3. The Lorax
Even though I saw two worse films this year, no movie has made me quite as sad these past six months as The Lorax. Dr. Seuss’ book is one of the greatest works ever written for children, a beautifully bleak, thoroughly solemn environmental parable that respects the intelligence of its young audience on every level. But Universal’s The Lorax is easily one of the worst children’s films ever made, for it ignores or mocks everything that mattered to Dr. Seuss. Instead of a serious, down-to-earth fable, it is a broad, pandering comedy, filled wall-to-wall with terrible jokes, endless slapstick, pop culture references, horrifyingly awful musical numbers, and long, complicated car chases.
Yes, you read that right. The Lorax now includes car chases. Several of them.
It is rare that a movie outrages me on a fundamental level, but to my mind, this hollow, studio-manufactured desecration of The Lorax is a frightening distillation of everything that is wrong with Hollywood, and more than earns its high spot on this list.
That’s My Boy isn’t just another awful Adam Sandler comedy, but one of the most actively disgusting films in recent memory. The film asks us to laugh at situations any sane human would find horrific, and desires our sympathy for detestable characters, all without having anything intelligent, meaningful, or the least bit redeeming to say about its subject matter. Shocking the audience may be one of the cornerstones of intelligent comedy, but offending without insight or reason is the bedrock of lowbrow humor. That’s My Boy falls several cavernous steps beneath lowbrow. It may, in fact, establish the bottom of the comedy barrel for several generations to come.
This is a thoroughly misanthropic film, one that hates the sane and demented characters alike; it hates subtle comedy and intelligent subtext; it hates the idea of healthy sexual relations, and it hates laughs that arise organically from the characters; it really hates minorities, fat people, and women, but above all else, it hates the audience, and shows it by delivering nothing but repulsive drivel.
Fair enough, for I hate it right back.
And the worst movie of 2012 is…