These turkeys won’t be getting any pardons from us! For the 15th annual edition of The Post’s Turkey Movie Awards, saluting the worst over the past 12 months, Hollywood has churned out the biggest flock of cinematic butterballs we’ve encountered since we started doing this way back in the 20th century.
For every “Gravity’’ or “Captain Phillips,’’ it seemed there were three dozen eyeball-rolling fiascoes like “After Earth’’ and “The Lone Ranger’’ — two woefully misconceived and massively expensive vanity projects launched to stroke the egos of erstwhile box office champs Will Smith and Johnny Depp.
Besides us, not many people saw our former Top Turkey Robert De Niro being stalked by Serbian war criminal John Travolta in the execrable “Killing Season,’’ or his risible comedies “Big Wedding,’’ “The Family’’ and “Last Vegas.’’ But we’re letting Paycheck Bob off with a Lifetime Dubious Achievement Award. Celebrating a new generation of questionable choices, this year’s No. 1 prize goes instead to Naomi Watts — who followed her second Best Actress Oscar nomination (for last December’s “The Impossible’’) with roles in no fewer than three of the year’s biggest stinkers.
Watts had plenty of company in humiliation — including Kate Winslet and Hugh Jackman, coping with prosthetic testicles hanging from his neck — in the sketch-comedy bomb “Movie 43,’’ the first film we’ve ever awarded minus-four stars. Then there was “Two Mothers,’’ a Sundance cringe-fest in which Watts and Robin Wright played pals who slept with each other’s sons — a movie so awful, it entered Hollywood’s version of witness protection with a new release title, “Adore.’’
But worst of all was “Diana,’’ for which Watts donned a prosthetic nose to play the People’s Princess, exchanging romantic howlers (“I love it when you touch me there’’) with a boring Pakistani heart surgeon. This was the year’s worst biopic — quite a feat when your competition is such dubiously cast disasters as “Jobs’’ (Ashton Kutcher as Steve), “Lovelace’’ (Amanda Seyfried as Linda), “Winnie Mandela’’ (Jennifer Hudson) and “The Fifth Estate’’ (Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange).
And now a drumroll — or drumstick — for the rest of Tinseltown’s list of the bad, the worse, and the truly ugly:
Someone please put them (and audiences) out of their misery: The over-the-hill gang of Bruce Willis in “A Good Day to Die Hard,’’ Arnold Schwarzenegger in “The Last Stand’’ and Sylvester Stallone in the aptly named “Bullet to the Head” — plus Arnie and Sly in “Escape Plan.’’
Giving new meaning to the term dead on arrival: Audiences shunned the $120 million megaflop “R.I.P.D.’’ starring Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges as dead cops reassigned to the afterworld.
When bad movies happen to great directors: Terrence Malick’s romantic meditation “To the Wonder,” with a mopey Ben Affleck, was more effective than any sleeping pill — while Pedro Almodóvar’s alleged airplane comedy “I’m So Excited!’’ had moviegoers reaching for their barf bags.
Well, at least it killed Babs’ hopes of playing an elderly Mama Rose in a movie version of “Gypsy”: Barbra Streisand embarrassed herself in the feature-length Jewish mother joke “Guilt Trip.’’
2012 came and went and we’re still here, so why are we still getting deluged with apocalyptic movies?: “Oblivion,’’ “It’s a Disaster,’’ “Rapture-Palooza,’’ “World War Z,’’ “Elysium,’’ “The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones,’’ “The World’s End,’’ “This Is the End’’ and “After Earth.’’ Please stop!
How (Li)Lo can you go?: Lindsay Lohan’s career remained on life support with dazed, listless turns as sexpots in the relentlessly boring drama “The Canyons’’ and the aggressively tasteless “inAPPropriate Comedy.’’
Needless sequels to moves we barely remembered in the first place: “G.I. Joe: Retaliation,’’ “Riddick,’’ “Grown Ups 2,’’ The Hangover Part III,’’ “Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters,’’ “Scary Movie 5.’’
And just for a little variety, they destroyed San Francisco: Eighty percent of “Star Trek Into Darkness’’ consisted of actors in close-up delivering expository dialogue. Kind of like a ’60s TV show we remember, except in IMAX.
When a 140-minute movie accidentally gives itself a devastating 20-second review: Paul Rudd uses a mirror to look up his ass in Judd Apatow’s shamelessly narcissistic flop “This Is 40.’’
Actually, they’re secretly Al Qaeda recruiting films: Brainless teenage twits rob people, go shopping and have sex in “Spring Breakers’’ and “The Bling Ring.’’
Warner Bros. scrapped the original ending after the Colorado theater shooting, but should have scrapped the entire movie: The witless period melodrama “Gangster Squad’’ squandered the talents of Josh Brolin, Sean Penn and Ryan Gosling — the reputation of the latter critics’ darling further dinged by the dumb, brutal and aptly named “Only God Forgives.’’
Bad documentary that Harvey Weinstein is hoping to turn into what will probably be an even worse feature: “Salinger,’’ which pads out five minutes of interesting material into a sleazy two-hour slog.
Most desperate bids for attention by aging sexpots: Cameron Diaz makes love to a car windshield in the appalling “The Counselor,’’ Jennifer Aniston strips in “We’re the Millers’’ — and we’re not even sure exactly what Nicole Kidman is doing in “Stoker.’’
The heirs of the Brothers Grimm should sue for malfeasance, or at least merchandising royalties: “Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters,’’ “Jack the Giant Slayer.’’
OK, it was one of eight movies this year he starred in and/or directed, but still: A charmless James Franco seemed to be playing an actor playing the title role in the abominable megaflop “Oz the Great and Powerful’’ — opposite the director-star of “Garden State,’’ Zach Braff, as a flying monkey.
And no, “Oz” wasn’t even the worst movie the Mouse House released in 2013: Johnny Depp gave the year’s most inexplicable performance as an Indian in “The Lone Ranger,’’ a quarter-billion-dollar, train wreck that swamped the studio in red ink.
We’ve had root canals that were actually funnier than these alleged comedies: “Parental Guidance’’ starring Bette Midler and Billy Crystal; “Identity Thief’’ with Melissa McCarthy and Jason Bateman; “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone’’ starring Steve Carell and Steve Buscemi; “The Internship’’ with Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson; and “All Is Bright’’ starring Paul Giamatti and Paul Rudd.
CBS’ loss is our loss: Charlie Sheen returned to the big screen to stretch as an actor playing an alcoholic, womanizing jerk in the dreadful vanity project “A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III.’’
Well, they can’t all be “Twilight”: Stephenie Meyer’s novel “The Host’’ was turned into an unintentionally hilarious sci-fi potboiler starring the ubiquitous Saoirse Ronan, who really needs to say “No” more often.