2013 Empty Cup Awards: The Worst Performances of 2013

Looking Back at the Worst Performances of 2013 (cause we felt like it!)

 

Sometimes looking back can be fun; sometimes excruciating. In this case, both.

Looking back on 2013, it is difficult not to be reminded of all the awful movies; it is equally impossible to forget all the terrible performances. 2013 was unique, however, in its ability to ruin entire casts all at once; films sprouted across screens that didn’t just have one awful performance, but sometimes as many as three, or frankly the entire cast just stunk it up. With this is in mind, it is no question why 2013’s worst performance is also our only solo nominee:

22 Jump Street: Hilariously Self-Aware!

Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (21 Jump Street, The Lego Movie) have done it again. Somehow, they have managed to not only create a sequel to 21 Jump Street -a film that against all odds was actually very funny and engaging- but have done so in an equally hilarious and unique manner. Filled with tons of shout-outs to its own supposed shortcomings, 22 Jump Street is an unexpected pleasure.

Premise: The hapless duo Schmidt and Jenko now go deep undercover at a local college. Result: Very funny and refreshing.

Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) are back. And their bizarre incompetence is still along for the ride, settling overtly into an opening sequence that has them hilariously bungle a trafficking ring bust with the notorious Ghost (Peter Stormare) at its center. However, Schmidt’s imitation of an East LA Vato is possibly one of the more painfully hilarious moments in recent memory.

Hansel & Gretel – Witch Hunters: The Third Sign of the Apocalypse

Directed by Tommy Wirkola (Dead Snow) and co-written by him and Dante Harper, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters manages to take an early, perhaps insurmountable lead in the race to be 2013’s worst film.  Ripe with confused actors, simplistic delivery and a lazy, vomit-inducing script, Hansel & Gretel is unbearable in virtually every way.

Premise: A reimagined fairytale that brings 21^st Century talk, thinking, and weapons to 19^th Century Germany. Result: Warning – Do not look directly at this film. May cause bleeding, nausea, and disorientation.  Prolonged exposure may cause permanent blindness.

Hansel & Gretel is supposedly a reinvention of a classic, if frankly tired, German fairytale first published in 1812 by the Brothers Grimm.  It is a purposeful anachronism, reimagining a world hundreds of years ago that would have cool gadgets, rapid-fire military-grade arms, ubiquitous newspapers, and dialogue found most readily in a 21^st Century middle-school classroom. But unlike other anachronistic reinventions like Van Helsing or even the more recent, and perhaps á pros pos, Brothers Grimm, whose failures echoed the halls of cinema for years afterward, Hansel & Gretel elevates those duds to masterpiece acclaim.

Virtually everything in this film is wrong, ALL WRONG. It begins with a purposefully confusing opening scene where Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton), here depicted as children, are abandoned in the woods by their father until they ultimately stumble upon a gingerbread house.

Of course, in it is a witch who tries to fatten and eat them until they miraculously escape and throw the creature into the fire.  Although the delivery is messy and unremarkable, it is at least quasi-consistent with the original take – that is except the part where Hansel gets diabetes from eating too many cookies (I’m not making this up people!)

This is followed by opening credits depicting the subsequent exploits of the duo that actually might be the coolest part of the whole film, if truth be told, even though that is not a particularly high bar.  We are then plunged into “many years later” where a town is under siege by witches who are abducting children (a plotline we have seen only a million times before).

It should be noted that the duo doesn’t notice until more than halfway through the film that they are, in fact, back in their childhood town; seems like an odd thing to overlook.

Nevertheless, the hunters emerge just in time to save a beautiful, if peculiar maiden Mina (Pihla Viitala), who is accused of witchcraft by the villainous Sherriff Berringer (Peter Stormare).

Blah, Blah, Blah they need to find the witches and rescue the children, yadda yadda yadda they meet a young Ben (Thomas Mann) who represents fan boys everywhere and adds no value at all, then people are killed because the Sherriff is dumb and jealous. And so on and so forth.

