Top 5 Duds of 2010

And they are:
- PCK The Movie
- Happy Go Lucky (福星到)
- Vampires Suck
- Future X-Cops (未来警察 / Mei Loi Ging Chaat)
- Like Sunshine After Rain

Well I know I'm supposed to come up with 10, but these were the films that stood out amongst the worst lot this year by a mile and beyond, that it's not much of a point to rank them since they're all bad and should not be touched with a ten foot pole unless you have too much time on your hands.

While the arthouse films of Singapore continue to stem their mark around the world, the local commercial fare contributed 3 amongst the five here, although Like Sunshine After Rain was on a limited theatrical release in an exclusive showcase at Sinema Old School. While bona fide filmmakers here have almost always mentioned budgeting being a constant challenge, I wonder how money got thrown at making PCK The Movie, where the characters have clearly outstayed their welcome, and should have been retired rather than given the privilege of showing up on the silver screen. Use your brain indeed, a non-existing one that is if you have to sit through this at any point in time.

Big names don't guarantee instant film success if the story is bad to begin with, such as Fann Wong, Richard Low and Patricia Mok (well, as far as local content go) in Happy Go Lucky, which was at best a scatterbrain premise that relied too much on Fann's saccharine, permanent smile and constant abuse as the Cinderella type by characters played by Low and Mok. Or the question of how even Andy Lau found himself stuck with Future X-Cops, a big surprise he could actually nod in agreement to make a stinker of a Wong Jing film that spoofed Hollywood only with genuinely bad effects that were laughable at best.

Speaking of spoofs, someone should already cancel all credit lines to Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, who continue to make mindless, unfunny spoofs of whatever popular genre is out in the market today. Filling one's film with impersonators galore who look far from the real deal, bad lines and tasteless jokes (if one can call them that) reeks of desperation, and one wonders if they have a trust fund to continue with their bad filmmaking exploits, if not only to become a classroom case study in years to come on how not to make movies.

Collectively, this group of films should best be forgotten they even existed in 2010.