The Bottom 10 Flicks: Cinematic Crimes We Can’t Unsee

The title promises a bear, cocaine and the sort of restraint normally associated with a gas-station hot dog. Elizabeth Banks delivers gore, an ambulance sequence built like a cheese grater and a premise happy to shout its own punchline. The problem is that the movie keeps wandering away from its one terrific bad idea to visit a forest full of thin characters.

Jon enjoyed the first hit of absurdity, but every rewatch dropped the score another half-point. The carnage lands; the tension and character depth do not. Ken found almost none of the comedy funny, cared for few characters and had no desire to return. Don appreciated the needle drops, the committed gore and the filmmakers’ obvious affection for the stunt, but the cartoon-looking bear kept pulling him out.

That leaves a 1.42 average and a hard truth: a title can be the elevator pitch, spoiler and complete creative strategy, but it cannot do all the acting.

The repair order: Cut the surplus subplots, give the human chase a clean objective and use a more tactile bear—or at least CGI that does not look like it wandered in from a mobile game. Keep the ambulance carnage. That part understood the assignment.

Rock of Ages raids one of the greatest decades of arena rock, hires an absurdly stacked cast and then arranges everything around two romantic leads with all the voltage of an unplugged refrigerator. The jukebox keeps playing; the story keeps waiting for somebody to put in a quarter.

Jon found enough camp, familiar music and Tom Cruise commitment to reach 2.25. Ken could admire the songs without buying the paper-thin plot or tonal whiplash. Don landed at 0.50, proof that beloved music does not receive diplomatic immunity when the movie wrapped around it is overlong, glossy and dramatically dead.

Cruise’s feral Stacee Jaxx is the movie’s best swing, but even he seems to be performing in a stranger, riskier picture that occasionally wanders through this one looking for the exit.

The repair order: Make Stacee Jaxx the center, trim the runtime, lose the bland romance and let the Sunset Strip feel dirty, dangerous and alive. If your rock musical looks like a theme-park gift shop, the rebellion has already filed for bankruptcy.

The Natural has Robert Redford, Randy Newman’s soaring score and one of cinema’s most famous showers of stadium lights. It also has a hero who drifts through his own myth while the movie treats every slow walk toward destiny like it just discovered baseball.

The Guys respected the handsome photography and the iconic finale, but struggled with the glacial pace, Roy Hobbs’s choices and a story determined to tell us he is legendary before making him fully compelling. Jon found the most romance in the baseball fable. Don and Ken mostly found a very long road to a home run everyone could see coming from the parking lot.

At 1.42, this is not technical incompetence. It is prestige without enough pulse—the cinematic equivalent of a beautiful baseball card for a player you never watched.

The repair order: Tighten the middle, give Roy sharper agency and let the supporting relationships create conflict instead of merely arranging themselves beneath the glow. Keep the exploding lights. Even a bottom-ten movie can hit one pitch into the cheap seats.

Joe Pesci carrying eight severed heads through a luggage-swap farce sounds like the sort of pitch that gets a movie greenlit before anyone asks the dangerous follow-up: “And then what?” Unfortunately, the finished film also seems unsure.

Ken called Tommy the only likable element, then described the story as convoluted, badly paced and a cheap Weekend at Bernie’s knockoff. Don found the only funny material belonged to Pesci and David Spade while everyone else sleepwalked. Jon’s comparatively generous two-fuck review was beautifully economical: his mother taught him that if he could not say anything nice, he should say nothing at all.

The dark premise was not the problem. The movie simply was not funny, and its 95 minutes somehow achieved the perceived runtime of a hostage situation.

The repair order: Pair Pesci and Spade for most of the film, simplify the chase and build escalating comic obstacles around the heads. Fewer vacant subplots, better rhythm and one actual reason to care about Charlie would be a head start.

By the sixth movie, Freddy Krueger had completed his transformation from shadowy nightmare predator into a one-man Saturday-morning variety show. The marketing called this his final nightmare. The movie responded with video-game gags, celebrity cameos, 3D dream demons and all the terror of a rejected breakfast-cereal commercial.

Jon’s love for Robert Englund survived, but he found the cast forgettable, the supposed finale disconnected from what came before and the dream demons impossible to take seriously. Don called the first two acts “horseshit,” though Freddy’s daughter, his backstory, Tracy and the returning musical echoes kept the third act from completely sinking it. Both scored 1.25; Ken did not rate this episode.

The newer 2010 reboot still ranked worse, but that is not absolution. It is the cinematic equivalent of being told you were not the worst fire in the building.

