The Films We Hate...

[c7_assassin]

They say that as we grow older, we learn certain truths about ourselves. I wouldn't know much about that; I try to discover as little about myself as possible. This helps me control my drinking problem. So instead, I'll share with you all a piece of self-knowledge I've had ever since high school: I tend to hate a lot of things, and I also tend to think about the things I hate a lot. I think that might be the reason I'm an atheist who owns copies of the Bible, the Koran, and the Book of Mormon. It's why I'm a university student even though I've hate university students. You could almost say I have a love-hate relationship with the things I hate.

Since it's now summer and I'm unemployed, I find I've been watching even more movies than usual. This, inevitably, has brought me into contact with several movies I've passionately hated. And this has got me to thinking about why. What makes us hate the things we hate? What, for example, distinguishes them from the things we merely dislike or disdain? I like to think of myself as a man of education and some taste; but even I know that I don't hate films or TV based on any objective standard of aesthetics or quality. I'm not a snob: sometimes I really like things I know are terrible.

An example of this would be the reality show Flavor of Love. This show is undoubtedly the worst offence against the human race that reality TV has ever committed, and trust me, every day has been a bloodbath. Its star is one of the most preposterous human beings ever created. He's a walking PSA for fetal alcohol syndrome. I'm about 98% sure that he really is legally retarded and as such, making a show like this should probably be illegal in a number of different ways. And Flavor of Love is a show where 20 of the strangest women in the world try desperately to fuck him. This show is objectively terrible by any measure; moreover, it represents the lowering of the lowest common denominator to an utterly unthinkable level and will probably be cited by future historians as the moment that television finally fell. Its popularity says things about humanity that I won't be ready to fully accept until I actually start climbing a clock-tower.

And yet I don't hate Flavor of Love: I actually kind of enjoyed it, that time I accidentally flipped to a channel that was airing the first season marathon and then my remote exploded (that's my story and I'm sticking to it). I expected to be repulsed, but I wasn't. I was entranced. Watching several of the worst examples of human failure disport themselves in an absurd wonderland of giant clocks and bling was kind of fun in an escapist sort of way. This show is unquestionably shit, but it's entertaining shit.

Or take a film that was bad and which I didn't like, but I also didn't hate: Transformers. I went to see this at theatres, and I now regret it. It turns out I don't like Transformers. The movie is pointless and much too reliant on fake-looking visuals (why do I care which talking special effect defeats the other? Should I try to superimpose Liam Neeson's head onto the effect-with-Liam-Neeson's-voice using my mind, so I can maybe generate some emotional involvement with this movie about the talking special effects?). But I didn't hate Transformers when I saw it; I wasn't angry when I left the theatre, I just made a mental note never to see the sequel. I was a little pissed that I had paid money for the ticket, but that's just because I'm also very cheap.

But I've found that some movies go that extra mile: some movies make me actively hate them. Some movies produce side effects in me that feel almost physical. Some movies make me positively seethe. These are movies that have me shaking my head and ranting as I leave the theatre, spitting foam at whomever was dumb enough to accompany me to the theatre when they knew this could happen. These are movies I never ever forget, because I invoke the memory of them whenever I have to kill one of my pets, in order muster up the necessary rage.

I'll be sharing some of my own thoughts on the top five films I've hated the most, but first I'd like to hear some of your feelings on the subject. What movies or TV shows have you hated with every fiber of your being? What films have made you want to rape the filmmaker with his own camera, and fuck getting caught because no jury will ever convict you and even if they do, it was totally worth it?

 

[john getty]

He who stares into the abyss is swallowed whole.
You've been warned, avoid reality shows.

 

[TropicThunder]

Two words.

Intolerable Cruelty.

That movie made me want to gouge my own eyes out with the plastic spoon from my DQ Blizzard and then throw my bloody eyeballs at the girl at the ticket place for advising me to see this movie, getting it mixed up with some Angelina Jolie movie that I heard was equally terrible.

Oh, oh, oh. Let's not forget Without a Paddle 2. Worst. Movie. Ever.

 

[Bugman]

Can't say there is a movie or TV show I've hated. There are many I have found moronic, insipid, boring or tasteless for example. They are what they are so I ignore them and go about my business.

