Top Ten Most Disappointing Movies of 2004

This list compiles the movies of 2004 that gave us hope, and then ripped it from our little, delicate bodies.
The Top Ten
1 Catwoman

This movie was doomed from the start, it seems. I mean, it was in development for close to a decade before things started taking off, was originally meant to be a direct spin-off from Tim Burton's 'Batman Returns' with Michelle Pfeiffer returning as the title role before things went south and she and Burton, who wanted to direct, left after things took too long and their careers progressed away from the project, and eventually dropped everything that had to do with Batman and that universe (becoming more of a "spiritual spin-off" - if such a thing exists). And, of course, it was dreadful. Everything was laughably bad. The story, the acting (Halle Berry, who had just won an Oscar for Best Actress - accepted her Razzie Award in person with the Oscar statuette in hand), the CGI effects, and the costume. Every element of the film was like the equivalent of passing a kidney stone (or perhaps a hairball -- which is more relevant).

Lets face it. Who would make a movie centered around CATWOMAN? She's a good villian, but a Catwoman movie with no BATMAN? This movie is doomed.

I loved this film as it was perfect for taking my two cats to, they are called Gato Gordo and Jim! They loved it, there popcorn-flavoured cat food stained the seats - I had to pay £200 to replace them:(

2 Ocean's Twelve

This sequel to 2002's all-star heist film, 'Ocean's Eleven' (which was, itself, a remake of the 1960 all-star heist film, 'Ocean's 11'), while laden with even more A-list actors than its predecessor, it was no where near as clever or exciting. And that's a real shame. You'd think that a film featuring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Andy Garcia, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac, Julia Roberts, Casey Affleck, and many more would warrant a script that is worthy of it's A+ A-list cast. Thankfully, 2007's 'Ocean's Thirteen' raised the stakes and gave us a satisfying end to the trilogy.

3 Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2

BKAllmighty do you think this movie should be number 1 on this list.

More worst than disappointing

This movie really sucks

This should be higher.

4 Shark Tale

We were all so into the undersea world after 'Finding Nemo' dived into theatres earlier in the year (I never missed a Pixar movie (besides Cars 2) in theatres after that), and the idea of getting another awesome undersea adventure film (this time from the people who gave us 'Shrek' and 'Shrek 2' (the latter of which also came out earlier in the year)) sounded hunky dory (no pun intended with the "dory" bit). Too bad it was just your typical run-of-the-mill pop culture joke-filled bore fest stuffed with everything any kids movie has ever had in it before. I still feel the burn, today. Just as if it was a sting from a king jellyfish (had to bring up SpongeBob -- sorry).

As a little kid, I liked this movie. Bit as my brain developed, so did my eyes. And I saw what this movie truly was: Trash.

I have to confess: I like this movie. But, I can understand why people think it's trash.

Shark Tale is to Finding Nemo as Hoodwinked is to Shrek.

5 The Village

M. Night Shyamalan's career took a total nose dive after 'The Village'. It had the attractive look and feel of a Shyamalan film, but lacked the edge it needed to be at all impactful to its audience, and by that I mean it was weakly written (especially the "twist" ending that M. Night is so famous for). Acclaimed film critic Roger Ebert reviewed the film very negatively, of course, and described the movie's problem in a way that I could never equal: "The Village is a colossal miscalculation, a movie based on a premise that cannot support it, a premise so transparent it would be laughable were the movie not so deadly solemn... To call the ending an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes. It's a crummy secret, about one step up the ladder of narrative originality from It was all a dream. It's so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film so we don't know the secret anymore".

That's bad.

The "noise" they've been hearing is a highway. Saved you two hours of crap.

6 Van Helsing

Poor Stephen Sommers. Things have been going mostly downhill for him since 2001's 'The Mummy Returns' stunk so horribly. This movie was no exception to that rule. While it made a ton of money at the box office, this dark fantasy action film starring the ever-popular Hugh Jackman and the 'Underworld' star, Kate Beckinsale, was another critical flop. What was to blame? An overactive use of CGI, for one, and an underdeveloped story, as well.

Agree about overuse of CGI, but that's been SOP for some time, and it seems audiences expect it.
Far from worst ever in story line and special effects. And you might be missing that this flick was largely tongue-in-cheek, more comedy than monsterpiece.

7 Along Came Polly
8 Exorcist: The Beginning

The 'Exorcist' series of films has its ups and downs in a very literal sense. The first film was brilliant, the second film was a misstep, the third film was a far superior sequel, and this, the decades late prequel, was a massive disappointment (that's why its here). It was just lazy, to begin with. Replacing effective tension-building scenes and eye-catching visuals with cheap, thrown together gory jump scares. It was also just unnecessary. We didn't need this movie to be made and nobody asked for it to be made so why was it made? To make money, folks. And what followed is quite interesting. Because of the horrible reviews and the terrible box office returns, the studio decided to basically remake the film right away based off of a script originally written and declined for this film. The subsequent 2005 film, named 'Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist', ended up being just as bad as this one (can anybody else here the "wah wah wah" trumpet noise? ).

