Razzie Awards…the one set of awards you can count on.
The Oscars are more hype than substance. The best picture winner is rarely the best picture of the year, the best actor and actress are rarely the most deserving, and the whole thing is more based on marketing and promotion than it is on straight-up merit. That being said, it is far better than say, the Grammys, in that at the very least Oscar winners are good movies with good performances and less attention is paid to box-office receipts than is paid to critical acclaim. Whereas the Grammys and other award shows of a similiar nature pay more attention to sales than they do to quality. Which is why Nickelback cleans up at the Junos. So I would certainly give the Oscars more credit than that. But the only awards you can truly count on for being bang-on are the Razzies. The annual awards for the absolute worst in movies are great, for a few reasons - they get to be as mean and politically incorrect as they want to be, they don’t have to take into account the pedigree of an actor, and they have way more movies to choose from than do the Oscars.
This year, I have already made my own list of the worst movies out there. While I would never bother comparing my list of the best to the Oscar nominees, I would certainly do so for the Razzies, since I feel they have more credibility. I chose Norbit, The Reaping, I Know Who Killed Me, the Number 23, Because I Said So, Wild Hogs, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, Rush Hour 3, Epic Movie, Georgia Rule, Spiderman 3, Happily N’Ever After, Pirates of the Carribean 3, Premonition and Resident Evil as the worst of the worst. Having recently watched Good Luck Chuck, I would gladly add that one to the list as well. So here is the Razzie list:
Category: Worst leading actor.
Nominees: Eddie Murphy as Norbit in Norbit. Cuba Gooding Jr. in Daddy Day Camp. Nicholas Cage in Ghost Rider. Jim Carrey in The Number 23. And Adam Sandler in I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.
Who should win: Nicholas Cage. Eddie Murphy was awful as Norbit, but we’ll get to him later. Adam Sandler was certainly bad in Chuck and Larry, but not Ghost Rider bad. Jim Carrey took a chance with the Number 23, and it failed miserably. And Gooding is just a bad actor. Always. He will never be good. But Nicholas Cage in blockbuster, big-budget movies, is the worst actor alive. He is fantastic in little, small-budget flicks (Leaving Las Vegas, Matchstick Men), but the bigger the budget, the more he sucks. Add to that the fact that he was especially bad in Ghost Rider, and you’ve got one of the worst of all time.
Who they missed: Seann William Scott in Mr. Woodcock.
Category: Worst leading actress.
Nominees: Lindsay Lohan as the stripper in I Know Who Killed Me. Lindsay Lohan as the clean-cut high school student in I Know Who Killed Me. The four female leads in Bratz. Jessica Alba in Good Luck Chuck, Awake and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Elisha Cuthbert in Captivity. And Diane Keaton in Because I Said So.
Who should win: Lindsay Lohan. For either role, but really the clean-cut student role is even more bizarre than the stripper one. One of the worst performances in movie history. Elisha Cuthbert was just in a bad movie, Diane Keaton had absolutely nothing to work with in Because I Said So, and Jessica Alba has always been useless as an actress. I was mercifully spared Bratz, but I can only assume that it had four of the worst-written female roles of the past decade. No matter how bad they were, they could not be Lindsay-Lohan-in-I-Know-Who-Killed-Me bad.
Who they missed: Ironically, they missed another Lindsay Lohan performance, this time in Georgia Rule.
Category: Worst supporting actor.
Nominees: Eddie Murphy as the old Chinese man in Norbit. Eddie Murphy as the fat lady in Norbit. Orlando Bloom in Pirates of the Carribean 3. Rob Schneider in I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. And Jon Voight in Transformers, September Dawn, and National Treasure 2.
Who should win: Eddie Murphy. Although Orlando Bloom has been consistently awful in the Pirates movies, and I have not been able to understand how he gets cast in the roles he does, because he is so awful, it is more a mis-casting issue than it is a bad acting issue. Eddie Murphy cast himself, therefore he should know better. Both these roles are heinous and offensive, but the fat lady role is on the screen most often, therefore it is most offensive, therefore it is the worst. Jon Voight was irrelevant in his movies, and Rob Schneider is just bad always.
Who they missed: Dan Fogler in Good Luck Chuck.
Category: Worst supporting actress.
Nominees: Jessica Biel in Next and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. Carmen Electra in Epic Movie. Julia Ormond in I Know Who Killed Me. And Nicolette Sheridan in Code Name: The Cleaner.
