For the past few years, I’ve been convinced that Gerard Butler, Clive Owen, and Anna Faris are all in a contest to see which super-likable actor can ruin their career by choosing horrible projects the fastest. Gerard Butler may have just taken a slight lead with Playing for Keeps (co-starring Jessica Biel, pictured below, for obvious reasons), which is currently tracking 0% fresh on

…flat, hacky, unfunny dreck… with an uncomfortably flagrant misogynistic streak. -Christy LeMire, AP

“Playing for Keeps” isn’t content just to be a generic romantic comedy. nstead, not only is it not funny and not particularly romantic, it treats women like idiots. the script, by Robbie Fox, is lazy; characters disappear for long stretches (who can blame them?), only to show up again when some ridiculous plot contrivance requires it. Simply put, it’s a mess. -AZ Central

…a sloppy, poorly focused comedy -ReelReviews

You don’t often find a romantic comedy that has no idea what it’s supposed to be doing. -NOWToronto

The story is surprisingly – almost painfully – hackneyed, with the fine cast giving consistently one-dimensional turns. It is perplexing as to how such an unambitious, paint-by-numbers work got made. Actually, it is not even a current paint-by-numbers effort, because most contemporary romances involving once-connected-now-separated couples are a bit more sophisticated and worldly. -Austin Chronicle

Butler’s latest putrefying corpse is “Playing for Keeps,” a movie that answers the question: Is it possible for a sex farce and a family drama to be one and the same movie?
The answer is no. Contrived and phony from beginning to end. -St. Paul Pioneer Press

At the end of this embarrassing movie, you feel that the director has not only wasted the talents of half a dozen good actors, but has also wasted vast amounts of money–and our own precious time. -Emmanuel Levy

…a mushy-headed vehicle for what are supposed to be a lot of high-voltage star turns. Nothing much makes sense, but look at all the celebrities. -Canada.com

Having given Greer a pity screw and let Zeta-Jones wrap those Entrapment legs around his neck, Muccino insists the audience take George at face value when he assures Stacie—while she’s at the final fitting for the dress she intends to wear while marrying Mr. Safe Choice, like, tomorrow—that she was always the only one for him. Playing for Keeps (which went into production under the title Playing the Field, and the disparity between the two says everything about the movie’s emotional dissonance you need to know) is knee deep in “don’t hate the player, hate the game” territory, no more so than when George nearly loses it all in the 11th hour because of the one woman he didn’t f*ck. -Slant

Yeah, but what about when he fights the giant spider in the third act? Yeesh, there’s just no pleasing some people.

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Up until this weekend, the title of 2012’s top turd in the tank belonged to Katherine Heigl’s pitiful One for the Money, which is currently running at 2% on Rotten Tomatoes to make it one of the year’s worst films. But 39 terrible reviews and a pathetic $6.4 million opening weekend later, Eddie Murphy’s A Thousand Words is in the driver’s seat with a Bucky Larsonian 0% rating.

Sure, it’s still early in the year and the film’s box office run – and lord knows Armond White still needs to chime in – but enough critics have ripped this movie apart, that there’s a good chance that it could be declared… *cues dramatic music* the worst movie of all-time.

A Thousand Words is by no means the only film to receive a zero rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Other no-marks include the Adam Sandler-scripted sex comedy Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star, the ham-fisted Pinocchio film by Roberto Benigni, and the disastrous adaptation of the Nicci French novel Killing Me Softly with Joseph Fiennes. A Thousand Words is unique, however, in having a significant amount of critics (30+) agree on the poor quality of a vehicle for a high-profile Hollywood star. (Via The Guardian)

It’s hard to put a finger on when exactly it happened, but at some point after Boomerang and The Distinguished Gentleman in 1992, someone let the air out of Murphy’s balloon and he just ran around Hollywood making a long farting noise. Hell, some people would even point to Harlem Nights in 1989 as the first tumble.

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Apparently when Al Davis died, Bucky Larson inherited the Raiders. I smell sequel! (thanks to Len for the screenshot)

MORNING LINKS
SITE NEWS: Changes In The UPROXX Media Network’s Commenting System Are A-Comin’ |UPROXX|

Here’s me talking Big Trouble in Little China with the Not Just New Movies crew. |NJNMPodcast|

Barry Sanders Taking Over For Hank Jr. Is Like Emmitt Smith Taking Over For Hitler |With Leather|

