The Five Worst Films of 2018
2018 was a stupefying year for movies, but it wasn't without its share of stinkers.
In my opinion, 2018 was one of the best years for the Hollywood industry of late. So much good came out all at once and together, we laughed, we cried, we oohed and awed at films that were either surprisingly good or expectedly awe-inspiring. It was a year for brilliant, high-concept original films along with the continuation of franchises that took themselves to the next level.
Unfortunately, not every film was exceptional and, looking deep into every film I saw in the past year, there were some terrible releases. Is it as bad as last year where it was home to such dreadful films like "The Emoji Movie," "The Mummy," and "Beauty and the Beast?" Somewhat. Even though the following selections are genuinely terrible films, at least 2018 kept the number to a minimum whereas 2017 was full of films that were no good. Before I get to the five best films of 2018 and the five hidden gems of 2018, it's time to revisit the five worst films of 2018.
5. Robin Hood
When I watched the first trailer for 2018's "Robin Hood," I was expecting the film to be one of the worst of the year, if not the worst. The trailers were abysmal. Across the board, it seemed like no one was putting any effort into the film. And so, along with my Dad and younger brother, I went into the theater expecting the absolute worst.
Obviously, with the film's placement on this list, it must've been terrible and in most areas, it was. However, I must admit that I did enjoy Taron Egerton as the titular character, I liked the score, and some of the action scenes were not awful. That's as far as my praise reaches though. While somewhat watchable, "Robin Hood" is a shoddy interpretation of the well-known story.
"The legend you know. The story you don't." That was the tagline for this film and, having seen many tellings of this classic story, 2018's "Robin Hood" is almost exactly like the previous adaptations. There's little variation to be seen between this film and its older siblings. Robin Hood's doing his usual routine and the Sheriff of Nottingham is up to no good per usual. Sure, Robin's backstory is different, but the film spends little time expanding on it. To the filmmakers credit, they do something different with the message, which feels politically applicable in today's world, but it's inclusion is severely underplayed, leaving little-to-no part in the story.
Obviously, with the film's placement on this list, it must've been terrible and in most areas, it was. However, I must admit that I did enjoy Taron Egerton as the titular character, I liked the score, and some of the action scenes were not awful. That's as far as my praise reaches though. While somewhat watchable, "Robin Hood" is a shoddy interpretation of the well-known story.
"The legend you know. The story you don't." That was the tagline for this film and, having seen many tellings of this classic story, 2018's "Robin Hood" is almost exactly like the previous adaptations. There's little variation to be seen between this film and its older siblings. Robin Hood's doing his usual routine and the Sheriff of Nottingham is up to no good per usual. Sure, Robin's backstory is different, but the film spends little time expanding on it. To the filmmakers credit, they do something different with the message, which feels politically applicable in today's world, but it's inclusion is severely underplayed, leaving little-to-no part in the story.
"Robin Hood" may have been a great movie if it was just about him and his nemesis, the Sheriff of Nottingham. If the movie took a deep dive into the personality of those two characters, perhaps the movie would've been more entertaining and focused. As is, the film is packed with too many characters and the plot is too mudded to give a sufficient amount of development to each one, resulting in characters that are severely underdeveloped, if that. The performances, outside of Taron Egerton, are dull. Since I lived in Saudi Arabia for almost three years, I enjoyed some bits of Jamie Foxx's John, but his performance is lamentable. The love interest, Marian, is trite as is the forced romantic rival, Will. Although he fares better than aforementioned three, Ben Mendelsohn's turn as the Sheriff of Nottingham is nothing remarkable.
With Hollywood continuing to produce visually-stunning films, the CGI in "Robin Hood" is unimaginative and often covered with a murky color palette, making it hard to follow the action sequences, which are already difficult to track because of the inconsistent editing. In all, "Robin Hood" has its merits, but is altogether a film full of contemptible inclusions.
Grade: D+
4. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again
My thoughts exactly, title. I recall titling this decade-late sequel as better than the original. On paper, that sounds like decent praise, but anyone who saw 2008's "Mamma Mia!" knows what a disgrace to the musical genre it was. Thus, a statement like that isn't an endorsement at all. While not as maddening as its predecessor, "Here We Go Again" is a worthless musical.
The sub-category of musicals, the jukebox musical, is a bad idea all around. Whenever done, I find it extremely hard to sit through because all it is are actors doing kareoke that sounds incredibly fake. Such was the case with "Mamma Mia!" and "Here We Go Again" is a slightly lesser representation. The song placements are laughably predictable. As I said in my review, as soon as I saw a Napoleon statue, I knew immediately that the actors would be doing their cover of ABBA's "Waterloo." The songs themselves are rife with autotune. They sound so robotic that it's hard to get into the mood to sing along. I would've done so during the "Dancing Queen" number had it not sounded so phony.