The repair order: Restore menace, connect the finale to survivors and mythology audiences already care about, and make Freddy’s daughter the emotional spine from the opening scene. Also return the dream demons to whichever Muppet warehouse reported them missing.

Waiting… should have been an easy ensemble comedy: trap funny performers in a restaurant, add terrible customers and let service-industry resentment boil over. Instead, it repeatedly serves the same genital gag and wonders why nobody asks for dessert.

The Guys recognized a talented cast and the painfully accurate purgatory of a dead-end shift, but the movie mistakes gross-out escalation for character development. Monty’s pursuit of a teenage hostess ages especially badly, while Dean’s existential crisis keeps getting pushed aside for material that would embarrass a middle-school locker room.

The 0.92 average is less a tip than a note asking to speak with whoever approved the specials.

The repair order: Center Dean’s choice, turn the staff into recognizable people and aim the nastiness upward at exploitative management and abusive customers. Retire the penis game after one joke—preferably before the camera arrives.

Dan Aykroyd’s only feature as director is a fever dream about rich Manhattanites detained by a 106-year-old judge inside a junkyard courthouse containing a human bone stripper, giant babies and a surprise Digital Underground performance. Those words sound more entertaining than the movie, which may be its most impressive special effect.

The production design is committed, Aykroyd is fearless and John Candy occasionally finds oxygen. Unfortunately, the tone lurches between gross-out comedy and grotesque horror without making either funny or frightening. Chevy Chase looks as if his contractual obligation has become physically visible.

The Guys could admire the audacity but not the experience. At 0.92, this is what happens when every strange idea survives and no adult gets to ask whether they belong in the same film.

The repair order: Choose horror-comedy, give the leads a reason to root for them and let a ruthless editor demolish half the detours. Keep the production design and one mutant-baby scene. We are not monsters.

Important evidence tag: this score belongs to the 1980 original, not the 2009 reboot discussed in the same franchise episode. Yes, the foundational film with Tom Savini’s practical kills and Betsy Palmer’s wonderfully unhinged Mrs. Voorhees landed beneath the remake. Camp Crystal Lake has seen many murders; nostalgia was merely the latest victim.

Don and Jon each found one point’s worth of slasher history, atmosphere and effects. Ken gave zero. The Guys’ problem was the dead air between kills, disposable counselors and a mystery whose final reveal introduces its killer so late that the story feels less constructed than withheld.

The final canoe scare remains iconic. Most of the trip there felt like waiting for somebody to finish setting up camp.

The repair order: Seed Mrs. Voorhees throughout the story, build distinctive counselors and turn the lake’s history into mounting dread. Keep the practical kills and final scare; remove enough wandering to make the suspense arrive before the sequel.

This basement slot belongs specifically to Marcus Nispel’s glossy 2003 remake. The 1974 Tobe Hooper original reviewed beside it averaged 2.33. The remake has Jessica Biel, aggressive sound design and expensive grime; the original has the suffocating nightmare the newer film keeps trying to purchase by the gallon.

The Guys found the young characters forgettable, the cruelty numbing and the style more music video than documentary terror. Leatherface gains bulk and backstory while losing mystery. Ken found one point of production value and brutality; Don and Jon each found half a point and probably checked whether the theater offered tetanus shots.

It is louder, wetter and more polished than 1974. It is also far less disturbing, because grime applied by a crew still looks like grime applied by a crew.

The repair order: Strip away the music-video sheen, stop explaining Leatherface, create believable travelers and let sound, heat and implication do the damage. Terror needs space. A chainsaw does not become scarier because the trailer editor revs it every eleven seconds.

At last, perfect agreement. Every Guy gave the 2010 remake half a point. For comparison, Wes Craven’s 1984 original earned 4.33 in the same episode. One created an immortal dream monster. The other made three people dream about the closing credits.

Jon called the remake empty, overlong and forgettable despite Chris’s death, a few Easter eggs and attempts to fill in the connective scenes. Ken admitted it had the strongest story of the three horror icon remakes they had recently covered, but found the CGI deaths uninspired and the experience unmemorable. Don tried to view it without comparing new formula Freddy to classic Freddy; the bland kids, clock-watching pace and version of Krueger he wanted defeated rather than revisited made that impossible.

Showing Freddy constantly drains the mystery. Explaining more makes him less frightening. Turning ambiguity into a grim, literal backstory does not deepen the nightmare; it turns on the fluorescent lights.

The repair order: Keep Freddy in the shadows, restore practical dream imagery, build Nancy into an active fighter and use the micro-nap idea for escalating uncertainty. Most of all, stop recreating Craven’s iconic shots with weaker CGI.