But part of it is because of the Razzies. The nominations for this year’s Razzies have been announced, and Mike Myers’ woeful mishap The Love Guru has swept the board, earning nods for Worst Screenplay, Worst Director, Worst Actor, Worst Actress, Worst Supporting Actor and Worst Movie.

But it’s not all bad news for Mike Myers, because The Happening has also been nominated plenty of times, and if it doesn’t win everything then we promise to do a dirty protest somewhere.

For all your Wall-Es and Dark Knights, 2008 was an almost universally terrible year for movies. The Incredible Hulk managed to do the impossible and actually be worse than The Hulk, Quantum Of Solace couldn’t have been any more disappointing if it was about sand, Indiana Jones 4 made us wish that that little Indian kid killed him two films ago, Cloverfield turned out to be 90 minutes of a big testicle chasing some wankers around a city and 27 Dresses was released.

Oddy enough, though, most of these films have been completely ignored by the just-announced Razzies nominations. And that’s because of three things:

1) The Love Guru

2) The Happening

3) Paris Hilton’s bewildering belief in her own talents as a movie star.

All three are awful in their own special way. The Love Guru, as well as being monumentally unfunny, was promoted with a mixture of interviews where Mike Myers came off as a self-regarding prick and editorial features which all had the headline ‘Mike Myers Is A Self-Regarding Prick’. The Happening was essentially a film about Mark Wahlberg running away from pollen. And then there’s Paris Hilton, who is Paris Hilton.

But despite the ferocious craptitude of those three movies, they aren’t the only recipients of Razzie Award nominations this year. How could they be, when Jessica Alba starred in more than one movie and Al Pacino continued his transformation into the world’s angriest Good Luck Troll? Here are this year’s Razzie Award nominations in full, courtesy of E! Online:

WORST PICTURE

• Disaster Movie
• The Happening
• The Hottie and the Nottie
• In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
• The Love Guru
• Meet the Spartans

WORST ACTOR

• Larry the Cable Guy, Witless Protection
• Eddie Murphy, Meet Dave
• Mike Myers, The Love Guru
• Al Pacino, 88 Minutes and Righteous Kill
• Mark Wahlberg, The Happening and Max Payne

WORST ACTRESS

• Jessica Alba, The Eye and The Love Guru
• The cast of The Women (Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett-Smith and Meg Ryan)
• Cameron Diaz, What Happens in Vegas
• Paris Hilton, The Hottie and the Nottie
• Kate Hudson, Fools’ Gold and My Best Friend’s Girl

WORST SUPPORTING ACTOR

• Uwe Boll (as himself), Uwe Boll’s Postal
• Pierce Brosnan, Mamma Mia!
• Ben Kingsley, The Love Guru and The Wackness
• Burt Reynolds, Deal and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
• Verne Troyer, The Love Guru and Uwe Boll’s Postal

WORST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

• Carmen Electra, Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans
• Paris Hilton, Repo: The Genetic Opera
• Kim Kardashian, Disaster Movie
• Jenny McCarthy, Witless Protection
• Leelee Sobieski, 88 Minutes and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale

WORST SCREEN COUPLE

• Uwe Boll and Any Actor, Camera or Screenplay
• Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher, What Happens in Vegas
• Paris Hilton and either Christin Lakin or Joel David Moore, The Hottie and the Nottie
• Larry the Cable Guy and Jenny McCarthy, Witless Protection
• Eddie Murphy and Eddie Murphy, Meet Dave

WORST PREQUEL, REMAKE, RIP-OFF OR SEQUEL

• The Day the Earth Blowed Up Real Good
• Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
• Speed Racer
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars

WORST DIRECTOR

• Uwe Boll, 1968: Tunnel Rats, In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale and Uwe Boll’s Postal
• Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans
• Tom Putnam, The Hottie and the Nottie
• Marco Schnabel, The Love Guru
• M. Night Shyamalan, The Happening

WORST SCREENPLAY

• Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans
• The Happening
• The Hottie and the Nottie
• In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
• The Love Guru

WORST CAREER ACHIEVEMENT

• Uwe Boll

We’ve checked this list several times, and we can’t help but notice that Justin Timberlake didn’t get a nomination for The Love Guru. The Razzies aren’t for another month – is it too late to ask for a recount?

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Unfortunately while the premise suggests that in this film shit happens, we're unhappy to say that, while score one for pun usage, it turns out that Happening's shit.  

The film starts with a creepy, paranoia-engorged scene out in open air as a whole community literally comes to a standstill for no apparent reason. This nerve-shredding scene culminates in a bit of a anticlimax (more on that later) which then quickly cuts to Marky Mark Wahlberg delivering some of the most thought-provoking, Oscar-worthy dialogue this side of the Mississippi: "Did you guys hear about the bees?" Brilliant.

