The Worst Films of 2013 (Brad and Jake)

Brad: Ready to revisit this?

Jake: Nope.

Brad: [laughing] Thanks for the crickets, by the way.

Jake: No worries, brother. That was just for you.

Brad: There's still half of them left in that cup, if you want some. I might still have a leg or two stuck in my teeth, with a few popcorn kernels from last week's movie.

Jake: I could not eat a whole cricket, I am on a diet.

Brad: Now for our list of ten things we'd rather do than eat a thing of crickets.

Jake: Hold on now. At least five things I would rather do than eat a cricket. Like, my Top 5 isn't the greatest caliber of movies. I don't wanna watch any of my Top 5 again.

Brad: But you'd rather eat crickets than sit through the Top 5.

Jake; Yeah.

Brad: They were pretty bad. I mean, I don't know about Top 5 on my list bad, but yeah, when you start getting to the Bottom 10, that's when you start thinking, pondering, this movie or crickets.

Jake: Or crickets.

Brad: How did you really rank yours? Like, based on...based on anything, based on how much it pisses you off, based on...just kind of technical specs, or what?

Jake: From 10-5, I kinda did that as, "oh, I forgot that I saw these movies."

Brad: Yeah.

Jake: So they obviously didn't bother me as much. Those obviously made my bottom. And then the ones that are still actively in my head that irritated me, whatever the case may be, those were my Top 5. Like there's...two, three of these movies I completely...four of these movies I forgot I watched.

Brad: All of these, I totally remembered. In fact, it was pretty hard when I got at #10. That was pretty hard, 'cause mine is, I at least have to still be passionate about the fact that I didn't like this movie. There are some that are near the bottom, there are some that aren't even on the list that, by technically speaking, should probably be in someone's Top 3, but I at least have to, at this point, give a shit, still at least, by this point, has to somewhat piss me off in a way. And I've kinda just sorta stopped going by, ranking them by what pisses me off vs. technical means, and just gone with my gut, what feels right.

Jake: That's kinda ultimately what, that's what mine has been since we've been doing this. I mean, with me, there's been obvious #1's, like when I saw Smurfs, that was just obvious.

Brad: I'll say this, #1 is obvious. It's gonna be obvious to anybody who is sitting here watching this what my #1 is gonna be. Really quick here...

Brad leaves briefly, turns on the light, then returns

Jake: Throwing a curve ball on mine.

Brad: I know, I'm trying to keep from looking. Your list is right there, and I'm trying to keep from looking down at it 'cause I wanna be surprised. Even though I know every single movie that will probably be on here, I just don't know the ranking of them.

#10
Brad: What did you pick as #10?

Jake: #10, I picked... [posters appear briefly for each selection] To the Wonder.

Brad: That I had to remind you that you saw.

Jake: That's why I made that little disclaimer. I completely forgot that I watched that movie. It made no impact on me. Like...once I saw, once you sent me that text of the movies that I'd watched, like it [snaps fingers] dawned on me then, oh, shit, yeah, that's right, I did watch that. Now, if you were to ask me, "Jake, what happened in that movie?" I don't know.

Brad: We couldn't answer that five minutes after we watched it.

Jake: We couldn't answer that while we were watching it! What's going on in this? Ah...pretentious, pretentious, picture, picture, pretentious, done.

Brad: It was...

Jake: That's the abridged version, it was actually four hours.

Brad: For the one that was surprisingly under two hours.

Jake: Yeah, it was under two hours.

Brad: What I remember the most about To the Wonder is that honestly, I actually thought it was harder to sit through than Tree of Life, mainly, and here's why. Because when we saw Tree of Life, we saw it in a theater. We're stuck there, there's no way out, we are here watching this movie. Now, To the Wonder, we watched at home...

Jake: We watched at home.

Brad: ...where there's an endless source of things we could possibly be doing at that point.

Jake: All kinds of distractions.

Brad: Yeah, other than watching To the Wonder. For me, that totally made...it's not on my list, but that totally made it a harder sit-through for me, anyway.


 * Poster of Tree of Life 

Jake: They were both equally painful for me to watch. I'm not really the type to leave a theater early.

Brad: Yeah, me neither.

Jake: Just because it's a shitty movie. It's obvious we've been doing this crap for two years, or however long we've been doing this.

Brad: About two or three years.

