Boy, 2008 was all over the map in terms of movies.  Most of them were torn down with varying degrees of critical hostility and, in the majority of those cases, the hate was justified.  From movies like 10,000 B.C. to The Happening, there have been some big stinkers among audiences this year.  What follows is my personal list of the ten movies from this year you should avoid at all costs, and if you have seen any of them already, then you have my deepest sympathies.  They are in descending order, with #1 being the absolute worst:

10. 88 Minutes - 88 Minutes was actually a movie I didn’t hate after my initial viewing, but as time went by and the more I though about it, I came to dislike it a lot.  Al Pacino, God bless him, is always a delight to watch on screen, but here he’s given material to work with that is just plain ridiculous (although not as ridiculous as that hairdo!).  Pacino plays criminal profiler Jack Gramm, who receives a call on his cell phone one day warning him that he has only 88 minutes to live.  Now, whereas most people would freak out and launch a desperate race against the clock to prevent such a thing from happening, Gramm seems not to care and casually carries on his discussion of a past murder case that may be connected to the threat on his life.  Does this guy have any idea how long 88 minutes is?  But Gramm walks through this movie as if he has all the time in the world, thereby taking away the time-crunch tension the plot presents.  But the most notable problem of 88 Minutes is how awful the writing is.  Let me share my favorite line of the movie: “I’m a forensic psychiatrist for the FBI!  Stop your car!”  Who says that in real-life situations?  Uh, that would be NO ONE!  But the screenplay essentially feels like it was scattered all over the floor by a gust of wind during the first read-through and when the producers were trying to get it back in order, they just said, “Oh, what the heck?  Let’s just film it like this!”  Plus, the film doesn’t even try to be interesting by aborting the notion of doing everything in real time, as it is 108 minutes long.  108 minutes of my life I won’t get back.  “Just give me more time,” Pacino says at one point in the movie.  Sorry, Al, but I have no more minutes to give here.

9. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor - “I really hate mummies!” Brendan Fraser exclaims well into the flashy, fast and downright terrible hunk-of-junk that is The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, and I have to say that the feeling’s mutual this time around.  Now, I actually was really entertained by the first two Mummy pictures. This third entry into the franchise, however, moves from scene to scene without the lubricating humor or excitement of the first two; plus, did I mention it was terrible?  The first half-hour was especially mind-numbing, replete with boring scenes of stale dialogue and unbearingly fake British accents.  Strike one:  the absolutely great Rachel Weisz has been replaced with Maria Bello, in what could be the worst performance of her career.  Strike Two:  Rob Cohen, the man behind such dreck as The Fast And The Furious and XXX, is in the director’s chair this time, and he handles the action sequences like Michael Bay would on his worst day.  Strike Three: those darned Abominable Snowmen, who look so fake that you just have to laugh at them – like much of the rest of the CGI in the film.  I would also criticize the exhausted plot devices, the film’s serious lack of emotion, and the just really all-around bad performances, but I’m all out of strikes.  From now on, the undead should stay dead.

8. The Incredible Hulk - Fans wanted more action after Ang Lee’s 2003 film incarnation of The Hulk, and that’s precisely what they got in The Incredible Hulk.  However, there’s nothing really incredible about this version. It is deftly robbed of what little sense of character and story development that the Ang Lee version actually did have.  Style replaces substance in Louis Leterrier’s film and it in turn feels like a really bad video game.  The plot involves the teeth-gnashing General Ross (William Hurt) tracking the exiled Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) in order to extract some of Bruce’s DNA to manufacture an entire army of Hulk Soldiers.  The one glaring problem: what makes Ross think that he’ll have any control over this army once he creates it?  Because the entire point of Bruce hiding in Brazil is so that he can attempt to find a cure for the Hulk side of him that goes completely bonkers once unleashed. It’s not as if Ross doesn’t know -  I think the General needs to go back to the drawing board, as does Marvel Studios.  Marvel delivered one of the best superhero movies in recent years with Iron Man back in May, but a month later, they put this…thing in theatres.  They should have realized by now that The Hulk is their least interesting, least developable character and that any movie made about him will always be uneven.  In my opinion, Marvel has many better characters they could focus their attention on, and I personally hope that this is the last we see of The Hulk on the big screen, at least in his own movie.  C ‘mon, Marvel, just SMASH! the Hulk franchise already.

