Kevin James Must Be Stopped

The Golden Raspberries, or “Razzies,” are given annually to the worst that Hollywood has to offer.  Awarded the day before the Oscars, the 36^th annual Razzies will be presented this Saturday evening, given to a handful of deserving actors, directors and screen writers, each of whom I’d imagine won’t show up to receive their fist-sized golden trophies for a special place in cinema ignominy.

With this year’s Oscars apparently devoid of racial equality, I embrace the Razzies for welcoming cinematic efforts of all hues, from turgid movies to terrible performances to laughable screenplays to onsite couples with zero chemistry.  Nominees compete in nine categories, and with a handful of truly cruddy movies released in 2015, there are sixteen films that divided all forty five nominations between them.  Watching all sixteen could have plunged me into the bowels of insanity, so I first narrowed down my choices to any film with multiple nominations (sorry, Human Centipede 3 –Worst Picture only isn’t good enough), leaving seven films with at least three Razzie nominations each.  I took Mordecai, a Johnny Depp-Gwyneth Paltrow turd of a film and Alvin and the Chipmunks 9 – Into the Wood Chipper off the list and landed on five Razzie-nominated films, two with five nominations (Pixels and Fantastic 4) and three with six total nods (Paul Blart Mall Cop 2, Jupiter Ascending and 50 Shades of Grey).  I then braced myself and watched every second of these non-masterpieces.

Viewing ten-plus hours of celluloid dreck wasn’t easy, the saving grace being able to watch them from home where I clutched my therapy pillow and wept for this nation’s future.  Here are my impressions of each and my prediction for who’ll be Saturday night’s big loser.

Paul Blart Mall Cop 2 – when ruminating upon this, I recall the words of Chinese philosopher Confucius, who wrote, “Why a second bag of dog poop when the first has ruined your sandal?”  PBMC2 stars Kevin James, he this year’s thrice-nominated Razzie actor (Paul Blart, the President in Pixels and Channing Tatum’s left bicep in Jupiter Ascending), doing his mustachioed Segway-riding mall cop routine who gets tangled in the middle of a Las Vegas art heist.  I’d feared Kevin James from afar for a decade, avoiding his nine-season run on The King of Queens like I’ve avoided cottage cheese and ground hornets.  Sadly, Mr. James was unavoidable in this movie, rolling on the floor, eating with a vibrating fork, hiding in luggage and uttering the line, “Always bet on Blart.”  You know a movie’s beyond redemption when its best line is stolen from an equally bad movie from 1992 starring tax-dodger Wesley Snipes.  This film’s finest performance was given by a peacock trying to peck Kevin James’ eyes out.  I’d like to think the large, flightless bird wasn’t acting.

50 Shades of Grey – let me get this straight – it’s OK for a member of the 1%, a billionaire with a helicopter and chauffeur, to say things to a woman like, “I exercise control in all things,” and “I enjoy various physical pursuits,” as he ties her up, whips her and demands she sign a weird sex contract to be his bondage slave/roommate?  We men in the remaining 99% who drive 2003 Honda Accords and lust for Pizza Night at Planet Fitness would be arrested as malingering perverts the moment we mentioned zip ties and duct tape in the same sentence.  Thanks Trump.  I saw this alone in my basement on Valentine’s Day, qualifying me for the Paul Blart Loser of the Year Award.  Even the supposed scintillating moments were tedious - I’ve watched better sex scenes on Meet the Press. 

Fantastic Four – Just stop it.  For God’s sake, stop.

Jupiter Ascending – When the brother-sister director team of Lana and Andy Wachowksi said, “Let’s make a movie about a maid from Chicago and a wolf-hybrid man soldier from outer space with jet-powered roller blades and anger issues,” I bet the Key Grip asked for his cash up front.  The Jupiter-based royal family at the center of this drama is named after a Santana album (“Abraxas”), and I now realize “Oye Como Va” really means “crap movie” in Spanish.  Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum struggle with boilerplate dialogue like, “We’re not getting off this planet without a fight,” and “We all do things we can’t explain,” which is what the cast of this rancid dreck will be saying for years to come.

Pixels – Growing up on Long Island I watched a lot of movies on TV – the Million Dollar Movie on Channel 9, the 4:30 Movie on ABC and the Sunday movies on WPIX, Channel 11 – and I never understood the appeal of Jerry Lewis.  The Nutty Professor, Cinderfella, The Bellboy – I’d see these films over and over, wondering why people loved Jerry so much.  The movies were silly, in a forced, annoying way, but I’d heard the French just loved him so I let it go – maybe there was a deeper meaning to Jerry’s goofball antics I was too young to understand.  I’ve often wondered what the obsession is with Adam Sandler as well.  Is he this generation’s Jerry Lewis?  Inane movies with thin plots, lots of bad dialogue and terrible acting are Adam’s trademark.  Maybe there’s a secret film appreciation society in the basement of le Bibliotheque de la Sorbonne, where beret-wearing scholars debate the religious subtext of Happy Gilmore’s plot or the subtle socio-political messages of You Don’t Mess with the Zohan.  After watching the two-hour kidney stone of a movie that was Pixels, I’m convinced Adam Sandler is no Jerry Lewis and should be encouraged to take up pig farming.  Pixels has a compelling popcorn-movie premise – aliens interpret ‘80s video game transmissions as hostile acts and send real-life versions of Pac Man, Frogger, Centipede and other arcade favorites to conquer earth.  And then Kevin James shows up and the movie descends into disconnected chaos, breaks in plot logic, predictable dialogue (“See you on the other side”?) and Peter Dinklage of Game of Thrones fame reminding us that buckets of money will always convince good actors to make bad decisions.

               I predict a huge night for Kevin James – if he doesn’t win Worst Supporting Actor for his turn as a hapless President in Pixels, he’ll take home the Golden Raspberry for his best actor efforts as an equally inept mall cop in Paul Blart 2.  Perhaps Kevin will stride onto the stage, accept his trophy and promise to join his buddy Adam on a pig farm somewhere far away from Hollywood.  Only then will we be free.