In less than a month, The Suicide Squad spinoff, Peacemaker, will officially make its series debut on HBO Max featuring John Cena reprising his role as the title character. In addition to John Cena, Robert Patrick, Jennifer Holland, and Danielle Brooks make up the cast that features a healthy mix of veterans and newcomers. This list will examine the five terrible movies involving the cast of Peacemaker. Each film has ten or more negative reviews. The only exemptions here are animated features, so don’t expect Ferdinand or Surfs Up 2: WaveMania. Let’s get started with our first feature:
Dolittle
In this swashbuckling misfire, Robert Downey Jr. plays the title character in 19th-century England. When young Queen Victoria becomes ill, the doctor and his exotic animals go on an epic quest to a mythical island to find the cure. The climax of this film is Dolittle taking a bagpipe out of a dragon’s ass. That is the type of movie that we’re dealing with here. One of the main issues with Dolittle is the mixture of tones. Stephen Gaghan – who previously directed Traffic and Syriana – actually feels miscast to helm this feature as it’s clear that the filmmaker wanted something darker. However, the film has an odd mixture of comedy and adventure that never gels together. The voices of each animal is fine, but Downey just doesn’t seem all that inspired based on his lackluster performance. While it’s great that Gaghan didn’t simply try to rehash the financially successfully Eddie Murphy versions of Dolittle, this movie felt like nothing more than a cash grab that wasted the talents of everyone involved.
Playing With Fire
John Cena has an interesting filmography. In Playing With Fire, Jake Carson and his team of firefighters’ rescue three siblings, but are forced to babysit the three kids which turns out to be a demanding and unpredictable. If you saw the trailer for Playing With Fire, you instantly knew the type of film that this was going to be. Playing With Fire is an odd kids film that features numerous shirtless scenes with John Cena. However, the core issue is that the movie feels like a nearly two-hour Three Stooges film, minus any attempt at a meaningful story and the random and stupid slapstick comedy. None of it equates to a funny movie, and what’s worse is that a cast of talented comedians are forced to subject themselves to lame poop and fart jokes that are clearly aimed to make kids laugh. The fact that this film wasn’t even nominated for any Golden Raspberries is the biggest shocker here.
Fred: The Movie
When I said that John Cena has an interesting filmography, I meant it. This Nickelodeon feature is Lucas Cruikshank’s character, Fred, a high-pitched voice teenager who has a crush on his dream girl, but when she moves away, he goes on a journey to find her. Don’t be fooled by that premise. Fred: The Movie barely has a story to carry it to it’s unnecessary runtime of 1hour and 36-minutes. The film is essentially a long Youtube sketch with the most annoying character in movie history. Fred’s voice is grating and since the entire movie is centered around the annoying gimmick then it’s hard to even listen to the title character. The jokes are uninspired and it’s clear that the attempt at comedy was the prime focus, not a cohesive narrative that makes a lick of sense. Let’s hope John Cena is done making these type of kid films.
The Poison Rose
The Poison Rose is stacked with a top-notch cast including John Travolta and Morgan Freeman; however, none of them can save this neo-nor mess. Travolta plays Carson Philips, a hard-drinking detective who’s drawn into a complex web of crimes and suspects when he takes what seemed like a routine missing person’s case. The Poison Rose tries to be a great neo-noir film in the vein of Chinatown, but it ends up being a confused and often preposterous story with some of the corniest dialogue you’ll ever here. Based on the central performances, the cast is clearly there for a paycheck, but given how bad the script is, it understandable why everyone is so lackluster here.
Striptease
This multi-time Golden Raspberry winner sees Demi Moore as Erin Grant, a former FBI office assistant who takes a job as a stripper in order to the fight a legal case to get her child back. Unfortunately, politician David Dilbeck becomes obsessed with the stripper, and will use his charm and violence to get what he wants. Despite the seriousness of the premise, Striptease makes the mistake of trying to be a comedy as well and fails miserably. The film doesn’t focus on the interesting plot, meaning that we don’t get much development of Erin Grant and her desperate need for cash. The movie barely gets by on story and even fails at the “so bad its good” territory like Showgirls.Dolittle
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