 

[Mitchell]

I've hated a few movies that the critics loved. Among the honorable mentions.

1. Leaving Las Vegas. I saw this with my mom, when we lived in NJ, on my
26th bday in 1996. Depressing, with no story. A good cast, (Nic Cage, And Elizabeth Shue) that was wasted.

2. Men Who Stare At Goats. Again, the critics liked it, I hated it. To me, the movie just made no sense.

3. All About Steve. I dont think the critics liked this one. It starred Sandra Bullock, who is one of my favorite actresses, but I just thought it was a bad movie.

4. Dude, Where's My Car? Two of my favorite actors, Ashton Kutcher, and Seann William Scott. Any adult I talked to who heard the name of this movie told me "Any movie with that name has to suck".

Those are some of my all time least favorite movies.

Mitch

 

[darkstain]

I've always hated movies or TV shows that try and impart some kind of social statement on the audience, such as the evils of racism, the misguided nature of war, or the plight of the abused women in Fudgepackistan.

 

[sasaxrah]

Everyone and their mom liked Moulin Rouge except me.

 

[drewskee]

Everyone and their mom liked Moulin Rouge except me.

And me. I hated Moulin Rouge.

 

[c7_assassin]

#5

Along Came Polly
Failure Rating: 14/10

This film makes it onto this list, I think because I hate it not only as a whole: I hate its every individual aspect as well. Watching this film is like watching a team of people who went to film school painstakingly assemble an intricate 1000-piece puzzle, if every piece was made out of failure, and the puzzle formed a picture of your parents having anal sex. And then a homeless man vomits on the finished product. Except that would have been a little entertaining: this is not.

I've hated Ben Stiller's movies ever since I abruptly realized that he has absolutely no talent as an actor or as a comedian. This hit me sometime after I saw Meet the Parents and thought it was great (because this was the first film of his I had ever seen); maybe around the time I finally got around to watching Reality Bites. He's not exactly unfunny, but I realized that his schtick is so predictable it makes watching him onscreen utterly pointless. Here's a trick: before watching a Ben Stiller comedy, read a three-word description of his character (take Dodegball: rich-asshole-bodybuilder), and think for a second about how Ben Stiller would play that role. Yes, that is exactly how it happens in the movie. Congratulations, now you don't need to see the movie! That'll just be $8.

Next, I utterly despise Jennifer Aniston, whose film career ever since Friends actually counts as a charitable institution for tax purposes. She is the most irrelevant celebrity in existence. She has not done a good or even memorable thing in her life, ever. No, seriously, not ever, and you can't even say that about Nia Vardalos. You think it took talent to play Rachel Green? I could never convincingly pine for David Schwimmer either, but that's why I've never tried acting for a living. Jennifer Aniston should have been put on an ice flow long ago (I've been given reason to believe Brad Pitt may have actually tried this...), but instead she still appears in movies so often that I've stopped questioning whether or not there's witchcraft involved and just started sleeping on a bed of wolfsbane.

This film's story is so uninspired that the fact that someone was paid to write the script almost makes me kiss the end of a shotgun every time it occurs to me. "Ben Stiller leads an ordinary life. Until one day a girl shows up who just turns his world upside down." I submit this for your consideration: we do not need any more movies about a girl who shows up and turns a guy's world upside down. This genre should have been nixed long before it became a genre. Everything that could possibly be said by these films has been fucking said, and said, and said to death. And then Along Came Polly (cue the fucking music and my death).

This movie also gave me the vague sense that I was watching an episode of Friends, and this pissed me off for several reasons: Friends involves Jennifer Aniston, whom I happen to hate; Friends is a TV show, and as such gets a pass for being a little dumb sometimes, because it's free and you can change the channel, and this is a movie; it also gave me a window into Along Came Polly's filmmaking process that compounded my hate for everyone involved.

You can tell the producers sat down and said "Okay, so we're locked into making a romantic comedy with Jennifer Aniston. No one's happy about it, but now at least I get my daughter's soul back. So let's just make this as painless as possible."

"You're thinking it should be a lot like an episode of Friends, right?"