The story isn't engaging and is full of pacing pitfalls. It chooses to chronicle the young adult years of the Meryl Streep character, yet the film also wishes to shed light on characters introduced in the original film. It has so many priorities that it fails to serve all of them at once. The stories suffer the most as the filmmakers chose to prioritize the musical numbers instead. The two story threads switch so sparsely that neither storyline is given enough time to land its emotional punches. There couldn't be more confusion within the film.
Two actors shine in this film while the majority fail. Amanda Seyfried contains enough heart and spunk to be entertaining within her character's limited screen time while Lilly James, though not playing a defined character, does the most she can with her large role. On the flip side, Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan, and Stellan Skarsgård's characters are dull and the trio fail the most in the musical numbers because they're especially untalented singers. Andy Garcia and Cher have the briefest of screen time playing ex-lovers who sing the most unimportant song in the film. The actors playing the younger versions of Donna's friends and three lovers lack energy and personality to be remotely entertaining.
I'd be hard-pressed to say that I expected more out of the sequel to one of the worst film musicals ever. While I enjoyed myself a little more this time around, then again, I didn't enjoy anything in the original "Mamma Mia!" "Here We Go Again" is slightly better, but still an awful film.
Grade: D
3. Teen Titans Go! To the Movies
Nowadays, it seems that superhero film genre has to mock itself in order to prevent any possible fatigue. We're now at a point where even this route is becoming stale. Exhibit A: "Teen Titans Go! To the Movies."
The funny thing about this film is that it's actually a TV show getting an upgrade to the silver screen. With a parody of the superhero genre being this film's goal, why wasn't this just a special, ninety-minute episode for their TV show? Why did this have to be a feature film? The animation quality isn't significantly upgraded and the fact that this film mocks the outlandish and unknown superhero characters who get big-budget superhero films is ironic, considering this is a film based on a TV show with characters that general moviegoers haven't heard of.
Few jokes in this farce are humorous. Nicholas Cage voices Superman and that's as funny as it sounds. Deathstroke, who goes by his alter-ego name Slade Wilson because it's a kids film, pokes fun at actions repeatedly done by moviegoers in the cinema. Stan Lee even makes his first cameo in a DC film and that elicited many laughs from me. With those exceptions aside, the humor's pretty juvenile. You know it's a bad sign when the marketing team can't resist putting a fart joke in the first trailer. It just goes to show you how much childish humor there is.
I know a little about the Teen Titans and have even seen some of the episodes of the TV show where this movie comes from. Having seen this feature film, I still consider this group to be a team of unfunny superhero wannabes. Good grief, are these characters unlikeable. Maybe their attitude and behavior is supposed to be funny, but I found their shenanigans to be unpleasant to sit through. Robin is always whining about not getting his own movie, Starfire and Raven are bland, and Beast Boy and Cyborg are annoyingly condescending. On a side note, isn't a live-action Cyborg film in production for an April 3, 2020 release? Shouldn't he be accepted by the heroes who are getting movies? As it turns out, no. Instead, he's thrown into the group of heroes who are seen as "not real heroes," which makes no sense.
Circling back to the film's humor, I get that DC wants to parody it's own live-action cinematic universe, but talk about beating a dead horse. The degree to which they make fun of themselves by including, say, a joke that mocks the "Martha" scene in "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" are painfully exaggerated. Here's a bright idea, DC. Maybe, instead of mocking your very recent mistakes, you should work on making sure those mistakes never happen ever again, but judging by the existence of this film, "Aquaman" looks to be another fluke from the company.
Grade: D
2. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Don't breathe a sigh of relief too much, "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom." You were almost the lowest spot on this list. At least you weren't as painful to sit through as my number one choice. Now that I have gotten your only saving grace out of the way, time to emphasize what a terrible movie this is.
"Jurassic Park" is one of my ten favorite films of all time and the three sequels that followed it didn't even match it in quality. Not that the first film ever needed any sequels to begin with. However, when J. A. Bayona was announced as the director of this fifth film, I was hoping that we would finally get a sequel worthy of the first. Boy, did we not.
J. A. Bayona has made some fantastic films in the past, so why was this as bad as it was? Though my ire towards this film is not entirely targeted towards him, as director, he did sign off on what the screenwriters and actors came up with, making him culpable for the giant mistake that is "Fallen Kingdom."
