Least Favorite Films of 2023

(dis)HONORABLE MENTIONS:
A lot of these had the potential to go the shitty distance, but they weren’t picked overall. This list includes: Skinamarink, Renfield, Vacation Friends 2, About My Father. It also definitely includes the Disney short, Once Upon This Studio.

And in terms of random documentaries, I could have included: Cocaine Bear: The True Story, Rob Schneider: Woke Up In America, and Take A Chance. Yes, I put a stand up special in there. Rob Schneider has passed the deep end.

15) Good Burger 2Why is it on the list? Good Burger 2 is another sequel, decades after the original, that only tries to re-use the same jokes from the original and fail to live up to anything like its predecessor. Besides the recycled material, and worst plot, Kel Mitchell has to show he does NOT have it like he used to. He has not been acting, he has been out of the game, and it is painful when the Ed character is on the screen. As one of the main two characters, he is on the screen a lot.

Worst moment? The Ed Robot ending.

Any Worst Awards? Worst Attempt At Nostalgia Cash-Grab of 2023!

14) Ruby Gillman, Teenage KrakenWhy is it on the list? It is wild how one animation studio can be consistently so inconsistent. Dreamworks has forever been plagued with both terrible movies, and pretty damn good movies. The good ones just happen to be in the Shrek, Panda, and Dragon universes, and basically everything else falls short. This Kraken movie, with an uncomfortable animation style, came out just six months after Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, and feels like something made for TV. It seems to only exist to attack The Little Mermaid, which had a 2023 live action release, and never feels more than a petty rushed hack job.

Worst moment? When the film feels like a weird combination of Luca and Turning Red from the last few years.

Any Worst Awards? Worst Jab At Disney Film of 2023!

13) Dog GoneWhy is it on the list? Almost every year we get some movie about having a dog, that caters to the same specific group of people. Over half of the time, the pet dies and some people cry. But every once in awhile, you just get a basic pet missing movie. And unfortunately for this one, the fact that the dog is missing is entirely the fault of the shitty owner, who we have to watch make plenty of bad decisions throughout the film. Some people maybe just shouldn’t be pet owners. This one amps up the melodramatic moments though, deciding to make both the dog, and the owner, sick. Hooray!

Worst moment? Getting the local media in on the missing dog search.

Any Worst Awards? Worst Dog Movie of 2023. (This beat out of Strays for me!)

12) Mafia MammaWhy is it on the list? Do they make good movies about the mafia anymore? Honestly, I feel like I can’t think of any. They peaked in the 80’s and 90’s and just said it was good enough. Mafia Mamma reminds me of the very bad The Family film a decade ago, but the thing is, I actually remember The Family. Or at least parts of it. I watched Mafia Mamma months ago and its all already gone from my head already. This was not Toni Collette wanting to make a good movie, but just wanting to make a paycheck.

Worst moment? I’m sorry, I don’t remember a single scene from this movie.

Any Worst Awards? Worst Mafia Movie of 2023!

11) Expend4blesWhy is it on the list? Look, no one is going to say the first 3 Expendable films are solid cinema. Not at all! I thought they were all already average to bad. But amazingly, this one decides to go and be even worse. This has the worst action, and worst cast list, out of any one of the series. I am here to watch a bunch of action stars together, and this one just decides to give a couple of them, with a lot of filler. Add to that, the terrible plot, terrible death fake outs, and just… bad all around aesthetic, it is actually a disgrace they ruined the already mid name of the franchise.

Worst moment? There was a fight scene between Fox and Statham, meant to be a sexy flirt couple fight. That one takes the case.

Any Worst Awards? Worst Action Film of 2023!

10) Baby Shark’s Big Movie
Why is it on the list? Look, I didn’t even know there was a TV show based on a song that got really popular. And it is likely for preschool aged kids, because my own kid in elementary school definitely did not want to watch it. But weirdly enough about this movie, is that it ended up having a similar plot to Trolls 3, but worse, with worse music. Another strange aspect is that K-pop band ENHYPHEN plays fish versions of themselves, but I didn’t even know that until the end, because I had no clue that it was a real band. I just assumed it was some parody of other bands. That I guess was the biggest stars they could find.