"Right; because that's why people will come see this movie: because they liked Jennifer Aniston in Friends, and they want more of Rachel Green."

"But the thing is, Jennifer Aniston was never much of an actress, even when she's playing Rachel Green."

"I gotcha. Here's what we do: we'll make every character in the film a poorly concealed knock-off of a character from Friends. Ben Stiller will be a guy who's exactly like Ross; they'll have an actor friend who's exactly like Joey. Also, let's just reuse the 'list' storyline from season two without any embellishments whatsoever: that way Jenn won't even have to act!"

"God, this is fantastic blow."

"That's wolfsbane, Fredo. Enjoy that."

 

[TropicThunder]

Excellent. I've never seen that movie, and now I never will.

I hate it when Ben Stiller goes all...Ben Stiller.

 

[Heeko]

Batman & Robin

I really don't blame the actors/actresses for this bomb as much as the horrible writing. The cast was credible and the past Batman movies handed the writers a built-in audience. But the writing in this movie buried it. This movie almost ruined the Batman franchise.

 

[Big_Dogg85]

Working at Blockbuster has enlightened me to many movies where I have zero tolerance... I will graciously add my list to yours:

-It's Complicated - you'd think something with Meryl Streep would be good but Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin just brought her down.

-Funny People - Another movie where I expected more out of Sandler in particular but this movie wasn't funny at all...recycling cliched jokes.

A lot of you will probably hate me for this one but...

-The Hangover - I just couldn't get into this movie at all...the first 30 minutes just seemed far too predictable to me -> most likely a movie that sealed it's fate with it's trailers, too much info given away and not enough for the movie.

-Val Kilmer - The man is seriously whoring himself out at this point...all of his new movies are just beyond terrible and since it seems like he comes out with one every month at least (some cases, every 2 weeks) I can't list em all but I'm adding all of Kilmer's new movies to this list.

and finally, a crappy coup de grace so final it had to be a trilogy:

-High School Musical 1-3 - While I am very aware that this series launched the careers of two decently attractive ladies in Ashley Tisdale and Vanessa Hudgens and a possibly decent actor in Zac Efron...but when a movie company of questionable judgment and penchant for being the most expensive item out there takes the Grease concept and "Disneyfies" it, you encounter a Frankensteinish monster that will have kids spewing out High School Musical songs nonsense for years, and parents shelling out money in a vain attempt to keep their kids happy. Since it's release, Disney has spawned a few similar movies, a Disney on Ice tour of High School Musical and decided to take the majority of it's shows and create movies out of them...none of which are particularly well done or currently relevant and frankly demonstrate more often than not how much Disney wants your money.

 

[TropicThunder]

^ okay, I agree with all of the above. Funny People wasn't funny at all.

 

[Snail Shell]

Movies critics loved that I hate:

AVATAR
Shakespeare in Love
Moulin Rouge
Saving Private Ryan
Signs
Forrest Gump

To name a few...

Snail Shell

 

[MrMacphisto]

Cloverfield...

Awful... just... awful.

The only thing J.J. Abrams has been connected to that I actually enjoyed was Star Trek, but this "Godzilla meets Laguna Beach" movie was beyond terrible.

Yet, Cloverfield sucked in the kiddies like candy, probably because the target audience was people who actually enjoy bland reality shows and overhyped suspense movies.

Besides, Paul Greengrass does the shaky cam thing much, much better than Abrams could ever hope to do.

 

[Cy/MiG]

There's not enough space here for me to list all the terrible movies which I truly hate.

So I won't bother to waste you fine people's time.

 

[emilyemilyemily]

duplex.

the virgin suicides.

romeo + juliet.

meet the fockers.

 

[c7_assassin]

#4

The Virgin Suicides
Failure Rating: 5 dead virgins (the required sacrifice after a crime this grievous).

Few things piss me off more than undeserved success. As you might be able to guess, I am an angry person because undeserved success is the organizing principle of our world. There is absolutely no relationship between effort and talent to wealth and physical comfort, and anyone who tries to tell you differently just wants you to buy their book.

