VINCE’S DISCLAIMER: I didn’t make a list of worst movies this year because to do it fairly, I would’ve had to knowingly subject myself to terrible movies. I don’t care what anyone says, you do that often, eventually it’s going to mess you up.  Ever read a film critic who’s seen every Katherine Heigl ass-pile (or whatever the equivalent of Heigl was in 1983) for the last 30 years?  They slowly go insane, they start recommending films like Atonement. Poor Peter Travers used to be the best critic around.  Now he feeds his scabs to pigeons and buries herring in his garden to commemorate krystallnacht.  I don’t believe in seeing every movie and pretending I don’t already have a pretty good idea which ones are going to suck.  Snobby as it may sound, I’m trying to not ruin my taste buds by purposely scalding them on microwaved chili biscuits from Am/Pm.  But I know how people love lists of bad movies. Luckily, for that we have Burnsy. You think that guy worries about his taste?  Dude lives in Orlando. [/end disclaimer]

Putting together a Top 10 list is a grueling process in any genre, but I found the feat of selecting the 10 worst movies of 2010 to be downright painful. It’s primarily difficult because these movies are atrocious piles of cow flop that should cause unparalleled levels of shame to be cast upon the families of everyone involved in them. It was also painful because I watched so much crap this year, and there was so much more crap that I could have watched but just couldn’t. Seriously, The Bounty Hunter? I don’t have the will power to not throw my TV into traffic. But here’s the thing – I enjoy watching terrible movies so much more than great movies because I live to criticize. Vince can tighten his scarf and crank Florence + The Machine from his hybrid IROC while he raves about Hesher, but by all accounts Hesher is a great movie, so nobody’s going to argue.

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The Other Guys became the first new release in four weeks to take the top spot from Inception, earning an estimated $35.6 million.  It looks to play strongly, while the other broad comedy, Dinner for Schmucks, dropped all the way to number five, and looks like it may not earn out.  Analysts are saying that may have something to do with The Other Guys being funny and Dinner for Schmucks feeling like it was written by fifth graders. …What’s that?  Oh, so you’re saying I don’t qualify as an “analyst” now?  Whatever.

Even in its fourth weekend, Inception‘s 32% fall from the previous weekend was the softest of all the major releases.  It’s a throwback to the days when blockbusters would hold their spots for two or three months at a time, and also to the days when movies weren’t as sucky.  Or something like that.  Look, I’m not good with good news, okay?

Meanwhile, Step Up 3D wasn’t nearly the hit that some people no one was predicting it was going to be.  It made five million less than the first Step Up, three million less than the second, and would’ve done far worse if it hadn’t made 81% of its money on more expensive 3D showings.  Attendance was bad. But what did you expect?  You can’t just replace Channing Tatum with some other mumbly wigger and expect that no one will notice.  This is just like when The Fast and the Furious tried to replace Paul Walker.  Uh uh, son, you can’t buy that kind of charisma off the rack.  If the analogy holds true, C-Tates better start getting in shape for 5tep Up to the 5treet5, when they give him a big paycheck to reunite the original cast.  I for one can’t wait.

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I didn’t plan to write a Dinner for Schmucks review.  With a dumb title and a lame “high-concept” premise (Paul Rudd has to find a schmuck to take to his boss’s annual, make-fun-of-schmucks dinner), but a cast of almost every likable, comedic actor in Hollywood (Rudd, Steve Carell, Jemaine Clement, Zach Galifianakis, Ron Livingston, etc.), I figured it’d make for light entertainment; a few chuckles and a pleasant way to spend 90 minutes.  Basically, the same thing I got with Get Him to the Greek, Predators, and to a slightly lesser extent, A-Team.  Mild, unmemorable entertainment.  Not life changing, but time passing.

As it turned out, I was so surprised by what I got, I couldn’t help but write about it.  Boy did I hate this movie.

The script, based on the 1998 French film, Le Diner de Cons, felt like it was written in 1935.  I understand it was meant to be a farce, but everything was so ridiculously theatrical and over the top, it was like watching a badly-translated Mexican sitcom from the 70s.  And I don’t mean their nice sight gags, like the guy with a fly swatter chasing around bee man, (the visual humor of Dinner for Schmucks‘ opening credits, with Steve Carell’s character painting his stuffed mice, was the funniest of the few funny moments of the movie), I mean the overwhelming shrillness, the buffonery, the cartoonish sexuality and face licking (not exaggerating here, there was face licking).  It was all over-the-top, groan-worthy camp, like a freshman drama club student trying to include the “wackiest” thing he could think of every five seconds.

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Inception topped the box office for the third straight week, grossing an estimated $27.5 million to Dinner for Schmucks $23.3.  It’s not exactly surprising, since compared to the rest of this summer’s movies, Inception is Lebron James playing basketball with retarded kids.

Nothing did drastically different than expected (Sorcerer’s Apprentice is still a huge flop, but that news is a few weeks old).  Cats & Dogs didn’t really play, but with Despicable Me and Toy Story 3 still in theaters, the market’s kind of oversaturated with kid movies right now. Charlie St. Cloud earned just over $12 million, which seems pretty standard for that kind of movie (it’s almost exactly what Letters to Juliet made in its opening weekend, for instance), but as CHUD points out, it has a listed production budget of $44 million, which seems insanely high for that kind of movie.  Maybe they overspent on their duck budget?  They might be harder to keep sh*t-happy than we think.

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OPENING THIS WEEKEND (trailers after the jump)

• Cats & Dogs 2: The Revenge of Kitty Galore
  “Kitty Galore?”  Really?  Didn’t “pussy” used to be an inoffensive way to say “cat?”  Anyway, it looks like a great movie to take your pussy kids to.

• Charlie St. Cloud
  It may be tracking just below 20% among top critics at Rotten Tomatoes and star Zac Efron as a sailing champion who plays baseball with his dead brother, but if you read my recreation of the plot using quotes from expository reviews and you aren’t at least a little bit curious, I don’t know what to tell you.  It sounds like the sailingest, most dead-brother-baseball film of the summer.  FAH GET YA SCHAWLASHIP TA STAN FUHD, CHAHLIE! THAT GOIL NEEDS YA HELP! LISTEN TO ME, CHAHLIE, I’M YA DEAD BROTHAH!

• Dinner for Schmucks
  The premise sounds terrible, it’s a remake, and the director has movies like Goldmember and Meet the Fockers on his resume (but also Meet the Parents and Recount).  But I don’t know how you go wrong with this solid a cast.  Steve Carell, Zach Galifianakis, Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords, Paul Rudd, Ron Livingston, BRUCE F*CKING GREENWOOD; hell, I’d watch these guys re-enact one of Gwyneth Paltrow’s salsa recipes.

Finally, if you see one movie this weekend, make it this week’s FilmDrunk Frotcast, with our interview of Rob Huebel and review of Olivia Munn’s book. …Okay, so maybe it’s not a movie.  But riddle me this: can you watch a movie while riding a unicycle, or doing squat thrusts?  I thought not.  Advantage: Frotcast.

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