10 Movies From The 2000s That Have Aged Poorly

For many people, it won’t seem possible that the year 2000 is 24 years ago, and even new time travel horror movies like Time Cut are taking audiences back to the early part of the new millennium. However, turn on your favorite radio station, and you’ll be guaranteed to hear one of the most popular tunes from the 2000s. Also, walk down the street, and you’ll likely see people strutting about in clothes that were first fashionable 20 years ago. The same, sadly, cannot be said about certain movies from the 2000s that barely anyone remembers or that may be better off being forgotten about.

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If you can pinpoint one thing that has changed since the start of the 21st century, it’s that some of these movies, no matter how popular they were at the time, have not aged well. Perhaps it’s a comedy such as Bridget Jones’s Diary with some gags that would be deemed inappropriate or scenes that blur the line of decency. This doesn’t make them all bad movies, but they contain certain behaviors, language, or plot threads that wouldn’t hold up today.

10 Knocked Up

Directed By Judd Apatow (2007)

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ScreenRant logo 7/10 2/10 Knocked Up

Knocked Up is a 2007 comedy about an unplanned pregnancy that results from a drunken one-night stand. Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl play the two leads, with Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, and Jonah Hill also sharing the spotlight. The movie was well received by viewers and received a sequel turned spin-off in 2012.

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Judd Apatow was on a roll in the early 2000s. He followed up the well-received The 40-Year-Old Virgin, with the equally funny Knocked Up in 2007. It has a talented cast, holds a decent 6.9 IMDb rating, and gained positive reviews upon release. However, despite Knocked Up finding new success on Netflix recently, there are elements of the movie that most likely wouldn’t be green-lit today.

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Judd Apatow has helped create some of the best comedies of the 21st century, either as a director, writer, producer, or all three at once.

The movie’s premise is quite straight-forward; a one-night stand between two people who are the opposites of each other leads to an unsuspecting pregnancy. There’s genuine warmth and humor to be found in the movie, but the female characters are mostly uptight and one-dimensional, while the guys are the opposite. Star Katherine Heigl also called this out to Vanity Fair, saying the film, “Paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys.”

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9 Bridget Jones’s Diary

Directed By Sharon Maguire (2001)

Hugh Grant and Renée Zellweger in Bridget Jones's Diary

Based upon the hugely successful books by Helen Fielding, the Bridget Jones’s Diary movies have become equally enjoyed by fans the world over, so much so that Renée Zellweger is returning for Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, the fourth movie due in 2025. It’s unlikely, however, that it’ll contain jokes about her weight, or the size of her underwear.

The misogyny in the movie is so severe that Fielding herself admitted to The Independent she was “staggered” by the amount of sexism in the movie after re-appraising it. It’s shocking to see the amount of harassment Bridget receives from many of the male characters in the movie, often of a sexual nature, but also about her appearance. It’ll be interesting to see how this is addressed in the latest sequel in the franchise.

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8 Norbit

Directed By Brian Robbins (2007)

The poster for Norbit featuring Eddie Murphy

Eddie Murphy has made a name for himself over the years by not only being a hugely talented, and sometimes controversial comedian, but also for having the ability to disguise himself in prosthetics, and take on a range of characters. His recent resurgence in the Netflix-dominating Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F proves that audiences still love the actor, but some of his older roles haven’t aged so well.

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Eddie Murphy has had a fantastic career in comedic and dramatic movies, and his unique talents have led to some truly amazing movie characters.

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Murphy’s gift for physical comedy, plus the impressive make-up effects by Rick Baker, can’t hide an offensive and somewhat depressing side of the commercially successful Norbit from 2007. He plays both lead roles, but the endless fat jokes about the domineering female character he plays, Rasputia, are cringe-worthy at best. Plus, his portrayal of Mr Wong, a xenophobic elderly Chinese man, is offensive on so many different levels.

7 Catwoman

Directed By Pitof (2004)

Catwoman (Halle Berry) posing on the poster in full costume

The much maligned Catwoman from 2004 wasn’t just massively derided by fans the world over upon release, it also flopped hard at the box-office. Nowadays, comic book movies are generally made as part of evolving, interconnected worlds, and the DC universe is expanding into new territories. Unfortunately for Pitof’s Catwoman, it was a misfire for several reasons that make it hard to work in modern times.

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The casting of Halle Berry was fine, but making her character a meek, docile pushover with a highly sexualized dominatrix alter ego, wouldn’t get past the writer’s table now. Also, the production seems to have forgotten that the character wasn’t even written that way in the original source material. There’s very little character development for Berry to work with, and the fact that her body, as Catwoman, is there as an object of desire, objectifies her needlessly.

6 Team America: World Police

Directed By Trey Parker (2004)

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Made by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone 20 years ago, Team America: World Police has rightly gained cult status as one of the funniest and most offensive movies ever made. Riffing on films such as Top Gun, the puppet movie is hilarious in parts, but it’s unlikely a sequel to Team America would work for modern audiences.

