Readers of a sensitive disposition should be warned that I’m about to launch headlong into a fragmented, expletive-laden diatribe containing a number of unnecessary references to my genitalia.  If you’re the type of lass or lad to add “[citation needed]” to Wikipedia articles, you’re probably better off skipping this one and finding something more wholesome to do.  I hear people used to go outside in the days before the interwebs, so that might be an option.

It may look as if women are the target of my manifold aspersions, but the truth is that they’re ultimately not the cause of the problem.  For every talentless actress on screen, there’s a schmuck-ass dude in a suit who gave the go-ahead to cast her, more often than not due to an inability to differentiate between her talent and her talents.  As a result, nearly every other movie is spoiled by tepid efforts by vapid bints with shiny teeth but not enough skill to floss with.

Enough is enough.  After enduring this particular brand of bullshit for the entirety of my movie-going life, I’ve decided to start naming names.  This, I trust, will bring an end to the trend of trotting out lame-duck actresses as if we won’t notice.  If history is any precedent, there’s nothing more powerful than a meandering rant from a no-name blogger.  If you care to check back in a couple of days, I’ll be writing an article that should eliminate poverty by the end of the month.

Jessica Alba
Jessica Alba has the cold, dead eyes of a shark, and the acting abilities of the same.  Actually, scratch that.  A shark would, at least, be capable of nailing the role of a shark.  Jessica Alba, meanwhile, is a young, beautiful woman whose sole responsibility in any movie is to be eminently effable.  Her lazy, lobotomised delivery, however, makes my penis very, very sad.  You may think my dick irrelevant to the discussion, but since it’s firmly in Jessica Alba’s target audience it’s actually a valid arbiter of her performance here.

Gwyneth Paltrow
While I have no qualms whatsoever about calling Jessica Alba a dud, I’m only about ninety-nine percent certain that Gwyneth Paltrow is a shitty actress since I can’t entirely rule out the possibility that her being the biggest hippy-ass gasbag on earth has coloured my perception of her on-screen efforts.  I can normally separate the actor from the character, but having spent a good chunk of my teenage years in Britain (where this pain-in-the-posterior now resides), I was so inundated with reports of Ms. Paltrow’s newest foolish thoughts that it was impossible to put her idiocy aside.  Not a week went by that the tabloids weren’t adorned with a headline in the following format:

Gwyneth Paltrow: Uninformed Opinion about Something; Educated People: That Chick Ain’t Right

Here’s a specific example:

Gwyneth Paltrow slammed by experts over shampoo cancer claim

…and another:

Paltrow’s blog under fire from Hindus

With such egregious asshattery in mind, I may be prejudging Paltrow and branding her a crappy actor in spite of movies attesting to the contrary.  Still, I seem to remember thinking she stunk even before she started flapping her lip, so I’m fairly happy leaving her on the list.

Meg Ryan
Her fucking face doesn’t move.  This is a relatively major malfunction for an actress.  In many ways we should consider her a heroine for overcoming such a crippling shortcoming to sustain a lucrative acting career.  She’s like a modern-day Helen Keller, only instead of being born deafblind, she was tragically struck down in her thirties by multiple Botox-related accidents, which she repeatedly paid for.

Kirsten Dunst
How do you make Spider-Man uncool?  Seriously, how?  Answer me, Dunst, because you did it.  They have now released a full three movies about a kid from Queens who was bitten by a radioactive spider and subsequently became one of the baddest son-of-a-bitches on earth, and I have yet to be struck by any impulse to see even a second of them.  This is entirely the fault of Kirsten Dunst, who, like Freddie Mercury, has the unusual ability to display a number of her teeth even with her mouth closed.  Unlike Freddie Mercury, however, she is not one of the greatest entertainers of her generation, and I don’t wish she wasn’t dead.

Jennifer Aniston
I know that if you were looking to actually do stuff rather than read about it, you wouldn’t be on the internet right now.  Still, I hope you’ll take part in a little exercise I’ve devised.  First, take the thumb and forefinger of either hand and pinch the tip of your nose so that the flow of air is restricted.  Now attempt to imitate the low, humming sound your refrigerator makes.  The noise you are now producing is all I hear whenever Jennifer Aniston is on the screen.  Occasionally she’ll emit a high-pitched “Ooh!” and flap her hands wildly, and this is an indication that she has made an adorably klutzy goof and that we are expected to laugh.  I invariably decline to do so.  Aniston has all the charm and verve of the mild fungal nail infection that forced me to wear swim socks in the pool for much of third grade.

I had originally planned a top-ten feature, but I fear that any further discussion of these infuriatingly dull dolts will result in my developing a peptic ulcer.  Drop a comment in the box below to let me know if you think I’ve been unkind to any of the millionaires mentioned above, or if there are any notable names missing from the list.