2010 in Retrospect: The Notable Disappointments

Clockwise from top left: Robin Hood, Alice in Wonderland, The Expendables, Salt, Dear John

Like any other year, 2010 cinema had its notable disappointments. Being a disappointment doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad film; but people truly expected these films to be better.

The biggest disappointment in my opinion was Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. It was one of my most anticipated films of the year, and the trailers and advertisements looked fantastic. Unfortunately, while the CGI and character designs were top-notch, the story turned out to be too ordinary, and the ending was merely a twisted crossover of The Lord of the Rings and Narnia. Johnny Depp stands out as the Mad Hatter but lacks his charisma as Captain Jack Sparrow, and his weird dance at the end of the film is embarrassing to look at. And while the movie looked amazing in IMAX, the 3D effect was underwhelming since it was merely converted to 3D in post-production, unlike Avatar or Tron: Legacy. Ironically, Alice was one of the biggest successes for Disney this year, grossing more than a billion dollars worldwide and snagging multiple (undeserved) Golden Globe nominations. Life is unfair: I found Disney’s other big-budget live-action film Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time to be relatively more enjoyable than Alice, but that underperformed at the box office.

I wonder why people never get tired of remaking/reimagining the classic tale Robin Hood, but that’s what director Ridley Scott churned out this year. With Russell Crowe as a slightly old Robin Hood, this could have been another solid epic like Gladiator. The end result? Not bad by any means, but there’s not much worth praising either, even for a film its genre. It’s not as emotional as Braveheart and not as exciting as the last major Robin Hood feature film: 1991’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, starring Kevin Costner. While that film wasn’t exceptionally good, it’s at least more fun and satisfying than this 2010 incarnation that takes itself too seriously. It’s a passable but unmemorable piece of work.

Another big disappointment is the Angelina Jolie vehicle Salt. It starts out as a potentially good thriller – the secret agents’ pursuit of Angelina is pretty exciting – but from that point onwards the film just drags on, with boring clichés and an uninteresting, predictable twist, at least in my opinion. It’s not even worth appreciating as a normal popcorn flick.

Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables was a missed opportunity since its cast is full of legendary action stars. Not that I expected it would be a deep and meaningful movie, but by macho action film standards it isn’t particularly thrilling or entertaining either. Honestly, I enjoyed the Arnold Schwarzenegger cameo more than anything.

The final movie I want to mention is not a disappointment, per se, since I never expected it to be really good. Still, it holds a special place in my heart as the worst movie of 2010… Dear John, based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks. I’m not one of those chick flick haters, mind you – I do enjoy films like Love Actually, Music and Lyrics and The Notebook (which happens to be from Nicholas Sparks too) – but Dear John is just plain bad. It tries terribly hard to be tender and touching, but achieves neither and only comes along as pretentious. I like Amanda Seyfried, but she is wasted here with expressionless hunk Channing Tatum. Our lead characters have no chemistry whatsoever, and the development of the story is forced and pointless. Even an average rom-com is better than this.

OK, enough with the sub-par movies; next up will be my top ten films of 2010.