Five worst films of 2022

As cinemas continued to reopen following Covid shutdowns, there were high hopes for the silver screen in 2022.

While some new films have delighted audiences and critics alike, others have been less successful, including a “crass” buddy movie, a “bland” Stephen King adaptation and a “mansplaining” revenge story.

Me Time

This ‘buddy’ movie features Kevin Hart and Mark Wahlberg as two old friends reconnecting for a wild weekend. But the stars are “clearly winging it” in this “dim-witted and disposable” effort, wrote Peter Travers for ABC News.

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In a movie where Hart “projectile vomits, defecates on a bed and is cradled like a pet”, wrote Amy Nicholson for Variety, his “greatest indignity comes at the climax when… he’s forced to pretend this is an emotional drama worthy of a big speech about the life lessons he’s learned”.

Jake Cunningham of Empire said Me Time “takes an interesting family dynamic and hides it under crass jokes and hackneyed stunts”.

The King’s Daughter

Pierce Brosnan stars as King Louis XIV, whose quest for immortality leads him to steal a mermaid’s life force. Unfortunately, The King’s Daughter has not stolen too many hearts. “This isn’t one of those films that’s so bad it’s good,” said Looper, “it’s just straight-up bad. And we mean bad.”

In the Independent, AP’s film critic Mark Kennedy felt it was even worse than that. “It isn’t just bad, it’s a cloying, cliched mess that’s not worth even the slightest risk of contacting Covid-19 to see,” he wrote. The movie “starts at an 11 on the bonkers scale, and unfortunately, there’s nowhere to go from there but down,” said Katie Walsh of the Wyoming News.

Firestarter

“No one here seems to know what they’re doing and, more importantly, why,” wrote Benjamin Lee for The Guardian, as he declared that Firestarter is a “strong contender for 2022’s most pointless movie”.

This remake of the 1984 adaptation of the Stephen King novel, in which a young girl tries to understand how she gained the power to set things on fire with her mind, left critics feeling rather cold.

It is a “bland retelling”, wrote Matt Fowler for IGN, describing the film as “muted and dry”, “stifled” and an “eye-yawn”. However, we may not have heard the last of it: director Keith Thomas told ComicBook that there are plans to turn Firestarter into a franchise.

Jurassic World Dominion

The sixth instalment in the Jurassic Park franchise “feels like a contractual obligation at best, and a D.O.A. attempt to wring one last drop out of an already depleted brand at worst”, wrote David Fear for Rolling Stone.

In the Jewish Chronicle, Linda Marric said the dinosaur flick is “too long and too incoherent”, and “also manages to be very boring”. The storyline, which has dinosaurs living alongside humans, is “too preposterous even for a franchise that has demanded that we suspend disbelief for the last 3 decades”, she added. “Dismal,” said The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin.

Asking for It

Asking for It is “the most inept #MeToo movie yet”, said Paste magazine. It centres on a small town waitress who is sexually assaulted and befriends a mysterious stranger who introduces her to a vengeful, all femme gang.

The film is as “subtle as a sledgehammer” and “shallow as a saucer”, said Jeannette Catsoulis in The New York Times. It “feels like a mansplaining version of what a modern revenge thriller should be,” said Ferdosa in Screen Rant. Roger Ebert wasn’t blown away by it, either: he found it “pitifully underwhelming”.