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The 10 Worst Movies Of 2017


Queen of the Desert

2017 has had a strong batting average of movies, from the social satire horror of Get Out to the western superhero epic Logan to the uniquely original heist picture Baby Driver. But when the bad movies came, oh, did they sting. Take a look at AboutHer’s list of the 10 worst movies of the year.

1. The Emoji Movie

The 1980s cartoons that were shameless toy commercials have nothing on The Emoji Movie, one of the worst examples of a commercial tie-in in recent memories. Not only is the story uninspired about a sentient emoji going on an adventure, but the director and writers seem to be completely clueless about how technology functions for the film’s many so-called gags. The talking piece of poop voiced by Patrick Stewart is the least of this film’s problems.

2. Transformers: The Last Knight

Michael Bay keeps the terrible Transformers tradition alive and well with the fifth installment. The story follows multiple plot lines of the transforming robots that go nowhere with the most random and juvenile of humor. There’s a giant Transformer living in the Earth, Cybertron is coming to invade the planet, transformers are being hunted by a new military force, Mark Wahlberg is hiding the good transformers, the government hires the bad transformers to hunt the good transformers and a secret order of knights reveal the secret history of the transformers dating back to King Arthur times. All of this is delivered in one of the most incoherent, annoying and excessively loud productions of unresolved plotlines and meaningless action. More noisy junk from the noisy junk master.

3. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul

I usually expect kids movies to be a little less intelligent and a little more gross, but never to this degree. This is an insultingly bad road trip movie about one kid trying to revert a family trip to his grandma’s house to attend a video game convention and clear his viral name as the kid who stuck his hands in a poopy diaper. Every single road trip gag of the highest cliche is telegraphed in bold presentations of horrible dialogue and even worse acting. I couldn’t decide what was more excruciating: Alicia Silverstone horribly singing a Spice Girls song in full (twice!) or Charlie Wright vomiting up fried butter on a carnival ride where the puke hurdles towards the audience. Thank goodness this movie wasn’t in 3D.

4. Fist Fight

Charlie Day plays a nice enough teacher who finds himself being insulted, beaten, accused of crimes and targeted by fellow teacher Ice Cube for a fight after school. This is not only the meanest comedy of the year, where it seems as though everyone in this town wants the innocent Charlie dead, but also the most vile for its phony moral message about how a fist fight after school will help Charlie regain his dignity and save the school’s budget. I don’t know what planet this movie takes place on, but it’s certainly not Earth.

5. Wish Upon

Teenager Clare discovers a Chinese box that will grant her seven wishes at the cost of the lives of people around her. When all the wishes are made, her soul will be taken to hell. Even when Clare finally learns all of these rules, she still continues to make them out of her selfish nature that we’re apparently supposed to identify with. Shot with telegraphed deaths and some of the worst dialogue ever written for teenage actors, Wish Upon is a bafflingly bad horror film, especially in an uncomfortably awkward scene where Shannon Purser makes dreamy eyes at Ryan Phillippe playing a saxophone.

6. The Space Between Us

It’s the story of the Boy in the Bubble except the boy is from Mars. Conceived during spaceflight and being birthed on the red planet, Gardner Elliot finally comes to Earth to meet his father and seek out his email girlfriend. Even though Gardner has had internet on Mars, he still doesn’t understand anything about Earth and is mystified by way too much for being a supposed genius. The film is not only a cavalcade of laughably bad scenes and a horrendously goofy plot, but the characters end up being unbelievably dumb for this writing to work. Elliot confesses to his girlfriend Tulsa that he’s never experienced the sensation of water before. I wanted to shout back at the screen; You worked in irrigation on Mars! You know what water is like!

7. Rings

As the third film of the Ring series, the concept of a haunted VHS tape turns extra ridiculous when the spooky tape that kills you in seven days is digitized. If you’ve seen the original film, you know the rules: watch the film of the long-haired Samara, receive a phone call from her and seven days later she comes to take your soul. Rings doesn’t deliver much of anything new to the revived horror picture; no unique kills, no scary frights, no interesting characters and the silliest of premises where Samara infects digital video with curse of Error 7777777. Get it?

8. Baywatch

Baywatch is a movie that can’t decide what type of film it wants to be. It doesn’t know if it wants to be a biting satire of the awful TV series, a legitimate lifeguard story, a buddy cop movie, a grisly drug bust thriller or a titillating beach blanket romp of nudity and raunch. The film attempts to deliver on all of these and fails so hard that even Dwayne Johnson cannot save it with his trademark charisma and smile.

9. Queen of the Desert

Werner Herzog is usually a dependable director when it comes to documentaries, but he’s made a massive misfire with Queen of the Desert. His bio-pic on the Middle East travels of Gertrude Bell (Nicole Kidman) finds nothing unique or interesting about her life, fading in and out of passive romances, dreary political conversations and so-called deep passages about life in the desert. It’s bad enough that his soundtrack sounds like a cheap rip-off of Lawrence of Arabia, but even worse when Robert Pattinson is miscast as T. E. Lawrence. He’s no Peter O'Toole, that’s for sure.

10. Sandy Wexler

Adam Sandler’s Netflix movie deal continues to turn out more unfunny comedies with usual band of misfit actors. This film is at least slightly more tolerable for not being as racist or sexist as his previous films. That being said, you still have to put up with Sandler’s annoying voice for the character of Sandy Wexler, a washed-up talent agent that never seems to land the biggest clients and always fails to delivers for them. He happens to land a talented singer, but soon begins to fall for her. It’s weird enough to believe this Wexler character could score any woman, but even more unbelievable that his elderly next door neighbor is sexually attracted to his voice. Only in a Sandler comedy.

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