AS Jennifer Lopez said to Ben Affleck in the notorious “Gigli” – “It’s turkey time. Gobble, gobble.”
Put on a napkin and get ready to feast on The Post’s ninth annual Turkey Awards, honoring Hollywood’s most dubious achievements of the year.
Last year, top honors went to Scarlett Johansson, who certainly got off to a feathers-flying 2007 with her inept work in “The Nanny Diaries,” one of countless gobblers from the Weinstein farm.
But Sony robbed Scarlett of the chance to repeat by bumping her no-doubt-immortal performance as “The Other Boleyn Girl” into the wasteland of next February, giving a turkey leg up to Oscar winner (and multiple past Turkey Award honoree) Nicole Kidman.
The ex-Mrs. Cruise was the year’s highest-paid actress, reportedly receiving $17 million to play a woman pretending to be a pod person (an autobiographical role?) in “The Invasion,” which grossed a total of $15 million in the United States.
Her apparently permanently frozen face didn’t register much in the way of expression in this or “Margot at the Wedding,” an even scarier movie. We can hardly wait for next month’s “His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass,” reuniting Kidman with Daniel Craig, the same actor she showed no chemistry with in “Invasion.”
On the male side, we gave some serious consideration to Brad Pitt, who stunk up empty theaters posing and mumbling his way through the title role of “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” a film that was even longer than its title.
But in the end, we had to go with the veteran schlockmeister Robin Williams, who never read a bad script in which he didn’t star. In the appalling “License To Wed,” Robin plays a demented minister who lives with a 10-year-old boy, while in the newly released schmaltzfest “August Rush,” he lives with a theater full of 10-year-old boys while looking like a cross between Fagin and Don Imus.
And now, a drumstick, or drumroll for the rest of Tinseltown’s list of the bad, the worse and the truly ugly:
MOST LIKELY TO HAVE THEIR OSCARS CONFISCATED: Halle Berry, “Perfect Stranger,” “Things We Lost in the Fire”; Hilary Swank, “The Reaping”; Cuba Gooding Jr., “Daddy Day Camp,” “Norbit,” “American Gangster.”
MOST IMPROBABLE BOB DYLAN IMPRESSIONS: Adam Sandler, “Reign Over Me;” Cate Blanchett, “I’m Not There.”
BEST WAY TO BLOW AN OSCAR WIN: Eddie Murphy, front-runner for “Dreamgirls,” turns up as a 400-pound woman in “Norbit” just before the voting deadline.
THE “WELL, MY EX-WIFE ISN’T WORKING MUCH” AWARD: Bruce Willis showed off his toupées in seven 2007 releases: “Alpha Dog,” “Grindhouse,” “Perfect Stranger,” “Live Free or Die Hard,” “Nancy Drew,” “Fast Food Nation” and “The Astronaut Farmer.”
WE WON’T HAVE WHAT SHE’S HAVING AWARD: Meg Ryan’s umpteenth comeback, the wretched “In the Land of Women.”
WORST STAR COUPLE IN SEPARATE MOVIES: the newly renamed Sarah Michelle Prinze in “The Grudge 2” and “Southland Tales,” and her hubby Freddie Prinze Jr. as the pride of Bay Ridge in “Brooklyn Rules.”
WHAT DID CHRIS ROCK SAY ABOUT JUDE LAW NOT BEING A MOVIE STAR?: “Breaking and Entering” and “Sleuth” disappeared instantaneously.
UNFUNNIEST STAND-UP COMICS IN UNBEARABLE MOVIES: Dane Cook, “Good Luck Chuck,” Jamie Kennedy, “Kickin’ It Old Skool.”
I KNOW WHO KILLED MY CAREER AWARD: Party girl Lindsay Lohan followed the flop “Georgia Rule” with “I Know Who Killed Me,” in which her character literally digs her own grave.
TWO FLOPS, TWO WEEKS AWARD: Double Oscar nominee Joaquin Phoenix tanked back-to-back in “Reservation Road” and “We Own the Night.”
SIX REASONS WE WISH HARVEY WEINSTEIN BETTER LUCK IN THE FASHION BUSINESS: “Grindhouse,” “Factory Girl,” “The Ex,” “Who’s Your Caddy,” “Hannibal Rising,” “The Last Legion.”
WELL, WE LOVED HIM IN “HAIRSPRAY” AND “ROMANCE & CIGARETTES”: Christopher Walken stumbled in Asian drag in “Balls of Fury.”
MAYBE THEY SHOULD HAVE WAITED ANOTHER SIX YEARS TO RELEASE IT AWARD: Alec Baldwin’s directing debut, shot in 2001 as “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” turned up this spring as “Shortcut to Happiness.”
FOUR ACTRESSES WE NEVER HEARD OF BEFORE AND PROBABLY WILL NEVER HEAR OF AGAIN: The teenage stars of the vulgar toy doll adaptation “Bratz.”
GENEVA CONVENTION AWARD FOR THE WORST OF THE YEAR’S SEEMINGLY ENDLESS SUPPLY OF IRAQ-THEMED FLICKS: Brian De Palma’s poorly acted fakeumentary “Redacted.”
MOST APTLY NAMED FLOPS: “D.O.A.: Dead or Alive,” “Death Sentence.”
LEAST APTLY NAMED FLOP: “Lucky You” with Drew Barrymore.
WE NEVER SAW THE MOVIE BUT THE PROMOTIONAL CAMPAIGN SURE GOT OUR ATTENTION: Fake explosive devices planted on behalf of “Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters” shut down Boston.
BUT IT’S ONLY A JOKE: The campaign for the black comedy “Wristcutters” listed ways teens could commit suicide.
MAYBE IT WILL DO BETTER IN CUBA AWARD: Michael Moore’s “Sicko.”
THE THIRD TIME WAS DEFINITELY NOT THE CHARM: “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End,” “Spider-Man 3,” “Rush Hour 3,” “Shrek the Third,” “Ocean’s 13.”
WE REMEMBER WHEN THEY WERE FUNNY AWARD: Will Ferrell in “Blades of Glory,” Billy Bob Thornton in “Mr. Woodcock,” Adam Sandler in “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry,” Steve Carell in “Dan in Real Life,” Vince Vaughn in “Fred Claus.”
LOVED THE LUGGAGE, HATED THE FLICK: Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman as self-absorbed siblings in the oh-so-precious “The Darjeeling Limited.”
UNLIKELIEST SUCCESSOR TO CARY GRANT: Ice Cube starred in “Are We Done Yet?” a remake of Grant’s “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.”
YOU CAN’T WIN THEM ALL AWARD: Javier Bardem won critics’ praise for “No Country for Old Men” and their jeers for “Goya’s Ghosts” and “Love in the Time of Cholera.”
TWO REASONS WE CRINGE AT THE THOUGHT OF NEXT MONTH’S “NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS”: Nicolas Cage and his toupées in the abysmal “Ghost Rider” and “Next.”
AND IF YOU WANT A BIG HAM WITH YOUR TURKEYS: You’ll have to wait until Christmas Day, when Jack Nicholson turns up as a comic cancer patient in “The Bucket List.”
Happy Thanksgiving.
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