We all know that it's not always necessary to see a movie to know it's a bad idea. For example, as soon as you hear, "Two firemen pretend to be gay for tax purposes, and one of them is Adam Sandler," you think: No good can come of this.

With that in mind, we've scoured the schedule and found what we believe are...

THE 5 WORST IDEAS OF FALL:

5.) Beowulf
Making a film out of the centuries-old story is a fine idea. The badness is in the way they're doing it: with that "motion-capture" business like they used in The Polar Express. Remember how everyone in that movie looked creepy, neither realistic enough to be convincing nor cartoon-y enough to be pleasant? There's no good reason for it. If you're gonna film the movie, JUST FILM THE MOVIE! Don't film it and then turn it into a plastic-looking nightmare.

4.) Fred Claus
Once again, the basic idea is reasonable: Santa has a good-for-nothing brother. Santa is played by Paul Giamatti and the brother is Vince Vaughn. We're with you so far! Oh, but wait: You decided to make it a PG-rated family-friendly, pratfall-laden kick-in-the-crotch-fest instead of something, you know, funny? Huh. The mind boggles at what a bad idea that is, and what a waste of good talent and a funny premise.

3.) Saw IV
The tagline tells you everything you need to know: "If it's Halloween, it must be Saw." In other words: "We didn't have any actual ideas for this movie. We just saw that Halloween was coming, and we were like, 'Crap, we'd better throw something together.' We'll try to be more on the ball next year, we promise."

2.) National Treasure: Book of Secrets
We went along for the ride with the first movie as a bit of harmless, frivolous, Da Vinci Code-ripping-off fun. We are a bit a skeptical of this sequel, however, as the premise (as gleaned from the trailer) is that Nicolas Cage's great-great-grandfather has been fingered as one of the masterminds behind the Lincoln assassination, and Nicolas Cage MUST. CLEAR. HIS. FAMILY'S. NAME. Um, why? It's not like they've accused YOU of killing Lincoln. It's your great-great-grandfather. Nobody cares. For THIS you're going to trot around the world, uncovering secrets and kidnapping presidents? Dude, chill.

1.) Alvin and the Chipmunks
First of all, we've always hated this title. Alvin IS a chipmunk! Quit trying to imply he's something else! More importantly, if ever an old children's cartoon needed to be updated, this is not it. Now Alvin, Simon, and Theodore are wearin' bling and actin' all gangsta. One of the trailers has one of the chipmunks actually eating another chipmunk's poop. Really. If that's not a metaphor for the whole film, we don't know what is.

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