Everyone in the world is the best at something. For our team, that something is watching god-awful movies. We’re spotlighting the movies that don’t get the credit they deserve for their ineptitude; 25% maximum Rotten Tomatoes score.
When you self-identify as a connoisseur of awful cinema, you begin to categorize the different classes of trainwrecks. I firmlybelieve there are three types of bad movies.
The first are movies intended to be good that lost the plot(1) for whatever reason (Hobbit trilogy; Captain Marvel)(2). These are the worst kind of movies – pretentious, with tropes and twists seen in actual good movies. They’re delusional.
The second genre of bad movie, and the one seen most in recent times, is my favorite. They are bashful, half-hearted moneygrabs with a clear path to box office mediocrity and beyond (Boss Baby; Pacific Rim Uprising; any Transformers movie made after the first one).
The third type of bad movie has Will Smith and J.K. Simmons in it. No seriously:
Smith (2008 – 2020): Seven Pounds (27%), After Earth (11%), Suicide Squad (26%), Collateral Beauty (13%), Bright (27%), Gemini Man (26%)
Simmons since Whiplash (2014): Terminator Genisys (27%), I’m Not Here (38%), Justice League (an astonishingly undeserved 40%), Father Figures (17%), The Snowman (7%), 21 Bridges (53%), The Tomorrow War (53%)
A high number of that first, pretentious kind of movie were imagined at the studio as good movies. Some of them (i.e., Collateral Beauty, The Snowman) may have even been presented as prestige film.
Our film today has no such aspirations.
I have never seen a movie made as apathetically as John Henry.
Starring Terry Crews as the titular character, Ludacris as a lifelong cousin/nemesis, and no more than three other characters, John Henry belies categorization. To list all the genres it attempts to be would just be a list of all movie genres. It is the movie equivalent of James McAvoy’s character in Split: unstable, changes moods (soundtrack) without any warning, and is twenty beasts contained in one. Instead of personalities, this movie pivots between thriller, romantic comedy, and gangland drama repeatedly and unpredictably.
As soon as the credits rolled on John Henry, I sprinted to Wikipedia to see whether Ludacris produced the movie. He did not. Being a producer, to me, was the only conceivable explanation for Ludacris’s appearance in the film. Ludacris plays a villain named Hell. It is not an exaggeration to say that Young Hell (legitimately the credited name of the character’s younger self) has more lines in a two-minute flashback than Ludacris does in the whole movie. Despite prime, second billing in the movie’s trailer and poster, Ludacris spends less than five minutes onscreen. This is jarring because this may be the worst movie I’ve ever seen. If Ludacris can’t get screen time here, what is he going to do when Fast 11 wraps?
In an eye-opening departure from powerhouse performances like Humanz Brother in Gamer and Brendan Nolan in New Year’s Eve, Ludacris simply does not seem to want to be here. Certainly, he wasn’t there much, given his screentime. One wonders whether Hell was penciled in for a more significant role originally. In that scenario, Luda might have signed on before he saw the script, and subsequently threatened to sue if he had to do more than one day of filming. The result is that Hell’s primary character trait is covering an old gunshot wound with a gold-plated face mask embedded with diamonds.
Yeah.
The apathy of Ludacris is matched only by the erstwhile director of this film. Will Forbes doesn’t have a Wikipedia page. I strongly believe, and alternatively would strongly suggest, Will Forbes is a pseudonym to distance the man responsible from this burning nuclear waste of a movie. The “switches” from plot point to point beggar belief. The pièce de resistance of the editing is the soundtrack. The movie stitches entire songs together. An ominous scene will begin; John will stare down some gangsters, maybe kill one, as action-movie music plays. He then has a romantic comedy moment in the very next scene. The director makes a bold choice here. He allows the action music to play through the first 20 seconds of the romantic scene, upon which point a WalMart version of a Marvin Gaye instrumental will immediately replace the action music. There is no break between these two songs. If you had asked a 13-year old me to assemble a movie soundtrack about feelings, using only stock music on Garageband, it would sound eerily similar to Henry’s soundtrack.
It’s a particularly depressing affair when you consider they could not get Ludacris, a musician and the second lead of the movie, to license or record anything for the production. He apparently could not be bothered to help with the soundtrack. In short, Ludacris should be thrown in jail if he accepted compensation for this project.
Just as your mind begins to comprehend the ineptitude of this movie, another thought creeps in. There is a bright light, a flicker of hope, in this movie. While Ludacris is doing one-day shoots with a bedazzled jaw, and you’re trying to figure out how John’s dad and grandmother can both be 85, there is one actor who brings legitimate energy to a moribund potpourri of movie tropes.
Terry Crews is good here.
Crews, as the titular John Henry, simply does not give up on the movie. It’s not an easy task. John is a quiet, obviously hulking specimen with a golden heart. His lean style of communication is established at the outset. Thus, Crews is asked to carry a movie, with only 3.5 additional characters, with facial expressions. Say what you want about the rest of this movie. I’ve already labelled it burning nuclear waste and expressed interest in seeing Ludacris do jail time for his involvement. So really, go ahead. But somehow, some way, Terry Crews comes out well from a movie that asks absolutely everything from him.
John’s mangled chemistry with a woman in danger and his father compares favorably to the lack of anything else resonating. He is menacing on the street despite few words with which to be so. He gives a glimpse of Crews’ trademark comedic timing; and he makes you believe that he really could be in love with a woman that has about 4 lines to introduce and conclude her character arc. The performance is like LeBron carrying the 2016 Cavs to the Finals with Dellevedova and Channing Frye. In this analogy, however, the Cavs are the Washington Generals, and the audience can’t figure out why this one guy is trying hard while his teammates dribble out-of-bounds. Fortunately, Crews did not get the memo.
I’m hesitant to call this the worst movie I’ve ever seen. First, I enjoy shitty movies, so ranking them is hard. Second, for all of the carnage, there is some self-awareness amongst the actors about what kind of film they’re in. Side characters morph from murderous to cracking dad jokes in under a minute. The villain is named Hell. He is played by the seventh lead in Fast 9. Seriously, John’s father may be older than his grandmother. This isn’t a high-priced Hollywood flop; this is you, me, and Dupree making an iPhone movie that just happens to have Terry Crews and a Ludacris cameo.
John Henry takes one of America’s most revered folktales and turns him into John Wick with worse dialogue and a sledgehammer instead of guns. This is offensive. The quickfire editing and lack of sound mixing is very offensive. The viewer can appreciate, however, how little is being asked of them. This movie has no pretensions of greatness. Forbes makes it abundantly clear from the get-go that this will be irredeemable – we don’t have to hope for a plot twist to improve the proceedings. I struggle to think of a performance so superior to its surroundings as Crews’. Then again, there’s never been a worse surrounding cast than that in John Henry.
(1) Pun intended
(2) No, I’ve never seen Captain Marvel
First Take Forever 