Will Smith managed to star in two disappointments in 2008: the comedy Hancock, above, and the drama Seven Pounds.

Columbia Pictures

This year, instead of a list of the worst films of the year, I’ve opted to call it a list of the year’s major disappointments.

These were films that started off on seemingly solid ground — with competent directors and actors — but then somewhere along the line something went terribly awry. Instead of being truly awful these films are … disappointments. So here’s a collection of films that didn’t live up to the promise of their advance hype.

• Speed Racer. This one had warning signs all over it. A 2-hour-and-15-minute live-action, $120-million version of a Japanese anime TV series that no one remembered with fondness, made in Germany with neon-colored cars whizzing around a computer-generated racetrack. You’d think that all that might have given the producers second thoughts. But apparently hope springs eternal in Hollywood. Warner Bros. released Speed Racer May 9 as the first of the “blockbuster summer movies.” By the time summer officially arrived in late June, however, Speed Racer had already sped off to oblivion. Alas, what can you say about a film geared to 14-year-old boys whose best moments were stolen by a chimpanzee?

• Miracle at St. Anna. Spike Lee wanted to give heroic African-American soldiers who were on the front lines in World War II their due with this film. But emotional fervor seems to have gotten in the way of Lee’s storytelling techniques in a 2 1/2-hour epic which could have used more scissor work in the editing room. The plot revolves around four black soldiers who get separated from their squad and take refuge in a village where all the inhabitants are mum about a Nazi massacre on the outskirts of town. The film, suffering from too many characters and too many subplots, ends with an unbelievable firefight in the heart of the village that leaves just about everyone dead.

• The Love Guru. Mike Myers co-wrote the script of this unfunny film about a self-proclaimed, self-help Indian mystic who claims to have answers to all of life’s problems and becomes the darling of the Hollywood celebrity crowd. All this is played out with broad gags that usually involve references to sex or bodily functions, including a fight in which the opponents wield mops that have been dipped into a bucket of urine. Hindus protested that the film poked fun at their religion. They were the only ones who were excited about the film, which audiences stayed away from in droves.

•Step Brothers. An exercise in low-ball humor. Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly play 40-ish men who still live with their single parents and have not developed much beyond the sixth grade. When their parents marry, they are thrust together in a shared bedroom. Most of the film had an air of childish naughtiness that it never overcame.

•You Don’t Mess with the Zohan. Adam Sandler played his goofball child-man character one too many times here as an unfulfilled Israeli commando who comes to New York to live out his fantasy as a hairdresser while still pursuing his arch nemesis, a Palestinian terrorist named Phantom. Rob Schneider played a Palestinian taxi driver who hasn’t gotten over the loss of his beloved goat. Sandler wriggled his way through the role of Zohan, having erotic encounters with some of the hair salon’s aging customers in the back room. Need one say more?

•The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. There were grand expectations for this sequel to the magical The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, which was based on a series of books by C.S. Lewis. Hopes dashed. This sequel, about a wayward prince who flees his murderous uncle, takes place 1,000 years after the first film ended and, sadly, lacked the sense of magic and wonder that filled nearly every frame of its predecessor. With little background information to its characters, those who hadn’t seen the first film or read Lewis’s books were left bewildered by a series of elaborate, surprisingly violent battle sequences that ran together in a blur.

•Hancock. Will Smith used up much of the good will he’d collected in a string of past hit films with this ton of poppycock that revolved around a boozy, unlikable and unlikely superhero who had remarkable powers. A grumbling, arrogant character, Hancock seemed to have no sense of the colossal damage his actions caused, eventually making the citizens of Los Angeles demand that he stop trying to “protect” them. I wanted to flee the theater, but the film was a big hit. Maybe people were dazzled by the snazzy special effects and Smith’s smile.

•Seven Pounds. As if Hancock were not enough to try the patience of moviegoers, Smith came back with this dramatic mess in which his character is on the verge of committing suicide in the opening scene. Smith plays an Internal Revenue Service agent who tracks down taxpayers, decides who is worthy and who is not, then punishes the bad ones and helps the good. If you can buy that, then you might even buy the even more unlikely ending in which he goes out on a limb to be a good Samaritan.

•The Day the Earth Stood Still. Is there anything more disappointing than a remake of a classic film that doesn’t hold a candle to the original? Many of the ingredients from the 1951 film are here, though updated, in this story of an alien being who comes from outer space with a warning for earthlings. In the original, Klaatu urged humans to change their warlike ways (the Cold War was in full swing at the time) or face annihilation. In this “green” remake, Keanu Reeves as Klaatu tells humans that we are about to be decimated for not taking better care of the planet. It doesn’t help that Jennifer Connelly, as the lone woman who can (possibly) save the world has little charisma and zero chemistry with Reeves. Sadly, without any hints of a connection between the principal characters as there was in the 1951 film, the endeavor falls disappointingly flat with very little sense of urgency about the coming end of days. Nevertheless, Kathy Bates, as the Defense Secretary, does get to utter one of the best lines of the year when she turns to Reeves and asks, “What were you before you were human?” That’s something we all were wondering about.

•Yes Man. Jim Carrey plays a hilarious scene with a fly near the start of Yes Man. Sadly, that’s about as funny as this silly and slight comedy gets. Carrey plays a glum bank loan officer whose wife has left him. However, during a visit to a self-help seminar, he makes what he believes is a sacred promise to say yes to everything for a year. The film has some funny ingredients, but Yes Man is played out on a level plane and Carrey never rises to the kind of manic nuttiness that made him a star.

mjanuson@projo.com