Sandler Slam: Peter Travers on Summer’s Worst Movies
Brace yourselves for a lot of bad movies: Making up for lost time (and vengeance) after a vacation break, Rolling Stone‘s film critic Peter Travers packs two months worth of scum into one four-minute package, breaking down the 10 worst movies of June and July.
First up is Entourage, a film sequel to the popular HBO comedy. “I ask one question about that: Were all of us who were fans of the show the first couple of season really waiting for a movie version of Entourage?” Travers asks. “The fans answered, and they said, ‘No.’ Nobody wanted it.” Next is the flat-lining Self-Less, which stars a dying Ben Kinglsey who “wants his brain and spirit to now live in the body of Ryan Reynolds.” And clichés run rampant in the dog-starring Max, which Travers says “pull(s) every tear-jerking trick in the book. And after about the 100th trick, I just said, ‘Don’t do this. Stop.'”
Travers isn’t happy about Boulevard, because it stars the late Robin Williams in final screen performance. Our critic praises the actor, who plays a married man hiding his homosexuality, but calls the movie a “tired cliche and a sad way for him to end a really distinguished career.” He’s also gunning for Southpaw, which stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a down-on-his-luck fighter making a comeback. Travers grants the leading man some scum-bucket immunity, though he doesn’t spare the film from a few sucker punches. And while our critic was impressed overall with action bluster of Terminator Genisys in his initial review, he remains bewildered by the actual plot: “Did anyone understand a word of what was happening?”
There’s also Channing Tatum’s stripper fiasco Magic Mike XXL, which Travers says “just didn’t rise to the occasion.” But it fares better than the Despicable Me spin-off Minions: “Now the minions are the whole movie, and I’m sad to say they can’t carry it!” he snaps. Our critic says the Ed Helms-starring revival of road comedy Vacation feels like a lukewarm retread, with jokes that “just smack of desperation.”
But for pure, unfiltered vitriol, look no further than Adam Sandler’s sci-fi comedy Pixels. “To me, this movie is a metaphor for everything wrong with movies,” Travers says.