In the sporting world, the most important part of an athlete's performance is the ending. If a gymnast fails to stick a manuever or a kicker goes wide with a field goal, all the work that went into the preparation and the initial execution is marred. The same holds true with movies. Great performances fizzle and excellent direction falters if the story ends poorly.
Below you'll find our picks for 2001 films that suffered from bad endings. Since we here at Filmfodder consider ourselves an interactive bunch, we welcome you to challenge our picks, or offer your own views on bad endings, in our uncreatively-titled Bad Endings Forum.
Warning: Many of the following critiques contain spoilers. If you don't want to know what happens, skip this article.
Unbreakable
The most egregious bad ending of 2001 goes to M. Night Shyamalan's follow-up to "The Sixth Sense."
"Unbreakable" looks like a drama, it feels like a drama, for most of its running time it actually is a drama, but the screwy conclusion whips off the dramatic finery and reveals "Unbreakable" to be nothing more than an expensive comic book.
Shyamalan's trick ending was spoiled by his "Sixth Sense" success. Before "Sense" few knew of Shyamalan and audiences certainly didn't anticipate a tricky plot manuever. With "Unbreakable" most moviegoers expected Shyamalan to pull the rug out in the final moments. Couple the expectation of a plot twist with Shyamalan's feeble attempt at climactic cleverness and you've got an ending that contorted viewers' faces into confusion and anger. "What the hell was that?" should have been "Unbreakable's" tagline. — Mac Slocum
What Women Want
It's hard to knock an ending to a romantic comedy because this genre's finales are supposed to be generic and predictable. If the guy doesn't get the girl (or vice versa), that lighthearted feeling isn't created.
in "What Women Want" the guy (Mel Gibson) gets the girl (Helen Hunt), but the bubble of happiness never forms because the final scene is ridiculous. Gibson's Nick Marshall, a hot-shot ad exec, grows during the film — morphing from an insensitive prick into an unselfish friend. The object of his affection, Darcy Maguire, also changes, dropping her iron exterior when she senses genuine love. Nowhere in this equation is it suggested that the key to happiness is role reversal, yet that's what happens in the final moments. Maguire becomes the guy and Marshall becomes the girl (metaphorically) and the two live happily ever after. Ninety-eight percent of "What Women Want" follows the idea that listening and caring are the keys to a successful relationship, but the ending grabs the wheel and veers elsewhere. — Mac Slocum
Cast Away
The $200-million "Cast Away" has raked in domestically offsets any criticisms I can level about its ending, but it's time to get this off my chest. "Cast Away" needed a happy conclusion.
The ambiguous finale has alleged realism. It's what might happen if, in that rare instance, a real FedEx employee was marooned on an island for four years, then made a miraculous return to the world he once knew. Since we're dabbling in the realm of extreme possibilities, it's just as likely that the protagonist would return home to find his beloved still waiting. Relying on ambiguity for the sake of realism (and critical appeal) is a cop-out.
"Cast Away" should have been simpler. Much of the story focuses on the survival instinct and resourcefulness of everyman Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks), so his successful return to civilization was the film's natural ending. Instead, director Robert Zemeckis brings Noland back to the "real" world so Noland can stare at ice cubes and cringe at crab legs. Worse yet, "Cast Away's" advertisements spoiled the potential surprise. Before the film unspooled we already knew Noland's fate — where's the drama in that? — Mac Slocum
Pay it Forward
And then he's murdered...
It wasn't bad enough for poor 11-year-old Trevor (Haley Joel Osment) to have an alcoholic mother, a bag lady for a grandmother, and a stubborn teacher with burn scars over his entire body challenging him to change the world. To top it off he gets knifed in the belly by school bullies when he tries to defend a classmate.
And all Trevor wanted to do was make the planet a better place with his "Pay It Forward" good deed scheme.
Trouble is, Trevor doesn't just die. He dies on his knees, arms outstretched in the perfect "Jesus crucified" pose. The camera cranes up to the heavens with the look of perfect martyrdom smeared across Trevor's little face. Man, I wish I was kidding. "Pay it Forward" could've wrapped itself up with a tight, logical, conclusion about the effects of Trevor's system. But oh no. We're going out with all guns blazing.
