Next up in the Year in Review is the Gomer Award.  This is the award given to the movie that was the biggest surprise of the year.  A film that I had little or no expectations for but turned out to be great.

Previous Gomer Award Winners:  The Gift, Ferdinand, Edge of Tomorrow, We’re the Millers, The Campaign, Ouija: Origin of Evil.

Runners-Up:  There were actually quite a few choices this year for the Gomer.  Overlord was a film that I did not know much about and had zero expectations only to find out that it was awesome. Instant Family was absolutely going to be just like Daddy’s Home and then, shockingly, it wasn’t and it was so much better and more emotional and real. The film A Simple Favor was outstanding and showed a type of film that I did not expect.  The promotional material looked to be surprised by it too.  John Cho’s Searching had no chance of being great, and yet it was one of the best of the year.  I found Eighth Grade to be as real of a film as I could have ever seen.  As a middle school teacher, these were characters that I have seen on a daily basis.  I walked out of Sorry to Bother You with my jaw dragging from the weirdness and originality.  I was sure that the basketball comedy Uncle Drew would be a travesty and, yet, I actually enjoyed it.  I ignored the remake of Overboard for weeks because I was sure I would hate it, but I did not.  It was decent.  And then Blockers had no reason to be anything but crude, unfunny humor but the film had a real heart and was funny.

The 2018 Gomer Award winner is….

Bumblebee

The last Transformers movie was The Last Knight, and it was one of my least favorite movies ever.  I would put it in the conversation with Movie 43, Batman and Robin etc.  There was no way that any Transformers movie could wash the stench off of itself from that travesty to be good. And yet, Bumblebee did it.  It was a great film, with a ton of heart and some wonderful storytelling.  This is the Transformers movie that we have all waited for and never expected that we would receive.

The biggest surprise of 2018