A list of the year's worst films is so mean-spirited that I can see why most critics don't do it.  I don't see A.O. Scott taking the time to list the films he hated and why.  The guy's got class.  I, on the other hand, own a copy of the 1983 Rob Lowe film, "Class", and have been informed that is not the same thing. 

Before I count down what I thought were the worst films of the year, I have to lay down the ground rules so that I don't get any e-mails asking "Why wasn't 'Meet the Spartans' or 'Hottie and the Nottie' on your list?"  The reason they're not on the list is that they're obviously terrible.  There was no room for success.  That's like saying I should give Stephen Hawking shit for not being able to run very fast*. 

The films that deserve credit (or discredit) are the ones that took a solid idea or a solid cast and squandered it in such a way as to be painful to watch.  And while I believe that all these filmmakers did intend to make a good movie, there's some thing cynical beneath the surface of each one that gnaws away at any positive qualities the film may possess.

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, grab your shovel and let's start digging through the shit!

5. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Not as horrible as it could have been but certainly the thing that should not be.  Even Frank Darabont's vaunted and highly-superior discarded script included the nuking of the fridge.  It's as if accepting a 60-year-old Indiana Jones isn't hard enough, George Lucas (could that have idea come from anyone else?) thought, "Hey!  Let's make him into a cartoon!" 

There's just no reason for this film to exist.  Ford is the only one who needs it because his last hit was "Air Force One".  Spielberg is just on auto-pilot with his direction and every dumb idea, from the cutesy gophers, to the nuked fridge, to Shia LeBeouf swinging on vines like a monkey, well I think we can all comfortably attribute those to Mr. Lucas.  Of course, Spielberg and Ford signed off on those ideas so they're just as much to blame. 

Thankfully, it doesn't ruin the previous Indiana Jones movies.  There's no reveal that Henry Sr. was secretly a Russian spy or that the Ark of the Covenant is filled with old Kenner action figures.  It's just a smear to the filmography of a great character.  It did, however, give us a great Patton Oswalt bit on how the endings of the four films compare.

4. Changeling

This partially makes the list because I was so appalled when I discovered that the Women Film Critics Circle named "Changeling" as their "Best Movie About Women".  If the category was "Best Movie About Women Being Saved By Men", then I couldn't agree more.

Jolie knows how to play the strong female characters.  In a way, I guess "Changeling" is a departure for her since she just cowers under her hat and lets the big men, like John Malkovich's reverend to the big city lawyer who graciously agrees to work pro bono for her cause, do all the work.  But if you take a drink every time she cries, "I want MY son back!" you can get a pretty good buzz going by the end of the film.

"Changeling" is made all the more painful by the better storylines on the periphery.  If Jolie's character had been stronger, more pro-active, and not just a shrinking violet who's a pawn in the big boys' games between the reverend and the good people of Los Angeles versus the corrupt police department, then I would be happy with Eastwood following her storyline.  Instead, she's just an irritating distraction as the more interesting material of the child murders and corrupt LAPD wave as we pass it by to more watery-eyed Jolie.

Also, the film wastes Jeffrey Donovan and as a die-hard "Burn Notice" fan, that just won't stand with me.

3. Smart People

"Smart People" was "independent" filmmaking at its worse.  This small-minded, poorly-crafted "human" drama wastes its cast but frankly, if they saw this script and saw any deeper resonance or worthwhile ideas, then they deserve to be wasted.  It's the kind of story that "Little Miss Sunshine" and "Napoleon Dynamite" have wrought where you pile on the quirk, maybe add some family pathos, load up your soundtrack with the bands your music supervisor likes, and assume that an audience will respond.

It's like no one double-checked the movie.  Is this joke funny?  Is this moment emotional?  Why should I care about these characters?  Is this song appropriate or totally heavy-handed and distracting?  Director Noam Murro and writer Mark Poirier were like chefs who just threw the ingredients together because they tasted the meal before and assumed they could just make it from scratch.  Instead, it tasted so bad that I almost regretted the original concoction that inspired them.

2. Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?

I stood up for Morgan Spurlock's previous film "Super Size Me" on numerous occasions.  His gimmick almost overshadowed his movie as numerous moviegoers scoffed, "He ate McDonalds for thirty days?  Gosh, maybe he got fat!"  I then had to explain that no, it was actually a look at the obesity crisis in America and furthermore, Spurlock didn't just get fat but he ended up endangering his liver and developed mood swings along with some other side effects that none of his doctors expected when he told them he was embarking on this experiment.  It was that sort of sneaky insight I expected going into "Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?"  Instead, I just got glib shenanigans followed by the most obvious and patronizing message imaginable.

Rather than take a look at our complex relationship with the Middle East and the current state of the War on Terror, Spurlock just wastes our time, first by spending about twenty minutes taking self-defense courses he'll never use and then the rest of the time navel-gazing at the upcoming birth of his son and using that as an excuse to go gallivanting around the Middle East to bring us the insightful message that hey, citizens of the Muslim and Arab world are people too and they don't all hate us.  Wow, thanks Morgan. 

There were plenty of great documentaries in 2008; I just expected far better from this particular documentarian and he dropped the ball in a big way.

1. The Happening

This list doesn't really need to exist.  Telling you five movies to avoid isn't really a worthwhile action.  It may provide a humorous read; a simple scolding to the studios and some filmmakers; maybe even a little controversy; but mostly it spurs you to inaction.  Not going to see these movies?  Then my work here is done. 

But one movie required the making of this list and it was M. Night Shaymalan's "The Happening".  2008 wasn't a year with a many memorable movies but you won't forget "The Happening" since it has a long life ahead as a cult classic of awful cinema.  It makes me excited for Night's next film because I'm eager to see if he can do any worse. 

"The Happening" doesn't work on any level except laughably bad.  In a way, it's almost a miraculous film.  It's like a psychic telling you he'll pick every red card in the deck and then ends up picking every black one.  It's the polar opposite of what he wanted and every choice is just dead wrong.  As other critics have pointed out, it makes you wonder if Shaymalan forgot how people talk.  It's like the whole film is made on a slant but it doesn't make everything creepy; it makes it funny.

Right before the film came out, Shaymalan tried to cover his mistake and called it a B-movie.  That's kind of an insult to B-movies since some B-movies still have real characters speaking believable lines of dialogue.  There is no B-movie that features a line of dialogue as deliciously terrible as "Why you eyein' my lemon drank?"

This is all removed completely from Shaymalan's equally terrible plot of plants retaliating against mankind.  I'm all for a green revolution in our energy policy but between this and "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (both from 20th Century Fox), I think we're already paying a high artistic price for saving the environment.  I thought characters out-running cold weather was bad in "The Day After Tomorrow" (also Fox; apparently the studio has a hard-on for the environment and awful movies) but Shaymalan out-did it by having his characters out-run the wind.

After the idiotic twist ending of "The Village" followed by the wild swings between quality and absolute garbage in "Lady in the Water", M. Night reached a new pinnacle of atrocious with "The Happening".  In 1999, he was an exciting filmmaker to watch because of "The Sixth Sense".  Now he's exciting to watch for a completely different reason: to see how much worse his next film can be. 

In the meantime, who wants to do a math riddle?

*This is the only article in existence that compares Stephen Hawking to a Paris Hilton movie.