Jake: Two or three years, and not a single time during the crap that I've seen have I walked out of a movie, though I got close. Like...Tree of Life, so much harder for me to sit through, and I think the reason was because I was stuck in one spot. Like, at least with To the Wonder, I could, like, kinda get up, move around, it's within the comfort of a home. But when you're in a theater, you can't get up, move around, smoke a cigarette, do what the fuck ever. You gotta sit there in one spot, be quiet 'cause there's other people watching it, even if it's infuriating you, watching what's happening on the screen. So, me personally, Tree of Life was a little bit harder to sit through because I couldn't move.

Brad: I can see that, I can see that angle. Yeah, I totally can. Like, I've never walked out of a movie before, but I have, sitting at home, shut movies off plenty of times, not when I couldn't because we were doing it for reviews.

My #10, this was so hard because I saw quite... I saw quite a number of bad movies this year, and picking #10 was so goddamn hard because it is, what on the list? What am I putting on this list, and what am I giving a fucking pass to? So #10 on mine is Epic. That was the one. Goddamn it, that movie surprisingly pissed me off. That movie still pisses me off! We were out drinking the other night, and I was still pissed off at that fucking movie!

Jake: [laughing] You were sure.

Brad: Jesus fucking Christ! Epic, to me, honestly more so than Smurfs 2, represents so many things that are wrong with kids' movies today because Epic has far more ambition than Smurfs 2 did, but fucks it up with all the typical tropes you see in all the kids' movies! Whether we're talking about pointless celebrity voices, or...this movie, above all goddamn kids' movies I saw this year, would never let a moment happen. It would never let any kind of real emotion, real drama happen without those goddamn chucklehead fucking slugs... were they slugs, or where they snails?

Jake: "There's no shell over herre, baby." That makes them slugs.

Brad: All right, fucking... "hang shell," "shell yeah," whatever the fuck they were saying, mixed in with the horrible fa... horrible fucking father the girl had that the movie seemed to be unaware of this fact, and... I will admit, I will fully admit that I'm sure I was grumpier at this movie because we saw it early in the morning. But I still wouldn't have liked it, even if I saw it during my regular hours, I still wouldn't have liked this movie. Still might have even made it on my list, but... I'm not a morning person, and that was...those fucking slug/snail/slug shit was just too goddamn fucking much. That's my goddamn #10.

#9
Jake: #9 for me was Monsters University.

Brad: Ooh.

Brad and Jake: The critically acclaimed one.

Jake: Well, fuck you, critics. I struggled with this. I didn't know if I should put it on my list, I still had two other movies to debate.

Brad: Is it kinda like me with Epic? Like, fuck, which fucking one is going on here?

Jake: I think the reason Monsters University made it on my list is because I got the goddamn pun shirt at the...fucking, at the end of the review.

Brad: So why isn't it your favorite movie of the year? You get a free shirt out of it, and it provides a solid mystery. We still don't know what "witch and famous" means?

Jake: That's a mystery I don't really wanna devote any time or attention to, Brad.

Brad: I searched, you're not gonna find anything. The only thing you're gonna find is that suburban mothers love that shirt. You're gonna find plenty of it at the school dance.

Jake: Ahh! Fucking "witch and famous," goddamn it. No context in that shirt! It just says "witch and famous"!

Brad: At least there's a broom on there.

Jake: In case you're confused on which witch they meant?!

Brad: It's about a famous witch, so obviously, it's a Goody Proctor shirt. I mean, it's pretty obvious.

Jake: Oh, yeah. It's so obvious! I don't know why we didn't see that when we first looked at the shirt! You're a dick.

Brad: [laughing through above] What else happened in that movie? I mean, I didn't see Monsters University, but I watched the review, 'cause it had the shirt gag in it, so I had to watch it.

Jake: Ha ha, we're poking the bear, and it's fun! Assholes.

Brad: That shirt cost me fifty cents. That and the one I got for Irving, the African...urban base, whatever the fuck that thing was. Ooh, a solid $1 purchase. What else happened in that movie? I remember you guys didn't like it, but...

Jake: Really, the reasoning why it wasn't liked, and looking at it now in hindsight, it seems kinda silly, but it is a little bit of a depressing children's movie. I have...I have to give it a little bit of respect in the sense that it did show that...the flip side of the "try as hard as you can, and you'll succeed" coin, 'cause Mike Wazowski, he was a bad man in school, he was. He tried the hardest, he busted his ass, and...sorry. Life's a motherfucker, ain't it? And then we move on. And while now, it's whatever to me, it's fine to see the flip side of the coin, at the time, it was...

