Johnny Showtimes: 10 Stinkers from the Year 2000

 by JB

If you are pre-gaming F This Movie Fest... as we all are ... here are some films to avoid. Or not! I cannot live your life for you.

Looking back this month on the movies released in 2000, I think that most of us have concluded that it was ONE HELL OF A YEAR to be a film fan. However, the mirror has two faces... you must take the sour with the sweet... the bad with the good... the most beautiful rose has the sharpest thorns... that writer you like on the F This Movie machine does tend to go on and on with tedious metaphors and pointless analogies... you’ll find that is why pencils have erasers.

1) The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle: This misbegotten turd makes me feel so bad for Robert De Niro, who was somehow coerced into playing Fearless Leader with bad prosthetic make-up and a goofy cartoon accent... and making fun of his own famous Taxi Driver monologue to boot. I understand that some Hollywood checks are large and easy to cash, but do they have to be so humiliating? Bobby, please leave that shit to third-rate club comics and SNL.

2) Battlefield Earth: Patrick waxed regretful about this stinkfest last week, but can I just repeat that the bad guys in this movie are called Psychlos? You know, like “Psycho,” but with an “L”? Sheesh. L. Ron Hubbard, get a day job!

3) Chocolat: Transparent awards fodder. As if Harvey Fucking Weinstein dumped all of his Miramax Oscar-baiting bullshit into some horrible computer and yelled, “Write me another one!” and “Can I jerk off on you?”

THERAPIST: “JB, how do you really feel?”

4) The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas: I once offered to take my little nieces and nephews to the movies one afternoon and this is what we wound up seeing. For 26 years, I have tried to make amends for that. I still don’t feel that I have sufficiently apologized. I think John Goodman escaped appearing in this witless farce because he had a note from his mother.

5) Hollow Man: With all due apologies to Paul Verhoeven, this might be my least favorite version/remake/rip-off of The Invisible Man. Not even engaging, reliable performers like Kevin Bacon, Elisabeth Shue, and Josh Brolin can save this forgettable tale.

6) Nutty Professor II: The Klumps: Okay, I will admit that I am biased here because 1) I am overweight and 2) I have a tremendous chip on my shoulder about the fact that fat people are the last minority it is socially acceptable to mock. Discuss. Though he plays the quintessential nerd in Bowfinger, Eddie Murphy made the questionable decision to change Jerry Lewis’s Nutty Professor into the Fatty Professor and Family. Boo.

7) Pay It Forward: Inert, virtual-signaling tripe, before virtual signaling was even a thing. Plus: KEVIN SPACEY!

8) Requiem for a Dream: My antipathy for this Reefer Madness remake is well known. But I come by it honestly; Darren Aronofsky killed my father. He beat him to death with a double-headed dildo.

9) Titus Andronicus: I am on record as hating every Shakespeare production that goes all “creative” on the material regarding time period and setting. “What if we set Julius Caesar in a giant office building? What if we set Romeo & Juliet in modern-day Miami? What if we set Taming of the Shrew in a fucking rodeo?" What if we take all these creative theatrical producers out and have them "exit, pursued by bear"?

As a former high-school English teacher, I have suffered through more than my share of modern dress Shakespeare, where the show “kind of works” until all the business-suited office types take out the daggers and the spears in Act III and start stabbing each other to death. This version of Titus is yet another of these “modern business office" rewrites, and it almost works until the title character orders a secondary villain to have his hands chopped off... and further orders said secondary villain to carry said hands around in his mouth. Careful! You may get blood all over your Brooks Brothers’ tie! Here, you can blot that clean with your pocket square!

Or maybe... I don’t know what really goes on at Apple board meetings.
Maybe this film portrays just another Wednesday afternoon in the corporate world.

10) 2001: A Space Travesty: In the wake of his late-career success in the Naked Gun franchise, Leslie Nielsen made some baaaaaaaaaaaad comedies: Stan Helsing, Repossessed, Mr. Magoo, Spy Hard, Surf Ninjas... How bad is this lame Kubrick parody? Nielsen plays a character named Dick Dix.

I know that a man’s gotta eat, but c’mon. This is a bit of a comedown for the star of Forbidden Planet. You can tell the desperate producers were praying for Nielsen’s presence ALONE to sell the film when you consider the entire remaining cast is a laundry list of performers THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD OF. Or maybe that’s just a Canada thing.

As I eagerly anticipate whenever I post a column such as this, I might have trod on someone’s cinematic toes with these highly personal picks. Be honest. Did I hurt your feelings? Now is your chance to use the comment section below to PROVE ME WRONG!