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​The film takes potshots at pretty much every facet of popular culture at the time, from Hollywood celebrities to world politics, and featured a sex scene that the MPAA insisted was heavily censored, before granting it a certificate. However, it’s the homophobic content and racial stereotypes that would prevent it from getting made today, plus the many dubious, if deliberate, accents used by the characters. This is a marionette project that looks destined to stay as a standalone film.

5 Wedding Crashers

Directed By David Dobkin (2005)

Owen Wilson at a wedding in Wedding Crashers

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When Wedding Crashers was released in 2005, it was well-reviewed, audiences enjoyed it, the box-office results were decent, and it also still holds a 7/10 rating on IMDb. Overall, it’s an enjoyable comedy with a good cast and a serviceable script. However, if it were to be released today, a serious rewrite of the entire plot, plus certain elements of the movie, would be required to be accepted into the mainstream.

Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson have appeared in four comedy movies together:
Wedding Crashers
,
The Internship
,
Zoolander
, and
Starsky & Hutch
.

The film’s premise would most likely be the starting point for a narrative overhaul. The plot follows Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn’s characters as they infiltrate strangers’ weddings with the intention of lying to women they meet, in order to sleep with them. If that doesn’t ring alarm bells, then throw in a predatory gay character, a racist grandmother, plus some non-consensual intimacy, and you have a severely dated, if occasionally funny misfire.

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4 The Blind Side

John Lee Hancock (2009)

Close up of Quinton Aaron as Michael Oher looking up in The Blind Side

When The Blind Side was released, it was not only a huge commercial success, but it also went on to win numerous awards, including an Academy Award for star Sandra Bullock. However, the movie, which focuses on a family who adopts a very promising up-and-coming young black football star, has been criticized for a variety of reasons. To put it simply, The Blind Side has not aged well.

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2009’s The Blind Side was released during the real Michael Oher’s rookie season in the NFL, so it’s missing information on his life after the movie.

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The film is based on the true story of American footballer Michael Oher. However, critics of the movie say his life story has been twisted into a white savior narrative, and that his adoptive family even had to teach elements of the game to him. Oher himself has since gone on record, in his autobiography, to distance himself from some of the movie’s scenes, and it’s hard to see how audiences wouldn’t have the same view if it was released today.

3 Tropic Thunder

Directed By Ben Stiller (2008)

Ben Still as Tugg Speedman as Four Leaf Tayback and Robert Downey Jr. as Kirk Lazarus as Osiris Lincoln in Tropic Thunder.

For anybody who has seen Ben Stiller’s hilarious satirical comedy, Tropic Thunder, there’s one element of the film that has been debated since it was released in 2008: Robert Downey’s performance as Kirk Lazarus. The character wears blackface and speaks in stereotypical African-American slang, although the actor has recently provided an in-depth explanation of his Tropic Thunder character.

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However, despite Downer Jr’s impassioned arguments, it’s incredibly hard to believe that a character wearing blackface would be green-lit today, even though he was purposely designed as a satire on Hollywood actors, a fact that audiences who actually watch the movie definitely understand. Looking back, it’s crazy to think that Robert Downey Jr was nominated for an Oscar for his role. Also, scenes in which Ben Stiller’s character plays the lead role in a fictional movie called Simple Jack may have been humorous to audiences in 2008, but not anymore.

2 I Now Pronounce You, Chuck & Larry

Directed By Dennis Dugan (2007)

Chuck and Larry smiling for a photograph.

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Over his hugely successful career, Adam Sandler has been no stranger to playing controversial characters, and several of his movies could be considered not safe for modern audiences. However, it’s I Now Pronounce You, Chuck & Larry that is a great example of a movie that, despite being warmly received upon release, could not be made in the same way now.

Although the film ends with a rousing speech that gay people are deserving of the same respect and equality as everybody else, it’s unfortunately too late to redeem the rest of the movie. The film includes a succession of homophobic insults, and if that wasn’t bad enough, Rob Schneider crops up in several scenes as an outrageously offensive Asian wedding officiant. Some of Sandler’s movies continue to dominate the streaming charts, but it’s hard to see a sequel to I Now Pronounce You, Chuck & Larry being developed anytime soon.

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1 Shallow Hal

Directed By Bobby Farrelly And Peter Farrelly (2001)

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The Farrelly brothers are responsible for directing some of the greatest comedies over the last 20 years, and the upcoming Farrelly brothers reunion movie proves that the talented duo are still not only working, but thriving in their own inimitable way. However, 2001s Shallow Hal does not have any redeeming features, and must surely serve as a major blip in their otherwise solid careers.

Several of the Farrelly brother’s older movies may also not stand up to a modern re-appraisal, but the premise for Shallow Hal alone should have raised serious alarm bells in 2001, let alone now. The film may have had good intentions in its premise that beauty is on the inside, but the endless fat jokes about Gwyneth Paltrow’s character really test those intentions, and even Paltrow has distanced herself from the movie, calling it a “disaster” in an interview with USA Today.

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Sources: Variety, The Independent, USA Today

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