This was perhaps inevitable. I’ve gone on record saying that 2013 was a superb year for motion pictures across the board, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t also full of crappy films too. If anything, the worst films of 2013 are nearly as bad as the best films are exceptional, and my list of The 14 Worst Films of 2013 is sure enough filled with inert comedies, blockbuster misfires, underwritten thrillers and the just plain dull.
But here’s the thing: a lot of the worst films of 2013 aren’t just bad movies. In fact, some of them are actually very well made, but just because the storytelling is good doesn’t mean that the actual story was worth telling. Films with disturbingly cruel messages about why corporations are more important than artists, bizarre insults to marginalized cultures, and even in one shocking case an ugly, misanthropic message about why bullying is a good thing are about to be listed off for you, and while it’s been argued by no less than the late, great Roger Ebert that what a movie is about matters a lot less than how it is about it, I find that I may finally be getting too old, or I’d like think maybe too mature, to forgive celebrations of human cruelty that teach audiences to do malign others for no good reason are “just movies.” Many of these movies were marketed to impressionable children, who deserve better and more positive movies that say at least slightly more meaningful things than “minorities are funny” and “rich men always know better than poor women with hard-earned opinions.”
With that out of the way I would also like to explain how I went about ranking these, as what makes a film “bad” isn’t necessarily the same as what makes a film hard to watch. As I looked over the veritable trough of terrible movies 2013 presented us, I ultimately decided that ranking them was less about which were inept, or even which were the most contemptible (the worst offender in that case scoots by with a paltry #9 spot). I decided that, in the end, I’d rather watch #14 on my list again then ever have to see my #13 as long as I live. And I’d rather watch #13 again than do the same with #12, and so on. Many of these movies hurt me, and I strongly advise you not to let them hurt you too.
So, without any further ado, here they are, my picks for The 14 Worst Films of 2013.
Read Witney Seibold’s picks for The Worst Films of 2013.
Read Fred Topel’s picks for The Worst Films of 2013.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
The 14 Worst Movies of 2013
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14. After Earth
If you ever wanted to watch Will Smith tell his son to “take a knee” for nearly two hours, speak in an unintentionally hilarious futuristic accent and sleepwalk through a hammy sci-fi parable about conquering your fear of monsters… or, if you ever wanted to see Jaden Smith star in a movie about how he’ll never be as good as his father – and possibly prove that point in real life – then After Earth is for you. And you alone.
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13. Battle of the Year
It takes a lot of effort to screw up the simplistic yet satisfying dance genre, and somehow the director of Planet B-Boy (a damned good documentary version of this exact same story) pulled it off. The moves are mostly lame, the acting is ten times worse, and the clichés never felt so unwelcome. Plus: Chris Brown. Just sayin’.
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12. Scary Movie 5
We knew what to expect from this kind of point-and-click “parody” movie, and Scary Movie 5 sadly delivered. I’ve almost come to accept that my life now has to include this fallow series in it every once in a while. That’s the most tragic part of all.
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11. The Lone Ranger
Overblown, poorly paced, horrifically insensitive to Native Americans and women of all kinds… yup, that’s The Lone Ranger. It’s sad that there were so many worse films in 2013. This is one of the epic big blockbuster duds that really is just as bad as everyone says it is.
Listen to our podcast interview with the director of The Lone Ranger XXX.
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10. Jack the Giant Slayer
It looks and sounds like an incredibly expensive episode of Shelley Duvall’s “Faerie Tale Theatre,” but with eyeballs popping out of skulls, and some of the most hideous, goofy-looking CGI characters in history. Jack the Giant Slayer doesn’t seem to know what it’s trying to be, and as such only succeeds in being borderline unwatchable.
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9. Saving Mr. Banks
Excellent story structure, sweet performances and grand music can’t save Saving Mr. Banks from being one of the most malevolent corporate monstrosities on record, rewriting the history of its supposed subject – original Mary Poppins writer P.L. Travers, who hated the movie made from her work – to fall more in line with a fictional version of reality that makes Walt Disney, and corporations everywhere, look not just smart, but more important than the artists whose work they appropriate, rewrite and arguably destroy.
Read my interview with screenwriter Kelly Marcel about my issues with Saving Mr. Banks.
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8. Grudge Match
Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro never quite shake the appearance of looking ashamed of themselves for parlaying their iconic boxing roles – Rocky Balboa and Jake LaMotta – into this tired, hackneyed comedy whose laughs all stem from how “funny” it is to watch two elderly people humiliate themselves just to get attention and money. Eerily on the nose? Sure. Embarrassing and unfunny? To the max.
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7. The Counselor
A movie that’s twice as terrible for thinking itself brilliant, Ridley Scott’s The Counselor is a turgid, portentous mess consisting of endless conversations between solid actors (Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem) about events we wish we were seeing instead. Except when they actually bother showing us some of it, like when Cameron Diaz humps a car’s windshield to completion. A few grossout highlights can’t save this self-important, long-winded, boring mess of a film.
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6. Paranoia
A sexy thriller with neither sex nor thrills, and plot holes through which you could drive a dump truck, Paranoia is the kind of all-star pointless junk I thought Hollywood didn’t even make anymore. Sadly, I was wrong. And you know what? It’s not even about paranoia.
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5. (Tie) - Turbo and Free Birds
Two ugly, unfunny animated movies with a too-good cast and concepts that make them reprehensible. Turbo is the story of a snail who dreams of being a car and succeeds, rendering meaningless to any child its theme of pursuing your dreams by claiming the literally impossible is worth dedicating your life to, and Free Birds is the story of turkeys who go back in time to stop the first Thanksgiving, inexplicably claiming in the process that turkeys – like Native Americans! – were once proud creatures but are now docile, stupid and inbred. Disturbing on both counts.
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4. Grown Ups 2
A grotesquerie of pro-bullying, misogynist propaganda masquerading as mainstream family entertainment, Grown Ups 2 is just further proof that Adam Sandler is openly mocking his audiences by implying they’ll actually swallow this stuff down by the bucketload without questioning its anti-human themes. Only a rather impressive, background gag-filled climactic 1980s costume party keeps it out of the #1 slot, but not by much.
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3. Identity Thief
Torture porn. That’s the only word to describe Identity Thief, a film about a sociopathic villain who beats a likable hero in the throat for the entire running time and expects you to root for the assaulter, and not the victim. Hateful, cruel, and a complete waste of the talented comedic cast.
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2. Salinger
Salinger exists to exalt The Catcher in the Rye author J.D. Salinger and fails on every conceivable level, turning the life of an author who valued anonymity into a embarrassing public spectacle complete with poorly filmed, idiotically overblown reenactments, actively insulting Mr. Salinger by ignoring every single thing he stood for.
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1. Snitch
I can honestly say that I have never been as bored by a motion picture as I was by Snitch, a b-movie thriller made with such dour seriousness that it’s impossible to enjoy on any level. Featuring a monotonous and annoying musical score that treats every scene – from the car chases to the quiet conversations – like it was the most depressing thing in the world. Sadly, it achieves that affect throughout the entire running time. Snitch is the worst movie of 2013, and that’s really saying something.