Brad: The time you guys had to talk it out.

Jake: ...he' a little, tiny, one-eyed monster, he just wants to be the best, and he tries so hard, and no, we got John Goodman being a dickhead to him the entire movie. Like, college hazing, like, he's the popular one, and Mike's not. Mike's more the studying type, and then "opposite attracts" kind of thing, and the roommate, whatever. He's still kind of a dick. He's still that jock-dick type of monster, you know. The big man on campus, whatever that case may be.

So you still want to root for him, even though you know what's going to happen. He is not going to be the best scarer in that university. So you're watching this entire movie just feeling really sorry for him, basically. Because it's a prequel obviously. So we learn eventually, in the first movie, everything actually works out for Mike Wazowski. They learn humor is the best medicine, but they didn't know that at the time, so you're just watching this man go through college to not get, at all, what he wants.

Brad: Seems like, since it's a prequel too, you probably already knew how it was going to end.

Jake: Exactly. You know what is going to happen, you know everything. We've already seen Monsters University, so that's kind of the problem with the prequel, especially since they've chosen that direction to go with, that they're in college. You know what's going to happen—Sully is going to be the head scarer, Mike Wazowski is just going to be his platform to let his friend succeed.

Brad: I'm just kind of done with Pixar sequels. Like...

Jake: Oh, come on, man, what about Jetsetter?

Brad: Well, that, I'm cool with. That's a spin-off.

Jake: That's my spin-off to Planes.

Brad: Which I would much rather have than the sequel to Planes that's coming out.

Jake: Wait, what?

Brad: There's a Planes 2 coming out. I'm guessing that they made it around the same goddamn time, because I don't see any other reason that that movie's getting a sequel.

My #9 is actually a three-way tie because they're the same goddamn movie. It's a tie between Movie 43, The Starving Games, and Scary Movie V. Now, you're probably wondering why these aren't higher on the list, because they're pretty legendarily bad, especially Movie 43. And by all means, if we're strictly talking, like, just on sheer movie value and, yeah, technical specs of the film, sure, they should be higher. But I'm not...I'm not in any way passionate about how much I hated these movies. These movies, I couldn't even get mad at myself when they were done. At this point, I've seen a hundred goddamn movies like this. Now, if these movies had come out ten years ago, yeah, I would've been a lot more pissed off at them. But fucking Starving Games, it's the same fucking movie as Meet the Spartans, Epic Movie, all of these. All of these, it's that again. Scary Movie V, what the hell do you think it's gonna be? Of course, it's fucking Scary Movie V. Sure, if this had been the beginning of this shit-parody trend, these would be farther up on the list. Same with Movie 43. Movie 43 is...all it is is a bunch of sketches that are all one joke. That's it. One of them is Terrence Howard coaching a basketball team about how they should be good because they're black and...

Brad and Jake: ...the other team's white.

Brad: That's it. That's the entire joke through the... The Hugh Jackman one where he's on a blind date and he's got balls on his chin. That's it. That's the joke. He's got balls on his chin, which was done way better when they put balls on Butters' chin in the South Park episode. It's a constant reminder of other goddamn things you should be watching. Fucking Starving Games is spoofing...there's all you need to know about that. It spoofs the fucking "double rainbow" guy from YouTube and Annoying Orange. It spoofs Annoying Orange in the goddamn thing, I guess which must tell me I could be watching worse things. I could be watching Annoying Orange. Guess I'll keep watching Starving Games.

Jake: Guess I'll keep watching this fucking thing.

Brad: They're horrible. They're horrible examples of fucking comedy. They are. They are by and large some of the worst comedies of the year, and they deserve all the fucking flak that they get because they're continuing a trend that's goddamn awful. But they're about the twentieth version of several movies I've seen, which is why they're farther down than being higher up, because I've got to at least be a little more passionate than this about how much I didn't like them.

Jake: You've got a point. How many of these are you gonna see that are just rinse-repeat-rinse-repeat when you just don't give a fuck?

Brad: Exactly, and I gave them one slot because, 1., again, they're all three bad for the same reasons, but also, I'd rather that than give all three different slots to the same fucking movie.

Jake: Yeah.

#1
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