10. Killer Elite
This one has stuck in my head, for some reason: perhaps the most purely inept mainstream release of 2011 in its inability to tell a story over the long haul, or indeed to make any real kind of sense from scene to scene. (If nothing else, it's living, rentable proof of the incoherence one can get into production these days.) A Jason Statham vehicle made by some ad-world chancer who clearly didn't understand what Jason Statham vehicles are for (i.e. not too much thinking), it featured Bob de Niro's laziest performance of the year (which is going some, given that he spent much of New Year's Eve in bed), and is destined to spend the rest of its life rotating in the lowest circle of audiovisual hell - or on semi-permanent repeat on ITV4, whichever is worse.
9. Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World
8. Johnny English Reborn
Jeez. If I were a kid again, and this were the kind of thing my elders were forcing upon me by way of harmless fun, I'd be kicking in the front windows of Dixons/addicted to ketamine/taking a knife to school and stabbing everybody about me, too. Given that the deluxe family items this year were Scorsese's naggy, lecturing Hugo and - conversely - Spielberg's junky, videogame Tintin, there was always going to be a marked drop-off in quality further down the production line, but having to sit through mirthlessly tardy sequels involving Rowan Atkinson pulling faces and Ricky Gervais as the voice of a talking dog would be enough to drive anybody to insurrection. The Spy Kids movie's one so-called novelty - handing its audience scratchcards, to be sniffed at whenever the Gervais-dog done a trump - was a bust: in truth, everything here had the excremental scent.
7. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
...and, in many ways, the film that got the easiest ride of the year. Perhaps it was festive generosity towards those less fortunate than ourselves, but those audiences, critics and Americans determined to make this creatively redundant franchise an ongoing proposition really need to take a long hard look in the mirror, ideally repeating the following words to themselves. Guy Ritchie cannot direct. Guy Ritchie cannot direct. Guy Ritchie cannot direct. Guy Ritchie cannot direct. Oh look, it's a naked Stephen Fry. Ha ha. Stephen Fry there. We really don't see enough of him, do we?
6. Horrid Henry: The Movie
If you peered very closely at this utterly charmless Britcom through your 3D glasses, and tried to listen beyond the relentless squealing that made up its dialogue, you could see and hear its genesis: a room full of braying Tarquins sat in a nondescript marketing department somewhere, spitballing their best ideas for a cash-cow franchise based on a wildly popular series of kids' books. It would be in 3D! (Because everyone loves 3D, don't they?) It would be full of celebrities! (Well, Richard E. Grant and Noel Fielding and Dick and Dom. You can't have everything.) It would be based around a Fame Academy-like talent contest! (Because if our kids should aspire to anything, it should be to be famous, like Noel Fielding and Dick and Dom.) And it would have a, yah, totally wicked soundtrack, featuring, erm, Taio Cruz and the Black Eyed Peas. When people tell me that being a film critic is a terrific job, mostly I just smile and agree, but sometimes it's all I can do not to crack and shout "BUT YOU DON'T HAVE TO WASTE NINETY MINUTES OF YOUR LIVES SITTING THROUGH SOMETHING LIKE HORRID SODDING HENRY: THE HORRID SODDING MOVIE EVERY SODDING HALF-TERM."
5. Revenge: A Love Story
This tawdry, Winner-esque Hong Kong shocker - in which a serial killer whose MO involves ad hoc caesarians on pregnant women is shown to be a sensitive soul avenging the rape and murder of his childhood sweetheart by a squadroom of detectives - very nearly didn't get released at all: one London cinema booked it, then changed their mind (presumably on seeing the finished film), then decided to go for the sociopathic wankers' pound after all - and the film promptly triumphed by raking in, over its opening weekend, a colossal... £29. Well done, everybody.