Worst moment? The Stariana song that was seemingly on repeat throughout the movie.

Any Worst Awards? Worst Musical and Worst Tiny Shark Movie of 2023!

9) Meg 2: The TrenchWhy is it on the list? The first Meg movie wasn’t a great movie. It was a silly giant shark action film. It was unbelievable, but it had some level of entertainment. The Meg 2 decides to make the sharks an after thought, with the majority of the film being a corporate conspiracy movie instead, until the very end. And to think this one had Ben Wheatley behind it for directing purposes, and most of his films have been passable, if not great before this.

Worst moment? Literally everything about corporate conspiracies and sabotage.

Any Worst Awards? Worst Big Shark Movie of 2023!

8) Fool’s ParadiseWhy is it on the list?I can be one of the people who is excited to see Charlie Day do things and succeed right? I want him to branch out, outside of IASIP. I liked him as the scientist in Pacific Rim. I liked him in that rom-com recently. But he has a lot more misses, and his first directed film is just so oddly placed. I cannot tell who this movie was for. He forgot to make the film entertaining, and it just felt like an incredible slog to get through.

Worst moment? When Day’s character doesn’t speak.

Any Worst Awards? Worst Directorial Debut From a Well Established Actor of 2023.

7) GhostedWhy is it on the list?  This couple has about as much on screen chemistry as a fish and sand. Evans and de Armas act like they have never met another person before. It has so much generic action, with a dull plot, and everything about it is dull. The fact that it was directed by Dexter Fletcher, who gave us Sunshine on Leith, Eddie the Eagle, and Rocketman is just astounding.

Worst moment? Honestly, any time we see the two on screen together, I slightly doubt it. I bet the whole thing was filmed separately. That is the only way to explain why it came across so flat.

Any Worst Awards? Worst on screen chemistry and worst Action Romance film of 2023.

6) Buddy Games: Spring AwakeningWhy is it on the list? Buddy Games, when it came out, was a pretty bad film. I didn’t dislike the cast overall, but the execution was something dreadful. It ended up being my 10th worst film of 2020. For some reason, a sequel was made, also straight to DVD, with the same cast returning, for more shenanigans and more made up rules for whatever these games end up being. Josh Duhamel is the director of these films, and it must be the strangest, weirdest, passion project of his. I don’t get it.

Worst moment? The actual events of this film have been mostly blocked from my mind.

Any Worst Awards? Worst Sports Movie Sequel of 2023.

5) Sound of FreedomWhy is it on the list? You have probably heard of this movie. It is about a true story of CHILD TRAFFICKING. So therefore you need to watch it or else you are a pedophile, idk. It involves a group of people, who went to South America, to free kids from child trafficking. And this is about them doing just that with a couple of groups. Now, of course, the events of this film are greatly dramatized. The ages of the kids shown are almost never that young. And the real fact that by going to these places and pretending to be buyers, and needing so many kids and so young, they created more child trafficking because the bad people needed go steal more kids.

Anyways. No one wants child trafficking, but a movie making the real events seem more sinister and lie about what the heroes did, and giving money to the makers of this movie, does nothing to stop child trafficking.

Worst moment? After freeing the first big group of kids (which only existed because of their demand for this many kids), the therapists with them on the capture site, had them sitting and clapping their hands to roughly the “We Will Rock You” beat. And that was it, that was the activity. And somehow, the main character looked on the group, and asked another if he heard it, “That is the Sound of Freedom…”

Any Worst Awards? Worst film based on some Q-anon stories and people of the year.

