2014 Recap – The Worst of the Year

WORST OF THE YEAR

1. Winter’s Tale

Colin Farrell attempts to save the love of his life with the help of a flying horse while demon Russell Crowe engages in heart-to-heart conversations with Will Smith’s Satan and, no, I didn’t make a single part of that description up. A disaster.

2. If I Stay

Exhibit A on how to ruin a fairly decent piece of young adult fiction, this adaption buried under so much treacle and sap I can still feel its syrupy residue on my skin almost six months after seeing it.

3. Ride Along

Ice Cube and Kevin Hart have zero chemistry in this noxious buddy action comedy that’s as offensive as it is stupid. A massive waste of time.

4. That Awkward Moment

Slight, if relatively amusing, ribald romantic comedy derailed by a final 30 minutes so fantastically terrible they almost have to be seen to be believed.

5. Dumb and Dumber To

Pointless 20-years-in-the-making sequel that does no one involved any good whatsoever. Painfully unfunny.

6. Better Living Through Chemistry

Shockingly bad (and bland) all-star black comedy that wastes the usually reliable Sam Rockwell in a desperately unlikeable central role well beneath his talents.

7. The Legend of Hercules

The first of two 2014 cinematic Hercules is easily the worst of the duo, the film a laughable excuse in mythological tedium that wears out its welcome in the very first frame.

8. The Amazing Spider-Man 2

The latest adventure for everyone’s favorite wall-crawling superhero is close to disastrous, so unfocused, ungainly and, most egregiously, unentertaining watching it is about as much fun as sitting in a greenhouse swatting flies with a feather.

9. No Good Deed

Idris Elba and Taraji P. Henson go slumming in a home invasion thriller so well beneath their collective talents one hopes the paychecks they received for appearing in it made up for the embarrassment of actually having to do so.

10. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s return to campy, pulp-fueled black and white neo noir is a sadistic, puerile bore that gets worse and worse the more I allow myself to think about. Here’s hoping after writing this sentence I no longer have to.

MORE WORST OF THE WORST

3 Days to Kill, A Million Ways to Die in the West, And So It Goes, Annie, Dracula Untold, Draft Day, Exodus: Gods and Kings, Gimme Shelter, God’s Pocket, Heaven is for Real, I, Frankenstein, The Judge, Rio 2, The Signal, Vampire Academy, Wolves

DISHONORABLE MENTIONS

Afflicted, Alien Abduction, All Cheerleaders Die, Annabelle, Big Eyes, Blended, Deliver Us from Evil, Divergent, The Expendables 3, Hercules, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, Innocence, Into the Storm, Life After Beth, Maleficent, Need for Speed, The November Man, The Other Woman, Penguins of Madagascar, Pompeii, The Pyramid, Stage Fright, Tammy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Third Person, Transformers: Age of Extinction, Unbroken, Under the Electric Sky

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– Portions of this feature reprinted courtesy of the SGN in Seattle