The Worst of 2012: Movies

With the Razzies coming up, I felt I needed to also bring up what was the worst thing I saw over the course of 2012. Somehow, I dodged bad video games, anime (Deadman Wonderland is a contender for the 2013 “Worst of”), music, and television.

For the most part, movies I have seen that I scored a 0 or 1 were B-movies I went into intentionally, knowing they were B-movies. However, my friend talked me into seeing Project X with him.

You know there’s a problem when this is supposed to be the funniest scene in the film:

Project X was easily the most excruciating 87 minutes of my life. With the other movies I saw that I scored a 0 or 1, I could easily divert my attention away by surfing the Internet with the movie playing in the background as I was watching them while at home. However, I was stuck in a movie theater to see Project X.

Project X intended to be a found-footage comedy about a teen called Thomas who was talked into throwing the ultimate party at his house by his two extremely manipulative pals. All three hope for this to be their ticket to becoming the most popular kids at their high school which would in turn make them more popular with girls. From beginning to end, the movie was one mean-spirited mess. Contrary to what the movie intended, I wound up feeling sorry for the neighbors that were bothered by this extremely loud party, but were ultimately rendered unable to actually do anything about it thanks to cops that proved to somehow be dumber than JB. I was squirming in my seat as I took in images of bouncing boobs and upskirt shots of allegedly high school-age girls. All told, I haven’t laughed once for the movie’s entire duration.

The best part of the movie? It ends with all three leads coming back to school the next day having achieved their goal of becoming the most popular kids at school. Thomas even made a speech saying that despite having had his college fund burned away to repair his family’s house (which was predictably burned down) and almost losing the one girl that legitimately cared about him forever, he would gladly do it all over again. It was the opposite of growth as a character, and it also was a rare instance of me bearing witness to a movie’s message and genuinely being bothered by it. The movie ended with the main characters being rewarded for immoral, hurtful, and even criminal acts. To Thomas, it actually seemed like his future and someone who loves him were acceptable losses for this newly-found popularity.

I almost regret mentioning this movie again because it deserves to be a forgotten entry in the long history of film, despite how well it did at the box office. I’m still not happy knowing I dropped $11 to see it when I could have seen 21 Jump Street, which was playing in the next auditorium over and also agreed to be a legitimately funny movie. Like Saw 3D, Project X to me is yet another example of a cold, calculated Hollywood decision to greenlight a movie for no reason besides correctly predicting a lot of people will come out to see it.