GERRY (2002)

Gerry gets my vote for worst film of the year. This utterly pretentious, silly, self-indulgent and turgid film gave me the urge to walk out very early on.

This film is exactly the reason people don't go or want to go back to the cinema.

Some improvised films bring a natural organic feeling to proceedings and the audience can fed off the realism and energy by a film produced, essentially, on the hoof.

In Gerry's case, this means an entire film of two college-aged men wandering around in the desert talking the most inane babble; it's enough to drive any sane person to seek help.

It does have one plus point. It is a very good looking film- it focuses more on the never-ending vistas of deserts, mountains, rocks, crevices and cacti than on actual plot.

We're not given the names of the characters and the name Gerry is the only reference point that we have, so the characters are, to all intents and purposes, Gerry one (Matt Damon) and Gerry two (Casey Affleck).

These two young men are on a hiking trip in the desert, when Gerry one becomes annoyed at the number of other, less serious hikers around them, even though they themselves don't look anything like serious hikers. So he suggests that they stray off the main path a little.

Within minutes, the two men find themselves in a vast desert. Once there, they're too far gone to make their way back to their car.

These two imbeciles are on the ramblers' equivalent of kamikaze. What happened to using the sun as a guide to direction?

What happens by the end is tragic, but you'll be hard-pressed to feel an ounce of sympathy. Especially when you step back, explore the logic and realise that none of this makes sense.

It's an unedifying ego trip for a couple of actors with the arrogant assumption that because they're Hollywood players, we should have to pay to watch them act out this drivel.

Life is way too short to sit through rubbish like this.