Who should win: Jessica Biel. She is truly awful in I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. In Next, she just has to deal with bad dialogue and a badly written character. In Chuck and Larry, her supposedly smart lawyer would have to be staggeringly stupid to do what she does. Carmen Electra is merely a passing character in Epic Movie, which makes her fairly irrelevant as a supporting actress.
Who they missed: Eva Mendes in Ghost Rider.
Category: Worst screen couple.
Nominees: Jessica Alba and Dane Cook in Good Luck Chuck. Jessica Alba and Hayden Christensen in Awake. Jessica Alba and Ioan Gruffudd in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Any combination of Bratz characters. Lindsay Lohan and Lindsay Lohan as twins in I Know Who Killed Me. Eddie Murphy and Chinese Eddie Murphy in Norbit. Eddie Murphy and fat Eddie Murphy in Norbit. Adam Sandler and Kevin James in I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. Adam Sandler and Jessica Biel in I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.
Who should win: Jessica Alba and Ioan Gruffudd in the Fantastic Four are the most boring, irritating, and terribly unconvincing couple since Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom in Pirates of the Carribean.
Who they missed: Kiera Knightley and Orlando Bloom in Pirates of the Carribean 3. Also, Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst in Spiderman 3.
Category: Worst remake and/or rip-off.
Nominees: Are We Done Yet? (Rip-off of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.) Bratz (Remake of the TV show…I guess). Epic Movie (Rip-off of…everything). I Know Who Killed Me (rip-off of Saw, The Patty Duke Show, and Hostel). Who’s Your Caddy (rip-off of Caddyshack).
Who should win: Epic Movie. This movie does not just directly quote every movie it is supposedly spoofing, but it also offends every movie they even mention. Beginning to end, extremely horrible.
What they missed: Underdog.
Category: Worst prequel or sequel.
Nominees: Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. Daddy Day Camp. Evan Almighty. Hannibal Rising. Hostel Part III.
Who should win: I’m so happy this category exists. In a lot of ways, the category honours the worst films that are sequels in what was already a fairly horrible series. Like Alien vs. Predator, Daddy Day Care, Hostel…In this case, Evan Almighty should win. Even though Bruce Almighty wasn’t the giant bomb that the others were, the sequel is a colossal waste of time. Yet it still had the temerity to call itself an “epic movie”. Garbage.
What they missed: Spiderman 3, Pirates of the Carribean 3…
Category: Worst director.
Nominees: Dennis Dugan (I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry). Roland Joffe (Captivity). Brian Robbins (Norbit). Fred Savage (Daddy Day Camp). Chris Siverston (I Know Who Killed Me).
Who should win: Chris Siverston. Roland Joffe just picked a genre that is almost impossible to do well. Brian Robbins I give the benefit of the doubt, and assume that Eddie Murphy was forcing all the action to suck. Dennis Dugan was given a dreadful script and a ridiculous concept. Chris Siverston could have done something with the crap he was given. Something. He could at the very least have coaxed a passible performance out of Lindsay Lohan. But he didn’t. He sucks.
Who they missed: Whoever directed Epic Movie. And frankly, I don’t care enough to look up who it was.
Category: Worst Screenplay.
Nominees: Daddy Day Camp, I Know Who Killed Me, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, Epic Movie, Norbit.
Who should win: Epic Movie. The others were bad, sure, but Epic Movie didn’t even try to be funny. I could have written that screenplay in less than an hour. All you needed for this one was to have watched twenty movies. Ever. Then you just copy them. And add puke jokes. Sorry, not jokes. Just add puke.
What was missed: Good Luck Chuck.
Category: Worst excuse for a horror movie.
Nominees: Captivity. I Know Who Killed Me. Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. Hannibal Rising. Hostel Part III.
Who should win: I Know Who Killed Me. It’s just so bad.
What they missed: Hallowe’en, the Rob Zombie remake.
Category: Worst picture.
Nominees: Bratz. Daddy Day Camp. Norbit. I Know Who Killed Me. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.
Who should win: Norbit comes awfully close, but I Know Who Killed Me is the worst movie in ten years.
Who they missed: Epic Movie.
There we go. That’s the most honest, complete list you will find at award season. The Oscar nominations are out today. I will do the same for the Oscars, although there will be more movies they missed and more performances that need to be acknowledged. Until then, avoid these movies!