4. Midgets vs. Mascots
Essentially a direct-to-DVD release that got lucky with a theatrical outing back in last January's dead zone, this is one of those things that invariably sounds more amusing when described than they actually are to have to sit through: in his will, a philanthropist leaves all his money to the winner of a competition pitching a team of sports mascots against a team of little people in a series of out-there contests ranging from pig-chasing to stranger-insulting. In his final screen role, the late Gary Coleman - as, you guessed it, the midget captain - has various items fired into his groin, is verbally abused by Jason Mewes, and gets farted on while performing cunnilingus on a woman in a toilet cubicle; it's a sad, sad, sad, sad world that chooses this - rather than, say, a properly appointed Diff'rent Strokes boxset - as an appropriate way to commemorate his passing. Sniggering fratboy guff that indirectly made Life's Too Short appear the height of comic sophistication.
3. The Hangover Part II
Huh-huh. Ladyboys. Huh-huh. Confirmed every last one of my suspicions about the inexplicably successful first film - this time round, there wasn't even a Heather Graham on hand to freshen the stale air in the room. Plenty of ladyboys, though. Huh-huh, ladyboys.
2. Arthur
When Hollywood can't even remake tatty Dudley Moore vehicles correctly, you know something's up. More so than Sachsgate - a controversy during which I'm regrettably sure Russell Brand gained as many acolytes as he lost - this was the moment the Brand bubble comprehensively burst: hard to see anyone, even the gurgling morons of this world, warming to the most misjudged leading performance of the year. (But no-one directs Russell: he's, like, his own man.) Hardly anybody came out of this with any credit: Helen Mirren, fruitlessly withering away in the "comedy butler" role; Greta Gerwig, falsely tanned and madeover as Arthur's love interest; Jennifer Garner, reduced to her underwear as her rich bitch rival; the Warner executives, who apparently thought it was a good idea at the present moment to do a remake that would get audiences cheering for a billionaire. Duh.
1. The Dilemma
It started around this time last year: the appearance of vast posters in unavoidable public spaces, prominently highlighting the flabby manfaces of Vince "Not Knowingly Funny Since 1997" Vaughn and Kevin "Zookeeper" James, and doing no good whatsoever to the digestive states of those going into 2011 a little green around their own gills. Missold as an Apatow-like laffriot, as all Vince Vaughn movies apparently have to be these days, The Dilemma starts as the kind of middle-of-the-road lifestyle comedy its director Ron Howard used to churn out back in his Ganz-Lowell days (Parenthood), then slowly, joylessly devolves into a study of alpha-male insecurity and other related bullshit.
An unlikely premise - that Vaughn and James might have settled down with (rather than, say, snacked or sat upon) Jennifer Connelly and Winona Ryder - gives way to scene after scene in which we're meant to cheer Vaughn for being nasty to suspected adulteress Ryder, despite the fact you too would probably choose to go off with Channing Tatum if you were forced to co-habit with Paul Blart: Mall Cop and pal around with Vince Vaughn at the weekend. (This doesn't stop every other woman in the movie, from a student on the subway to Queen Latifah's car exec, finding the leading man's bloated cadaver somewhat disproportionately attractive.)
People often query why - as a man, of sorts - I'm so down on the maleness of mainstream Hollywood, but The Dilemma (and Arthur, and The Hangover Part II) is exactly what happens when it goes unchallenged: when directors would rather employ wall-to-wall guys, or ladyboys, or Robert Downey Jr. in drag, than they would actual actresses, our films start to get filled with sports metaphors, 1970s attitudes and guitar riffs, scenes in Thai massage parlours, and sweaty jocks in the back seats of old cars. The clever and funny Howard's descent into this kind of hoary hackwork is especially lamentable, if unsurprising after the success of his Dan Brown diptych-for-dipsticks, but thankfully The Dilemma provided him with one of his rare recent commercial flops. Justly so: it's a Sandler comedy where the good, honest dick jokes have been replaced by aspirations of landing GQ feature articles - quite frankly the whole enterprise, like so much of the major studios' output this year, fair reeked of balls.
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