What were the most disappointing movies of 2005?

Cafe Society
1

Now I know we can do it by numbers but would quickly say Stealth or maybe the Island. From
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=2005&p=.htm

Stealth (2005)
Budget: $138,000,000
Domestic Gross: $31,704,416 (-106 million)

The Island (2005)
Budget: $122,200,000
Domestic Gross: $35,799,026 (-87 million)

A Sound of Thunder (2005)
Budget: $80,000,000
Domestic Gross: $1,897,575 (-78)

According to this site Stealth is the biggest Money loser of all time in absolute gross in unadjusted numbers, while A Sound of Thunder is number 18 all time in terms of poor ROI. The Island was clearly going to be DreamWorks no.2 (after WoW) major movie release this year – its second banana blockbuster/moneymaker and to lose money to that extent is a SHOCK.

Looking at that, Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man (budget exceeding the domestic gross by ~20 million) and Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven (budget exceeding Domestic gross by ~70million) kind of don’t look so bad in comparison….

But we can come down to hard numbers and pick one criteria to answer “most disappointing” more or less in a General Questions way.

Really though in Café Society, maybe taking that as one facet (or not), what do you see as the biggest disappointment in Movies this year?

For me it was Sahara. It lost money (68million domestic gross on a 130m budget). And I am not going to exaggerate for the sake of my thread and claim it was the worst movie I saw in a theater this year… but as a Dirk Pitt movie, long awaited and with A-list equivalent budget and with real movie Stars, it should have been on the level of a Bond or a Borne. THAT was what I expected – all that talk from Cussler for decades about not making a movie until he was sure the production would be first rate. It just wasn’t – Oh, they were clearly on location and I guess that ate the budget up because it “felt” like I was watching an episode of the A-team in the 80’s (maybe a very special 2 parter season finale) – I don’t want to be overly negative but that was my perception. I was VERY disappointed.

Kicking and Screaming is my number 2. It was marketed to kids. We go to every kid movie and so I took my then 6 year old because he ate up the commercials. It made money 52 million (on a 45 million production budget – almost 40% of the take was on the opening weekend which tells you something). But I soo freakin pissed. Ditka, Soccer, Will Ferell as a crazy Dad, a bunch of child misfits trying to be a team, were all the trailers in kids movies for months. That was the movie I paid $16 bucks for us to see on my day off. Well it was really a movie about Robert Duvall as Great Santini ; the mean as cr^p grandfather and abusive father and this huge “issue” movie between Ferrell and Duvall. ALL the funny parts were in the trailers, and then the insults came: 3 (!!!) music montages each cornier and more hackneyed than the next Vangelis’ theme from “Chariots of Fire,” Queen’s “We Are the Champions” and Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger,” set to the kids doing appropriate stuff.

Go ahead : Be a cornier than Kansas kids movie. Be a Father son Great Santini style movie. But **don’t be ** half-assed issue movie that is not funny – advertised and marketed to KIDS for crissake. It was only my number 2 disappointment because I didn’t look forward to it for decades like Sahara – but I felt suckerized and mislead and apologized to my kid who was bored by it.

2

I think it’s a bad idea to focus on how much money a movie loses at the box office domestically. Technically, no Hollywood movie “earns” money, because film studios have wacky accounting practices. Also, I’d be real surprised if Stealth and The Island didn’t close the gap with foreign and DVD sales.

Fantasia was in the red until its third or fourth theatrical release. So, IIRC, was Duck Soup. I wouldn’t call either “disappointing.” Frank Miller’s Sin City made money had over fist, and I was intensely disappointed with it.

3

Just curious: were you familiar with the source material (the graphic novels) before going to see it?

My biggest disappointment this year was Be Cool, a sequel to the great Get Shorty, with an excellent cast, but a crummy and pointless movie (and really obnoxious how it marketed Aerosmith and the Black Eyed Peas). The Rock and Vince Vaughn were very funny and entertaining in it, but the whole thing was a colossal waste of everyone involved.

I also disliked The Brothers Grimm, made by a director I love (Terry Gilliam) and what looked, from the trailer, like a period version of Ghostbusters or The Frighteners. Instead, it was a disjointed, poorly-paced mess, not scary, not exciting, and not any fun.

4

I don’t go to the movies to see graphic novels. I go to the movies to see movies. As a movie, Sin City was unholy bad. So was A History of Violence, for that matter. It doesn’t matter what they were like originally.

A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was another adaptation that should have been burned before it was ever put onto celluloid.

If you can’t refigure a movie for life as a movie, don’t remake it.

5

How do you figure? I’m not trying to pick a fight with you, in spite of our past posting histories. I know you appreciate a lot of good movies, so I’m curious why you hated it so.

6

Definitely A Sound of Thunder. I can’t believe I didn’t just walk out of the damn theater.

7

I was mildly disapointed by Sin City (unfamiliar with the source material), and very disappointed by Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

8

Wow. This one was so bad that I never even heard of it!

9

The leaden dialog could not be spoken by living and breathing human beings. The stylized imagery was often interesting, but was almost always undercut by the inability of the actors to convey any equivalent dimensionality. I’m not saying that their performances were bad: for the most part they were quite good. But real life is, in many ways, lived between the panels. This film was a series of highlights, i.e. the panels themselves, and that is insufficient for an effective film.

Some experiments work and some do not. This one was worth trying, but for me it was a flat failure.