Ultimately the rest of the film pits the hunters against the evil “Grand” witch Muriel (Famke Janssen) and her hideous coven of witches that at some point look like sloppy outtakes from a Clive Barker film. Of course, while fighting the witches they learn there are good witches too, they understand who their parents were, and other minor twists that could be seen from a galaxy far, far away.

To be frank, this script is criminal.  It is painfully lazy as Wirkola and Harper appear intent on just doing whatever they want with no rhyme or reason.  The dialogue is worse than simply out of synch with how people might speak hundreds of years ago, it feels out of synch.  There is a very real sense that the writers just didn’t care what people said, or how they said it, because in their view, writing doesn’t matter and people will watch and shut up if there are enough explosions and bloody, mangled corpses.

And while those elements and the fight sequences are fair for some of the movie, by the end, like too much of any good thing, it just leaves observers reeling.  And so all we are left with is writing that somehow feels insulting.

And even with the veil of purposeful anachronism, it is just too much. Even if observers allow the ridiculous weapons, the colloquialisms, the insulin (not around for literally 100 more years), Wirkola is just playing games. At one point they have a record player that keeps playing the voice of a child to lure a witch.  Really?  And on and on.

And even when they try to introduce lore, they get it wrong. There are trolls bound to witches (for some reason), yet anyone doing even a cursory glance into troll lore would know trolls turn to stone in sunlight; yet troll Edward (Robin Atkin Downes) is virtually tanning he is around so much.  While a minor example, it goes to the heart of the issue: the story didn’t require a troll at all, so why risk it detracting further from the plot by getting it wrong like everything else; lazy, sloppy screenwriting can be the only answer.

Don’t look to the cast to set this movie straight; they seem completely lost from moment one.  Renner already proved that comedy is not his strong suit (check out his SNL hosting, ouch!) and yet somehow no one got the memo.  But this disaster isn’t even really his fault: not only was Renner forced to deliver punch line after pointless punch line, but somehow he seems to be painfully aware of just how unbearable it comes off.  It is painful to watch such an accomplished actor abused in this manner.

Arterton, for her part, partially pulls off her role if only because her sexy, mysterious persona may be confused for a serious performance; essentially, her allure might be mistaken for actual acting. Of course, fortunately for Stormare, like his recent performance in The Last Stand, no one could actually accuse him of acting.

Janssen appears to be trying in this film, a noble attempt, but her role is so hackneyed and boring that had she not been the central villain, audiences might have forgotten she was there.  Oh, and Thomas Mann is in this film.  I think.  It’s impossible to remember considering his talent is completely wasted in this movie (go see Project X instead.)

Hansel & Gretel is terrible.  There is no mistaking this transcendent fact. While the idea might initially pique interest and there are a few moments where the action on screen approximates interesting, the film is messy, lazy, and inept.

“Hey Wirkola, the Brothers Grimm and every person who accidentally saw this movie want their money back.  And damages.”

Rating: 2 – Boxed wine and Razorblades – let’s see which kills you faster!

The Last Stand: This Movie Is Completely Off the Rails

Although research indicates that The Last Stand had a director, and this director was director Jee-woon Kim, the first ten minutes of this film alone, disputes this claim. Instead, audiences are presented with what appear to be a series of outtakes that somehow snuck their way into the film, as if Kim chose to shoot scenes one-time Ed-Wood-style and whatever resulted was fine by him. Fortunately, the film gets better, but nowhere near enough to make this experience worthwhile.

Premise: Drug Czar escapes the FBI ad the only thing standing in his way is an angry Arizona Sheriff and a sleepy town. Result: A messy, clichéd action film that spends more time being ridiculous than making sense.

The Last Stand focuses on a sleepy Arizona town near the U.S.-Mexico border where the most exciting occurrences revolve around shooting hanging meat and being arrested for drunken disorderly.  Fortunately for them, there is pleasantly gruff Sheriff Ray Owens (Arnold Schwarzenegger), who essentially wanders around town, guiding the townspeople and his deputies out of the way of their own incompetence.