But even more infuriating than undeserved success is undeserved accolades. It's bad enough watching someone with no worth or merit skip ahead of you through blind luck or personal connections, but there's simply no excuse when praise is also heaped upon these horrible, worthless individuals. When this happens it can turn a single lapse in judgement into a damning indictment of all society. The fact that Henry Kissinger can honestly call himself a Nobel Peace Prize winner used to be the worst example of this sort of failure. Then, in 2003, the title of least-deserving-awardee-ever passed to "Academy Award winner" Sofia Coppola. My hands cramp just typing those words. Academy award winner Sofia Coppola. I think a blood vessel just burst behind my eye.😱

So anyway, my hatred for The Virgin Suicides isn't just about me hating the film (which I did). It's not even about me hating Sofia Coppola (aka that bitch who ruined the Godfather trilogy). It's more about hating a life which is so unfair that this talentless skank was not only handed a career by her filmmaker father, and then used that career to make a series of the worst movies ever made (Lost in Translation was the first of her films that was remotely tolerable; think burnt-hamburger as opposed to dogshit rolled in more dogshit), but then got absurdly praised and rewarded for it. Sofia Coppola epitomizes everything that is wrong with Hollywood. And inherited wealth. And the world.

Also, The Virgin Suicides really is just a very shitty movie. I say this in spite of the fact that this film stars Kirsten Dunst, and I've wanted to nail her since before I even knew what 'nailing' was. She has a permanent place of honour in my spank-files. She is my first, and best, celebrity crush. But not even she can save this film from being a pointless waste of everybody's time and an affront to the filmmaking arts. The Virgin Suicides staggers from contrivance to contrivance, lurching toward the forced, fake, obvious conclusion that everyone can see coming from a mile away. Sofia tries for some misdirection by making the audience abandon its rationality early on, so that while it would make sense for a film called "The Virgin Suicides" to end with a bunch of virgins committing suicide, by then you've accepted that nothing in this turd makes any sense. So maybe the ending will totally shock you. (Except it won't).

In addition to how mind-numbingly unrealistic the plot is or how much I hated all the characters, there's also the weird, pseudo-feminist message that Sofia Coppola tries to inject into the film (the pressures on young women are what drive them all to suicide! They're rebelling against the patriarchal order!), which I'm all for, except that in her film none of the girls have any personality; they're just interchangeable blondes who do things no one understands. How is that empowering? If you want to do a movie about strong women, great, Sofia, but they need to have a fucking personality first. She tried to hit this mark again when she made Marie Antoinette (this film taught me that Sofia Coppola's ideal heroine is evidently a woman who has been given everything in life, lives in ungodly opulence, and whom everyone else hates for it; I can't tell if this is because of her background has deeply alienated her from the human race, or because she's just that fucking stupid).

Thank you to Emily for reminding me of this cinematic garbage which I had almost blocked from my memory. Fuck your face.😛

 

[Cy/MiG]

And here I thought my rage toward certain movies was unparalleled...

I applaud you good sire, but please:

Tell us what you REALLY think.

 

[Marquis De Sade]

Movies critics loved that I hate:

AVATAR
Shakespeare in Love
Moulin Rouge
Saving Private Ryan
Signs
Forrest Gump

To name a few...

Snail Shell

Dude you hated Signs?!?!?! They had tin foils hats man!! TIN FOIL HATS!!

 

[FlockOfSeagulls]

Raising Arizona was the first movie that popped into my head

 

[Korastus]

I'm on board with everyone who hated Moulin Rouge, that movie is awful.
Anything by M. Night Shyamalan, including The 6th Sense. They all sucked. He isn't that goddamn clever.

 

[Korastus]

I really don't blame the actors/actresses for this bomb as much as the horrible writing. The cast was credible and the past Batman movies handed the writers a built-in audience. But the writing in this movie buried it. This movie almost ruined the Batman franchise.

Oh, and this.
Everything about that movie was awful, and it DID ruin the franchise until Chris Nolan came along.

 

[TklDuo-Drew]

The Matrix 2: whatever it was called

Austin Powers 2: not gonna waste my time with the title

Meet the Parents 2: Meet the Fockers

Superhero Movie

Meet the Spartans

Epic Movie

A.I.




Drew

 

[ticklishscribe]

"A Clockwork Orange" and "Beverly Hills Cop."