10 Worst Film Comedies Since 2000

Before the Samuel L Jackson/Eugene Levy ‘comedy’ The Man reached multiplexes, Jackson suggested it be screened for victims of Hurricane Katrina, who protested that they’d already suffered enough. Having survived one disaster, they were in no mood to sit through 83 minutes of lame action and flatulence gags.

Joking aside, there really are comedies so flat and dispiriting that returning to reality feels like sweet relief. So far, 2016 has brought to mind the old Chinese curse (“May you live in interesting times”), but if you went to your local multiplex expecting to see a comedy you got Fifty Shades Of Black instead.

Although here's something funny; under normal circumstances that’s exactly the kind of movie that people like the late Roger Ebert would be singling out as evidence of mankind’s regression into hairy primates, but when seen alongside some of the year’s other movies, it’s “not that bad.”

Compare it to some of the worst offenders since 2000, and it looks like a collaboration between Stanley Kubrick and Peter Sellers...

When the talking apes that evolve from our species discover Scary Movie 5 among the rubble left in the wake of our demise, they will seal it so deep in their Forbidden Zone so that nobody – not Charlton Heston, not Roddy McDowall, nobody – can witness the true horror of moviegoing in the 21st Century.

What’s a sure sign that a movie is going to suck? When it opens with a Paranormal Activity spoof starring Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan. You see, they’re shooting a sex tape (uh oh) that turns sinister when it incorporates gymnastics, clowns and horse riding. Then Lindsay becomes possessed and yadda yadda yadda.

From such fumbled beginnings, Scary Movie 5 somehow manages to get even worse, attempting to spoof the Evil Dead (which hadn’t been released when this movie was in production) with Snoop Dogg. They’re not very funny parodies, so presumably the joke is in seeing what celebrities can be reduced to.