Of course, there is ineptitude of a far more severe kind taking place in Las Vegas, where FBI Agent John Bannister (Forest Whitaker) and his band of midget-clowns are escorting Drug Czar Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) to prison.  However, due to some fair planning on Cortez’s part and shocking uselessness on the part of the FBI, he escapes with a hostage, Agent Ellen Richards (Genesis Rodriguez), and a fictional Corvette that is faster than some aircraft.

Of course, well ahead, he also has his henchmen lining the roads to keep it clear for him.  In addition, he has worked out his logistical escape, and his uber-henchman, Burrell (Peter Stormare), is firmly in place just outside Owens’ town.

Essentially, the point of the film rests on Owens deliberate desire to stop Cortez from passing through his town on his way to Mexico.  To be fair, this doesn’t stem simply from some sense of deep-rooted Justice; after Burrell and his men attack the Deputies, this essentially, has become personal.  And with his motley crew in place -Mike Figerola (Luis Guzmán), Jerry Bailey (Zach Gilford), Sarah Torrence (Jaimie Alexander), town hot-guy waste-away Frank Martiniz (Rodrigo Santoro), and local-yocal Lewis Dinkum (Johnny Knoxville)- Owens indeed will make his last stand.

While the first half of this film is slow and largely unwatchable, the second half settles nicely into passable watchability.  It never gets good, so to speak, but there are plenty of humorous moments and tons of gun violence which numbs the brain pleasantly like cinematic morphine, lulling us into a false sense of intrigue.

And audiences might also get the feeling that the actors themselves are in on the joke, laughing just as hard at a film that hits new levels of predictability and the preposterous.  Yes, there are old people being old and cavalier with their lives, yes there’s plenty of unnecessary but mildly amusing slapstick – hell, there is even a scene in which a gun fight ensues directly in front of a watermelon stand.  Really?

To this end, the acting in this film comes full circle, starting in a dark, dark place and ultimately serving no purpose at all.  To say that Schwarzenegger is out of practice would be the same as observing the mummified remains of a Pharaoh and commenting on its deft mobility. Fortunately, as the film continues, and observers grow drunker on the intoxicating spectacle on screen, he appears to get better, or at least recalls where syllables of English words should be pronounced.

It hurts him deeply, no doubt, that there are no trademark lines that we have come to expect from Schwarzenegger; instead, the best we get are a few gruff jokes, hysterical facial expressions, a reference to his noticeable age, and a “shmuck” joke that never connects.  Oh well, we all know he’ll “be back”.  Apologies.

Whitaker, for his end, seems as confused as audiences as to what he is even doing in this film.  Lodged firmly in a performer Catch-22, he either under-performs to keep pace with his peers or over-performs, attracting attention to an Academy Award Winner being woefully out-of-place.  It’s not ever clear which road he chose.

Several other cast members are strangely notable for all the wrong reasons.  Stormare manages to put on several different accents for his character, but all at the same time, making him seem like a man possessed and speaking in tongues. To continue the communication issue, Santoro seems miscast in his role as a burned out Iraq vet when it is virtually impossible to understand anything he is even saying.

Knoxville is sufficiently endearing but it is never clear what is happening with his character: is he crazy or is he mentally disabled?  Is he both?  Who knows – certainly not Knoxville.  And the rest are fair performances but ultimately forgettable.

The resolution of this film is satisfying in as far as, in fact, the film actually ends.  Contrary to sentiments during the film, where there is a very real sense that on-screen events may torment observers for all of time, it is quite nice that Kim actually chose to stop at some point.

Ultimately, this film is below even low expectations.  It takes far too long to even approximate interesting and even when it does, it is almost too ridiculous to be more than incidental amusement.  It may not be the worst film in recent memory, but it is certainly the worst Schwarzenegger has done in a very long time (acknowledging his eight year hiatus as the Govern-ator).  Fans and film-lovers alike can only hope that this will not foreshadow things to come

Rating: 4 – A case of PBR and a “Dear John” letter