4) 80 For BradyWhy is it on the list? I honestly don’t know who this movie was made for, or who it was meant to appeal to? Based on a true story of…women who are old and like Tom Brady and watch football together. So they filled it with a lot of actresses who have tons of awards between them. To talk about old ladies going to the Super Bowl, against all the odds? And hell, during the super bowl, shenanigans occur, tickets are lost, and hell, they actually end up effecting the game that leads to Tom Brady winning a super bowl. But like, this is set in the real world? In a real super bowl championship, with a score that for sure happened?

What is the… goal of the film is really the question I have to ask myself?

Worst moment? At one point, some characters are on drugs. Oh golly, old women getting high.

Any Worst Awards? Worst “Simpsons Did It” film, Worst Ensemble of talented actors, and Second Worst Sports film of 2023.

3) Lady BallersWhy is it on the list? Well, let’s take a movie where the coach, a washed up and broken man, decided to grab his successful team from many years prior, and have them wear wigs to be women and win that championship instead. No, this is not a 90’s movie. This is a movie attacking the woke culture of the liberals of course. Honestly, finding this to randomly watch, I did NOT know it was The Daily Wire film, which is set out to destroy the woke Hollywood. The first idea of this was to make a documentary, but it turns out they couldn’t just get guys to say they are women and join a women’s team. You know, because there are rules, it takes times, it requires usually a lot of hormone therapy, before any of this is allowed.

So of course, they instead ignored that, made the movie as if any of this was doable, and clapped their hands on their backs happy to say they really got those liberals with this one. No one should watch this anti-trans film, and honestly, if I knew about it ahead of time, I would have given it the hard pass.

Worst moment? There was an upper elementary school aged kid used by her father, the coach, to teach the team what is acceptable on their transition. That one for sure because of the way they presented the information.

Any Worst Awards? Worst satire(?), worst comedy, and worst sports film of 2023.

2) Paw Patrol: The Mighty MovieWhy is it on the list? The first Paw Patrol movie was rough. It was pro-Cop, even in areas of that they had no jurisdiction in, and just confusing overall. So what happens with the sequel? All of the characters get SUPER POWERS. And now they are super heroes, with somehow more super vehicles than before. That is fine, if not unnecessary.

But why is it bad? Well, their focus on this movie is on one of the two lady puppies. Who loses her powers, and then immediately gets abandoned by the team and told she cannot help anymore. Even though they aren’t doing much more than what they did before. Now she is useless to them without powers? Add to that the other lady dog, introduced in the first movie, who never got powers for most of the film either, and not just was sidelined, but forced to watch even younger puppies (since they are all puppies?). This film gets to be pro-cop, while also anti-women simultaneously. Can’t make this stuff up.

Worst moment? Literally any time there was a junior Paw Patrol group, who apparently were taken from their families and now lived with them, to be watched by other baby dogs?

Any Worst Awards? Worst sequel, worst animated film, worst coproganda, and worst misogynist film of 2023.

1) BezosWhy is it on the list? Look, when 2023 started, I didn’t know I’d get to have a BioPic about the founder of Amazon so early in the year. Because who wanted this? No one asked for this. I did sort of expect it to be this dreadful. Watching a rich and successful man, get hundreds of thousands of dollars from his parents, and dreaming of starting a company just to fight book sellers. Hell, this has Kevin Sorbo as the CEO of Barnes and Noble, so you can judge the whole film solely on that. But Jeff is shown as a determined, kind, slightly smug individual, who clearly isn’t working well with his wife, and just wants to make money more than anything, even when he exploits the time of his early workers.

But this is like, a praise film at the same time. The funniest part is that this is based on a biography about Bezos officially. It is in the Zero To Hero series, which, if you can see on this link to amazon itself, is a book for children.

Worst moment? The eventual reveal of his company name of Amazon.

Any Worst Awards? Worst Biopic, Worst Movie based on a Children’s Book, Worst Drama, and Worst Film of 2023.

Thanks for reading! If you disagree with part of this list, let me know. If there is something I missed, let me know.

And as always, I accept hate mail via the post office, email, or tweets.