In the normally capable hands of director Mimi Leder ("The Peacemaker," "Deep Impact"), "Pay it Forward" goes from bad to worse as it actually closes out with a candlelight assembly for Trevor with all the film's characters gathered to pay their respects for the little saint. This is a kid who likes the music of Papa Roach and professional wrestling, and he gets a candlelight processional? I should be so lucky.
The music hits a high crescendo and the film cuts to a wide shot of a traffic jam of car lights from people coming across the country to lavish their love on the dead boy. The suits over at Universal should consider litigation since the closing shot of the film dangerously apes "Field of Dreams."
It's an ending that single-handedly kills any decent motivations "Pay it Forward" had. A rather aggressive attempt to wring some tears out of the audience when every other dramatic device has utterly failed them, the killing and idolatry of Trevor only serves as a reminder that the brazenly manipulative "Pay it Forward" has run out of ideas. — Brian Orndorf
Dinosaur
The method to Disney's animated madness has always been happy endings. True, there have been some fantastic bittersweet exceptions ("The Jungle Book," "The Fox and the Hound"), but for the most part, Disney has always wanted to leave those in the audience with smiles on their faces.
For last May's "Dinosaur," The Mouse House spent $200 million bringing the computer-generated adventures of Aladar and his dino buddies to life. There was no way Disney would risk anything with this kind of coin riding on the line, so no matter what the history books say, their "Dinosaur" would end happily.
In the opening of the picture, the infamous asteroids have begun striking the Earth, killing all in their path. Aladar and the gang escape their wrath and begin the trek to a rumored "Dinotopia" where all the remaining Dinosaurs can go and live outside of the dust-filled wasteland once known as Earth. Wacky and mind-numbingly boring situations occur and the group finally finds the elusive land where they can live forever.
Now, any 8 year-old can tell you that dinosaurs are extinct, but lord knows Disney doesn't want you to consider that. "Dinosaur" ends with the Dinosaurs playing in the grasslands of their new home. Happy as can be.
Yet, I sit there as an audience member with this thought raging through mind: "The Earth has been cracked into millions of pieces, your species has been completely wiped out, and you're going to end this bombastically awful movie with shots of happy dinosaurs frolicking in the sun?"
I look forward to the day when my future children openly debate me to the actual facts about the dinosaur's extinction.
"But Daddy, Aladar found Dinotopia, couldn't they still be alive?"
"No Honey, that was just a movie. Now if you tell another lie like that again, your nose will grow." — Brian Orndorf
Proof of Life
I've got a great idea for a movie: "Casablanca" loosely
remade in a hostage-negotation framework.
Unfortunately, I think screenwriter Tony Gilroy
already had that idea — what's really unfortunate,
however, is that I can't be sure, assuming I'm trying
to find out by watching "Proof of Life," directed by
Taylor Hackford from Gilroy's screenplay.
Imagine if Rick and Ilsa didn't have an affair — they
just palled around, went out for coffee and caught the
occasional floor show. Under those circumstances, the
stakes in "Casablanca" take quite a nose dive.
But that's what's happening here because "Proof of
Life" stars Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe became
romantically entangled over the course of filming,
either they, or their agents, or their publicists, put
enough pressure on the filmmakers that the final cut
of "Proof of Life" didn't have a love scene or even any
verbiage to suggest it happened off-screen. Any hint
of something greater than longing surfaces only twice:
When Crowe passionately kisses Ryan before leaving to
get her husband (which elicited tres unromantic
laughter from the confused audience), and when the two
have a knowing conversation once Ryan's husband has
been saved — you know, the "maybe not today" moment.
Without any actual groundwork laid in the film itself,
however, it's all just silly and, frankly, painful.
The "Casablanca" model is a great one, and to see the
movie fall from the height to which it aspired makes
its half-measures far, far smaller. — Sean Weitner