The bee dialogue goes on for quite a while as Marky Mark does everything in his power to shrug off his macho exterior to try and come across as the sensitive, intellectual, schoolteacher everyman that we can root for; shirt and knitted vest combo, check! Replace gruff voice with a ball squeezing highpitched whine, check! The only things missing were some black rimmed glasses and a copy of Einstein's theory of relativity on his bookshelf (although there's no space for that, too many Sony products to stuff into the frame).  

Mark is joined by the enemies of spell-check Zooey Deschanel and John Leguizamo, playing his distant wife and best friend respectively. The usually beautiful and youthful Zooey looks like shes been slapped by 10 years of aging since the last time we saw her on screen and does little more than open her eyes wide and point out the obvious – example: *Car pulls right up next to her and Mark* "Look, there's a car."

Leguizamo does no better as the so-called best friend who can't help but point out the faults in his best friend's marriage while, aside from avoiding an appropriate smash in the teeth, obviously having his own problems by being a shitty father.

Other characters come in and out of the equation, each being as stupid as the last with only a couple of teenage boys showing a little bit of personality (and we mean little), but they soon get put an end to in an unintentionally funny moment.

It's hard to spot who's to blame in this mess of a film. Is it M. Night Shyalalalaman for the terrible script? Is it the appalling acting? Or the marketing? One of the most annoying things about the film is the adult rated trailer released before the film's release. It featured every single death in the film but actually showed all the gore, which for some reason in the UK they cut out. This just screams as a marketing tactic just so they can release an uncut version of the film on DVD in time for Halloween to entice muppets to watch it again. It's such a cheap ploy and we expected better from a director who has made some great movies in the past.

The weird thing is, the stupidest thing about the film hasn't even been discussed yet! The main threat of The Happening is so ludicrous that we found ourselves laughing throughout the film at the sheer ridiculousness of the whole thing. One scene involves our batch of idiots running away from… The Wind! That's the terrible villain in this film, Mother Nature, and she's taking no prisoners – nobody's safe! You'll never look at a hanging basket the same after this film. To Shagalamb's favour he manages to build up suspense pretty much out of anything… a tree swing being a particularly eerie moment for some reason.  

The film then runs out of steam in the third act as if M. Night had the sudden realisation that you can't outrun the wind or take a swing at it. So we get some creepy old lady to act as the manifestation of evil for the final act so the funky bunch can have somebody to actually react to.

We enjoyed The Happening for the wrong reasons – it was unintentionally hilarious as it became lost in a spiral of stupidity and as it came towards the end the whole audience in the cinema was laughing at the absurdity of what was before them. It's full of some of the worst performances we have seen and, although the direction is sharp, the script is a mess of good ideas mixed with the overwhelmingly bad ones.

If you have to watch this film then we feel sorry for you, but at least you'll leave the cinema laughing, or probably punch the first tree you see.

[story by David A. Scarborough]

Folded:

• Hannah Sandling (beyond cute cutie)

• Dark Beige (Mathew Clifton’s very funny Onion-esque blog. Start petitioning the BBC for ‘Dimewatch’ right now)

• Old Skool R&B (perfect for the hot weather we don’t currently have)

• The Happening (why does everyone hate this? Because everyone tells them to)

• GTA IV Does The Naked Gun (inspired)

Creased:

• Matthew McConaughey (remember when this guy had a promising career back in 1996? Long time ago)

• Zezi (Channel 4’s latest: a fat bird with an attitude)

• George Lamb (friend of Zezi: bow tie, grey, needs a haircut)

• Opticians (they force you to have another eye test every couple of months just to get some contact lenses. And guess what? Your prescription hasn’t changed in the slightest!!)

• Useless Royal Mail (don’t post anything that you want to arrive on time or, actually, anything you want to arrive at all)

Chances are if anyone asks you about films you're looking forward to seeing in 2008, you'll say Iron Man or The Dark Knight or even – if you're weird – A Quantum Of Solace.

What you probably won't say is "that M. Night Shyamalan film about the plants that make people kill themselves." But tough shit, because here's a trailer for that movie anyway. It's called The Happening, it opens on Friday 13 June, and there's no way on Earth it can be as bad as The Lady In The Water, right?

Well, let's just hold our horses about that, shall we? The trailer for The Happening shows a bunch of people committing suicide for no reason – which just happens to be a fairly similar scenario to what we all started doing when we heard that M. Night Shyamalan was making another movie.

What evil spirit is causing all these deaths in The Happening? Well, it's plants, obviously. The plants are doing it. Hopefully that's not the big M. Night Shyamalan twist in The Happening, otherwise we've spoilt it. But, yeah, it's the plants.