Thrills, laughter, and tears.

All these sensations and more have been prevalent throughout the fair-weather months at the cinema. And just like every other summer, some feelings are more manufactured than others.

The movies of summer 2011 have had a polarizing effect. Some sure things turned out to be anything but, while other entries were surprisingly effective in their endeavor to entertain. Here are the best (and worst) of 2011.

Comedy

Best: Bridesmaids
Making its mark early in the season, the tale of maid of honor Annie (Kristen Wiig) taking her lumps, while trying to create the perfect wedding for her best friend (Maya Rudolph), had audiences rolling in the aisles. Deservedly so, with an amazing cast, including standouts Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Wendi McLendon-Covey and Jon Hamm, giving it their all and then some. It would seem the first half of summer saw the strongest giggles, with Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, and the raunchy duo of Bad Teacher and Horrible Bosses, also getting their fair share of laughs.

Worst: Zookeeper
What could be funnier than talking animals? The correct answer to this question clearly wasn’t a big fat guy to get smacked around ad nauseam. Kevin James’ turkey was arguably one of the worst movies of the year, devoid of any true humor and a waste of the entire cast’s talents. Also guilty of misusing capable comedy premises were the lewd body-switching romp The Change-Up and Steve Carell’s love it or hate it Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Drama

Best: A Better Life
The story of an illegal immigrant (Demián Bichir) trying to track down his stolen pickup truck and get himself and his teenage son (José Julián) out of the Los Angeles slums, a reworking of The Bicycle Thieves, proved to be one of the most realistic and heartbreaking movies of the summer. Then again, there wasn’t much in the genre to compete with, aside from the enormous book club hit The Help, the enigmatic The Tree of Life and little-seen, but high-quality, features like Sarah’s Key and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.

Worst: One Day
Two college friends (Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess) remain close for years, always drifting toward a relationship together. Can they make it work? Do we care? The adaptation of David Nicholls’ bestseller fails to match its literary beginnings in terms of keeping an audience interested as the lovers in question move on with their lives year by year each July 15. As long as we’re talking about missed opportunities, who else thought The Beaver lacked the appropriate bite?

Action

Best: The Debt
This is a tricky one. While it was more of a dramatic thriller than a straight actioner, and its release date qualifies it more as the first good movie of fall rather than the last good movie of summer, we’re still counting it. Helen Mirren is a powerhouse as usual, as a retired Israeli operative, whose mistakes 30 years ago are catching up to her. Jessica Chastain is great as Mirren’s younger self, while Sam Worthington, Marton Csokas, Tom Wilkinson and Ciarán Hinds round out the rest of the cast of director John Madden’s riveting account of tracking down a Nazi war criminal (Jesper Christensen). Slim pickings was the name of the game in finding original action movies this summer, with one of the few solid entries being the hilarious and thrilling Ireland-set The Guard, teaming Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle with debuting director John Michael McDonagh, the brother of In Bruges filmmaker Martin McDonagh.

Worst: 30 Minutes or Less
A loser (Jesse Eisenberg) pizza delivery boy has a bomb strapped to his body and is forced to carry out a bank robbery. What could have been an enjoyable action comedy from Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer, left us cold in laughs, and even more frigid, in the fast-paced action it promised. This was hardly the first of the summer to take on too much and fail, with the revenge story Colombiana lacking firepower despite a worthy effort by star Zoë Saldaña and a haunting conclusion set to Johnny Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt.

Science Fiction

Best: Super 8
A group of adolescents finds their existence in a 1970s small town shaken when they accidentally capture the escape of a government captive on camera. J.J. Abrams’ homage to producer Steven Spielberg ranks right up there with the likes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. Easily the best sci-fi movie of the year, this may also turn out to be the best of its kind throughout the decade. We’ll just have to wait and see if there are any better entries by the end of 2019…

Worst: Cowboys & Aliens
James Bond, Indiana Jones and a bunch of intergalactic invaders sounds awesome, but the results aren’t even close in this mishmash of Westerns and alien flicks starring Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford. Judging by his work with the Iron Man movies, you’d think Jon Favreau could competently blend high-tech flash and earthbound personalities, but it just doesn’t work here.

