had been scribbled by a pre-schooler, studio bosses still decided to throw millions of dollars and some spurious stunt casting at the project in a bid to make it stick at the box office. The end result was a mess. A well polished and pretty to look at mess, but a mess all the same.
4. John Carter
As a rule of thumb if the movie you’re about to watch involves aliens and / or Taylor Kitsch in a starring role; then it’s probably going to suck. After all this was meant to be the year that the one time Friday Night Lights actor made it big. Long tipped as the next big thing in action movies there was a definite air of excitement around the release of John Carter back in March, but then people watched it – or at least those who didn’t storm out in disgust did – and the whole conceit came crashing down. It almost took Disney with it too if the record losses the House of Mouse took on the movie are to be believed.
3. Alex Cross
It turns out that Tyler Perry isn’t just awful in his own movies; he’s awful in other people’s too. Here he attempts to fill Morgan Freeman’s shoes as James Patterson’s titular FBI profiler, in what’s perhaps the most spectacular piece of miscasting this side of Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood. To be fair he’s not helped by Matthew Fox’s skeletal serial killer – proof if proof be needed that drastic weight loss does not automatically equal a dramatic performance.
2. A Thousand Words
Believe it or not Eddie Murphy is one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood; a one-time A-lister who commands exorbitant fees for the films he stars in. We hope in this case that director Brian Robbins kept his receipt so he can ask for his money back after a performance that will surely prove to be the final nail in Murphy’s career coffin. Although it was released in march A Thousand Words was actually shot way back in 2008 and presumably only resurfaced after someone found it tucked away in an Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark style warehouse crammed full of awful things.
1. That's My Boy
Adam Sandler is currently enjoying the same kind of career trajectory that the likes of Eddie Murphy, Rob Schneider and Lindsay Lohan have enjoyed of late. The one time funnyman has been dining out for years off of the back of the enjoyable lowbrow buffoonery of Happy Gilmore and The Waterboy. But any goodwill the audience still held for Sandler has surely been after the abysmal That’s My Boy, 90 minutes of over acting, misfiring gags and cringe-worthy plotting that feels like the cinematic equivalent of having an idiot shout at you for an hour and a half.
10-6 are at the source