Its the end of November, and Peter Travers knows that turkeys on the Thanksgiving table means plenty of turkeys at the movies. So while youre recovering from your tryptophan coma and trying to figure out what film to see, our fearless critic has brought out his faithful Scum Bucket and his fowl friend Gobbles! to help you steer clear of Novembers worst movies.
See Which Movie Peter Travers Calls Spectacular
Fittingly, the worst-of-the-worst is Free Bird, a poorly animated kids movie about turkeys that Travers urges you to avoid at all costs. And while The Best Man Holiday provides a few laughs, by the end Travers was desperate for any sort of conflict to break-up the overwhelming sentimentality. The holiday schlock thankfully ends with the atrocious Christmas Candle not that Spike Lees miserable remake of Park Chan-Wooks revenge thriller Oldboyis worth seeing either.
Travers is also plenty distraught over the disastrous Diana, which stars one of his favorite actresses, Naomi Watts, in the title roll. DirectorOliver Hirschbiegels film does an awful job at chronicling the last two years of the young Princesses life before her fatal car crash. As for Shia LaBeoufs certified career crusher Charlie Countryman, its so awful it makes Travers utter the unthinkable: I almost wish he would do more Transformers movies because this is so awful.
Why 12 Years a Slave is Best Picture Bait
Kicking off the top three is the Sylvester Stalone-penned Homefront, in which Jason Stathem plays a widowed DEA agent who tries to get his daughter to quit the drug business, but ends up being followed by a manic meth dealer (played by James Franco). Everybody in this movie is cast against type and they are breathtakingly awful, Travers says, citing Francos failed attempt to prove he can play Walter White.
In Delivery Man, an allegedly true story, Vince Vaughn plays a guy whos collegiate sperm donations led to lawsuits from 142 of his 533 biological children asking to meet their father. The entire movie is a miserable one-joke mess Travers has mad props for everyone who made sure to avoid it last week but not even Delivery Man can hold a candle to Scum-vembers worst film: Enders Game, a sci-fi flick about children trained to save the universe from evil aliens that look like ants. While the politics of Orson Scott Card, the author of the films source material, are absurd enough to warrant total dismissal of the movie, theres plenty wrong what ends up on the big screen anyway: Whats the message of the movie? an incredulous Travers asks. You kids that stay home and play video games all day and night and never go out, youre the saviors because you can learn from video games how to defeat the ants.