Comic Book Adaptation

Best: X-Men: First Class
The prequel, detailing how Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) came to be the way they are, is a zippy new take on the X-Men mythos by Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn. Taking the reins from series innovator Brian Singer, Vaughn makes the story his own, while still taking the franchise seriously at its roots. It’s been a very Marvel summer, with Captain America: The First Avenger and Thor giving respectable showings, in addition to DC title Green Lantern making a passable effort.

Worst: Priest
As if we haven’t had enough vampire hunter films, this dull, desaturated take on the Korean manhwa [a general term in Korean used to describe comics and cartoons] of the same name, was unbelievably tedious, no thanks to practically sleepwalking star Paul Bettany. Like Van Helsing before it, this undead horror deserves a stake through the heart. The same could almost be said of the similar Dylan Dog: Dead of Night, but at least there’s a sense of humor within that particular mess.

Family

Best: Winnie the Pooh
The return of everyone’s favorite stuffed bear and his friends was made all the better by a feature that sticks to the old-fashioned Disney animation that we grew to love. It’s impossible to dislike Pooh’s (voice of Jim Cummings) latest adventure, regardless of your age. On the subject of roly-poly bears, Kung Fu Panda 2 also packed a punch, while the mistaken identity feature Monte Carlo gave families a few laughs abroad.

Worst: The Smurfs
“La-la-la-la-la, sing a happy song.” The cheesy theme song is far from the worst thing about this big screen update of the 1980s cartoon, with terribly miscast vocal talents and one bad joke after another regarding the Smurfs’ nemesis, Gargamel (Hank Azaria). Nobody could have expected much from this misfire, which gives new interpretation to the familiar catch-all “smurfy,” depending on your vocabulary, but still… Also proving weak were the Jim Carrey vehicle Mr. Popper’s Penguins and Pixar’s first lemon, Cars 2.

Sequel

Best: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2
The finale to J.K. Rowling’s magical series provided everything Harry Potter fans could have hoped for after a decade’s worth of films. More graphic than ever, the battle between the boy wizard (Daniel Radcliffe) and Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) will be one for the ages. Elsewhere, the action of Kung Fu Panda 2 made it a worthy successor to the first, doing something unheard of these days by actually strengthening its main character’s personality.

Worst: The Hangover Part II
With more sequels this year than any other in history, it’s no shock that the majority make up one big junk heap. Most bad sequels come from movies that weren’t that great in the first place. For example: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Final Destination 5, Fast Five and plenty more. Even worse are bad follow-ups to great movies, with the carbon copy of The Hangover already tainting the reputation of its predecessor, which will always remain the definitive “morning after the party” comedy. To be fair, it’s still pretty funny, but the lack of originality is just embarrassing. Maybe we need one of Alan’s (Zach Galifianakis) prescription meds to erase our memories of this travesty.

Remake

Best: Rise of the Planet of the Apes
After Tim Burton’s horrific attempt to recreate the success of the 1960s classic, one would have thought any further efforts to get such a project going would only be met with screeches and flung banana peels. Such thinkers obviously didn’t count on the motion-capture style of Andy Serkis as Caesar, who captures our hearts like a smaller, smarter King Kong or a hairier, less vocal version of Gollum. Reinventing the origins we saw in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, this update had heart, soul and brains to spare. Less powerful was the remake of the comic horror show Fright Night, but with Colin Farrell providing plentiful charisma as the bloodsucker next door, it still had some fangs to show.

Worst: Conan the Barbarian
The cinematic rendering of Robert E. Howard’s hero wasn’t exactly magnificent the first time around, but this redo of the pulp fiction saga was pure mush that even Conan’s (Jason Momoa) blade couldn’t pierce. Mindless entertainment is one thing, but it should at least be thrilling. And no, showing it in 3-D doesn’t count.

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