The Wandering Fox's Least Favourite Movies

Written by The Wandering Fox

The Wandering Fox sighs after watching a movie he didn’t like.

“Ugh. Just….what on this Earth did I watch?”

You know how you have films which are so bad you just wish you can rinse your brain dry? I have those films, they just make me think of all the effort these films could’ve had if it was in for way better stuff than what we got. Honestly, I’m just baffled at how these films were even allowed to go to film experts and they told them they can make it.

If you like these films then I’m sorry, but I just hate them. I’m the Wandering Fox and these are films which I just have to tell you are utterly terrible.

We start with:

Nativity 2

Oh yeah, we all love a Christmas film, don’t we? Christmas is about, fun, love, helping others, as well as thankful to have your family. There are many Christmas comedies which tends to spice things up. Or you get a waste of good filmmaking and wrecking the holiday spirit with Nativity 2. I haven’t seen the first film though of what I’ve researched it’s bloody terrible. I had the unfortunate chance of watching this film on a school cinema day out and my goodness I wanted to dart out of the cinema.

Nativity 2 sees the living man child Mr Poppy bully and abduct teacher Mr Peterson and his school class to go to a school nativity he and the class had made. I was watching this entire film thinking “How on Earth did Mr Poppy not get arrested? Mr Peterson, deck him on the floor! How come Mr Poppy’s auntie is enabling him!? How come David Tennant took part in this film!?”

The whole film sees Mr Peterson suffer at the hands of Mr Poppy who gaslights him in letting the kids do their nativity all the while Mr Peterson is trying to be a proper teacher, he’s trying to help his heavily pregnant wife, trying to live up to his dad’s standards and do himself better than his twin. Mr Peterson own phone is destroyed by Mr Poppy and it was his only way of checking on his wife, who’s now worried at what’s going on. Every scene Mr Poppy is in I wanted to arrest him for all the crimes he committed, he abducted a man and a class of kids, drove them in the middle of nowhere, destroyed his mobile phone, honestly if I was a kid I’d be crying and begging to be let home. Yet the film tries to have everything Mr Poppy does as a good thing, even him gaslighting Mr Peterson in how he’s just acting like his dad just cos he’s trying to be a good teacher.

The only good things in this are David Tennant, the scene where he’s playing the twins together. That’s it. Those are the only good things. I think David did this for the money, he was struggling to find work after he left Doctor Who. I wouldn’t be stunned if he’s told his children to never watch this film, why have them watch a film where a man child farts in his face?

The guys who made these films can happily say “Oh, but our films made a lot of money”. Uh, yeah, thing is you had this on at Christmas, the cinema is busy during Christmas. And besides, we know bad films make lots of money. I seriously would like to talk to those who made these films and ask them what had them think Mr Poppy was right? Come on, come talk to me.

This film ought to be tossed aside and Mr Poppy deserves to go to jail.

Coming up, we have…oh, another David Tennant film.

What We Did on Our Holiday

Oh golly, what do we have here? A film starring David Tennant, Rosamund Pike, Ben Miller and Billy Connolly. What could make this a bad film? Oh yeah, that’s right, focus it on idiot children with bad writing and mean-spirited families. Then again this was made by who made Outnumbered, of course it’s going to be mean spirited.

The story sees David and Rosamund playing Doug and Abi, going through a separation, taking their kids to Scotland to see Doug’s father as he’s dying, and the family are having a huge get together. It honestly does sound like a decent film, a struggling mother and father trying to be strong for their kids and their granddad. Only instead this film has by far the most mean-spirited take on it, including trying to write these badly behaved children as if they’re good kids.

The film also thinks it’s funny to make fun of people suffering depression and having an anxiety breakdown as we see with Margaret, her anxiety breakdown is exposed on the internet and is played for laughs. Then there’s her son Kenneth, he’s obviously autistic which I have no issue with as I’m autistic myself, but the film has him frowned upon by his dad and family with his autism. How lovely. Or how Doug’s dad and a friend of his try to explain to the kids “Lesbians come from a magical world called Lesbania”. Ugh. Look, I’ve got twin nieces who are younger than the kids in this film and they know lesbians are humans and don’t deserve babying.

The film sees Doug’s dad die while he’s on a day out with his grandchildren at the beach. In his haziness he asks for a Viking funeral. The children do end up burning his body and send him out to sea, they tell their family what they did and it ends up catching the attention of the police, social services. Doug’s brother does call out the children for what they did though he’s portrayed as being in the wrong, the social services woman won’t take the kids away after the daughter basically yells “Grandad wouldn’t want us fighting”. I’m sorry, what on Earth made the writers think this was an awesome idea!? The children oughta have been taken away, Margaret oughta have divorced her husband, Kenneth deserves a better family, and the ostriches oughta have not been in the film. Quit making films which says bad behaviour in kids is fine. It’s not.

Ooooooookay, going into the horror section now, we have.

Carved

The film adapts an indie film of the same title, and it sees a pumpkin come to life and kill those who carve pumpkins. I saw the synopsis and thought it was going to be a fun cheesy horror film which would have some fine jokes in there as well as quirky characters. Instead, what I got was a badly acted film with characters as stereotypical as you can get, mid CGI and a snail pace of a film.

The film fails at being a comedy horror which Scream succeeded at. Unlike Scream which good acting, memorable characters and throwing in jabs at slasher films while keeping an intriguing plot, Carved has characters who are just there as stereotypes. You have.

• The guy who smokes weed and is high off his arse. It’s all his character is.

• The “trope expert” who survives, who knows everything about horror tropes and knows how pumpkins work.

• The love interest who causes weariness as he is going to get a job far from home.

