I've been promising to do this for years, but for some reason I just never get around to it. Well, I'm sure one reason is the idea of sitting through five awful films in the space of one weekend is enough to make me go, hmm, don't I have some toilet scrubbing to do? But as one of the preeminent Bad Movie-ologists on the web (and by the web, I mean my own mind), I felt it was necessary to at least poke my head up from my steady diet of awful cinema of the '60s, '70s, and '80s. It was time to discover the State of the Bad Movie in 2006.

To conduct this inquest, I decided to view all five films that were nominated for the Worst Picture Razzie Award for 2006. By no means am I trying to say that the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation is the end-all and be-all authority on Bad Movies. Certainly, I've disagreed with their selections in the past. They've nominated films that, to me, were simply mediocre. And also, you can always count on them to pick on movies purely because they feature high-profile stars.

No, I'm not disputing that Leonard Part 6 deserved to win Worst Picture, or that Madonna deserved the Worst Actress Award for Shanghai Surprise, or that "Addams Family (Whoomp!)" deserved to win Worst Song. When it comes to Razzie winners, it's hard to really work up the energy to dispute them too much. I'm only saying that every year, there are always several films far worse than the ones that get nominated for Razzies.

I mean, Tom Cruise's Cocktail wins in the same year that brought us the Razzie-ignored Mac and Me? Bruce Willis' Color of Night takes the big award of the night, and It's Pat! doesn't even score a nomination? So, yeah, their bias towards big-name, big-budget films is obvious. But can you blame them? Is the AP really going to put Razzie noms out on the wire if they're for films nobody ever heard of?

Those criticisms aside, I figured the Razzie noms for 2006 were a pretty good place to start assessing what Bad Movies are like in this day and age. And the Bad Movie is still bad, there's no doubt about it, but I'm sad to see that the days where a single writer-director-actor could run off with the studio's money and make a gloriously insane and incoherent mindfuck type of picture (e.g., Hudson Hawk or Zardoz) are probably long gone.

These days, there's too much money riding on films, and too many test screenings and focus groups and reshoots for something truly abominable to get released into theaters. (That, and the theatrical market for B movies all but dried up a long time ago, forcing most of the really bad stuff to go direct to DVD or basic cable.)

Going into this, I was pretty sure of two things: One, this wouldn't come close to being one of my worst movie-watching weekends ever. Second, that out of these five films, four would seem like utter genius in comparison to Little Man, the latest in the Wayans Brothers canon that includes the first couple of Scary Movie installments and 2004 Razzie nominee White Chicks.

Well, I was right on at least one count: Generally, these films weren't "bad". A truly bad movie is one that bores me completely and utterly. For the most part, these films held my attention throughout (although, once the credits rolled, I could barely remember anything about them). I think it goes without saying that I've seen way worse than these five movies.

But on the other count? My sound conviction that Little Man would be the worst of the bunch? Well, I didn't quite call that one. But that's all I'll say for now. No need to spoil the final verdict coming at the end of this article.

So, for those who didn't follow the Razzie nominations this year, here are the five films I watched, in the order I watched them:

	Lady in the Water Written, produced, and directed by M. Night Shyamalan Starring Paul Giamatti
	Little Man Directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans Starring Shawn and Marlon Wayans
	BloodRayne Directed by Uwe Boll Starring Kristanna Loken
	The Wicker Man Directed by Neil LaBute Starring Nicolas Cage
	Basic Instinct 2 Directed by Some Guy I'm Too Lazy to Look Up Starring Sharon Stone

Razzie Nominee #1: Lady in the Water

Originally advertised as "a bedtime story by M. Night Shyamalan", this film inspired me to come up with a bedtime story of my own:

Once upon a time, there was a director named Night who released a spooky thriller called The Sixth Sense in the doldrums of August 1999. It became a massive surprise hit for Night, thanks in large part to its trick ending. With help from that year's other surprise hit The Blair Witch Project, Night helped usher in a new wave of less-gore, less-is-more horror filmmaking.

Night went on to make more films. These films were flawed, yet frequently entertaining. But with each successive movie, he took more and more flack for his implausible plots and twist endings. Every new film from Night was greeted by a chorus of nutters on the internet proclaiming it to be "the worst movie of all time".

Of course, Night's output was pretty far from the worst ever, and Night himself was pretty far from the worst director ever. Even the much-reviled The Village was an intriguing film with good performances (which sadly got its legs cut out from under it by a ludicrous twist ending that anyone could figure out ten minutes in).

