Pajiba

I LOVE Dan in Real Life! Come on!

I don't know if Fracture was 'mediocre', a term which (to me at least) suggests that everything about it was relatively average. It was well acted by Gosling and Hopkins (the less said about Rosamund Pike, the better), but the plot was a whole lot of stupid. I'd class it as "watchably retarded" if anything.

I've seen exactly five of these, and the remaining five are ones I'll catch on HBO 9 a Hangover Sunday during the child's nap. Unless I too take a nap. Or it's football season. Or I need to mow the lawn. Or if I decide that the leftover pizza isn't going to reheat itself.

What were we talking about again?

The only one of these I've seen is "Leatherheads". I have no idea what that says about my movie choices.

Wow, I think I have have watched 2 or 3 of these, but damned if I can remember whether or not I bothered! Fractured sounds familiar, maybe because it wasn't out that long ago, but for shit's sake I couldn't tell you anything about it.

Dustin, my hat is off to you. This is about as 'meh' as a list could get. To you, sir, I impassively say 'eh, whatever'.

Hey!

You shut up about The Ruins, you dicks! Evil, sentient vines! Who the hell is ever going to forget the movie with the evil, sentient vines?

True sign of a mediocre movie: You read the title and go "Hey, I remember that movie...Oh shit, did I leave the iron on again? Balls." That was my general reaction to all of these, really.

The only part of watching "The Ruins" that I remember was being really terrified that it was starting to look like a tentacle hentai. *shudder*

I remember the day I saw 16 Blocks. My mom was in town, and we had already exhausted her go-to activity of shopping so we decided to see a movie. We stood outside the theater looking at the marquee for a 10 minutes desperately trying to decide which January released movie wouldn't kill us. Finally, we decided on the Bruce Willis one.

The only thing I remember from the whole movie is that Mos Def ends up making cakes at the end. Cakes.

ZZZZZZZZZZ.....

oh, wait, I'm sorry....

Did you say something?

I slept thru this list...

I've seen Frequency and Invincible and must agree that they were astoundingly mediocre. Almost perfectly middle of the road - a moment or two of tension or something that made you care, but it passed and you returned to fugue state until the credits rolled.

What was that 1920s-era golf movie where Will Smith did his "magical black dude" thing and Matt Damon did his "troubled rich white dude" thing? That was fairly bland.

The Legend of Bagger Vance

"If you've ever Loved, or Dreamed, Or Didn't Want to Take Out the Garbage, you'll love This Generic Movie."

Aww, I really like Frequency..

That would be The Legend of Bagger Vance, Reba. I don't think I will ever be able to watch it seriously thanks to a Lonely Island spoof that involved people crapping the bed.

In currently stuck on a business trip in a city where I know no one. Hotel TV is taking me to new heights of mediocre entertainment. I sat through The Wedding Date last night. Despite a blond Amy Adams, it was so meh that I can barely remember the plot now.

Must Love Dogs, on the other hand, is not mediocre. It is fantastically awful. I wanted to slap the whine out of Diane Lane - oh wait, that's her acting in every movie! Christopher Plummer, what were you thinking?

This has nothing to do with the list, but I was reminded of Alison Pill when I saw "Dan in Real Life" on here...she was scary good on "In Treatment" this season, hoping the academy or board or whatever the fuck they are tuned in, she was hilarious, heartbreaking, fill-in-the-blank-hyperbole.

The Ruins. Is. Awesome.

Oh how I meh-ing love this site1

I saw "Fracture" and "The Score," and ... holy hell, you're right. I'd completely forgotten about both until I saw them up there.

Anyway, in keeping with the theme, shouldn't they all be ranked No. 5? How can any of them be more or less mediocre-er than the others?

Okay, what about Crash, Benjamin Button, Indy 4, or Transformers? I know those films did well, but I don't remember shit about them.

@ the commenter formerly known as bucdaddy: true dat. What I remember about Crash is not anything about the movie so much as that it was presented to me by relatives as something that I would undoubtedly find as profound and powerful as they did, and I was really, really glad we were boozing it up when we watched it.

I have to agree with DaddyMac. Frequency is not a mediocre film...not a great film but certainly not mediocre.

If you're going to add one to the list, I would have to say Saw. With all respect to Dustin and his hatred of torture porn, the first Saw was a mediocre horror movie made great by the masses by virtue of the fact that there is very little competition for horror films anymore.

SAW is perhaps a perfect example of the 00's film making. Mediocre films that do successful business for like three or four weeks beget sequels that have no business being made. Since 2000, how many good films have most of us seen? Maybe 2 or 3 dozen, and that's over the course of almost ten frakkin' years!

SAW deserves a spot on this countdown for the simple fact that it inspired the pure mediocrity that has befallen the horror genre.

shut the fuck up, frequency makes me cry like a baby.

and i LIKED the ruins with its *spoiler* cell phone flowers.

I was surprised that I enjoyed Dan in Real Life as much as I did. I wouldn't call it meh... but meh is the PERFECT word for Leatherheads.

Man, I love Frequency. It's just so damn watchable, if not notable. Otherwise, I love this list.

