Worst Picture

Men in Black II

Even the best year is going to have its fair share of crap and 2002 was no exception. Sequel-itis was the most common cinematic disease of the year, but the filth was by no means restricted to regurgitated ideas. There are still a few classic TV shows that haven't been ruined by the translation to screen, though that number dwindled this year. Remakes of classic films also made for an unhealthy amount of the filmgoing experience in 2002. Of course, for a truly bad film, there's nothing quite like letting Hollywood hang itself with poor concepts, writing, acting and directing. These are the films that made people glad they're not film critics.

Chief offender among our group was Men in Black II, an amazingly cookie-cutter sequel to the 1997 hit comedy. What was an amusing concept the first go round quickly turned into a bad FX demo reel filled with lame jokes, uninspired acting, and a completely recycled plot. After writing themselves into a hole by erasing Tommy Lee Jones's memory, they retroactively ruined one of the more touching moments of the first by inventing the "deneuralizer" so they can bring him back into the movie. They needn't have bothered, since Jones seems remarkably bored and looks like he's figuring out how many mortgage payments this film will cover. Hey, it's only fair; he wasn't the only one bored, as millions of audience members and several voters of our jury felt the same too, thus earning it the Calvin for Worst Film of 2002.

A tie for second place saw the third Austin Powers film match up with The Tuxedo for runner-up status. It's harder to judge which is a sadder waste of talent and money; Powers for destroying what once was a brilliant and comedy-rich concept or Tuxedo for wasting the talents of Jackie Chan. My vote went to the latter since the concept behind the film was so misguided as to defy believability. Why make a Jackie Chan film if you're going to hide him behind a suit and have him do musical numbers? What's next, porn movies where all the actors keep their clothes on?

Goldmember wasn't better by any real definition, although I did laugh at a couple of jokes and the opening sequence. Most of the "humor" seems to have stopped at the conceptual phase without bothering to figure out anything funny for the characters to do or say. Someone return the old, funny Mike Myers to us.

George Lucas's latest middle finger to Star Wars fans finished in fourth place. I'm not quite sure it's that bad, but it's the worst Star Wars film and that certainly counts for something. While the series is still the same space opera that we expect it to be, it never was this.. humorless, nor did 50% of it resemble a douche commercial. You've got one last chance to fix this, George.

Fifth spot went to the Cameron Diaz gross-out romantic comedy The Sweetest Thing, which proved that comedies aimed at women can be just as horrid as any frat-boy nonsense like Tomcats. Following up these were such lame-brained and ill-conceived atrocities like Scooby-Doo, the "poorly-directed and not as hip as it thought it was" xXx and the Star Trek film to break the "even=good, odd=bad" pattern of the series, Nemesis. Some truly horrendous films are no doubt overlooked here (for instance, Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, which placed fairly low) but that can just be attributed to good "crap detectors." There's very few masochists among this bunch. (Reagen Sulewski/BOP)

Top Ten
Position	Film	Total Points
1	Men in Black II	84
2	Austin Powers in Goldmember	71
3	The Tuxedo	71
4	Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones	42
5	The Sweetest Thing	41
6	Scooby-Doo	30
7	xXx	30
8	Birthday Girl	29
9	Star Trek: Nemesis	27
10	Rollerball	26