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5 Worst Movies of 2006 According to Dave

by Dave Minkus
January 4, 2007

It's that time of year where everyone gives their opinion as to what the best films of 2006 were, and here at FirstShowing.net, we're no different. We'll be talking about our favorites in the coming days and weeks, but I think it's important to also note the awful releases to set a stark contrast to the films that excelled and are deserving of recognition.

BloodRayne
Why it's so bad: It's an Uwe Boll movie. How can you possibly have a "worst of" list without an Uwe Boll movie? Seriously, there's a reason why Uwe Boll has such a bad reputation, and it doesn't even have to do with his directing skills, even though they are bad enough to land him on this list alone. The primary gripe many people have with Mr. Boll is the fact that he can't seem to stay remotely close to the source material. Credit does have to be given to Boll in that he actually managed to have a dhampir (half-human, half-vampire) in the film, but the storyline isn't even close to either of the games (which could very well lend themselves to a film storyline). Add in his horrible directing skills (how do you get such a horrible performance out of Ben Kingsley?) and you've got yourself an Uwe Boll film.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Why it's so bad: Feel free to send your hate-mail to dave@firstshowing.net. I expect to get a lot of it from this choice and the next one. The first Pirates of the Caribbean film was a perfect popcorn film. It had adventure, swash-buckling, supernatural pirates, comic relief and a charismatic scoundrel in Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow. In short, it actually captured the fun of the Pirates ride I remember at Disneyland. Why can't studios just let a wonderful and fun film be just that? If you're going to make a sequel to a film that you hadn't planned on making from the beginning, you had better bring something spectacular to the table. There can be no argument that the effects work in Dead Man's Chest is a spectacle by itself, but once you get past that, there really isn't anything new. The sequel took away much of the character that endeared Jack Sparrow to the audience and replaced much of the fun swashbuckling with goofball slapstick comedy. The addition of a third crew to the series just convoluted the storyline to the point of absurdity and made me give up on the film half-way through. I didn't walk out because I wanted to love this movie, but they just screwed things up. I will add a disclaimer to take this film off the list, however, if by some chance the third film ties everything together and makes this film better.

X-Men: The Last Stand
Why it's so bad: The X-Men series is one that I expected to last for many years due solely to the fact that there is so much good material to draw from in the canon of X-Men comics over the past 40 years. Then I saw X-Men: The Last Stand. While many would blame director Brett Ratner for the failure of this film, I don't think it's fair to do so. I think the blame has to be passed all around. Fox could have waited for Bryan Singer to come back and do the Dark Phoenix saga over two films and it would have ruled the world. However, for whatever reason, Fox unreasonably was hell-bent on putting out the next X-Men movie before Singer's Superman no matter the cost, and boy was there a cost. Even as a huge comic geek, I've been able to look past changes to characters in movie adaptations (The Kingpin being an African-American, Spidey having organic webshooters, Batman training with Rah's Al Ghul before becoming Batman) because they made it flow in the story and really didn't change the core of the characters. The Last Stand took the Phoenix storyline and compressed what should have been an epic two movie storyline into half a movie with another storyline that should have been its own film. As if that wasn't problem enough, they didn't go in-depth into the Phoenix persona at all and didn't even try to sell the changes they made. Add in the fact that every single life-altering event that happened in the film ended up being "BS" and this was just a failure of a movie in every way.

Flushed Away
Why it's so bad: Alex has voiced his opinion in the past that who is chosen as voice talent in an animated feature doesn't mean anything. Flushed Away is almost certainly Exhibit A in his case. This film had some very significant changes made (the potentially funny hamster butlers in the trailer are absent entirely), but nobody cared enough to even notice or ask why. The only highlights of this film were the singing slugs that have absolutely nothing to do with the storyline. The fact that they were the only highlight really shows how weak this movie is, and I hate saying that because I love the work that Aardman Animation has done in the past. The fact is that while it ran a normal kiddie flick formula, it completely failed to connect with me in any way, shape or form.

Date Movie
Why it's so bad: Can we just let this franchise die? PLEASE?! The people responsible for these movies are single-handedly beating the dead horse of the spoof mercilessly. The problem is that these movies are so specific and up to date in their targets that there is no way that any of these flicks will have any longevity to them. By the time the movie comes out, the joke is already six months old. Exactly how is that funny? I laughed a total of two times in the entire movie and wanted to gouge my eyes out with a spork for the rest of the movie. The joy of the Airplane, Naked Gun and (to a lesser degree) the Hot Shots movies is that they have fun with the conventions of the genre of movies, not necessarily the movies themselves. Those conventions are timeless for the genre, which makes the spoof timeless as well. How hard is it for the "movie" franchise makers to grasp this concept? I hope they grasp it sooner than later because eventually these are going to be so bad that audiences will commit mass suicide in the theater.

The interesting thing is that three of these movies would most likely be nowhere near making anybody's all-time worst list, which really does indicate how strong a year this was. I hope it's tougher to make a "worst of" in 2007, but we'll just have to wait and see. It's now time, have at it in the comments below if you so dare!

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