Is 2010 the Worst Movie Year Ever?

William Goldman once wrote that “Every Oscar night you look back and realize that last year was the worst year in the history of Hollywood.” But in the Wall Street Journal, Joe Queenan notes just how bad it’s become:

In a millennium that has thus far produced precious few motion pictures in the same class as “The Godfather,” “Jurassic Park,” “Casablanca,” “Gone with the Wind,” “My Fair Lady” and “The Matrix,” there is a knee-jerk tendency to throw up one’s hands and moan that the current year is the worst in the history of motion pictures. But 2010 very possibly is the worst year in the history of motion pictures. Where once there was “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” there is now “Robin Hood,” prince of duds. Where once we could look forward to “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “The Last of the Mohicans,” we can now look forward to “Dinner for Schmucks” and “The Last Airbender.” This time two years ago we were treated to the ingenious, subversive “Iron Man”; this year we have the insipid, uninspired “Iron Man 2.” What does it say about the current season that the third installation of “Toy Story” is better than the first installation of anything else? Or that people are actually looking forward to a sequel to the 1982 flop “Tron”? Does this mean that a sequel to “The Rocketeer” will soon be on the way? Quick, Leonardo: Penetrate somebody’s subconscious. Fast.

Of course, as George Clooney, the self-professed “old-time liberal” babbled during the 2006 Academy Awards ceremony, “I would say that, you know, we are a little bit out of touch in Hollywood every once in a while.”

But as with the post Hays Code, pre-Star Wars 1970s, having also spent most of the previous decade asleep at the wheel, that’s an awfully long “while” to be out of touch with mass audiences.

Well, American audiences at least. Fortunately for the American movie industry, you and I aren’t all that important to their revenue streams these days.

Update: Finally: Hollywood’s long-lust luster, swank, and panache will return to give us all a magical Christmastime gift.

Five words. Just five simple words: Dan Aykroyd is Yogi Bear. 

Related: Five even better words: Anthony Weiner is Yogi Bear! “MSNBC Confuses Screaming Democratic Congressman With Grizzly Bear.”

Don’t miss the screen caps; they’re funnier than anything that will be in the Aykroyd movie.