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The 17 worst movies of 2015 according to Rotten Tomatoes
Now that Disney is finding success in turning all of its animated movies into live-action films, Warner Bros. wanted to cash in on the trend, too. The only problem? They probably should have reconsidered doing a prequel to "Peter Pan."
"Joe Wright's Pan is lacking in the fun, excitement, and magic that made earlier adaptations of Peter Pan so endearing and memorable, leaving behind a troubled prequel that even kids will more than likely find to be a tremendous bore," said the Examiner's Jeff Beck.
It also didn't help that its star, Hugh Jackman, was mostly unrecognizable as Blackbeard. Nope, he's not even Captain Hook.
Channing Tatum in eyeliner and with wolf ears does not a good movie make. Fans should have been alarmed when the Wachowski siblings' next sci-fi movie was abruptly pushed back 10 months. What was supposed to be Warner Bros.' big summer tentpole in 2014 turned out to be a wacky romance between a reincarnated royal and a half-human, half-wolf creature (Tatum) who team up to stop youth-hungry aliens from harvesting humans for their cells.
It also gave us this strange performance from now Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne.
The first few "Transporter" films with Jason Statham were enjoyable, but when you make a fourth film and replace him with an unrecognizable newcomer (Ed Skrein), it's a lot of rehashing what the first trilogy did without making it feel fresh.
"Cheap silliness abounds, including car chases that are more about loud crashes and CGI than the thrill of speed," writes the Los Angeles Times' Robert Abele.
Giant video-game characters coming to life to destroy the planet and our only hope is Adam Sandler and his gang of friends? "Pixels" was a pretty silly premise that riffed on "Ghostbusters" without any of the same charm or humor.
The Daily Telegraph's Nick Dent may have put it best, "If you're old enough to remember the likes of Frogger and Q-Bert, you're probably too old for the film's generally puerile humour."
Did you know this was the fourth film in the live-action franchise? I'm just going to leave this here from The Seattle Times:
"Exposure to 'Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip' may result in the dislocation of eyeballs in viewers over the age of 7 due to uncontrollable rolling of the eyes at the sight of the idiotic antics committed on screen."
Since action thriller "Taken" worked to kick-start Liam Neeson's career in his 60s, maybe "Gunman" could do the same for Sean Penn in his 50s? It even came from Pierre Morel, who directed "Taken"!
It didn't work as planned.
I particularly enjoyed the NPR's take:
"A dum-dum action picture that briefly pretends to be about world aid before returning to muscular, middle-aged men beating the snot out of each other."
Vin Diesel was really passionate and proud of his film about an immortal witch hunter, so it's a bit unfortunate it didn't pan out.
"The Last Witch Hunter" was big on CG and an overstuffed story that had Diesel battling off demons in New York City, across centuries, and dream sequences.
"The special-effects-laden fight scenes are ho-hum, incoherent and badly lit," writes The Washington Post. "It's often hard to tell what some warlock or scorpion-like beast is doing and to whom."
Was anyone looking for a sequel to 2010's first movie? The Hollywood Reporter called the time-travelling film a "flop-sweaty cash grab."
Even John Cusack, who starred in the first film, opted out of doing the sequel, which finds Craig Robinson, Rob Corddry, and Clark Duke hurdling ten years into the future to prevent the murder of one of the group.
You may have missed this fantasy thriller despite it being led by Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore. That's because it quietly debuted in February after constant pushbacks from its original 2013 release date.
The film, about a boy (the seventh son of a seventh son) who works as a witch hunter, was criticized for wasting its big talent with a dull adventure.
"A strange movie that manages to be both ridiculous and bland, its chief point of interest is the spectacle of a great actor caught in career decline."
Johnny Depp may have dazzled audiences in "Black Mass," but before that his last few performances have fallen flat. It was never really clear from marketing and teasers what "Mortdecai" was about other than a blonde-haired whimsical Depp with a twitchy mustache.
