The 11 Worst Movies I Have Seen

We all have that experience of getting up from the couch, or walking out of the theater, and thinking, "I will never get back the 2 hours of my life I just wasted!" But perhaps we can bring some good out of the cinematic sins that others have visited upon us. Or perhaps I'm trying to atone for having spent $15 to see The Green Lantern.

Note that these are movies that I have seen. (Thankfully, I managed to avoid Left Behind). Also, I will not attempt to explain why I saw some of these movies - except to say that college students have been known to do stupid things.

11. Bad Boys 2 was actually enjoyable at the time. But by the time it ended, I simply felt tired, and upon leaving the theater I realized that I had killed more brain cells than if I had spent the afternoon downing vodka. It was producer Jerry Bruckheimer who first proved, with Top Gun, that a movie didn't need to have a plot to be successful. Supposedly, the original script for Bad Boys 1 was so bad that he and director Michael Bay actually rewrote it. If only I could get my hands on that original script - now that would be interesting.

10. The American President. Political movies rarely work as good drama, simply because it is so difficult to avoid pushing an agenda. Director Rob Reiner didn't even attempt ambiguity or complexity. He made a thinly veiled infomercial for the Democratic Party, particularly then-President Bill Clinton, and against the Republican Party and then-nominee Bob Dole. Dialogue and situations were lifted straight out of the previous few years of political headlines, including the 1996 election and the Monica Lewinksy scandal. Like Facing the Giants (see below) for diehard Democrats.

9. Jarhead. Although well-acted and -directed, this Gulf War movie / Full Metal Jacket-remake fails to tell a compelling story or offer any redeeming elements. Part diatribe against the Marine Corps, part tragedy of a lost and confused young man, it is long on pathos but short on substance. Nothing about any of the characters, except perhaps the Sargeant played by Jamie Foxx, gives us any reason to love or hate them - only to pity them.

8. Scary Movie 1 & 2 are combined not only because I watched the back-to-back, but because they are utterly indistinguishable. (Don't believe me? Hook up two DVD players to a television and switch back and forth randomly. You'll never notice any discontinuity!) Like a desperate comedian losing his audience, both movies continually resort to sexual perversion in an attempt at actual humor. Parodies only truly succeed when they use the material of the original as a springboard to mock larger trends, and in this regard both movies fall flat and remain (thankfully) utterly forgettable.

7. Nothing But Trouble. I am told that this movie was intended to be a comedy. Unfortunately, without a laugh track it was difficult to distinguish those events meant to be funny, from those that merely appeared to be snapshots of the most bizarrely bad day ever.

6. Sex and the City 2. For the first 90 minutes, I found myself checking my watch, looking around the theater, thinking about technical problems at work, and wondering what we should do with the landscaping in our backyard. I could not find a reason to care about anything happening to any of the people on screen. I have never seen a movie whose subject matter was so utterly banal. The movie works only as an uintentional comedy, in that the central conflicts facing each of the four women are - if given any thought - actually hilarious. A sex addict complains she is losing her libido? The worst conflict in a marriage is whether to go out and party every night or watch TV every night?  etc. etc. blah, blah, blah. The one redeeming element? A surprisingly accurate portrayal of Middle Eastern culture.

5. The Joneses begins with a truly intriguing premise: a "family" of actors who move into a very upscale neighborhood and entice everyone to buy various products through a combination of suggestion and envy. There was great potential here for an insightful look at materialism and the way we are influenced - by envy or the desire for social status - to buy things we don't need. Unfortunately, the plot quickly becomes bogged down by the conflicts within the "family," then veers into utter tragedy before suddenly ending on a romantic note. The actions of one of the main characters, a neighbor who spends recklessly to keep up with the Joneses and then defaults on his jumbo mortgage, are incomprehensible - it is difficult to believe that someone that affluent would have so little clue about his own finances. Rarely funny, occasionally insightful, but thoroughly depressing.

4. Scream. Senseless violence, no plot, and only amusing to the degree that it pokes fun at horror-movie conventions. That is, unless your idea of comedy is watching somebody get pinched to death in a garage door.

3. Swimming Pool. This movie should have been rated "X." And the plot (if you could call it that) made absolutely no sense. Reviewers praised it's "Hitchcockian sense" and the director claimed it "mixed fantasy and reality on the same plane." More accurately, it mixed gratuitous sexual content with a failed aspiration to be about something.

2. Jeepers Creepers. Not even scary, just pointless and disgusting. It featured bad acting, senseless gore, and a "plot" (using term loosely) in which evil wins for no particular reason.

1. Facing the Giants. Terrible acting, preachy dialogue, and ridiculous plots could all be forgiven when the movie was made by a Baptist church in the 9th poorest metro area of America. The real problem - and, unfortunately, the reason the film was so popular with many Christians - is that it contains, by far, the worst theology I have ever seen or heard. One reviewer called it "pornography for evangelical Christians." The gospel according to this movie: walk into a field and put your hands in the air... and God will give you a new truck, a winning football season, and cure your infertility! Truly an embarrassment to the church. And, quite possibly, the worst movie ever made since the invention of motion pictures - surpassing even Plan 9 From Outer Space.


Wow, I feel better now. Perhaps one of these days I'll write about good movies. Until then, consult Christianity Today's list of the Most Redeeming Films of 2012 - especially if you have seen any of the above monstrosities.

Facing What Giants?

It’s not often that a movie leaves my wife and I feeling worse by the end. In fact, not since we watched Will Smith get devoured by zombies has a film left us feeling down. It’s even more strange when the movie in question is supposedly “created to encourage believers and evangelize non-believers.” But discouragement is exactly what we felt as the final credits rolled for Facing the Giants.

