Does Anybody Do Negative Reviews Better than A.O. Scott?

· Good Luck Chuck (Sept. 21, 2007)

"What passes for cleverness is the movie's central conceit: Chuck (that would be [Dane] Cook) suffers under a curse that causes every woman he goes to bed with to fall in love with the next guy who asks her out. When the local ladies find out about this, Chuck gets a lot of action, but then -- after a long, split-screen montage of his priapic exertions -- he starts to feel empty and used. Me too. But if the logic of Good Luck Chuck holds, the next movie I see should be a masterpiece."

· The Love Guru (June 20, 2008)

"The word 'unfunny' surely applies to Mr. Myers's obnoxious attempts to find mirth in physical and cultural differences but does not quite capture the strenuous unpleasantness of his performance. No, The Love Guru is downright antifunny, an experience that makes you wonder if you will ever laugh again. And this is, come to think of it, something of an achievement. What is the opposite of a belly laugh? An interesting question, in a way, and to hear lines like "I think I just made a happy wee-wee" or "I'm making diarrhea noises in my cup" or to watch apprentice gurus attack one another with urine-soaked mops is to grasp the answer. Please don't misunderstand: I'm not opposed to infantile, regressive, scatological humor. Indeed, I consider myself something of a connoisseur. Or maybe a glutton. So it's not that I object to the idea of, say, witnessing elephants copulate on the ice in the middle of a Stanley Cup hockey match, or seeing a dwarf sent flying over the same ice by the shock of defibrillator paddles. But it will never be enough simply to do such things. They must be done well."

· Seven Pounds (Dec. 19, 2008)

"So instead of spelling out what happens in Seven Pounds, I'll just pluck a few key words and phrases from my notes, and arrange them in the kind of artful disorder Mr. Muccino seems to favor (feel free to start crying any time): Eggplant parmesan. Printing press. Lung. Bone marrow. Eye transplant. Rosario Dawson. Great Dane. Banana peel. Jellyfish (but you knew that already). Car accident. Congestive heart failure.

"Huh? What the ... ? Hang on. What's he doing? Why? Who does he think he is? Jesus! That last, by the way, is not an exclamation of shock but rather an answer to the preceding question, posed with reference to [Will] Smith."

· Leap Year (Jan. 8, 2010)

"What makes Leap Year so singularly dispiriting is precisely that it is bad without dis
tinction -- so witless, charmless and unimaginative that it can be described as a movie only in a strictly technical sense. [... The lead characters'] initial antagonism might be promising -- hostility is often the catalyst for romantic-comedy bliss -- if either one did or said anything funny, clever, provocative or even slightly memorable. Instead there are exchanges like the following, on the subject of the supposed tradition that gives this movie its title.

"Declan: It's a load of poo.

"Anna: No it isn't. It's romantic.

"Much as one hates to contradict a lady, the gentleman has a point."

· MacGruber (May 22, 2010)

"Good morning, class. Welcome back to 'Advanced Topics in the Ontology of Cinema.' Today's lecture is on MacGruber, a film that poses a philosophical question fundamental to our inquiry here, namely: 'Why does this exist?' [...] The law of diminishing returns is enforced so stringently that the movie succeeds not only in negating its own comedy, but its very being. Thus 'Why does this film exist?' turns out to be a trick question, because as we have conclusively demonstrated here, MacGruber does not, at least within the ontological parameters elaborated by this course, exist at all. Class dismissed."

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