Arleigh’s 10 Worst Films of 2011


I’ve been pretty good at avoiding fillms that I knew was going to be awful before I even stepped into the theater so certain films from 2011 that everyone call the worst I probably won’t have on my list since I never saw them. So, such films as Jack & Jill, Bucky Larson and Zookeeper will not make my list since I was smart enough to not pay to watch it.

This ten worst list of 2011 are from films I did see during the year whether in a theater or on video. I couldn’t decide which film was worse than the next so this order doesn’t really determine which was worst. It’s just my way of keeping things organized.

  1. Shark Night 3D – I had high hopes that this film would be 2011’s version of Piranha 3D in that it would be silly, goofy and over-the-top and knew it. Instead it’s tame with it’s PG-13 rating (seriously a film about Sharks eating college kids in 3D gets a PG-13 treatment) and has none of the joie de vivre that Piranha 3D had or the bugnuts craziness that Drive Angry 3D threw at you.
  2. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides – With a cast that looked to be better than the Orlando Bloom/Keira Knightley one of the original trilogy I thought this new beginning for Capt. Jack Sparrow would breathe new life to the trilogy, but instead we get one of the worst entries in the franchise (that’s saying a lot) and one that ended up wasting the talents of Ian McShane in the role of Blackbeard.
  3. Season of the Witch: I never saw it in the theater after I read Lisa Marie’s review of it. So, I waited until it arrived on Netflix and took a chance that maybe it wasn’t as awful as she said it was. I think she was being kind with her review. This film was awful in it’s awfulness that I couldn’t even enjoy just how bad it was.
  4. Transformers: Dark of the Moon – When I first saw this film I enjoyed enough of the action when it was robot vs robot so all the human interaction part never registered, but as I saw it again on blu-ray I realized just how awful this third entry in the Michael Bay franchise was in a franchise that should’ve been fool-proof. I mean it’s giant robots that transform fighting other similar robots. I think if Shia LeBouf was replaced by someone like Jason Statham I would’ve enjoyed this film more, but Shia’s whining and screeching took away any enjoyment I had from seeing robots fighting.
  5. Cowboys & Aliens – Another film that had a premise tailor-made for the summer blockbuster season with a cast that had Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig, Olivia Wilde (Mmmmm), Paul Dano, Clancy Brown, etc…not to mention Jon Favreau in the director’s chair. I thought that Favreau may have been railroaded and made a scapegoat for some of the failures of Iron Man 2 in 2010, but seeing what he ended up doing with this film made me rethink that maybe Marvel Studios was smart to cut him loose and bring in someone else.
  6. Green Lantern – DC Studios…Geoff Johns…one of the Justice Leaguers. One would think that was recipe for one kick-ass space opera that would rekindle the fun that are superheroes the way Iron Man did in 2008. Instead what we ended up getting was one of the worst superhero films ever made which made Hal Jordan an emo character fighting against a villain who wasn’t terrifying and a cosmic evil that made the Lost smoke monster look horrific in turn. Fuck you DC and Johns for ruining what could’ve been a great franchise.
  7. Arthur – I’m a child of the 80’s so I remember the original Dudley Moore version, but I was willing to give this one a chance. I shouldn’t have and any goodwill Russell Brand got from me with his performance from Get Him to the Greek vanished with this film.
  8. Apollo 18 – Moon rocks with legs!! Nuff said.
  9. Dream House – Another film that I thought was interesting enough to take a chance on despite the trailer pretty much ruining the twist in the story, but I thought it would have an interesting path getting to that twist. Daniel Craig may need to just stick to being James Bond, because he was almost like a cardboard in this film and the rest of the cast weren’t far behind. I never thought Jim Sheridan would ever make a bad film. I guess I was right. He didn’t make a bad film. He made a horrendously awful film.
  10. Priest – This was another film that could’ve been fun fluff or even an entertaining bad film, but it wasn’t either of those. This was directed by Scott Stewart who did the abysmal Legion from 2010. I thought maybe he would do better a second time around adapting a popular Korean manwha title, but I guess the saying is true: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

I’m sure I left out a few other titles that ohters think should be on this list, but those probably I actually enjoyed or weren’t bad enough to bump any of these ten from my list. This list is pretty much almost a full day of my life wasted and me not able to get a refund. It’s near to 24-hours of awful that took a full day off of my lifespan. Ten films which could be the death of me down the line.

6 responses to “Arleigh’s 10 Worst Films of 2011

  1. Awwww…poor little kitty! 🙂

    I agree with you on 8 out of 10 of these films. I enjoyed Pirates of the Caribbean a little bit more than the other writers on this site, though I agree that it was uneven and ultimately rather forgettable. But I love Johnny Depp (though that didn’t make the Rum Diary any more enjoyable) and I thought he and Penelope Cruz had an enjoyable chemistry. At least, I think I that’s what I thought. To be honest, I have a hard time remembering much about that film beyond the fact that the 3-D upset my tummy.

    Apollo 18…lol, well, I seem to be totally and completely alone in that I absolutely loved Apollo 18. In fact, it just missed out on showing up on my Top 26 of 2011. (Admitedly, part of my reason for loving and defending the film is that it seems to bring out a certain type of foaming-at-the-mouth among the Fincherites.)

    Otherwise, I agree with all your picks here.

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    • Yeah, I had high hopes for Apollo 18 and in the grindhouse way, but everything that would’ve made me enjoy the film just wasn’t there. Moon rocks with legs!!

      Poor kitty, indeed!

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  2. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought that cat had just sat through a midnight screening of “The Beyond”. (Hey, I liked “Zombie”.)

    I thought “Apollo 18” was decent. If you consider it in the context of how a human/alien encounter would manifest itself, it would likely be more like “Apollo 18” than, say, “Alien”. As a minimalist sci-fi film, I thought it had some atmosphere and tension. Not as much atmosphere and tension (or fun, for that matter) as “Alien”, but I think it rose above the realm of “bad” films.

    On the flip side, thanks to its inclusion on a “Best” list and an earlier review elsewhere on the site, I saw “The Guard” a few days ago. I liked that one quite a bit. It had an original style and unique main character. I thought both the film and the lead performance were better than with another film that could be described similarly, but received more attention and praise, “Drive”. While I thought Albert Brooks was surprisingly effective as a charming and brutal guy, I thought the narrative style was somewhat contrived and awkward – you could see the director’s attempt impress the viewer with his ostensible cleverness. Just because something is different doesn’t necessarily mean it is good. (Remember the singer for Fine Young Cannibals? Yikes. And what about “Avatar”? 🙂 ) “Drive” actually is good, but I think the comparatively organic style, among other things, of “The Guard” made that a better film. And while Ryan Gosling was fine, Brendan Gleeson was better. So thank you for bringing it to my attention.

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  3. I came here, and instantly started laughing at that cat photo. I have a cat whose tongue sticks out like that all the time. Great pic to work with. 🙂

    Arthur and Green Lantern were just so bad. Ugh. While I liked the action parts in the last half of TF3, it was too much to have to wade through all of the first hour and a half. Great choices here.

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  4. Apollo 18 gave me Blair Witch vibes, and that’s never a good thing. I hate that style of camera work. It feels very lazy to me.

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