7. Mamma Mia! - I truly feel bad for anyone else who was dragged to the incessantly corny and nearly insufferable film adaptation of the stage musical Mamma Mia! This movie is so bad, not even the presence of the great Meryl Streep can save it.  You know, I absolutely loved last year’s big musical, Sweeney Todd, but whereas that film played like a smooth-flowing and hauntingly beautiful opera, Mamma Mia! instead plays out like a disjointed and bombastic karaoke night in Greece.  In addition, the songs are stretched out to the point where I felt like I was back in elementary school chorus on a really bad rehearsal day.  And the cinematography during the musical numbers certainly didn’t help, as that made the whole film feel like an overdone production of Riverdance. When the music is one of the worst things about a musical, you know something went wrong somewhere. Furthermore, Mamma Mia! manages to accomplish something that I thought no movie could possibly do, and that is it makes Meryl Streep completely and utterly bland.  Shame!  Shame on them!  And finally, the two shallow, giggly girlfriends portrayed by Julie Walters and Christine Baranski are the character equivalents of nails on a chalkboard.

6. Fool’s Gold - I have a question: where is the chemistry that stars Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson allegedly shared on-screen?  ‘Cause I gotta tell you, after the horrible How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days and now the equally bad Fool’s Gold, I just ain’t seein’ it.  In fact, Fool’s Gold has everything going on EXCEPT chemistry between its stars. Not that any of what’s on the screen holds our attention for more than a minute.  It’s weird, because for a film showcasing underwater fights and high-speed sequences with motor scooters, Jet Skis and a prop plane, it all becomes unimportant – quickly.  There was a certain point I reached while watching Fool’s Gold where I just didn’t care any more.  And I find it ridiculous that the film expects us to suspend our disbelief so much that we swallow the notion that these two characters would willingly push aside their distaste for one another, as well as their recent divorce, just to go treasure salvaging.  I’ll be sure to keep that in mind if I ever have a really bad break-up with a girlfriend.  I can’t see any real reason why Fool’s Gold was made, except to show off tropical locations that can be used to check your watch in the dark and the intense tans of its stars.  You know they have to be spray-ons.

5. Four Christmases – The D.O.A. holiday comedy Four Christmases is full of jokes that stink worse than expired eggnog.  It’s movies like Four Christmases that demonstrate exactly how little Hollywood knows about making Christmas-themed movies that are actually good.  This alleged comedy is bursting at the seams with both slapstick and bathroom humor, and I have to say that Fool’s Gold is looking funnier and funnier by the minute.  All Four Christmases does is give us scene after scene of uninspired jokes that fall flat on their face, yet surprisingly keep trying to make us laugh.  Cue the baby vomit!   Vince Vaughn can definitely be funny, but here he’s given an abysmal script penned by four – count ‘em, four – writers that have no real sense of comedic timing.  I know what the producers of this piece of junk are getting in their stockings this year: lumps of coal.

4. Twilight – Vampirical lust meets teenage hormones in Twilight, and the end result makes you want to search for a wooden stake.  Twilight is the romantic horror phenomenon for teenage girls these days, and I don’t doubt that the millions of them who’ve seen it by now were more or less satisfied with what they got.  Everybody else who sees it, though, will think it’s laughable, slow, badly acted and B-O-R-I-N-G!  I actually had the misfortune of reading the book as well, and let me tell you that compared to this film, the book is far more bearable – but that’s not saying much.  Really, NOTHING happens in the first hour and a half, but when things finally pick up in the last half hour, it’s far too late to salvage whatever potential this thing ever had.  I blame author Stephenie Meyer for this, because the book had a similarly nonexistent plot.  And when the villains of the story come in toward the end, you just can’t help but laugh because the only way to recognize that these people are the bad guys is that they walk in that super-cheesy slow motion while sneering at the good guys. They’re about as intimidating as regular teens who are mad at their parents for grounding them.  Add on top of that the fact that stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson have ZERO chemistry together, and you’ve got the ingredients for one of the dopiest movies of the year …and in case you can’t tell by now, I hated this movie.

