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The Worst Films of 2002


Originally Published: Movie Poop Shoot, 1/15/03
Making this list, my third annual, I realized things must be looking up. 2002 could be rough at times, but it was nothing compared to the barrage of stinkers Hollywood lobbed our way last year. As bad as it got, we never approached the gauzy trash of GLITTER or the depravity of FREDDY GOT FINGERED (And Kevin Costner kept his sideburns to a minimum, thank God). Most movies I saw this year didn’t really move me one way or the other. Too many filmmakers were satisfied giving audiences nothing and leaving them comfortably numb. A hipper writer than I might say “Mediocre is the new terrible.”

That’s not to say there weren’t a couple of out-and-out clunkers. Here are my bottom five, presented in order of descending quality. Also, It should be noted that this list was made without the benefit of seeing DEATH TO SMOOCHY, ALL THE QUEEN’S MEN, THE ADVENTURES OF PLUTO NASH, or SWEPT AWAY. Did I draw the line on these giants of bad cinema? Nah, I just couldn’t get to them before they were pulled from theaters.

5)REIGN OF FIRE - 245 people gave REIGN OF FIRE a 10 on IMDb.com. Did they confuse 10 for 1 in the rating system? Had they ever seen a film before? I do not understand the appeal of this film. After a tense opening, viewers are forced to suffer through 100 minutes of bad dragon effects, lame plot twists, and Matthew McConaughey’s worst performance yet. Some found the film an entertaining B movie. I thought McConaughey’s scenery devouring performance was completely out of place in an otherwise grim film. Maybe if costar Christian Bale looked like he was having any fun at all the two wouldn’t seem like characters from different movies accidentally spliced into the same scenes.

4)COLLATERAL DAMAGE - Putting off a movie’s release is almost always a bad sign. Early 2002 was the dumping ground for a slew of films that were pulled after 9/11. That may have been the excuse given, but it’d be just as believable if Warner Brothers had delayed it for “retooling the ending” or “beefing up the special effects.” Star Arnold Schwarzenegger keeps insisting he isn’t interested in a career in politics, but after his fourth straight bad movie, he might want to reconsider. Completely predictable, rarely exciting, and almost criminally manipulative, DAMAGE would have been immediately forgotten upon release if its story of a vengeful firefighter hunting down terrorists hadn’t been a little too close to reality.

3)EXTREME OPS - ‘Sup, sitches? Now here is a movie that embraces and acknowledges its rather tawdry level of entertainment, but can’t manage to present a single exciting moment or image to a very disappointed audience. Rufus Sewell, Devon Sawa, and Bridgette Wilson-Sampras lead the worst ensemble cast of the year, as extreme sports enthusiasts who wind up in a tiff with a Serbian war criminal (whose apparently not a fan of the X Games). I’d call it a VERTICAL LIMIT for our generation, except VERTICAL LIMIT was also for our generation and neither film was any good.

2)STEALING HARVARD - The good news is STEALING HARVARD, starring Tom Green, is nowhere near as bad as his FREDDY GOT FINGERED. The bad news is, it’s still pretty crummy. This utterly unfunny comedy, which somehow makes Jason Lee and Dennis Farina look bad, suggests that even if Green does not direct, produce, and star in a film, his mere presence is enough to send it plunging into the depths of bad movie hell. I suggest he hire Johnny Knoxville’s agent.

And the absolute worth thing I saw in theaters this year:

1)ROLLERBALL - It may have come out ten months ago, but something tells me ROLLERBALL won’t be forgotten come Razzie Awards time. Delayed and delayed and delayed (see movie #4 on this list), anyone who saw it realized, in retrospect, that no one would have minded if it had never been released. The epitome of a cash-in movie for director John McTiernan, ROLLERBALL was all that was wrong with Hollywood this year. Violent, but watered down (Since an R rating would have meant even further death at the box office), it presented types not characters, hacked up its action sequences to incomprehensible bits, subverted what little message it had to offer, and remade an existing property that no one was clamoring to see again. In a word, shameful.