There’s nothing quite as infuriating as someone hating something you love. It feels personal in a way that’s different than someone loving something you hate. So it is with some trepidation that I have compiled a list of my least favorite films of the 21st Century so far.  I rate every movie I see from 1-10 and this list consists of every movie since 1/1/2000 (I know, actually a year before the 21st Century began…) that I gave a rating of 5 stars or less.

Please don’t be offended if I didn’t share your love for a favorite film. These aren’t facts; they’re just opinions. And hey, maybe I was wrong. Maybe I need to give that film another chance. I probably won’t, but maybe I should. Maybe I was just having a bad day. Or maybe this is a truly terrible film. We may never know the answer, but I can live with that uncertainty. I hope you can too.

You’ll notice that certain types of films tend to crop up on my “least favorite films” list. For example, I find most modern comedies to be awful. Even if they provide some laughs, they come at the expense of credible characters, coherent scripts, and emotional richness.  I find that so many comedies in the past 30+ years are little more than SNL-type skits that someone padded out to 90 minutes. It might have been funny as five minutes on TV show, but sitting through a feature-length movie is a chore. Other frequent fliers are: overrated animated films that hope we’ll overlook the lack of substance because it’s cute and clever; by-the-numbers rom-coms; by-the-numbers action flicks; and science fiction films that, upon serious examination, make no sense (I can only suspend my disbelief so far – Chris Nolan, Wachowskis, I’m looking at you…).

Anyway, here’s the list (in chronological order, as per usual):

1. Meet the Parents (US, 2000) Dir: Jay Roach
2. Scary Movie (US, 2000) Dir: Keenen Ivory Wayans
3. Bamboozled (US, 2000) Dir: Spike Lee
4. The Matrix Reloaded (US, 2003) Dir: Lilly Wachowski & Lana Wachowski
5. The Matrix Revolutions (US, 2003) Dir: Lilly Wachowski & Lana Wachowski
6. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (US, 2003) Dir: Gore Verbinski
7. Gothika (US, 2003) Dir: Mathieu Kassovitz
8. Spanglish (US, 2004) Dir: James L. Brooks
9. National Treasure (US, 2004) Dir: Jon Turteltaub
10. The Village (US, 2004) Dir: M. Night Shyamalan
11. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (US, 2004) Dir: Adam McKay
12. Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (US, 2004) Dir: Brad Silberling
13. Collateral (US, 2004) Dir: Michael Mann
14. Spider-Man 2 (US, 2004) Dir: Sam Raimi
15. The Stepford Wives (US, 2004) Dir: Frank Oz
16. King Kong (New Zealand/US, 2005) Dir: Peter Jackson
17. Wedding Crashers (US, 2005) Dir: David Dobkin
18. The Upside of Anger (US, 2005) Dir: Mike Binder
19. Notes on a Scandal (UK, 2006) Dir: Richard Eyre
20. Happy Feet (US/Australia, 2006) Dir: George Miller
21. The Break-Up (US, 2006) Dir: Peyton Reed
22. The Mist (US, 2007) Dir: Frank Darabont
23. Ratatouille (US, 2007) Dir: Brad Bird
24. Live Free or Die Hard (US, 2007) Dir: Len Wiseman
25. Next (US, 2007) Dir: Lee Tamahori
26. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (UK/US, 2007) Dir: Tim Burton
27. Evan Almighty (US, 2007) Dir: Tom Shadyac
28. WALL·E (US, 2008) Dir: Andrew Stanton
29. The Hangover (US, 2009) Dir: Todd Phillips
30. Taking Woodstock (US, 2009) Dir: Ang Lee
31. Up (US, 2009) Dir: Pete Docter
32. Avatar (US, 2009) Dir: James Cameron
33. He’s Just Not That Into You (US/Germany, 2009) Dir: Ken Kwapis
34. Inception (US/UK, 2010) Dir: Christopher Nolan
35. Source Code (US/France, 2011) Dir: Duncan Jones
36. Cedar Rapids (US, 2011) Dir: Miguel Arteta
37. House at the End of the Street (US, 2012) Dir: Mark Tonderai
38. The Equalizer (US, 2014) Dir: Antoine Fuqua
39. The Endless (US, 2017) Dir: Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead
40. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (US/UK, 2020) Dir: Jason Woliner
41. A Man Called Otto (US, 2022) Dir: Marc Forster
42. Hundreds of Beavers (US, 2022) Dir: Mike Cheslik
43. Saltburn (UK/US, 2023) Dir: Emerald Fennell
44. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (US, 2025) Dir: Christopher McQuarrie