Most Disappointing Movies of 2007

Last week I posted my picks for the best movies of 2007. Here are my selections for the worst, most disappointing films of the year. I didn’t add any commentary to my “best of” listing, but for some reason I felt like I needed to qualify these. So, here goes.

1.) TMNT. I went into this movie with really high hopes. In hindsight, that might have been part of my problem, but I’ll comment nonetheless. I was a huge Turtles fan growing up so I was really anticipating the release of this version, almost as much as the retro series of the 90s, but I was sadly disappointed. True, there were moments where I felt like I kid again watching “turtle power” unfold before my eyes, but there were also those moments when I felt like bashing my head against the floor. The storyline was sloppy at best. Too complicated for the average kid and too stupid for the average adult. It never went anywhere. I’ll stick with the Saturday morning version.

2.) Transformers. I had high hopes for this one too. It had the potential to be very, very good, but clearly missed the mark. Visually, it was spectacular, but when tempered with the poor writing and very poor acting, the effects weren’t worth the watch. The story was horrible amounting to nothing more than the typical, predictable, canned sci-fi plot. The dialogue was tolerable at best and painful at its worst. It might be worth seeing in the theater just for the visuals, but anything more would be much too generous.

3.) Spider-Man 3. This first several disappointing franchise finales. I was never a huge Spider-Man fan growing up. Batman could take Spider-Man and Superman any day. Which gets me really, really excited about this. Anyway, this movie is definitely worth seeing. The fight scenes between Spidy, Venom, Sandman, and New Goblin in the end are straight up kick-ass—that’s all there is too it. But that doesn’t make up for the rest of the movie. It moved very, very slow (too slow) up until the last 1/4 of the movie. And the whole emo-Spiderman/Peter Parker thing really threw me. Again, it’s worth seeing, but not comparable to the first two. The third part of a trilogy should be the apex. If that’s true this movie failed.

4.) Shrek the Third. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure what was wrong with this “three-quel.” It just mediocre and very, very forgettable. Same sort of story, same plot, same, recycled jokes. I guess it just didn’t really make an impression on me. Like I said just very, very unmemorable. I had high expectations. This first two Shrek movies were pretty good.

5.) Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. Ok, so I haven’t actually seen this one yet. But after all the talk I’ve heard from other people and the reviews I’ve read, it will be next to impossible for me to enjoy it when I do watch it. And I have a hunch that it is likely to be one of those movies that has to be viewed on the big screen just to capture the aura. The main complaints I’ve heard have to do with length and character development. Lot’s of people say it’s too long and too much time was spent on minor character development (which I may or may not end up enjoying), almost as if there could have been four movies but the producers decided to jam everything into a third installment. Johnny Depp is one of my favorite actors and I plan on seeing this soon. So, hopefully I’ll have to re-post and revise this list because I really liked that first two and I’d like the franchise to end well. But we’ll see.

~bh ><>