This franchise was in desperate need of new ideas and though I suppose that this film does add one or two new concepts to the canon, they're ideas that come out of nowhere and when revealed, they have no affect on the story and don't hit as hard as the film thinks they do. Once they're revealed at the end, you then spend the rest of the movie trying to figure out why their inclusion was necessary.
Instead of disguising itself as a deeper meaning, the whole "Should we save the dinosaurs?" argument is extremely transparent. In fact, a newscaster spells it out for you, ruining the cleverness of having such a debate. Plus, when you're the fifth film in a franchise that still tries to support man's interference with dinosaurs, given the track record, the people all for saving the dinosaurs just sound foolish rather than motivated individuals. On that note, if you're annoyed by characters who continually make foolish decisions, steer clear of "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom." The level of idiocy displayed by every single character in this movie is astonishing. Not one character makes a right or even sane decision. You know, other than running away from dinosaurs, which is done so last-minute that you wonder how these humans are still alive.
Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are wonderful actors, but they did not exercise any of their talent in this film. The relationship that their characters built in the first "Jurassic World" is retconned for no reason, leaving this movie to build that relationship back up to no avail. Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, and Isabella Sermon are even worse. Smith's character is a pathetic and unfunny wimp, a person that should've been eaten as soon as he encountered his first dinosaur and probably would've if said dinosaur wasn't as stupid as he was. Pineda plays a character who's full of the stereotypes you've come to know and hate. She'll say she's tough, but will get kidnaped. She'll act all independent, yet will need rescue towards the end of the film. Throughout her screen time, she is constantly in a bad mood and it progressively makes her unappealing. While Isabella Sermon's character starts off very likable, her place in the story doesn't make sense and she ends her screen time by making the most thoughtless decision imaginable. Even worse, she has the gall to be proud of it and the other protagonists seemingly support her for it.
It's so easy to title this the worst film of the year, but I can count a few things I liked. Granted, I'd only be able to count on one hand the things I liked about this film. At the very least, it's better than my number one choice where I can't count anything I liked in it. Still, to paraphrase Ian Malcolm, "Fallen Kingdom" is one big pile of crap.
"Jurassic Park" is one of my ten favorite films of all time and the three sequels that followed it didn't even match it in quality. Not that the first film ever needed any sequels to begin with. However, when J. A. Bayona was announced as the director of this fifth film, I was hoping that we would finally get a sequel worthy of the first. Boy, did we not.
J. A. Bayona has made some fantastic films in the past, so why was this as bad as it was? Though my ire towards this film is not entirely targeted towards him, as director, he did sign off on what the screenwriters and actors came up with, making him culpable for the giant mistake that is "Fallen Kingdom."
This franchise was in desperate need of new ideas and though I suppose that this film does add one or two new concepts to the canon, they're ideas that come out of nowhere and when revealed, they have no affect on the story and don't hit as hard as the film thinks they do. Once they're revealed at the end, you then spend the rest of the movie trying to figure out why their inclusion was necessary.
Instead of disguising itself as a deeper meaning, the whole "Should we save the dinosaurs?" argument is extremely transparent. In fact, a newscaster spells it out for you, ruining the cleverness of having such a debate. Plus, when you're the fifth film in a franchise that still tries to support man's interference with dinosaurs, given the track record, the people all for saving the dinosaurs just sound foolish rather than motivated individuals. On that note, if you're annoyed by characters who continually make foolish decisions, steer clear of "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom." The level of idiocy displayed by every single character in this movie is astonishing. Not one character makes a right or even sane decision. You know, other than running away from dinosaurs, which is done so last-minute that you wonder how these humans are still alive.
Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are wonderful actors, but they did not exercise any of their talent in this film. The relationship that their characters built in the first "Jurassic World" is retconned for no reason, leaving this movie to build that relationship back up to no avail. Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, and Isabella Sermon are even worse. Smith's character is a pathetic and unfunny wimp, a person that should've been eaten as soon as he encountered his first dinosaur and probably would've if said dinosaur wasn't as stupid as he was. Pineda plays a character who's full of the stereotypes you've come to know and hate. She'll say she's tough, but will get kidnaped. She'll act all independent, yet will need rescue towards the end of the film. Throughout her screen time, she is constantly in a bad mood and it progressively makes her unappealing. While Isabella Sermon's character starts off very likable, her place in the story doesn't make sense and she ends her screen time by making the most thoughtless decision imaginable. Even worse, she has the gall to be proud of it and the other protagonists seemingly support her for it.