Real Steel Review: A terrifying commercial for a dystopian future |Film Drunk|

The Problem With ‘Terra Nova’: Boring Characters |Gamma Squad|

Lil Wayne Delivers 30-Minute PSA On His Legacy And Steve Jobs |Smoking Section|

Hillary Cage. via SirMitchell

Trailer for Reincarnated ‘Beavis & Butt-Head’ |Warming Glow|

10 Famous People Without Their Famous Facial Hair |Buzzfeed|

Kris Jenner has her 16-year-old daughter modeling bikinis now. |TheSuperficial|

This week in gifs. |Videogum|

Nine strange courting rituals from around the world. |MentalFloss|

Here’s Method Man rapping about Sour Patch kids. |DogandPonyShowWebsite|

This lady can make her titties dance. |gorillamask|

The Most Banned Horror Movies in History |Moviefone|

Internet Treasures – 12 Best Webcontents of the Week|Adult Swim|

Ben & Jerry’s Supports Occupy Wall Street |The Daily What|

The Ten Best Cartoons From The 80s |Unreality|

5 things Netflix should rent instead of DVDs. |ScreenJunkies|

5 not inappropriate kids costumes. |Holytaco|

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Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star is still sitting at 0% on RottenTomatoes after 32 reviews (11 more than when I took this screencap), having grossed just $2.5 million to date. That’s a lot of negative reviews, especially considering Moneyball is at 95%, and Moneyball sucked. In a recent interview with Splitsider, Nick Swardson says part of the reason that critics hated it is that they just went in wanting to hate it.

Bucky Larson was a very interesting experience because it was a small movie, it was small budget for Sony/Columbia, and, you know, it was out there. It was a character nobody knew. It wasn’t a character from a show or from Saturday Night Live, you know what I mean? It was one of those things where I was like, either people are going to buy this or not. It’s going to hit or miss, and it didn’t really hit. I think when it gets to DVD people will realize, oh, this wasn’t as bad as we thought it was from the commercials. To promote an R-rated movie, with commercials, with this character, it was just really, really hard. It was hard to get the movie across to people. The trailer in theaters was really tame because we couldn’t show any of the insanity, and even if we did it, it wouldn’t hit because it had no context. It was just really frustrating. I knew the critics were going to bury us. It was a softball. They were waiting, waiting to hate that movie. It’s kind of funny that they get their rocks off on reviews like that. They review The King’s Speech, then they review Bucky Larson.

It’s a lot of work and a lot of reviewers aren’t going into that movie to like it. They don’t want to like it. None of those reviewers was psyched to see Bucky Larson and laugh. They go in with the mentality, f*ck these guys for making another movie. They go in there to kind of headhunt. It makes me laugh because it’s just so embarrassing. It makes them look like such morons. You can’t review Avatar then review Bucky Larson. Comedy is so subjective, you know what I mean? To sit there and technically pick it apart is so stupid. We’ve never made movies for critics, so we could give a f*ck.

I like Nick Swardson. He’s been the funniest part of a lot of bad movies, and I like his show, Pretend Time, which he was promoting in this interview. And to some extent, he’s right. Most critics are too uptight and self-serious to admit they like something deliberately crass. They all hated Your Highness, and Your Highness was great. That being said… Bucky Larson didn’t even screen for critics. So… does that mean critics went in wanting to hate it, or you went in wanting critics to hate it? I get the whole “we did this for the fans, maaaan” rap, but keep in mind, that’s what Nickelback says.

In any case, I think I see an even greater problem here. It’s, and I know this is going to sound crazy, but… it’s that your main character looked like this:

Was there a reason you had to dress the lead guy like a character from a Mexican sitcom? Also, did you see any of your commercials? Here’s one:

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Alternate headline: “Reports of 3D’s Demise May Have Been Greatly Exaggerated.”

Hot on the heels of a pretty damning report by Slate on the declining profits of 3D and the news that 2D has been kicking 3D’s ass in head to head screenings, a 3D re-release of The Lion King more than doubled the gross of its nearest competitor at the box office this weekend. Call it 3D’s dead cat bounce, or an allegory for notorious choker Tony Romo torching my Niners in overtime yesterday (ROMO! *shakes fist*).

In other news, Drive did okay for a great movie that almost every girl I’ve talked to† hated (no small feat for a film starring that doe-eyed drink of honeybutter, Baby Goose), and I Don’t Know How She Does It stunk up the joint (shocker, I know). But not as much as Bucky Larson, which isn’t on the above graph because it landed at number 22, tied with Midnight in Paris, which opened 18 weeks ago. Bucky Larson earned $243 per screen, which is less than a third of what it averaged last week, when the average audience was eight people. You do the math.

In related news, a “lion king” is when you put your thumb in a girl’s butt, then wipe it on her forehead and hold her over a cliff. Some say it has the highest degree of difficulty of all Urban Dictionary sex moves.

[via Yahoo, BoxOfficeMojo]

†In fairness, it was like three girls, and they were all pretty dumb