The Best And Worst Netflix Originals Of 2018

Netflix is a streaming video service, but it's often been compared to a traditional TV network, or at least a more provocative cable channel like HBO. That's because it offers many different TV series of every possible genre for a wide variety of audiences — and just as many (if not more) movies from the distant past, the recent past, and its own production partners. 

But Netflix is more than a network — it doesn't have a set number of time slots to fill, so it can offer a seemingly endless array of content. And it just doesn't serve as a clearinghouse for Hollywood movies, TV hits, and international offerings: Netflix produces and distributes its own content at a rapid clip, including high-quality stuff like Stranger Things and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Because it's pretty hard to keep up with everything Netflix puts out, we've rounded up some of the best films and series the company has introduced in 2018...along with some you shouldn't bother putting on your watchlist. 

The rollout of this third film in the Cloverfield series highlighted what makes streaming media so exciting. During the Super Bowl, Netflix ran an ad announcing the imminent debut of The Cloverfield Paradox — in fact, it would be ready to stream at the conclusion of the game. Unfortunately, the critical consensus is that the way Netflix surprised the world with a big-budget feature film was the most compelling thing about The Cloverfield Paradox.

Paradox finds a bunch of scientists (including Daniel Bruhl, Elizabeth Debicki, and Chris O'Dowd) stuck on a remote space station attempting to tap a new source of energy. Instead, they mishandle a particle accelerator, wind up in an alternate dimension, and send a monster (guess who?) on its way to Earth. It's like the Aliens movies, only needlessly convoluted...but also with a plot too thin to justify its many turns. Barry Hertz of The Globe and Mail says The Cloverfield Paradox's "twists feel routine, its narrative spine limp, and its conclusion especially rushed."

Mute had everything going for it. The cast included likable stars such as Justin Theroux, Paul Rudd, and Alexander Skarsgard. It was co-written and directed by Duncan Jones, the inventive mind behind modern-day sci-fi classics like Moon and Source Code, and Mute is his passion project, a film 14 years in the making. But when Mute finally hit Netflix in 2018, fans were left wondering "is that it?" after a film that borrowed heavily from Blade Runner. Set in a high-tech Berlin in the year 2035, the story stars Skarsgard as a strip club bartender unable to speak due to a childhood medical problem and an Amish mother who refused treatment. When his true love, a waitress named Naadirah (Seyneb Saleh) disappears, he goes looking for her, only to find himself caught up in the city's cliché-ridden criminal underworld, including a couple of American doctors (Theroux and Rudd) who run an illegal medical clinic.

Rosie Fletcher of Digital Spy summarized Mute nicely: "The whole film is populated by people you don't believe or care at all about, behaving in ways that don't make sense against a cheap-looking sci-fi-by-numbers backdrop."

First of all, if you're not a fan of Workaholics, or a cast member of Workaholics, this movie isn't for you, and you're not going to like it. (You'd also agree with the critical consensus — Game Over, Man! rates a dismal 9 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.) This film takes everything singular and specific about the long-running Comedy Central slacker sitcom and amplifies it. Genitalia jokes? Tons of them. Romanticized '80s action movie violence? Depicted, in scene after scene. Profane banter between the three real-life friends and comedy partners? All over the place, except it isn't bleeped. 

Overall, Game Over, Man! finds Anders Holm, Blake Anderson, and Adam Devine portraying pretty much the same character types they played on Workaholics, except now they're working in a luxury high-rise hotel held hostage by terrorists. So yeah, they basically remade Die Hard, but with more dirty jokes and somehow more violence.

Carol Burnett's return to television should be cause for celebration. The entire nation should have dropped what they were doing and found their way to a Roku the second the TV legend's direct-to-Netflix project started streaming. Surely, Burnett would just start up where she left off and give the audience what it wants from Carol Burnett — fun, flashy, and charming sketch comedy like she made on The Carol Burnett Show in the '60s and '70s. But for some reason, Burnett's first regular TV series in decades (not counting those Carol Burnett Show box set infomercials that air on late-night TV), is a forced, awkward mash-up of Dr. Phil and Kids Say the Darndest Things. 

