Top 2020 Movies to Avoid
As we begin a brand new year, it’s that time again where we give you our recommendations and our warnings for the coming year’s theatrical slate. This year’s slate is sans an Avengers or Star Wars movie but there’s still lots of good and an awful lot of potential bad movies to bring your attention to here. To start things off, let’s take a look at the 2020 movies you should definitely be running away from.
Dolittle (January 17)
There’s a term in Hollywood for the first two months of the year and it’s ‘deadzone’. Basically, studios try to squeak in their most subpar films to try to capitalize on the fact that there’s nothing else going on to squeeze a few extra dollars out on a project that would get buried during any other time of the year.
Which brings us to Robert Downey Jr’s first post Iron Man role – a retelling of the classic Doctor Dolittle story. RDJ’s star has never been stronger and he can carry any film he decides to but there’s, uh, something off about this one. AKA it looks awful. The list of stars is as long as my arm but my interest in seeing this movie couldn’t be shorter. The trailer lacks charm (which is RDJ’s strength), humor (which is odd since it’s supposed to be a comedy), and it seems like the ads are aimed at the parents of the children who are the key demographic of this one. Maybe it’ll bring home some serious dollars but I’m going to predict it’s going to also bring home some seriously bad reviews.
Sonic the Hedgehog (February 14)
Earlier this year the trailer for the extremely long gestating Sonic movie finally dropped and the character design was nightmare fuel – something I kind of think was done on purpose. The re-edit and redesign were done in a suspiciously short period of time and then the company who did the work went belly up in a suspiciously short span of time immediately after. This all points to a publicity stunt in my books as everyone did their best to ensure that everyone was talking about Sonic the Hedgehog for the first time in 20 years.
There’s nothing wrong with this trailer per say but it’s just something my gut is telling me. The jokes Jim Carey delivers aren’t really good and there’s a certain lack of cuteness which normally makes these types of movies excel. It all just seems to be missing a certain je ne sais quoi that makes me think this movie is going to be a rough ride.
The Invisible Man (February 28)
Does everyone remember when Marvel was riding high and every god damn movie studio on the planet decided they were all going to cash in on a connected universe? Well, a lot of those companies lost an absolute ton of money building a series of very expensive films about characters that no one cared if they were in each other’s movies or not. Universal, of course, is one of the biggest losers of this gamble, but god bless them, they’re pushing forward anyway!
And true to form, they have replicated the formula used on The Mummy (which actually wasn’t terrible) and made the titular character the villain. Because that’s how you build a franchise. Why am I investing in a character if he’s the villain who is going to be defeated by the actual star, whoever the hell the other person is? Also, this was initially supposed to be a Johnny Depp vehicle but Depp got off that train faster than his marriage to Amber Heard ended and I feel like that’s a good warning to us all. Basically, this psuedo horror is going to sully a great story and potentially ruin Elizabeth Moss’ film career.