2013 was a good year for movies, but every drink has its dregs. Here are some of the biggest offenders in cinema, guilty of mean-spirited grossness, stilted acting, incoherent direction and many more crimes against viewers:
1. “InAPPropriate Comedy”
Offer “Vince” Shlomi, the salesman in the ShamWow! infomercials, co-wrote and directed this “comedy” that will make viewers feel dirty on the outside and hollow on the inside. He plays a pervert who sits in the sewer and looks up Lindsay Lohan’s white dress from an air vent as she reenacts (or defaces) the iconic image of Marilyn Monroe. Just as “St. Elsewhere” occurred within an autistic boy’s snowglobe, “InAPPropriate Comedy” emanates from her glowing nether region. The seemingly endless 83-minute film consists of Shlomi pushing different apps on his iPad and bringing up sketches. After each painfully, soul-crushingly unfunny sketch, one is glad it is over even after three or four minutes, but then the film goes back to the same four or five sketches over and over. They include “Blackass,” a black version of “Jackass” that just perpetuates horribly racist stereotypes without any political subtext or wit. Another has Oscar-winner Adrien Brody playing “Flirty Harry,” a feminized spoof of “Dirty Harry,” where the entire joke is that everything he says is a gay double entendre. Another sketch that repeats ad nauseam is “The Amazing Racist” where a man insults all different races and ethnicities in a faux “Candid Camera” format. Staging the ugly performance only makes it that much cheaper and empty. The film is just mean-spirited, lazy and, worst of all, totally without laughs or intelligence. Now Shlomi’s being arrested for beating a prostitute is only the second worst thing he has done to humanity.
2. “Insidious: Chapter 2”
Quiet … Quiet … Quiet … BOO! Did that scare you? Of course not, but that’s a basic summary of “Insidious: Chapter 2,” the mind-numbingly dull sequel to the decent 2010 original. Gore and explicit violence do not a horror film make, but it is true that there are very few PG-13 horror films worth anyone’s time. This sequel lacks any real scares or tension because it merely consists of long stretches of characters walking around in a creaky, haunted house with a quiet soundtrack until suddenly the music or a sound effect blares, causing, at most, a momentary startle. A small child can come up behind someone and scream out, causing the other person to flinch, but as soon as the source of the noise is revealed, there is no fright or dread left. There is no momentum or meaning to the boo moments. The film is nothing more than cheap scares strung together in a completely convoluted plot. The director, James Wan, made the much more effective horror film “The Conjuring” earlier in the year. How could the same person make two films in the same year of such wildly different quality?
3. “Getaway”
Ethan Hawke stars in this frenzied action thriller as a man who has to drive like a madman through Bulgaria to save his wife from being killed by a psychotic foreigner voiced by Oscar-winner Jon Voight. Early on, Hawke pulls Selena Gomez into his car to help him after she holds him at gunpoint. If a competent director and editor had been steering this vehicle, it could have been a fun B-movie, and the ludicrous premise could be forgiven. The problem is that the action is edited so fast and the camera work so inconsistent and incoherent — cutting between extreme close-ups of parts of the car and random shots of the car barreling through the bustling city — that one can rarely tell where the car is in relation to its surrounding or how fast it is traveling. There are probably fewer than 10 shots in the entire film that last for more than five seconds. Car chases mean nothing and become boring if nothing makes visual sense. On top of that, the dialogue is ridiculous, the plot has holes and Gomez is far from believable as a gun-toting criminal. Go into high gear, and flee this wreck.
4. “The Ultimate Life”
Following up on the 2006 film “The Ultimate Gift,” the story begins in the present and quickly goes into an extended flashback that lasts most of the film, telling the early life of billionaire Red Stevens (James Garner) as he made his first millions in the Texas oil fields. Remembering the specifics of the plot is difficult, because the film is forgettable, cloying Hallmark Channel-level claptrap. I do recall being the only person in the theater when I saw it and rolling my eyes on numerous occasions and squirming in my seat wanting it to be over. What did stick with me was the film’s confused messages. The faith-based drama is all about kindness and sharing what you have with the world, but the main character gets his fortune with some morally questionable business deals. From what the original film shows, his children turn out to be horrible, greedy people, and this prequel never explains how they became that way. For a film projecting positive messages, there is a darkness underneath that is never explored.
5. “R.I.P.D.”
Ryan Reynolds plays a generally good cop who makes a fatal error one day in an attempt to make some money for himself on the job. In death, he is transferred to the R.I.P.D., the Rest in Peace Department. As one could surmise, he fights crime in the afterlife and stops an assortment of ghoulish creatures. He is teamed up with an Old West sheriff, played by Jeff Bridges, who does a cloying variation on his Rooster Cogburn character in “True Grit.” Who ever thought Bridges, of “Big Lebowski” fame, could play such an annoying character? The special effects-laden mess is a mix of “Men in Black” and “Ghostbusters” but without an ounce of those films’ wit or charm. The plot makes little sense, and many of the major story developments are never explained.