3. Speed Racer – No, Speed, no!  Alright, I can appreciate that The Wachowskis (Matrix Trilogy) were trying something unique and different with Speed Racer, but what I absolutely can’t appreciate is the end product:  CGI run amok, a hyperactive, bubble-gummish mess that moves so fast, you’d think everybody involved in the production was on speed themselves.  Fortunately, I didn’t waste any money on Speed Racer in theatres, as I saw it via Netflix, but let me tell you that the experience would have been just as mind-numbing on the big screen.  And don’t get me started on Speed’s little brother and his pet monkey…in fact, now that I think about it, it was the monkey that gave the most tolerable performance in the entire movie.  In the year 2008, did Warner Brothers really expect us to be impressed solely by CGI, which in this case makes the film look all the more cartoonish and serves the sole purpose of trying to cover up the film’s paper-thin story.  And it seems theater crowds shared my sentiments.  For all I care, Speed can keep on driving his race car right past the Finish Line until he reaches the Land of Story and Character Development.

2. 10,000 B.C. – Talk about a train wreck of historical proportions – oh my God!  This obviously inaccurate “historical epic”, if you could call it that, is so bone-headed, cliche-ridden and downright laughable that you’d think it was written by Neanderthals.  The plot is so mired in exhausted plot conventions it wouldn’t be able to stay afloat if thrown a life raft.  And without a life raft, the story has its characters take what feels like a disjointed trek through an issue of National Geographic.  One minute, they’re in snow-covered mountain terrain; next they’re in a thick jungle and, finally, they arrive in a barren desert.  You know, I would’ve loved to see the location shooting sites on this film.  Now let’s see, what’s a writer to do in order to salvage whatever credibility hasn’t been sucked dry by this movie?  Stage both a slave AND mammoth revolt!  If there was any upside to 10,000 B.C., I guess it was that after watching those creatures that look like a cross between a raptor and a turkey, I didn’t feel so bad at Thanksgiving.  Seriously, cave paintings are looking more and more entertaining by the minute.

1. You Don’t Mess With The Zohan – So, what could be worse than vampire stare-offs, CGI on meth and the stupidest Neanderthals ever put on film?  The answer: an Israeli commando who dreams of becoming a hair stylist.  Talk about stranger than fiction!  I’ll openly admit to never being a fan of the Adam Sandler schtick, but it is at its worst in You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, the lowest point of Sandler’s career that’s made even more unwatchable by the painfully fake accents and the typical Sandler humor. That by itself is so tired out by now, it’s hard to feel a pulse.  Whoever thought a decent movie could be made from this concept needs to have his authority to greenlight movies permanently revoked.  Not five minutes into the film I said “You’ve got to be kidding me,” because the attempts at stringing bad jokes onto a thread of Israelis and hummus are astronomically uninspired.  Not once did I even begin to crack a smile; I was too busy staring at the screen in utter disbelief and revulsion.  And what makes this even more sad is that this marks the second consecutive year that an Adam Sandler comedy has had the dishonor of appearing at the bottom of my year-end list.  You Don’t Mess With The Zohan is the cinematic equivalent of dry-heaving; you’re empty but really feel sick, and that feeling stays with you no matter how hard the convulsions wrack you.  The title says that you don’t want to mess with The Zohan, but quite frankly, who would even care to?

Now, if any of my picks upset anyone in any way, I apologize – but keep in mind that these are my own personal choices.

If anyone wants to argue with me, I’m willing to defend myself.

And be sure to stay on the lookout for my forthcoming list of the Best Films of 2008, where I count down my personal choices for the year’s top ten films.

Let me clear the air by saying that I was unwillingly dragged to see “Mamma Mia!”, the latest Hollywood interpretation of a stage musical.

Clearly, I’m not the type of person the people behind the film adaptation of “Mamma Mia!” were trying to please.  People like me, who are generally against musicals can and should find a better way to spend their time at the movies and leave the people who are actually interested in this film to see it.  However, I truly feel bad for anybody dragged to this incessantly corny and nearly insufferable movie musical that is so bad, even the presence of Meryl Streep can’t save it.

