Great, now I get to roast some turds. With 91 new movies in my noggin, it was inevitable that I’d find some stinkeroonies – and find some, I did. If you’re a movie that’s rated 1.5 or lower for me this year, be very scared, I’m coming for you. But like I say every year, this is a very personalized list, and I couldn’t make time to see every movie that came out, so at least the movies ahead of us appealed to me enough to have me move to see them. Nobody sets out to make a bad movie – just like a first pancake, sometimes things don’t turn out so good even if the goal is to create something yummy. But efforts and ambitions aside, it’s also a sport to pot bad movies, so thank-you I guess, to all these movies for providing fodder. If I condemn a movie that you actually felt was pretty good, be shocked and appalled, and channel that energy in the reply box below – that’s always fun too. Now let’s do this!
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My Least Favourite 10 Movies of 2022
10. Mother/Android
😪 I gave Mother/Android a chance because it contained lead actress Chloe Grace Moretz. But remember The Fifth Wave? Exactly. Moretz has found herself in a second post-apocalyptic movie bound to be forgotten, with minimal tension to hook us onto the premise. I remember thinking that this movie had potential as a YA story, if it were firm on its target audience and catered accordingly, but its tone was primarily stuck in no man’s land, between grim and fanciful, lackluster both ways. Mother/Android is not quite as flimsy as last year’s Chaos Walking, but it’s poor in the same vein. And they both came in 10th on my Least Favourite movies list 😱
9. Moonfall
Oh, I thought we were done with the outlandish catastrophe movies, now that the majority of the population are legitimately worried about climate change for real. I think 2012 was the last cinematic disaster I enjoyed, or at least the last one I had time for, but something possessed me to check out Moonfall, and I chose poorly. I compared it to Godzilla: King of Monsters in my mind, for how both movies were pretty silly, but in dealing with their larger-than-life threats to the globe, the lizard movie had more resolute scientists, that I was happier to run along with. I don’t know who Patrick Wilson pissed off in the writer’s room, but I felt he was playing an excessively grumpy swashbuckler without any charm. I feel sorry for John Bradley too, as this was his first big outing since Game of Thrones, and it’s a stumble. The movie takes way too long for us to get to the moon, and by the time we are there, the existential revelations didn’t nab back my attention 😴
8. Thor: Love and Thunder
The Marvel bubble burst with Thor: Love and Thunder. Taika Waititi has taken what was once a very serious tone with Thor (and one I was enjoying actually, albeit seemingly by myself), and pinched off a super fun outing with Thor: Ragnarok, but couldn’t quite capture lightning in a bottle twice, for the God of Thunder. Thor has bounced back quickly from many a heavy loss, including the death of his mother, father, brother, and home world; Jane Foster has cancer, and this movie still wants to be hip to the hop, turning everything into a tangential joke, with a heavy pour of cynicism, probably matching Valkyrie’s alcohol intake. The only tragedy Thor hasn’t overcome is the loss of his hammer, and those scenes where he swoons between his two weapons were tedious. Christian Bale showed up to the set to create a perfectly sympathetic villain, which is practically wasted within the negligible care taken to shape the rest of the movie. I dunno – not everything has to be a joke, dude. Now Chris Hemsworth thinks Thor has had his run, and this is my least favourite MCU movie to date.
7. The Addams Family 2
Many people adoring the new Wednesday series on Netflix might’ve already forgotten that MGM attempted to continue their lukewarm The Addams Family franchise at the beginning of the year. This average cartoon focused on Wednesday too, and hypothesized that the girl who never smiles could be adopted 😮 Maybe she’s not a true Addams…? Have you ever heard anything so absurd? Over the Christmas break, I plan to devour Tim Burton’s Wednesday, and one thing I’m hoping for is passion – I think this project had next to none, wasting a perfectly great voice cast that includes Oscar Isaac, Charlize Theron, Chloe Grace Moretz and Bette Milder. For shame!
6. Morbius
Due to all the jokes surrounding this movie, at least its flop still managed to be entertaining. But Morbius disappointed me on a personal level, because I like Morbius, I thought Jared Leto had the right look, I love the Spider-Man universe, and at least the Venom movies that have come out of Sony have been watchable. It’s been revealed since that Morbius was a little hacked due to the fact it was originally supposed to come out before Spider-Man: No Way Home, but the COVID shuffle ruined plans. Either way, the movie we got is a mess, with bad dialogue and a wishy-washy comic book progression that we’ve seen many times before – it would’ve needed extensive reshoots to fix that. At least Matt Smith was having fun as the smooth-dancing Milo.