Produced on a shoe-string budget by Sherwood Baptist Church of Albany, GA, with a cast entirely of amateurs, few movies had generated so much buzz in the Christian grapevine. Much of the attention was due to the nature of the film’s making, and an overt gospel message bolstered the strategy of marketing to churches instead of movie theaters. Choosing to center the storyline on a quintessentially American institution – a high-school football team – almost guaranteed rapport with American church audiences.

A brief synopsis: Grant Taylor, head football coach at Shiloh Christian High School, is facing the prospect of losing his job after six straight losing seasons. He’s nearly broke, his car and house are falling apart, and he and his wife Brooke are unable to have children. After a local man who faithfully prays for all of the students gives the coach an inspiring “word from the Lord,” he decides to re-orient his football team and all of his life around trusting God. And one after another, the giants in his life begin to fall.

As Christian film professional Barbara Nicolosi cynically noted in a scathing review,“In short order after he utters the Evangelical commitment formula aloud, he wins back the esteem of his fellow townspeople, he turns around his terrible team so that they win the championship, somebody gives him a brand new shiny red truck, AND his infertile wife becomes pregnant!” Christianity Today was equally harsh, giving it only 1 out of 4 stars. With these reviews in mind, I approached this film with a degree of skepticism. I didn’t expect Facing the Giants to be much of a credit to the artistic contributions of evangelical Christianity.

In fact, the acting (although bad) was bearable, the football scenes are well done, there are some moments of genuine (although not memorable) humor, and a few scenes are truly inspiring – particularly a practice exercise in which a blindfolded player achieves more than he ever thought possible. Taken in context, the surprise gift of the new truck was both moving and believable, and not a “word of faith” sermon illustration . (In fact, something similar happened to us in Kuwait when a pastor gave us a car – BUT we only had it for 6 weeks, and it had 600,000 miles on it). The relationship between the small, soccer-playing placekicker and his wheelchair-bound father is touching, and that the father comes across as authentic is no small feat; as one literary critic notes, a “good man” is one of the hardest characters to portray believably. (Compare to the father in Sherwood’s Fireproof, who often sounds as if he is channeling some overly erudite minister or motivational speaker).

But Nicolosi’s point stands. While many of the individual moments may be the sort of things that Christians come to expect from a God who is at work in the world, the overall arc of the story suggests that merely putting Jesus first will result in “victory” in all areas of life. The characters often talk about trusting God “no matter what,” but they never actually have to – everybody gets what they want. In fact, most things in Grant and Brooke’s life improve immediately.

We all know what it’s like to pray those prayers of total surrender: “Lord, I accept your will regardless of how this turns out.” We often pray them half-heartedly, hoping that God will be impressed enough with our offer to follow Him even if he doesn’t give us what we most want, that He will give it to us anyway. The true test of faith comes when God calls our bluff.

That happened just this past week to a friend here in the Middle East. He had just moved from his parents’ house in South Carolina, and was struggling to adapt to a foreign place. His relationship with his long-time girlfriend, whom he was hoping to marry, was on the rocks. He prayed, putting everything in God’s hands, placing their relationship on the altar.

The next day she broke up with him. I wonder when someone is going to write that into the script of a “Christian movie?”

But we’ve seen substandard movies before. When we stepped off a flight after watching an ensemble cast collectively mangle a witty book that had been reduced to a bad script, we didn’t feel like sitting on the tarmac and moaning. In fact, after the Shiloh Eagles won the state championship, we wanted to cheer just like in any sports movie.

It was the last 5 minutes that killed us.

From the start, it was a foolish choice to relegate infertility – one of the biggest emotional struggles any couple can face – to a subplot in a movie about high school football. Nevertheless, here was a chance to show – in even the smallest way – how two people might choose to place their faith in God’s goodness and sovereignty even when the deepest desires of their hearts were continually frustrated. As an excellent book on the subject notes, “In the Bible, infertility is usually an affliction of the righteous” – and there is no Biblical promise that all Christians will be able to have children. To long and pray for children with no answer, while watching high schoolers get pregnant and welfare cases pop out babies like Pez dispensers, is to die a slow emotional death while being continually slapped in the face with the seeming senselessness of reality. The [assumedly] well-meaning but flippant comments of other Christians only serve as kicks in the one place it most hurts.

To then insinuate in a Christian movie that all one must do is “turn it over to the Lord,” and suddenly you will get pregnant, is little more than an insult to those who are suffering the chronic pain of infertility.

We know: in the past year we lost 2 children in the womb, and do not know if we can ever give birth. After 3 months of our first pregnancy, our prayers were “answered” with a trip to the emergency room with my wife screaming in pain. We have experienced much healing since then, but it has been less like the closure of a wound and more like a cripple learning to walk – every step has been hard-fought and won with perseverance and tears. Had we watched this movie earlier in the year, it is quite possible that it would not have returned to the owner in one piece.

We have now begun the process of adopting children from Ethiopia. On the night we popped in this DVD, hoping for a night of respite from our struggles, we were watching our efforts dissolve in front of our eyes and were one email away from having to give up completely. It was a huge test of faith as we faced a genuine giant – and Facing the Giants merely left us angry with its trivialization of our struggle.

We’ve seen some breakthroughs since then, reminders that the Lord is with us in this journey. And we’re well past letting ourselves get bent out of shape over a poorly made 94-minute movie. At least we finally saw for ourselves just what all the fuss was about. But we won’t be recommending this film to anyone.