Bad 2000s Movies That Got Good Reviews

I recently read a quote from Seth Rogen about the nature of art that really stuck with me.

“I have accepted that a lot of what I do just won’t age well,” he said, before adding “but the thing is, nothing ages well.”

I’m not sure if nothing ages well. Casablanca still looks pretty darn good; The Godfather too. But it’s true that many movies don’t age well, even some that were enormously popular, and even critically respected, upon their initial release. Today we’re looking at movies like that, films released in the first decade of the 2000s that already have begun to age poorly — but that earned overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics back in the day. (How horrifying is it that the early 2000s can be accurately described as “back in the day?”)

The ten films below (with one notable exception) all received enough positive reviews from film critics to earn a fresh or even certified fresh rating from the aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes. (By the way, anyone else only eat tomatoes that are certified fresh? When I go to the grocery store, the first thing I do is find someone in the produce department and ask, “Excuse me, where do you keep the certified fresh tomatoes?”)

The only film on the list below that got a rotten score from film critics did something car more impressive and prestigious: It earned a major Academy Award nomination. So I included it because, well, if that movie could get an Oscar nom, anything’s possible — and Seth Rogen is correct and any movie can age poorly.