Film
By Dan Hudak

And while on the topic of movies that made no sense, what was going on in The Fountain?

The worst movies in 2006 ranged from terrible to depressingly awful, and interestingly enough both terms describe Basic Instinct 2. Not only does Sharon Stone look like a mannequin that’s come to life, but the acting is wooden, the story contrived and the ending utterly preposterous.

Lindsey Lohan made the “Best” list with A Prairie Home Companion, and now appears on the “Worst” list with Just My Luck, a painfully awful tweener comedy in which she plays a down-on-her-luck girl who finds solace in a cute boy and some rarified good fortune. Even the old Hilary Duff-hating Lohan loyalists thought it stunk.

It could’ve been worse for Lohan, though: At least she wasn’t in You, Me and Dupree. Owen Wilson’s puckish charms are starting to wear very thin, and because the movie centers on his good-for-nothing miscreant Dupree, co-stars Matt Dillon and Kate Hudson are reduced to virtual nonentities.

Speaking of nonentities, Jessica Simpson will always turn heads with her beauty, but her acting ability is another matter altogether. Admittedly, Employee of the Month would’ve been a disaster with or without her vacant presence, but she really didn’t need to give guys a legitimate reason to never want to hear her speak.

Numerous hotties also appeared in Turistas, which was a so-so slasher flick until an unsightly disembowelment made me physically ill. Even the strongest of stomachs had trouble with this grisly gore.

Historical biopics can be highly effective when done right, but this was not the case with Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, a movie so devoid of thought it concludes with a happy ending. For you European history students looking to take a short cut by watching the movie, take note: Marie did not live happily ever after with King Louis. In fact, shortly after the story ends they were captured, imprisoned for a few years and then beheaded.

History repeats itself in The Grudge 2, a waste-of-time remake that brings star Sarah Michelle Gellar back for two minutes before killing her off. It’s amazing she could survive the entire first movie in which she was in countless perilous situations, but here she is quickly tossed off the roof of a hospital without much of a fight. And that’s merely the beginning: The rest of the film follows Amber Tamblyn as she ambles through an incoherent plot which includes three subplots that have nothing to do with hers.

And while on the topic of movies that made no sense, what was going on in The Fountain? Hugh Jackman’s character apparently lived and lusted for Rachel Weisz’s heroine in three different time periods spread 1,000 years apart, with only a monkey and a brain tumor uniting them. If anyone from Mensa can explain this to me, please do.

Jackman and Weisz weren’t the only stars to bomb this year. I still don’t understand why Russell Crowe and his Gladiator director Ridley Scott would make A Good Year, a sappy, wine-soaked drama about a middle-aged man who finds himself in the beatific countryside of France. They should’ve made a musical if they really wanted to get in touch with their feminine side. 

There seems to be one horrible Christmas movie each year, and this year we technically have two. Deck the Halls is an idiotic waste of time starring Matthew Broderick and Danny DeVito as warring neighbors in a small Massachusetts town, the latter of whom is striving to have his houselights seen from outer space. And although it doesn’t celebrate the gift-giving, greed and commercialism that most of us associate with Christmas, The Nativity Story is a faithful, Sunday-school-ready film about the birth of Jesus Christ, and it’s also the most boring film of the year.

Still infecting theaters with its crappiness is Eragon, a rip-off of Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings that has zero creative ideas to call its own. Tack on some hammy acting and murky visual effects, and you start to wish the dragon would just kill everyone and get it over with.

And finally, the worst, most immoral and irresponsible movie of the year was The Quiet, which starred Elisha Cuthbert as a teenager who’s sexually abused by her father and Camilla Belle as a deaf mute who knows her secret. Director Jamie Babbit was clearly striving for some American Beauty-esque commentary, but what she achieved was a despicable work that condoned pedophilia and completely wasted the ability of its stars. This movie was unwatchable.

Here’s hoping no sequels are made to any of these movies, and if they are made they go straight to DVD.

Comments? E-mail dhudak22@yahoo.com.

Also opening in Miami-Dade County this Friday: Code Name: The Cleaner, Freedom Writers, Notes on a Scandal, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.

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