So, if I normally resist big, lavish movie musicals such as this, am I really the right person to review “Mamma Mia!”?  Well, I’d say no, but I’ll let you be the judge of that.  I’m not reviewing this movie for the fans of the musical, because I know that they’ll be pleased with what they get; I’m reviewing it for everyone else.  Now, that’s not to say that I automatically give every single musical I see a negative review.  I really enjoyed 2005′s “The Producers” as well as “Chicago” from 2002, and last year’s “Sweeney Todd” was my pick for the second-best film of 2007.  What ultimately made me not like “Mamma Mia!”, I guess you could say, was the simple fact that the film seriously missed every single mark it was trying to hit.  This movie is meant to be a fun, breezy hour and forty-eight minutes at the theater, but I thought there wasn’t any fun to be had and due to its dragged-out songs, there was nothing breezy about it.  Whereas “Sweeney Todd” played like a smooth flowing and hauntingly beautiful opera, and rather successfully at that, “Mamma Mia!” instead plays out like karaoke night in Greece.

Well, let’s face it.  Musicals aren’t meant to have elaborate or intricately crafted plots and that’s the case here (which invites another comparison to “Sweeney Todd” that I’ll make later).  The plot for “Mamma Mia!” is paper-thin and it always comes to a complete halt whenever the next musical number starts up.  So, the light and bright Sophie Sheridan (Amanda Seyfried) is about to get married to stud muffin Sky (Dominic Cooper), who incidentally has cloudy eyes.  Sophia’s one wish, though, is to have her father attend her wedding and give her away to her McDreamy.  The only problem is that her catamite of a mother named Donna (Meryl Streep) slept with three different men around the time Sophia would have been conceived.  That means that there are three possible candidates for the title of ‘Dear Old Dad’: Bill (Stellan Skarsgard), Sam (Pierce Brosnan) and Harry (Colin Firth).  And yet another problem is that Donna doesn’t want any of them at the wedding.  But as we all know, they’ll inevitably stay and that will cause serious romantic decisions to be made in one weekend that would normally take more than a weekend to decide to be made in, well, one weekend.

The plot’s only true purpose is to act as an engine to get us from one musical to the next, and that’s one of the biggest problems I’ve always had with musicals.  I can understand the necessity for an uncomplicated plot, but still, why can’t the writers at least try to bring more to the storyline so that the movie doesn’t feel like it can simply end at any given moment if one of the three men just came up and revealed that they are the father of Sophie?  Plus, I think it’s safe to say that you can pretty much guess who the father is by the way the camera lingers on each individual bachelor.  Now, I will admit that “Sweeney Todd”  does have a similarly thin plot, but the difference there is that the songs of that movie essentially were part of the plot.  It avoided that choppy style because the songs actually moved everything forward.  Here, the songs seem to be there just for the heck of it and while they may be mildly enjoyable, the choreography that accompanies them just makes everything feel like an overdone production of Riverdance.  And I’ll say this: if I had to sit through one more musical number where men and/or teenage boys tried to imitate professional dancers on a pier, I’d have been ready to throw my bag of popcorn at the screen.

For a musical meant to have purposefully bland performances made even more bland by professional actors such as Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan, then there’s something wrong in the acting department.  Meryl Streep has always been a terrific actress, but she’s given virtually nothing to work with here.  Oh, she can sing just fine and is definitely capable of holding her own whenever she bursts  into song, but it’s the in-between stuff that had me scratching my head in wonderment, trying to discern how Streep couldn’t be up to her own standards.  Also, her two shallow, giggly girlfriends portrayed by Julie Walters and Christine Baranski are the character equivalents of nails on a chalkboard.  And the serious overacting of Amanda Seyfried as Sophie doesn’t help much, either.

I think the best thing about “Mamma Mia!”, though, is the scenery of Greece.  Every outside scene carries vibrant sunshine, aqua-blue ocean and lime-green trees that at least give the movie points for eye candy.  And if I had to say something good about the cast, it would be that Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard do pretty decent work and are the most interesting to watch.

However, when a musical is iffy on the music and very noticeably at that in addition to being a challenge to sit through, then something went wrong somewhere.  I think it’s safe to say that the people who want to see “Mamma Mia!” will probably end up liking it, but me personally, I prefer my musicals to lay off the annoying choreography and make the songs pieces of the plot, rather than roadblocks to it.

Rating: ★½☆☆☆