Nevertheless, most critics saw The Village as simply the inevitable first misstep in an exceptional career. After all, nobody can hit a home run every time they're at bat. Even the greatest directors have nasty skeletons they'd much rather keep hidden in their closets (anyone seen 1941 lately?).

But it seems Night took the criticism to heart, and tried his best to divorce himself from twist endings altogether. Sadly, his next film, Lady in the Water, was so off-kilter and so devoid of purpose that audiences wondered if they were better off with the stupid twist endings. And nobody lived happily ever after. Especially people who paid to see this in the theater. The end.

Obviously, I'd have to be crazy to call a run of three or four good films a "fluke". But after watching Lady in the Water, Shyamalan's previous films almost look that way. It's that bad.

To the best of my abilities, here's a brief synopsis: In an overly precious and preachy opening animation sequence, we're informed that residents of the "Blue World" once had a close bond with mankind. But then mankind decided to move inland, and so the ties were broken. And yet people from the Blue World still find a way to reach out to us from time to time, whenever mankind is in need.

Ah, she's from Keithharingworld.

And so, a denizen of the Blue World (Bryce Dallas Howard, daughter of Ron, so captivating as the blind girl in The Village) comes to our world via the swimming pool in an apartment complex. Her name is Story—yes, that's really her name—who reveals herself one night to the building's superintendent, Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti)—and yes, that's really his name.

Paul Giamatti: Craziest super since Schneider.

Story says she's a "narf", which, near as I can tell, is a mermaid without the fish tail. And all it takes is some perceptive comments from Story, delivered in a soft voice, and Cleveland is magically cured of his (bad, really overdone) stutter. And this, in turn, is all it takes for him to believe that Story really is a resident of this mythical Blue World.

And so, with the help of several abrasive ethnic stereotypes living in his complex, Cleveland pieces it all together. According to some folk tale of vaguely Asian origin, Story has come to our world to reveal something of major importance. After that, she needs to get picked up by a giant eagle and flown back to the Blue World, all the while avoiding big wolf-like things made out of blades of grass. But wait! It gets even more bizarre!

"Please, I did all I can about your clogged drain. You're just making me feel guilty now."

Cleveland goes from tenant to tenant, asking them to fulfill certain roles in the fairy tale, which somehow will summon the giant eagle. Like, he actually goes to an apartment full of stoners and tells them they have to be "the chorus". And not only do his tenants happily go along with this, it also causes them to acquire strange abilities. Like Jeffrey Wright, who plays a tenant who can suddenly read crossword puzzles in the same way a psychic might read tea leaves.

Yes, it is all just as absurd as it sounds. And yet, the movie is still a boring straight-line plot. All we see is Giamatti rounding up tenant after tenant, with not a twist or a surprise in sight, until eventually the giant eagle comes to pick up Story. (For once, it's nice not to feel guilty about revealing the ending of an M. Night Shyamalan film.)

Yeah, this was pretty much how I watched the movie, too.

I really tried and tried to figure out what good idea was at the core of this movie, that would make a talented guy spend months of his life on it. I suppose there's the mildly interesting idea of a modern-day community trying to bring a folk fairy tale to life. It'd be like, I guess, me and my neighbors re-enacting Beowulf in the sincere belief that Grendel would appear. (Oddly enough, that's nearly the exact synopsis of a mediocre episode of Star Trek: Voyager, which just goes to show what a great idea it is in the first place.)

Now, you'd think participating in a fairy tale would require a huge leap of faith, right? I mean, if my building's super came to me in the middle of the night, and said I needed to be "the guide" or "the healer" or "the chorus", my first assumption would be that the guy was mad tweaking. If he persisted in all seriousness, I'd keep him busy while I got the local psych ward on the phone. If this film had shown Cleveland fighting anything like that kind of uphill battle with his tenants, then possibly this movie might have been interesting.

"Thanks, guys. I'm all set to play Gwen Stacy now."

But that doesn't happen here. When told they need to participate in some crazy folk tale, all of the building's residents are like, "Sign me up, dude!" I think Night was trying to make this his one "feel-good" family-friendly picture (like David Lynch did with The Straight Story), and maybe this movie did bring a smile to the faces of Night's kids, at least, but for the rest of us, it's not at all interesting to watch.

Making matters worse is that we learn almost nothing about Story, or where she comes from. So why should we care if she gets back or not? She never displays a real personality—She simply alternates between shrinking in fright, and spouting serene platitudes.