It's so easy to title this the worst film of the year, but I can count a few things I liked. Granted, I'd only be able to count on one hand the things I liked about this film. At the very least, it's better than my number one choice where I can't count anything I liked in it. Still, to paraphrase Ian Malcolm, "Fallen Kingdom" is one big pile of crap.
Grade: D-
1. Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation
As I delved into the list of films that I had seen this year, I found two perfect candidates for the last-place spot: "Fallen Kingdom" and this film. Both of them were so terrible that I had a tough time selecting which one should have the honor of being the worst. As you can see, I opted to name "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation" the worst film of 2018.
I can see some of you rejecting my choice because you either like this film or think other films released this year were much worse. For me, "Summer Vacation" was exceptionally painful to sit through. It's amazing how unimaginative it is just by basic premise alone. There's no plot. Rather, there's a string of loosely-connected scenes that seem to make up a ninety-minute, disposable train wreck. I was no fan of the first two "Hotel Transylvania" movies, but even I have to admit that this was a disgrace to the first two films. You have to try to be as bad as this movie is. The franchise is named after a hotel, so why are these characters going on a cruise?
Oh, did I say characters? I meant, celebrities. Because no one who watches this movie will call these people by who they're supposed to be voicing. You know that's Adam Sandler, you know that's Kevin James, you know that's Steve Buscemi, you know that's Selena Gomez, et cetera. They're not doing anything in the animation field that they haven't already done in live-action movies. You could make a checklist out of the many things they do in this film that they already do in their other films, be it lazy and immature humor or Sandler being delusional.
You have Adam Sandler continuing to voice one of the worst fathers ever portrayed in film. Kids may get a kick of Sandler's goofy voice. To me, it's very similar to what he did in "Jack and Jill." If you saw five minutes of that movie, you'd know how entertaining it was to hear Sandler throughout this film. I think seventy-five percent of Sandler's "lines" are just him speaking gibberish. The character is written so conniving that he proves himself to be more of a villain than the film's actual villains. His comedy is intentionally made up of slapstick gags to lure kids into seeing this film, leaving the longest ninety minutes that they've ever spent at the cinemas.
The animation is stylistic, but offers nothing amazing that makes it noteworthy. The music choices a done with the goal of attracting young and/or nostalgic audiences members. I feel compelled to add that if you liked this movie, good for you. Maybe you saw something I missed. With that said, "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation" is the worst film of 2018, the second time in a row for Sony Pictures Animation. Thank goodness for "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse!"
I can see some of you rejecting my choice because you either like this film or think other films released this year were much worse. For me, "Summer Vacation" was exceptionally painful to sit through. It's amazing how unimaginative it is just by basic premise alone. There's no plot. Rather, there's a string of loosely-connected scenes that seem to make up a ninety-minute, disposable train wreck. I was no fan of the first two "Hotel Transylvania" movies, but even I have to admit that this was a disgrace to the first two films. You have to try to be as bad as this movie is. The franchise is named after a hotel, so why are these characters going on a cruise?
Oh, did I say characters? I meant, celebrities. Because no one who watches this movie will call these people by who they're supposed to be voicing. You know that's Adam Sandler, you know that's Kevin James, you know that's Steve Buscemi, you know that's Selena Gomez, et cetera. They're not doing anything in the animation field that they haven't already done in live-action movies. You could make a checklist out of the many things they do in this film that they already do in their other films, be it lazy and immature humor or Sandler being delusional.
You have Adam Sandler continuing to voice one of the worst fathers ever portrayed in film. Kids may get a kick of Sandler's goofy voice. To me, it's very similar to what he did in "Jack and Jill." If you saw five minutes of that movie, you'd know how entertaining it was to hear Sandler throughout this film. I think seventy-five percent of Sandler's "lines" are just him speaking gibberish. The character is written so conniving that he proves himself to be more of a villain than the film's actual villains. His comedy is intentionally made up of slapstick gags to lure kids into seeing this film, leaving the longest ninety minutes that they've ever spent at the cinemas.
The animation is stylistic, but offers nothing amazing that makes it noteworthy. The music choices a done with the goal of attracting young and/or nostalgic audiences members. I feel compelled to add that if you liked this movie, good for you. Maybe you saw something I missed. With that said, "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation" is the worst film of 2018, the second time in a row for Sony Pictures Animation. Thank goodness for "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse!"
Grade: F
Conclusion
This has been my list of the five worst films of the year. I welcome your opinion on the subject. Look for the five hidden gems of 2018 and five best films of 2018. Both of those lists are coming soon. Thanks for reading, I'm Dallin, your resident Film Fanatic, and I see you again with another editorial.
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