5. Jurassic World: Dominion
Locusts! Nah, but c’mon, in your big finale dinosaur movie, you make the biggest threat to our planet… locusts. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom seemed giddy at the prospect of finally allowing dinosaurs to spill over into the real world, but it turns out these creators had very little idea what to do with that option. Our hand-raising heroes (dunking on Chris Pratt) end up back on an isolated island, and thumbing their noses at dumb rich guys who still cannot keep their creations in a cage. I really toyed with putting this movie at number 1 on this list for being the bloated braindead garbage of the year, but there are still dinosaurs, and Laura Dern is pretty cool. There’s not much to be proud about otherwise – I’ve seen burnt out cars on the side of the road that take more pride in what they once were. Thankfully, the Jurassic sequel trilogy is over, although I hear we’re getting a Hammond prequel and more ahead, squeezing every last drip of blood from the amber – if these movies knew how to be entertaining, there would’ve been a time where I could’ve been excited by the prospect, but since the last two Jurassic movies have been trash, I have no faith in what’s going on at Universal.
4. Firestarter
Hey, I was excited to learn about this Stephen King property, but I quickly revaluated my desires when the screenplay or direction seemed like it was missing a couple of do-overs in the first few minutes. You don’t see many movies like this that bundle their characterisations so horribly, leaving viewers on shaky ground with their leads before a plot even gets started. Zac Efron and Ryan Kiera Armstrong are fine, but I think Firestarter should’ve had so much more to give. Supposedly, I already had the gist of the story from content like Stranger Things, that have since remolded, and potentially remastered, this narrative.
3. Choose or Die
Ugh. The most egregious part of this horror movie is the ending – it’s hating on men without having set up the argument, and foregoes that its inspirations had winning females in them decades ago. So, no need to be so needlely. I wouldn’t be surprised if the heavy social messaging was a last-ditch effort to appeal to some, and cover up the cracks in the poor execution everywhere else. Conceptually, this movie has something – a cross between Jumanji and A Nightmare on Elm Street – but in execution, pass me my pillow; to scream my frustrations in, or rest my head as this movie bores me to sleep – choose or die, movie, choose or die! What’s most ironic is that Asa Butterfield is not a favoured actor of mine, and it’s not his fault this movie stinks.
2. Lightyear
I just, um, I’m still a little upset. The bad thing about doing this list every year is reliving the tribulations of what the movie going experience can be. Basically, after four Toy Story movies, detailing Buzz’s lore thoroughly, plus a TV show, the writers at Pixar decided they knew better, essentially starting from scratch to deliver a vision so weak and foreign to me that this movie is Lightyear in name only. And their hubris fails – this movie was a flop at the box office and its merchandise still sits on shelves. I remember sitting up in bed the night I watched this on Disney+, and rage-texting my friends so flabbergasted by the pits I just saw. I also remember, in my review, I did a deep-dive on the writers of this movie to figure out who they were and what the hell they could possibly be thinking – it’s the first time I’ve ever done that. I used to quip James Bond’s SPECTRE as the most aggravating dropped ice-cream cone I’ve ever seen, but now I’ll name Lightyear 😠
1. Me Time
Kevin Hart and Mark Wahlberg, I demand a refund of my time spent with this meandering excuse of a comedy. I’m scolding you – you’re officially scolded. The problem with Netflix is you never know if you’re going to get movie gold or a faulty product that deserved to go direct to TV or DVD because the cinemas didn’t want it. Considering Me Time stars big names like Wahlberg and Hart I thought I was safe, but I can’t even explain to you the plot of this movie because it has about 3 or 4 of them, all vying for air to breathe, and none of them are remarkable. There’s something about a buddy coming back to town, and the need for Hart’s character to venture out more, and a tortoise… I don’t know. Anyway, avoid. I put metaphoric ‘hazardous’ tape around this movie 😡
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No dishonourable mentions this year, but there’s a few blander movies that can be lucky I saw the others, so they escaped their scrutiny. I also looked back over last year’s ‘Least Favourite 10 Movies that I had a clear number one, but this year the bottom five movies could all lay claim to be the worst – and that shouldn’t be!
But that wraps up 2022 for me. Thanks to everyone for reading this, and anything else I’ve written this past year. Please check out my ‘2022 Index: An A to Z on Movies’ post for a full guide on all the movies I’ve seen for 2022 as well. I feel my concentration levels kick up a gear this year, and looking back over the past twelve months, I can’t believe how much ground I’ve covered. You sticking around for 2023? Let’s see how far we go.
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