Shyamalan really got raked over the coals for giving himself a large supporting role in Lady in the Water. And frankly, he deserves it. In his other movies, his cameos were mostly cool and Hitchcockian. But here, he actually has lines—and a lot of them—and finally reveals to the world that he has no screen presence whatsoever.

"You've got to tell me. Will I ever come up with an ending more ludicrous than Signs?"

Even worse, he gave himself a pivotal, self-indulgent role as a tenant who, according to Story and her sudden precognitive abilities, will have a major impact on the future of the human race. Night's character is writing a lazily-defined political manifesto called The Cookbook (full of, as Night informs us, "thoughts on leaders and stuff"). Story explains this book will inspire a young man to one day become President of the United States, and change the course of human history. Right. And surely he will lead us all into a blessed, glorious new age where we clasp hands and bathe in the golden light of our own greatness. All thanks to The Cookbook!

But what really kills this movie more than anything else is that not one single character acts or talks like a real person. Mostly, we get broad ethnic stereotypes. Occasionally, we get people who talk in riddles denser than anything the Oracle ever came up with. You know, it really is time to stop making movies where people speak in metaphor.

"They're eating her! And then they're going to eat me! Oh my goooooooooooooood!!"

And if you need any further proof that Shyamalan really took the criticism of The Village to heart, there's a movie critic character (played by Bob Balaban) who's the most standoffish, condescending, and unlikable tenant in the complex. He ends up getting eaten (in a bizarrely self-referential scene), which really does feel like Shyamalan venting in a petty, Deanzilla sort of way.

When it comes down to it, Shyamalan really needs people around him who will kick him in the head and tell him to come up with better ideas. Unless, of course, this is the best idea he could come up with. In which case, those same people need to kick him in the head and make him realize that not every movie needs to be High Concept! It's perfectly okay to take an old idea and do it over again, and if you do it well, people will actually come to see it.

Lady in the Water in a nutshell: Boring and simplistic, yet hopelessly convoluted all at the same time. Giamatti pieces together a puzzle that nobody really cares to see solved in the first place, all the while completely avoiding anything resembling dramatic conflict.

Did it deserve the Razzie nomination? I'm pretty sure there were many movies released in 2006 far worse than this one. But still, it deserved the Razzie bitchslap purely for being a complete waste of everybody's time. If there had been a Razzie Award for "Most Wasted Potential", this would have won, hands down.

Razzie Nominee #2: Little Man

I might just be officially losing my touch. Because Little Man was nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be. Maybe it's because the tedium and frustration of Lady in the Water was still fresh in mind, but I almost enjoyed this film.

Please don't misunderstand me. Little Man is not a good movie by any measure. There is no way in the darkest, coldest reaches of Hell that I would have ever recommended anyone spending $10 or more to see this when it was in theaters.

Even as a rental, I can't recommend it. When I think about all the great comedies that are out on DVD, I can come up with absolutely no reason to seek out and rent this movie. If you're at a point in your life where you're seriously thinking about buying/renting Little Man, you need to take a step back and remind yourself of what a good comedy is.

But let's say you're watching movies as a group, and the movie selection process is not up to you. Or perhaps you're watching movies with your significant other, and it's his or her night to pick the movie. Or, you're on a date with someone, and he or she just happens to want to see Little Man. If your date is hot enough and bangable enough, then I say go for it. There are far worse ways to spend ninety minutes.

Yes, it has plenty of tasteless jokes that I did not need to ever see in my lifetime. But there are just as many jokes that made me laugh out loud. I speak as someone with a pretty low tolerance for toilet humor (and by that I mean, humor that actually revolves around toilets), which is why I've avoided most comedies of the last five years. But Little Man had very little of that. I have to assume that the people who proclaimed this one of the worst films of 2006 (and that includes the Razzie voters) simply never saw it.

But then again, I have no vendetta against the Wayans clan. Specifically, I have no bias against Shawn or Marlon Wayans, the stars of Little Man, nor do I hold a grudge against Keenen Ivory Wayans, the director. I used to love In Living Color back in the day, and even Shawn and Marlon's WB sitcom was sporadically funny. That same type of humor is all over Little Man, and it's far less brain-dead and gross-out than the reviews would have you believe.

Keenen even gives small parts to his old castmates, like David Allen Grier and Kelly Coffield. The net result is a movie that feels like an extended In Living Color skit, which is both good and bad: It's mostly just one joke stretched out way too long, but still pretty funny in places. Frankly, it could have been much worse.