I hated ratatouille and also totally forgot about it until the above commenter mentioned it, i was extremely dull.

but yeah frequency > mediocre - not the best but it was good enough, pelham 123 was awful i fell asleep seeing it at like 2:30pm a couple of weeks ago. travolta is not even almost believable.

I would second Must Love Dogs as mediocre, I've watched that movie at least four times and instead of remembering any plot elements, I always think of it as a rom com starring Hitler titled "must hate Jews"

Adolf Hitler, a art student in his late twenties, was recently rejected from art school. His friends decide that they have to find him a lady to break him out of his funk. After a series of disastrous, but hilarious, dates he decides to swear off dating for good. His friends are unrelenting in their quest to find him a girlfriend, however. His good buddy, Joe Goebbels, puts him in a classified add, including the description of "must hate jews." He hates jews, but doesn't have the courage to lash out against them, so he asks Heinrich Himmler to do it to impress young Eva Braun at a public park; she, very impressed, falls for Hitler on the spot. After they begin to date the viewer is left asking "How will this craaaaazy relationship end?"

I can admit that when Jerry Maguire came out, I liked Renee Zellweger in that role. I had never seen her in anything else, or seen her give an interview or anything, so I went in clean. I thought she was a little off, but I was so attached to Cameron Crowe's nutsack at that point in time that I gave her the benefit of the doubt. (This was before Vanilla Sky and Elizabethtown -two movies that could be on this list - and the Tiny Dancer scene from Almost Famous effectively obliterated that mancrush)

So, she went on and made other movies that I didn't really give a shit about. Jerry Maguire was the last time she did a movie without some goofy accent or tic. We got to know her personality and she turned out to be a cipher, a zero. She won an Oscar she didn't deserve, gained weight, lost weight, who gives a rat's ass. Then she appeared in two movies that have a running theme, even though one is a Western and one is a Football movie. In both Leatherheads and Appaloosa, you have two leading men (Clooney and Krasinski or Ed Harris and Viggo) who are really cool....until they both end up falling in love with a sour faced hobgoblin with a fucked up accent for reasons no one understands except she must be the only woman in that town.

Leatherheads was going to suck regardless, they tried to make a screwball comedy and missed the mark. Clooney was cool, but he could be cool in about anything. Krasinski was outgunned, but he's still likable. Zellweger wanted to be Katharine Hepburn and that ended horribly. I'd rather see Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder do Taming of the Shrew than listen to her try that accent and cadence again.

Stryker, I disagree with you on Appaloosa. It had something, the scenes between Harris and Mortensen were great and I'm a huge fan of movies with the heroes living by a "code" and these guys played their roles well. Jeremy Irons was a solid villian. But Zellweger's part and performance tainted the whole experience. Her scenes were tacked on and unnecessary, which slowed down the movie and that is probably why you felt it dragged.

What was my point? Oh yeah Renee Zellweger sucks.

I actually liked The Score alright.

I loved Dan in Real Life!!!

The only one I've seen is Dan in Real Life's soundtrack.

The only one I even kind of wanted to see was Leatherheads, but I was too 'eh' to put any effort into watching it. Good to know that was a smart 'eh.'

Frequency isn't bad at all, and certainly isn't mediocre. Maybe it's a little too genteel and sedate for what it tries to be (a bit of a family-team-up time-travel thriller), but it's still decent.

And whoever was dissing Bagger Vance - I WILL CUT YOU!

I remember Fracture well because I own it. I was going to rent it but it was for sale for half the price of the rental so I bought it. It tries really hard to be clever, but doesn't really sell it. But I like both the stars enough that I don't mind owning it.

My votes would be for The Truth About Cats and Dogs and The Faculty. The Faculty may be saved by the awesome conclusion where (spoiler alert) meth saves the day, and a rare Jon Stewart acting performance...but it's debatable.

add Burn After Reading.

The only thing I remember from the whole movie is that Mos Def ends up making cakes at the end. Cakes.

Posted by: kelsy at July 10, 2009 2:35 PM

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He's sensitive, hence he bakes cakes. That is about the only thing that remotely made sense in that movie.

Oh Mos Def, what pretty babies we'd have...*sigh*

This actually made me giggle. The funny thing about those films are that I've heard of them, but was never moved enough to bother watching them. So...meh indeed.

As for Benjamin Buttons, I'm sorry, but it wasn't "meh". There's boring, then there is the point when boredom becomes actual physical discomfort and you start fidgeting and your brain keeps trying to throw itself out of your ears. It's like having a pimple under your tongue.

This was the most adequate list I've ever read, but it tastes like it needs a serious infusion of Cusack.

Rubble...Irons was way underused and therefore did not make a convincing villian, at least to me. Viggo and Harris are fine in their roles, and I actually liked their relationship. But the plot surrounding their respective arcs are middle of the road and uninteresting. A servicable enough film, yes, and Lance Henriksen makes an apperance, so that upped it a tic for me. Otherwise, a rather middling affair, and right on for this list.

I love you Pajiba.

Frequency was great, even if I have seen it many time, I always enjoy it and I always cry. It should not have been on that list.

Frequency was good! I love that movie.