In each episode, Burnett, along with the equally mis-utilized stand-up comedian Russell Peters, takes questions about life and love from the studio audience. Then Burnett and a celebrity guest (Finn Wolfhard from Stranger Things! Derek Hough from Dancing With the Stars!) try to answer before throwing the query over to a panel of cute and precocious kids who have no idea what they're talking about. Carol Burnett deserves better.

Adam Sandler is one of the most divisive screen presences of all time. Critics loathe the actor/producer/writer's unabashedly puerile, juvenile, and silly movies like Billy Madison, The Waterboy, and Pixels...but millions of people go see them. He's been so successful that Netflix signed him to an exclusive deal that gives the service the distribution rights to all of his films. But not all of Sandler's films are critically reviled — many pundits enjoyed his restrained performance in Punch Drunk Love, for example, and he was a winning romantic lead in The Wedding Singer. The Week Of places the now 50-year-old Sandler in the "doofus dad" phase of his career, and also gives us a new Sandler to go along with Silly Sandler and Serious Actor Sandler: Boring Sandler. Seriously, very little happens in this movie that takes place "the week of" his daughter's wedding to the son of a surgeon played by Chris Rock. With some spare slapstick along the way, Sandler toils away at getting things ready for the big day, messing most things up and cringing at the price tag every time. The Week Of feels like it plays out in real time.

Okay, so The Boss Baby probably wasn't a great movie. But then, it wasn't made for an audience of people who are even old enough to be able to read sentences criticizing it — it was a light, diverting romp tailor-made for toddlers. It did have a couple of things going for it, including a clever and kooky premise — a baby is a big shot in the cutthroat business world and must foil a pet store's plan to introduce dogs that stay cute and puppy-like forever...which will mean people will have less babies. Its second major asset? The deep, expressive voice of Alec Baldwin as the Boss Baby. Netflix's very quickly produced Boss Baby follow-up series, The Boss Baby: Back in Business, has too much of one good thing and a complete lack of the other. The premise concerns Boss Baby trying to foil a plan to make everyone want to buy super-cute cats instead of dogs, but Baldwin was too busy or too expensive to reprise his role, so a soundalike named J.P. Karliak fills in to the best of his abilities.

Elle (Joey King) and Lee (Joel Courtney) have been best friends for literally their entire lives — their moms were best friends and gave birth in the same hospital on the same day. Over the years (time flies in this movie with lots of montage sequences), the two develop a list of steadfast "friendship rules," a plot contrivance that nobody in real life would actually make. Perhaps the most important rule: Don't date each other's relatives...even if one of those relatives is, say, Lee's older brother Noah (Jacob Elordi), a popular, hunky teen who always seems to wind up with his shirt off. Well, guess what happens? Elle and Noah totally end up together, even though they're totally not supposed to. They kiss at a school fundraising kissing booth (which seems unlikely to be a thing in these days of #MeToo and herpes), and beyond. Much of the movie consists of Elle and Noah sneaking around to make sure Lee doesn't find out Elle has betrayed his trust.

The Kissing Booth: The plot doesn't make sense, the characters are annoying...and it's maybe the perfect teen movie?

While David Spade's 2001 comedy Joe Dirt was successful in its own right, Joe Dirt 2 was probably unnecessary. However, it gave audiences another chance to enjoy Spade playing a crude, drawlin', and rough-around-the-edges good ol' boy, and Spade clearly had a blast making both movies. But did the SNL and Tommy Boy veteran really need to show the world what would happen if Joe Dirt had low self esteem, a tendency toward senseless violence, and a college-age son who's probably ashamed of him? 

Father of the Year makes a whole movie out of that argument that eight-year-olds have — "My dad could beat up your dad!" — only the eight-year-olds are in their twenties and the dads actually entertain the notion of fighting out of some misguided need to prove their worth to their sons. That's a pretty disturbing and tonally weird premise for what's supposed to be a comedy. 

Unfortunately, this film is no Joe Dirt. Father of the Year has joined the ranks of the handful of films to acquire a 0 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. Blake Goble of Consequence of Sound couldn't identify even a single major redeeming quality, calling it "all easy beats, predictive familiarities, and absolutely zero heart, soul, or silliness anywhere to be found."