• The mayor who doesn’t care about the chemicals infecting the crops and wants to focus on the season celebration.

• The kid.

The jokes are like a wet fart as they aren’t delivered with gravitas or snark as they’re done by bad actors, the evil pumpkin just works like a big spider with its physical walks and even the more creative kills just look like it was done weakly. Then you have actors in there who just ham it up for the sake of it. The acting is so bad that during a chase scene, the van crashes and the driver gets sent flying out of the window, only his scream is just...bad. Like the actor knew he was in a bad movie he couldn’t bother doing a true scream. If I had the scene itself, you’d see it.

Then we get the ending which is meant to be comical but it’s kinda strange. The evil pumpkin has baby pumpkins which the surviving cast chop up. It’s strange. The baby pumpkins did try eating the boy, then you have the survivors massacre the babies who are all screaming. I don’t know, it’s just odd.

Do yourself a favour, don’t watch a film like this.

Up next we go onto anime. We have...

Suzume

I think this is going to upset a lot of those, and hey, if you like the film, that’s fine. I will give the film credit, it’s animated beautifully, and the voice acting is good. I just don’t like the story. You know how there’s the whole “Oh we just met, I love you” trope? This film takes it and doesn’t do much with it, or it tries to, and it falls apart. Then there’s a time travel moment at the climax which has me scratching my head in wonder.

Suzume is a young teenage girl who lost her mother during a weather incident and is living with her father. Then on her way to school she bumps into a man called Souta, who asks for the abandoned theme park. Suzume instantly falls for him and goes after him, she finds a door which is a gateway to a Wyrm which causes natural disasters. She takes out the Keystone which turns into a cat and runs away. Souta helps her close the door though there is an earthquake. While tending to Souta, Suzume is found by the cat who traps Souta in the little wooden chair Suzume’s mum made for her. They have to chase the cat across the country to restore Souta’s body and seal the gateways.

I was liking the film up until we get to Souta being trapped as a Keystone and the cat, Daijin, is happy to be free and wants to be Suzume’s cat. As a cat lover, I didn’t like what happened next. Suzume obviously gets angry and yells at Daijin and wants Souta back. Suzume’s aunt goes with her to rescue Souta and Daijin gives up his freedom to become the Keystone again and says he’s sorry he couldn’t be her cat. Then the film ends with Souta leaving, without even having a relationship with Suzume.

I felt like I wasted my time, and I felt I was battered for caring about Daijin. Yes, Daijin replacing Souta in his place is screwed up, but the problem is this: Souta is an adult. Suzume is a teenager. He’s stuck in the form of a wooden chair and can’t do much, whatever there is with Suzume’s development he’s hardly there for it. And we’re meant to accept he feels she’s the most wonderful person he’s met when we’ve hardly got things from his perspective? Then there’s the fact he lives a life without being settled, it’s kind of toxic and Suzume is willing to give up her life for a guy who she’s just met and is way older than her then the guy leaves!

If you were to think about it, this is like a bad guy winning story. Daijin and other animals are trapped in the form of little statues and can’t move, Daijin is a kitten, Souta and his family keep these animals trapped, you have Daijin who wanted to be free and be somebody’s animal, then Souta has an ordinary lady obeying him and almost risks her life to save him.

This isn’t like Doctor Who in which the Fifth Doctor gives up his life to save Peri who he’s only just met, cos it’s the Doctor, he’s a good guy who does his bloody hardest to save everybody and saving this woman he’s met is how selfless the Doctor can be. This isn’t like Princess Mononoke in which the romantic elements with Ashitaka and San are cleverly woven in the story and makes sense with the characters. This is a girl who’s screwed up her whole life to help a man who ends up buggering off, stressed her auntie out, didn’t have as much to do with the guy.

Lastly, the time travel thing. I’m honestly confused by it. Suzume goes back in time to the day her mum died, taking her chair and giving it to her younger self. This is the same chair Suzume’s mum made, the same one which Suzume had. What happened to its original form? How can Suzume have grown up having it and then giving it to her younger self? Where was the chair at this point in Suzume’s childhood while her mum died?

Im confused.

I’ll thank the movie for this. Its treatment of cats had me seek out anime in which cats are loved. I found My Roommate is a Cat. Love that anime, I suggest you check out that if you love cats.

Up next we have, finally...

Cobweb

Cobweb is interesting as I don’t exactly hate it, I think it has a decent idea, the problem is how the story is even blooming told.

The film sees young boy Peter living a lonely life with his protective parents, it’s coming to Halloween, and they don’t want him going out on Halloween. Then he starts to hear a girl in his walls. The girl tells him his parents can’t be trusted, then explains she’s Peter’s older sister Sarah. In the film Sarah helps Peter in freeing her, only it’s revealed she’s way more sinister than he thought.

The film wants Peter to free Sarah, though how it gets there is strange. The film tries to have it so their parents are just being protective of Peter and they love him, but the film has to try and have Peter distrust them to help Sarah, hence it ends up portraying them as quite abusive to Peter by trapping him in the basement and scaring away his concerned teacher. The film obviously has it known they had a good reason to have Sarah locked up as she’s a killer, killing the school bullies who come inside the house, eating them, tearing them in half and she tried killing the teacher. Sarah also didn’t want to help Peter, in fact she was envious of him, for Sarah was born with a disfigurement and her mum and dad locked her inside the walls. Sarah hates Peter as he got all the love, though if Sarah had listened as the film tells us, she knows Peter wasn’t treated well by his mum and dad either.

Hence we get a mess of a film. I like bits of it, but it could’ve honestly been better.

There are other movies I do not like though it’s these I wanted to talk about. I hope I didn’t waste you in reading this. I’m the Wandering Fox and I will see you later.