I mean, for big portions of the movie, you get to look at Kerry Washington. And you also get to look at Brittany Daniel, wearing a crazy push-up bra that makes her look like Pam Anderson. So what have you got to complain about, really?

Okay, so I guess there is the plot. It's shamelessly stolen from the Bugs Bunny short "Baby Buggy Bunny" (which is why Little Man scored a Razzie for Worst Remake). If you haven't seen it, the cartoon is about a midget gangster who robs a bank, and loses his money down Bugs' rabbit hole, and so pretends to be an orphaned baby to get back the loot.

It took an unbelievably rigorous workout routine to turn Tracy Morgan into a giant.

Little Man uses the exact same premise of the cartoon, and even directly steals several of its gags, all without credit. (But as with Barb Wire, this is probably a case of the original creators going, "Credit? No thanks, I can do without. You just take allll the credit you want for this one, fellas.")

The special effects are incredible. Also, Marlon's head on the kid's body is cool, too.

But the supposedly clever "twist" here is that Marlon Wayans plays a midget thug via CGI trickery: His face is digitally pasted onto the body of a nine year old actor. And the effect is... not good. And it often borders on, what's the word? Oh yeah: profoundly disturbing.

At the start of the movie, Marlon gets out of prison, and immediately formulates a plan to rob a jewelry store. He absconds with a valuable jewel, but through a series of unfunny contrivances, the jewel ends up in the handbag of Kerry Washington.

He finds out that Kerry is married to Shawn Wayans, who really wants to have kids, but Kerry wants to focus on her career. And so, Marlon devises the perfect subterfuge: He poses as a child left on their doorstep, so he can get inside and get the jewel.

Naturally, all sorts of sitcom-level complications arise that prevent him from getting his hands on the jewel, most of them thanks to Kerry's dad, played by John Witherspoon (AKA Hollywood's Crazy Black Dad of Choice).

The usual suspects for movie comedies are all here: Lochlyn Munro, Tracy Morgan, Chazz Palminteri (who you will be absolutely shocked to learn is playing a mobster), Alex Borstein, Molly Shannon, etc. Rob Schneider makes an (uncredited) cameo, which even got a laugh from me. (Unfortunately, his cameo lasted much longer than that one laugh.)

"The grosses for European Gigolo were bad. Really bad."

Yes, Little Man is dumb. And yes, the humor is broad. But lest we forget, it's a movie where a midget pretends to be a baby. I think midgets-pretending-to-be-babies movies need to be judged on their own scale, and based on that scale, this movie succeeds in what it's trying to do.

It's time to play Guess What Bodily Fluid is Being Squirted into Marlon Wayans' Mouth!

Of course, there are a number of disturbing jokes that nearly ruined the film for me. First of all, it seems all comedies these days are required by law to have at least one scene where human and/or animal bodily fluids are ingested, and this film does not fail to deliver.

But worse are the scenes where Marlon tries to force himself on Kerry Washington. At one point Kerry, thinking of him as a little baby, starts kissing his stomach, and Marlon puts on a truly repulsive rapist face and tries to force her head down into his crotch. That's right, folks: Forced oral sex is comedy gold!

Yet another feel-good comedy about a sex offender with a heart of gold!

And in another scene, it's strongly implied that Marlon crawled out of his crib and had sex with her in the middle of the night, unbeknownst to her. Now, some viewers (mostly the nutters on the IMDb boards) have called this a rape scene. If that's the case, then there's a pretty heinous rape in the middle of Revenge of the Nerds. I mean, it is a comedy, after all. But still, it's uncomfortable to watch, especially considering Kerry is presented as something of a mother figure to Marlon.

And after all this, the movie has the balls to try to be heartwarming, implying a real father-son bond is forming between Marlon and Shawn. But it's pretty hard to believe Dad and Son are making this deep connection, when Son is knocking out Dad with a cast iron frying pan in the next scene. (Yes, that really happens.)

Little Man in a nutshell: Not even close to rising to the level of Cinematic Torture™. It held my interest throughout, and I laughed a lot more than I thought I would. Obviously, a number of scenes were pointless and a lot of the jokes fell flat (or worse), but what did anybody expect, really?

Did it deserve the Razzie nomination? Probably not. Personally, I haven't seen any other comedies from 2006, but surely something must have sucked more than this.

Continue to Part 2 of Razzie Weekend 2007: Uwe Boll, a psychotic Nicolas Cage, Sharon Stone's lopsided breasts, and more!