2010: Worst Year Yet for Movies

“2010 very possibly is the worst year in the history of motion pictures,” declares Joe Queenan in a hilarious Wall Street Journal piece bemoaning the downfall of American cinema. You know things are bad in Hollywood when:

• “Shia LaBeouf—who looks a bit like the young George W. Bush” is being passed off “as the second coming of Tom Cruise.”
• The top contenders for Next Big Action Star are Jake Gyllenhaal and Adrien Brody. “None of these are logical heirs to the throne abandoned by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Harrison Ford and Sylvester Stallone. They may not even be legitimate heirs to the throne vacated by Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme.”

• “The third installation of Toy Story is better than the first installation of anything else,” and “people are actually looking forward to a sequel to the 1982 flop Tron.”
• The industry “actually makes sequels to bombs—The Incredible Hulk is a case in point—simply because the subject matter of the film is at least familiar to audiences.”
• Everything sounds familiar. For example, “Dinner for Schmucks, which promises to be the worst film of the year, is a remake of the brilliant 1998 French comedy Le Dîner de Cons. Judging from the previews, it is a clump of spittle aimed directly at Lafayette's face.”

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