Summer season suck: The 6 worst movies Hollywood crapped out this year
We generally try not to let our hipster cynicism and pessimism override us here at Show and Tell, but there's no way around the truth of hindsight. Now that it's September, and the official Summer movie season is over, we know: The tentpole Summer movies of 2011 sucked, and sucked hard. ![]()
Spoiler alert: This is one of them.
In an effort to prove to you, internet, that this is a cold, hard, objective fact, here were the six worst offenders:
The Help
The Plot: Read To Kill a Mockingbird. Hit yourself in the head until you're brain damaged. What you remember is basically The Help.
Some girl wants to be popular, so she lies about losing her virginity to schoolmates, but instead of getting the "good attention," she becomes an infamous harlot. So to distract everybody she decides to talk to some black people.
The Problem: The movie is fine. It's not spectacular in any way, shape, or form, but if Emma Stone wrote a movie called, I Hate Tim Davids, He's Too Fat, I'd go and see it and love it just because it would mean she's speaking words out loud with her scratchy-perfect voice and inherently spectacular comic timing.
You is kind, you is smart, you is important, you have to think for us, please.
Here's the rub,
Dear Hollywood, I get that there were a few white people that helped in the Civil Rights movement along the way. It is very nice that they demonstrated that there are plenty of white people that are reasonable and decent human beings. Can we maybe make one or two movies that aren't about them? Wait, this chick isn't even real? She's made up? This whole thing is made up? You're inventing white people to save downtrodden African-Americans now? Seriously, what the fuck? I don't want to see a movie about the King's March on Washington centered around the white hot dog vendor who worked the streets that day and gave the people free hot dog fuel for their protest (please don't greenlight that idea now).I don't want to watch the rise of Jesse Owens through the eyes of his white buddy played by Anton Yelchin.
Just give me a movie where black people save themselves by expressing their deep communal strength while engaging in arduous struggle. You know, kind of like what actually happened.
Love,
Tim.
Fright Night
The Plot: Anton Yelchin (speak of the devil), who has a silly name, thinks his neighbor is a vampire, but really he's just Colin Farrel, playing himself. Dr. Who has turned into Chriss Angel and tries to help King Silly Name. McLovin' is in there somewhere and his voice is squeaky. None of it really makes any sense or gels together, and everyone is a douchebag. Marti Noxon proves that she really is the reason everyone hated the 6th season of Buffy, and Chris Gillespie directs, so I assume the female lead is a RealDoll. "Imogen Poots" is fucking hilarious to say aloud, and thus she is Queen Silly Name.
The Problem: It's all so useless. The original Fright Night is a kickass little meta-movie that commented and homaged the Hammer Horror that came before while presenting a nice little story of a dude terrified of losing his virginity. This one is about Colin Ferrel being a guy who wears Affliction shirts for a little bit and wants to bang some kid's mom but instead turns into a computer-generated monster sometimes. My friend Chad was really interested in seeing this movie. His name is Chad.
Not actually a movie still, but paparazzi pictures of Farrel from last weekend.
Cowboys and Aliens
The Plot: A buffoonish British bandit, once the leader a group of a boorish gang of buffoons, loses his memory and bad east coast accent simultaneously, turning him into a stoic, moralistic, collected, highly effective killing machine with a cool wrist-gun. It confuses Harrison Ford. Olivia Wilde is an alien. Spoiler. They all fight aliens together. Spoiler.
The Problems: Orci and Kurtzman are ancient Pagan gods sent to modern times to cause mischief by subverting our national culture with their writing. They use their powers of hypnosis to continue getting high-profile screenwriting jobs. The two can only be stopped or killed by channeling the power of a falling meteor through an ancient artifact hidden at the top of the pyramids of Egypt, which is why they conspired together to let Michael Bay loose on the pyramids for Transformers 2. Nothing can stop them now.
It's called Cowboys and Aliens, and it's not even remotely fun. The Western template they seem to have gone with was less Rio Bravo and more Unforgiven. Daniel Craig can't decide what movie he's in on a day-to-day basis. Olivia Wilde's character is useless, and then idiotic. The aliens have guns and then forget they have guns. The cowboys hatch a genius plan to ride into a valley and fight the aliens hand-to-hand (and die). The aliens have interstellar space travel but no discernible culture or set of ethics. There's no reason this movie is about cowboys other than "they can't use cell phones to call in the army." It's really long and poorly paced. Sam Rockwell doesn't dance.




