It's a shame when corporate Hollywood interests take a classic and beat it to death and beyond.
"Rocky" is a prime example. "First Blood" was engaging---the sequels were big-budget cartoons.
And "Godfather III" was a pathetic parody of the first two.
Nothing wrong with making money, but that's not how a classic is born.
And a single classic will likely generate more revenue than five or more stinkers.

9 The Butterfly Effect

Ashton Kutcher was still riding the big wave from his starring role in 'That 70's Show', which landed him the role, but, much like his character, Kelso, from said television show, the movie tried so very hard to be smarter than it was capable of being. One might still find some fun in the premise, which is indeed intriguing, but those who desire a film filled with food for thought, you'd be doing yourself a favour by sitting this one out.

In a different time, Kutcher would be lucky to land a 10-second walk-on as a cabana boy. "Kelso" comprised the sum total of his skills.

10 King Arthur
The Contenders
11 Fat Albert

Well, I can almost guarantee that anyone who enjoyed this movie at the time of its release will have likely drifted away from it by now, considering the current Bill Cosby "situation".

Hey hey hey it's a terrible movie on my birth year!

12 The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
13 The Phantom of the Opera
14 The Stepford Wives (2004)

Well, at least Nicole Kidman's post-surgical face-freeze fit the plot.

15 Thunderbirds

I enjoyed Thunderbirds when I was young, so really, my childhood had some of my Dad's childhood in it. This is something that took the idea of it and ripped it to shreds. They couldn't have come up with more preposterous ideas, such as making one of the original pilots too young to fly Thunderbird 3 like everyone remembers him, or making every other secondary character a kid, who get all the focus in this film for the sake of boring, childish dialogue, and saving all the special effects that would be needed to see the Thunderbirds in action for all the basic things that don't take much effort to simulate. Even Ben Kingsley couldn't stop the wooden acting all round, or save the sloppy plot. So, if you remember Thunderbirds for being exciting, thrilling, and unpredictable, with humour every now and then, prepare to be heartbroken.

Sorry but I've always been a fan of Busted and they sang a song for the film and Brady Corbet (Alan Tracy) is gorgeous.

16 Home on the Range

The new millennium was not exactly what one would call a joyous affair for Disney and their animation department. While some of their post-renaissance films were successes (either critically or financially, but never both at the same time), none of their films stunk as hard as 2004's 'Home on the Range' did at this point. The plot was just plain dull and the pointy animation style was almost painfully hard on the eyes. Mind you, things would just get worse the following year after the release of 'Chicken Little', everyone's least favorite animated film from Disney, would lead the world to wondering if Disney was still the studio to beat in the animation business, or just another desperate corporate entity trying to make money from stories that would barely fill a picture book. Oh, and because of the critical and financial failure of this film, no traditionally-animated movies would be released by Disney until 2009. Yes, one might call this a dark chapter in Disney's recent history.

17 Garfield: The Movie

It sounded like a good idea on paper, I'm sure. And, if properly handled, it could have been a really refreshing, cute, and funny movie (like 2014's 'Paddington'). Only, it wasn't. Bill Murray (who was impeccably cast as the voice of the titular character), himself, regrets making the movie (which says something). The story, as he tells it, was that he thought one of the Coen Brothers (Joel Coen, which is what the script said on it, to be exact). Of course, that ended up not being the same Joel Coen. If it had been, maybe the movie would've been suitable for viewers old enough to recognize how big of a poorly-written, underdeveloped cash grab the movie really was. Of course, the movie made money and had an even worse sequel made.

I'm sorry, this movie just did not work for me. I obviously didn't see this when it first came out (I was born in 2003) but I have it on DVD and I really don't care for it.

18 The Whole Ten Yards

The first film (2000's 'The Whole Nine Yards') wasn't exactly a ray of sunshine. It was serviceable, but had the potential to be great with the pairing of Bruce Willis and Matthew Perry working so well onscreen. Well, it made itself enough money to allow for a sequel to be made and brought back the original film's two stars. Only, that's about all it gave us to look forward to. It was universally panned by both critics and audiences and was a box office bomb, making just over half its budget back.

19 Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed

2002's live-action 'Scooby-Doo' film was a pretty solid disappointment. It was lazy with its writing, didn't seem to get how to cast its characters (aside from Shaggy and Scooby - who were spot-on), and left its audience feeling grossed out and dirty with its raunchy, bawdy humour. It was not for kids, to put it bluntly. Well, the 2004 sequel, while basically making all the same mistakes, sort of went too far in the opposite direction with its humour and aimed itself entirely at an almost toddler-aged audience. Picture what 'Batman & Robin' did to Batman and re-work that scenario with the Scooby-Doo franchise. So, after 14 years of live-action Scooby-Doo media, we still have not gotten what we want to see on the big screen. Maybe we could get a live-action 'Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island'?

20 Blade: Trinity

Not so bad because Parker Posey saves the film with her outstanding performance.

21 The Punisher
22 Alexander
23 Resident Evil: Apocalypse

I've never really been interested in this series. This and 'Underworld'.

24 Seed of Chucky

The series had such a unique thing going for the first number of movies. How did this happen? 'Bride of Chucky' was the 'Batman Forever' of the franchise, and you know what that makes this film.

25 Team America: Police World
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