because you can have too much entertainment...
February 2001

Contrary to popular belief...
...2000 was not the worst year ever in films. BUT If you only saw the following movies you'd be hard pressed to realize that. Before I get to the absolute jaw dropping WORST of the year... let's spend a little time in the land of the overrated.

OVERRATED & OVERPRAISED
The most ridiculously pampered movies of 2000

5. (tie) CROUPIER / TRAFFIC
For the record, I think these are well made and fine films. They're tense, psychologically compelling and peppered with good acting. They're both quite overrated anyway. Croupier's scope is smaller than it needed to be and its charms are also small. Traffic is so large that it would really have benefited from a longer running time...it doesn't cohere in the way it needed to. Erin Brockovich is the better Soderbergh film but people would be frightened to admit that because it comes on like a full throttle star vehicle. It doesn't feel important in the way Traffic does.

Basically the reason I'm including these is that there were more deserving cinematic offerings this year that outshone these two films. Those other films (too numerous to name here -but check out this list) would have benefited from even a fraction of the attention and awardage heaped upon these two.

4. SUNSHINE
So overbloated with melodrama that it becomes almost a parody of the romantic period epic. This movie desperately needed a tough editor to trim some of the subplots and fat (particularly the laughably Harlequinesque Rachel Weisz affair). I love little pieces of this film but not the whole bloated corpse.

3. GLADIATOR
I am so vexed at the response to this movie. All involved have done and will yet do better work than this. Aside from one blissful moment of irony... "Are you not entertained?" this film is decidedly simplistic. This revenge fantasy (that's the entire plot, kids) wastes Crowe's abilities and magnetism on a one note role. Giving him the Oscar for this would be sinful. In the end, Gladiator provides little to chew on other than the visuals which are only exciting for the first half after which the director and cinematographers all run out of ideas and repeat their tricks to numbing degrees. (Slightly more here.)

2. FANTASIA 2000
I love the original and thought the sequel a swell idea. Sadly, apart from one genius segment, "Rhapsody in Blue", it's just more of that tired Disney cannibalization. Anything for a buck. How many more of their own children are left for them to eat? (Full review here.)

1. ALMOST FAMOUS
And now for the very definition of overpraised. I have nothing against Cameron Crowe but this particular movie is NOT a great one. It's underdramatized, uneven, pointless, soft, soft, soft, easy, and even occassionally inept in both acting and storytelling. Almost Famous is in fact the most overpraised movie since Saving Private Ryan. Saving Private Ryan's appeal was, at least, understandable. Why anyone would consider this particular film best of the year...in any year? I'm stumped. But many many people did. Two years later I still remain perplexed. Review here.

Before we get to the worst list I must say that I don't go to as many films as paid movie critics so I didn't have to see the dreck many of them do. Battlefield Earth comes immediately to mind as films that the reviews of others saved me from -I later saw pieces of it on cable and from what I saw ---yes, it is atrocious and probably the worst of the year) Still, I managed to catch these doozies of idiocy. Prepare yourself -here they come...

WORST OF 2000
The 100 % bonafide garbage of 2000

Runners up:
10 FREQUENCY Cheese served straight up. Review here. I don't hate it... but I just can't take it seriously.
9 BROKEN HEARTS CLUB Too self-loathing for my gay ass, even though it has some recommendable qualities. More here.
8 SUPERNOVA Silly and as they say, "edited with chainsaw"
7 PAY IT FORWARD Everything you've heard is true. Manipulative. Shameless. So over the top I couldn't believe my eyes. This film has it all: Spiritual redemption. Burn victims. Mass martyr worship. Drug and alcohol addiction. Child abuse -Every possible tearjerking elemental handled with the grace of ---excuse the cliche---a bull in a china shop. And topped with an embarassing performance from the once great Kevin Spacey -unfortunately starting a career decline trend. Even Haley Joel Osment, the greatest child actor in many a year, barely makes it out alive...
6. DROWNING MONA An unintentionally funny drama is never quite as hard to sit through as an unintentionally UNfunny comedy. Devoid of one single thing to recommend it.

And now ---The Worst of the Year (According to the BiTCH)

5. UNBREAKABLE
Promise me, whatever happens, that you'll never believe your own hype. M Night Shyamalan did and now he's over before he'd begun. A really awful film. Slow, ponderous, amateurish and worst of all, filled to the brim with its own self importance. I refer to it as "M Night Shyamalan's Unbearable."

4. TITAN A.E.
Unwatchable. That's all I have to say.

3. CHOCOLAT
Trite, obvious, awkward, infuriating, simpleminded, pretentious, preachy, over the top, condescending, graceless, force fed... OK, I despised it. Full review here.

2. MISSION TO MARS
So relentlessly dumb that I'm embarassed to admit I saw it. It is from the very first scene, dull as a bag of hair and full of pretentious hot air. The whole shameful endeavor is badly and ponderously directed by Brian DePalma. The smelliness is further fueled by awkward performances ranging from OK (Robbins, OConnel) to adequate (Nielsen -as uninteresting here as she was in Gladiator) to full blown bad (Cheadle, Sinise) Treacly science fiction at its absolute worst. It wanted to be Contact (97) but couldn't manage to invoke even one snippet of that film's grace, not one iota of awe in the face of its overdone special effects. Most unfortunately, it plays with a tone of self deluded grandeur like it's the Gone With the Wind of sci-fi. This makes you hate it even more. I'm embarassed for everyone involved.

(So large is this movie's empty void that it also swallowed two usually respectable and intelligent and even inspired critics from Salon.com whole.. I've since forgiven them but it still sent me reeling.)

1. LOSER
This film was so painful that I was too embarassed to ask my friends to pay me back for the tickets I bought them. This film was so offensive that I felt like paying my friends for attending. This film was so annoying that I want Mena Suvari, who gave the film's worst performance, to pack up her bags as penance. (That dread 15th minute couldn't arrive soon enough.) This film was so unerringly bad that I take back anything I ever said about Amy Heckerling's talent. What talent?

-Nathaniel

Note in 2002: This list has been revised in retrospect. (They always are) -I added Unbreakable and deleted But I'm a Cheerleader -mostly because it didn't take itself so seriously and I felt sort of mean hating it. I also replaced The Beach which was merely mediocre and annoying with the execrable Pay it Forward.