Whoa.  As if having taken part in Old Dogs wasn’t already embarrassing enough for John Travolta, he also decided to do a cover of an old Bobby Brown song with his daughter Ella Bleu and shoot a video featuring Old Dogs clips.  It’s… well, it’s pretty much the gayest video I’ve seen since “Banana Smoothie” (which was so gay Viacom has since blocked it). Also, I think if you wanted your child to grow up spoiled and entitled, a good way to accomplish that would be to sing her a song about how she’s the most important thing in the world while you dance around giant letters that spell out her name.

Make sure you watch until the spoken-word part at 2:13 to get the full effect of the creepiness.

[Thanks to Patrick for the tip]

Now that we’ve got the best out of the way, it’s time for the fun part: the worst.  Not surprisingly, this list is a lot longer.  It should come as no surprise that the big winner is Old Dogs.  Whether it’s the actual trailer, with Seth Green getting cradled by a gorilla, this clip of gratuitous nutshots, the tagline “Sit. Stay. Play Dad.”  or releasing a publicity still in which you can clearly see a crewmember’s reflection, the entire marketing campaign was essentially a hate crime.  Worse than a hate crime, really, because it hurt white people.

RUNNERS UP:

Clash of the Titans (watch it below).  It doesn’t hold a candle to Old Dogs for sheer cringeworthy terribleness, but it does nicely illustrate the idiotic mindset behind your average awful trailer.  Plot? Dialog? Story?  Screw that, yo, we’ll just cut together imcomprehensible action sequences and set it to guitar!
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(This is the actual final frame of Old Dogs. This scene should have chalk around it.)

Seeing the promos for Old Dogs was like watching Hollywood rape a child on film and then try to sell tickets for it, but they say the Lord works in mysterious ways.  You see, last week, the failure/embarrassment of Old Dogs led new Disney chief Rich Ross to pull the plug on Robin Williams’ equally horrendous sounding Wedding Banned.  Less than a week later, Variety reports that Wild Hogs 2: Bachelor Ride has also been Rich Ross’d.   I’m starting to like this guy.

The Touchstone pictures sequel to the 2007 hit was revving up to begin production by next summer, with Walt Becker back as director, and John Travolta, Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence, and William H. Macy reprising their roles.
…new writers were in the process of being hired.  That ended this week, when word came down that the picture wasn’t going to get made.
The timing of the move follows Disney’s release of the Becker-directed Old Dogs.  The comedy was trounced by critics and did not score at the box office.

Though Old Dogs was a disappointment, it wasn’t exactly a bomb ($40 mil on a $35 mil production budget, so far).  Killing a movie from the same director with the same star is a smart, though fairly easy business decision.  What’d be even cooler is if he did it not only because it was a money loser, but because he was actually ashamed of his company making money off a sub-par product, instead of just shrugging his shoulders and saying “I dunno, I guess people like sh-t sandwiches.”  What a concept.

Comedian Scott Aukerman of Comedy Death Ray reportedly sat through Old Dogs recently for the purpose of taking pictures and posting them on Twitter.  I can’t confirm that this is an actual still from  Old Dogs beyond taking Scott Aukerman’s word for it, because I’m not a masochist who walks on broken glass or hammers spears through his penis or goes to see Old Dogs for fun.  Nonetheless, this is supposedly the final shot of the movie.  I don’t know the context, but I guess the joke is that all their husbands finally switched to Enzyte.  Yes, even the baby’s.

[via BWE]

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New Moon took the number one spot again this weekend, but with a 70% decline from its huge opening last weekend, it’s not likely to break any more records. A quick fizzle after a fast start is to be expected with an audience that gets tired after a few stairs.  Meanwhile, a close number two, The Blind Side was actually up 17.6% from its opening weekend, sparking legitimate oscar nomination talk for Sandra Bullock from people besides Pete Hammond.  The real tragedy is that I might actually have to see this before I can continue to ridicule it now, and I’m still 85% sure it’s going to suck.  “THAT BOY IS CHANGING YOUR LIFE.”  “NO, I BEG YOUR PARDON BUT I MUST DISAGREE.  IT IS HE THAT IS CHANGING MINE.”

Elsewhere, Old Dogs barely showed up, giving a glimmer of hope that no one will ever make an awful sh-tburger like this ever again.  I can’t even imagine the process under which it got made.  “Okay, we’ve got Robin Williams and John Travolta, great.  Now, let’s stick them with as many awful f-cked out 80s clichés as possible.  Take odd couple, add bachelor-adopts-baby, fold in disastrous business meeting with the Japanese, sprinkle in nutshots beyond all that is rational and… voila!  Dat’s-a tasty a hate crime.”

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