Here's the film synopsis:
Juggling some angry Russians, the British Mi5, his impossibly leggy wife and an international terrorist, debonair art dealer and part time rogue Charlie Mortdecai (Depp) must traverse the globe armed only with his good looks and special charm in a race to recover a stolen painting rumored to contain the code to a lost bank account filled with Nazi gold.
Reviews called it an embarrassing spoof of a film that was anything but funny. Maybe this is why Depp will be returning to the high seas in 2017's next "Pirates of the Caribbean" film.
Teaming up with James Franco's younger brother Dave didn't help make Vince Vaughn's comedy about starting a business a hit.
The reviews for this film are just brutal.
Chicago Sun-Times: “Vince Vaughn, continuing his decade-long streak of mediocre comedies plays another variation on his fast-talking, slightly oafish but goodhearted regular guy.”
Grantland: "The movie gets dumber and more desperate as it goes."
Richard Roeper: "After seeing the wretched, wandering mess that is “Unfinished Business,” I’m wondering if some studio executive scribbled those words on the front page of the script as a commentary instead of a suggested title. Nearly everything about this movie feels like a task half-completed."
"Fantastic Four" really missed the mark. What started out with a lot of potential was bogged down by too much background, too many time jumps, and not enough of what you expect from a superhero film: superheroes! The film skipped right over what should have been one of the best parts — seeing how its heroes adjust to and use their new powers.
Even director Josh Trank knew the film wasn't a hit. Before the film came out, Trank blasted the movie on Twitter in a now deleted tweet saying he had a "fantastic version" of the film a year ago but we'll probably never see it.
This one was a big bummer and a major letdown.
After two successful hit films it appeared the need for a third film in the series outweighed making a coherent final entry to the franchise. Dull dialogue, major plot holes, and some choppy editing in major action sequences (Liam Neeson fumbling over fences and that highway chase come to mind) detract from what made the last two movies mindlessly enjoyable.
As Vulture said, "The concept is lame, and the execution is lame, too. The more the film advances, the less we care about the plot — or anything that happens to anybody, really."
No one has quite nailed turning a successful video game into a movie, yet, and this reboot of 2007's "Hitman" film didn't do the trick either.
"Fast and Furious" star Paul Walker was originally pegged to star in this reboot, but it may not have saved the movie. Instead we received Rupert Friend ("Homeland") in a generic action thriller that deviated from the cold and calculating gameplay necessary to advance in the five console games in the series by adding a damsel in distress to the mix.
Though we may see another go at this franchise rebooted one day, it's tough to adapt a character who barely ever talks in his own video game.
It was never clear why we needed a remake of Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze's 1991 film with a group of mostly unrecognizable actors. The result was an action-heavy string of sequences from snowboarding to cliff diving with little of the same chemistry between the actors. San Francisco Chronicle's Peter Hartlaub boiled it down to feeling like a Mountain Dew ad.
Come on, you can't get much better than that original bank-robbery scene.
Remember when Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock did a cop movie in 2013? That was funny. This similar team up between Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara ("Modern Family") was just the opposite with all the silly accents and overacting.
More than anything, this just felt like a major waste of talent.
"'Hot Pursuit' fails to be the smart comedy it should’ve been, especially given that it stars an Oscar-winning actress and the Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated star of one of TV’s top comedies," writes ABC's David Blaustein. "This movie feels beneath them."
The first film starring Kevin James as a New Jersey rent-a-cop didn't receive flourishing reviews, and the sequel, which came out in April, received even worse critiques. If you’ve seen the first movie, it was a lot of the same, with James falling and fumbling, but this time in Vegas as he attends a security officers’ convention. (Apparently, those are a thing!)
This wisp of a plot is just an excuse for James to do his one trick over and over: Bluster, then screw up humiliatingly. Is it never funny? No, it's not never funny. It's just not funny nearly often enough.
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