Let's Razz Again

If you can remember when director M. Night Shyamalan was one of the most respected filmmakers in Hollywood, you're showing your age. Peter Bogdanovich, Francis Ford Coppola, and William Friedkin all had their falls from grace, but I don't think any of them have stumbled as quickly and as decisively as Shyamalan, whose action flick The Last Airbender cleaned up at the Razzies last night, "winning" for worst director, worst screenplay, and worst movie. This is a stumble of Cimino-like proportions.

The other big "winner" at the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation's 31st annual awards ceremony was Sex and the City 2, which found Carrie Bradshaw and her friends vamping it up in Arabia and still living life to the fullest. The original "Sex and the City" television series and the first Sex and the City movie had instilled some sense of urban envy in their viewers, entertaining women from suburban areas or from decidedly non-glamorous cities like Indianapolis and Omaha with depictions of the good life in New York, all full of clothes, sex, excitement and shoes. But the latest (last?) Sex and the City movie took that opulence to an unpalatable and offensive extreme. I'll let GRAF founder John Wilson explain:

"It was released in the middle of a period of American history when everyone's scrounging not to lose their homes, and these women are riding around in Rolls-Royces, buying expensive shoes and just throwing money around like they're drunk," Wilson declared. He added that the movie, set in Abu Dhabi, was disrespectful to Arab culture, not the best position to be in at a time when so many Islamic extremists hate the West's guts.

The four stars of this film - Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon - felt the hatred of the GRAF, as they shared its worst actress award. They also earned the worst screen couple or ensemble Razzie, while Sex and the City 2 itself "won" for worst prequel, remake, ripoff or sequel.

Shyamalan, for his part, can take solace in the fact that the The Last Airbender, a live-action movie about people who can command fire, air, water and earth that was adapted from the animated TV series "Avatar: The Last Airbender," did moderately well at the box office both here and abroad. But despite its 3-D special effects, Wilson insists that many people felt cheated by the lack of a coherent story and the fact that Shyamalan shot the movie in two-dimensional form and converted it to 3-D. This latter case sounds comparable to digitally remastering an analog sound recording but, judging from Wilson's comments, it's apparently more like colorizing a black-and-white film you meant to feature in color anyway, with bad aesthetics as a result. (It was bad enough to win a custom award: worst eye-gouging misuse of 3-D.)

I wouldn't know, of course. I didn't see it. I'll take Wilson's word that it's bad, though.

It's probably a strong commentary on how Hollywood produces stars more than actors that the other worst acting awards were awarded to actors for multiple roles: Ashton Kutcher for worst actor in Killers and Valentine's Day, Jackson Rathbone for worst supporting actor in The Last Airbender and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse and Jessica Alba for worst supporting actress in The Killer Inside Me, Little Fockers, Machete and Valentine's Day. The Iowa-born Kutcher had never considered acting before he was discovered by a talent scout; he got into movies more for his looks than his talent, exuding a detached Middle American suaveness associated with the young Ronald Reagan. (It seems appropriate to me that Kutcher married the greatest non-actress of my generation, Demi Moore.) And Jessica Alba, whose star burned so brightly as the lead actress in the TV series "Dark Angel," can look forward to a black future if she doesn't realize quickly that movie acting - even in a big-screen farcical romp like Little Fockers - generally requires a greater deal of complexity than a TV series aimed at teenagers.

I have a feeling that the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation will be around for a long time, if only because Hollywood is devoted to that uniquely and insufferably American maxim - if you can't have quality, get quantity - and is thus intent on flooding movie screens with more films than we can possibly stand. And it's easy for movie studios to get enough people to see a piece of crap with the right publicity, especially if there are big enough names in the cast. Of course, some movies don't do so well, going quickly - and in many cases directly - to home video. So what? If they don't make any money, they can always be written off for taxes.

Americans, while foolish in their entertainment preferences, are not completely stupid. When Little Fockers became the top box office draw this past Christmas weekend on the strength of the two previous Focker movies (never mind that the first one was only okay and the second one sucked), it was advertised as America's number one comedy movie. But Americans learn fast. Leaving an office the weekend after that movie's premiere, I overheard someone talk about how horrible it was.

I only hope this isn't the last we'll see of Teri Polo. :-(

Please note that no black actors were dishonored with Razzie awards this year.