10

I think the director took the common statement “Well, they can’t make a worse adaptation than the low budget mini-series” as a personal challenge. In that, he succeeded wildly.

I found Amityville Horror to be a fairly disappointing adaptation too. It wasn’t a bad horror movie, but it was rumored that it was going to be more faithful to the source material than the orginal movie, and “not a remake of the movie!” Yeah. Sure.

11

Most disappointing for me personally (that I saw) was Fantastic Four.

12

“Sin City” was the most disappointing movie I saw this year. I felt unclean after seeing it, and I simply cannot imagine subjecting myself to watching it again.

Granted, I haven’t seen any of the movies named in the OP, and it sounds like it wasn’t much of a loss for me to pass them up at the movie theater.

13

For me, The Baxter, a small film done by some of the State/Stella alumni and starring Michael Showalter (sp) and Michelle Williams.

The premise of the movie is that it is a romantic comedy from the perspective of the nebbishy loser who gets left at the alter when the female lead goes off with her one true love. Think Bill Pullman in Sleepless in Seattle. That’s what the movie itself tells you it is going to be, but what you get is a standard romantic comedy that pokes fun at romantic comedies. It’s a failure on every level.
To talk a bit more about Sin City, I watched it again just a few days ago and I really had a personal revelation about it. Sin City the movie and the graphic novels are really a parody of the noir comics of the time. Faulting the dialogue or performances in the movie is like faulting the dialogue in Airplane!

14

Hmm. It wasn’t meant to be so. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I like the graphic novels. They are intentionally over the top but regardless are intended to be devoid of any humour about themselves. The only, faint reference to self-mockery is the inclusion of a greasy barfly who resembles Marvel Comics’ Wolverine (a tough-guy character Miller has worked on in the past) .

15

I think King Kong probably has to be mentioned.

King Kong (2005)
Budget: $207,000,000 (estimated)
Domestic Gross: $66,181,645 (-141 million)

Of course, there’s still plenty of time in the theater for it to close the gap, but from a money standpoint it’s looking bleak. Of course with foreign box office, remaining theater time and DVD sales it’ll probably break even. Still, it seems like by most measures this film will be a disappointment. Even if not the biggest money loser.

I think based on expectations it certainly has to be at the top of the list for disappointments. I enjoyed the movie, though it had it’s flaws, but it appears that that breaking 3 hr. barrier was crippling.

FTR, I knew nothing about *Sin City going in and was certainly caught off guard by what it turned out to be. Still, I liked it. Even if you hated it I don’t think the movie had that high of expectations since everyone knew it was going to be a niche film with a limited audience. By that defineition it’s not a disappointment.

Personally, Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy was the most disappointing as a fan of the books, but I’m not sure many people expected it to do that well.

16

I was disappointed in Rent. It wasn’t dreadful by any means, but I thought more could have been done. As far as box office, it had a budget of about $40 million and has to date grossed $28 million, though with DVD and soundtrack it should make a profit. (OTOH, in a business infamous for movies that cost $50 million, gross $150 million and yet are “in the red” when it comes to passing out percentages [e.g. Chicago, Coming to America], who knows.)

While The Producers only opened wide this past week, its $4.5 million gross to date against a $45 million budget isn’t very promising. As far as aesthetically, I thought it could have been better (and probably will be on DVD) but as is I give it a B.

I was very disappointed in King Kong but I’m sure with international box office, home video, games and promotions it will turn a profit. Narnia has already made back its $180 million budget and I found it very disappointing as well, while Revenge of the Sith is of course a huge hit and imho is to the original trilogy what Godfather III is to Godfather I.

Monster in Law tripled its production budget in gross revenue but I don’t really know why- it’s a predictable plot, chemistry-less romantic couple, Wanda Sykes as a Hollywood stock “sassy black women don’t need good dialogue, they’re funny just being black and sassy” character and a phone-in from Jane Fonda.
Flightplan had great acting by Jodie but plot holes you could fly the world’s biggest passenger plane through. It’s taken in about $190 million foreign and domestic so I’m sure it’s a hit, but probably not as big as they’d hoped.

17

Well, you’re wrong. Domestic gross (according to boxofficemojo.com) is at $128,516,635. Plus overseas gross of $153,600,000 means that right now it’s grossed $282,116,635. In other words, it’s in the black already and it’s only been out a fortnight.

18

PS- Elizabethtown was a box office disappointment as well. People were hoping Orlando Bloom could carry a blockbuster without a sword in his hand but apparently he can’t yet. ($26 million gross/$45 million budget- seems like just yesterday I was wondering how on Earth Ishtar could spend $40 million on a movie without spaceships.) I didn’t see the movie so I can’t speak to its merits.

I’m surprised that Kingdom of Heaven only did $48 million domestic. It wasn’t a bad movie at all and had some really great action scenes and good performances. The overseas gross made it profitable at least.

19

Overpriced actors, I’m guessing. Serenity had spaceships and was made for $40 million dollars in todays money. That’s almost the entire budget just devoted to Jim Carrey’s salary in Fun with Dick and Jane.

20

I used the figures off IMDB which didn’t include overseas box office and figures which didn’t yet include the previous week. I never claimed it’d lose money, though it’s doing better than my impression had it, but I think it still qualifies as a disappointment. I’m sure Universal expected to be kissing the half a billion worldwide number by 2006.