It's official: Wannabe Oscar-bait "Seven Pounds" is the critical cuddle buddy to Will Smith's godforsaken 2004 Michael Bay sequel, "Bad Boys II."

While "Seven Pounds" is no "Delgo" -- which, as S.T. Van Airsdale points out, apparently has already disappeared from theaters altogether -- Smith's new movie was supposed to be a bid at awards-season glory. Rotten Tomatoes has the film at a 27% approval rating, with Metacritic weighing in at 35. (By RT's measure, however, "Seven Pounds" isn't even the worst film in release; that honor goes to "The Day the Earth Stood Still.")

Still, Will! "Bad Boys II" earned a 24% RT rating, although that wasn't his career worst; that honor goes to the 1999 stinker "Wild Wild West," which earned a 21% rating.

What does 27% look like? Something like this:

"'Seven Pounds' features the best performance by a jellyfish in a film this year. Really, the thing is mesmerizing." -- Tom Long, Detroit News

"It's probably safe to argue that never before has the spirit of giving been pushed any higher. How high? According to my altimeter, to that oxygen-deprived point where lachrymose meets laughable." -- Rick Groen, Globe and Mail

"I don’t see how any review could really spoil what may be among the most transcendently, eye-poppingly, call-your-friend-ranting-in-the-middle-of-the-night-just-to-go-over-it-one-more-time crazily awful motion pictures ever made. I would tell you to go out and see it for yourself, but you might take that as a recommendation rather than a plea for corroboration." -- A.O. Scott, The New York Times

Good grief. Still, take heart, Columbia Pictures; even our own Todd McCarthy, who panned the film as "off-putting for its manifest manipulations, as well as its pretentiousness and self-importance," found something nice to say:

"All the same, the climax will be emotionally devastating for many viewers, perhaps particularly those with serious religious beliefs, meaning there’s a substantial audience out there for this profoundly peculiar drama, if word gets around."

Which, presuming that it doesn't pull a "Delgo," it probably will. [Hat tip to Steve G.]

Talk about service journalism: Oxford University has compiled a list of the 10 most irritating phrases, Charlotte Bailey reports, and number-one with a bullet was Hollywood's favorite form of noise pollution, "at the end of the day." Third place was was the nonsensical "I personally," a phrase that BBC Radio 4 presenter John Humphreys describes as "the linguistic equivalent of having chips with rice." Oxford researchers monitor phrase usage in the Oxford University Corpus database, which "alerts them to new words and phrases and can tell them which expressions are disappearing. It also shows how words are being misused." As a grammar geek, I'd like to will them my paltry estate. The full top 10 list in all its glory, after the jump. [Telegraph]

Among them: Advise readers well ("This does not involve informing them, 'You'll love this!' "), keep track of your praise ("If you call a movie 'one of the greatest movies ever made,' you are honor-bound to include it in your annual Top Ten list"), don't make challenges you can't back up ("When Gene Siskel predicted that 'Hakuna Matada' from 'The Lion King' would become a national catch-phrase, he later gracefully acknowledged he was wrong") and beware of both trailers ("have nothing to do with them") and freebies, a rule that Ebert admits "was a hard one for me to acknowledge." [Roger Ebert's Journal]

Eric D. Snider is good at math. He points out that four movies opened wide last weekend; three screened for critics; one wasn't. And now that the weekend's over, survey says? At Metacritic, "City of Ember," "Body of Lies" and "The Express" each have an average rating of 58. "Quarantine" is just slightly lower, at 54. "Why didn't Screen Gems let critics see it?" Snider asks. To which I'd imagine Screen Gems' Clint Culpepper would answer: "Why bother?" Of the four, the low-budget, under-wraps, review-free "Quarantine" was the top pick at the boxoffice, earning $14.2 million over the weekend. [Cinematical]

"We're fucked," says Sony Pictures Classics' co-president Tom Bernard. Specifically, he tells Claude Brodesser-Akner, he's depressed about the audience decline where big critics like Michael Wilmington (Chicago Tribune), John Anderson (Newsday), David Ansen (Newsweek), and Jami Bernard and Jack Mathews (New York Daily News) are no more. Says Bernard: "Our numbers in Chicago are down 20%, and it's only been three months since Michael Wilmington left." The death of specialized distributors (Picturehouse, Paramount Vantage, et. al.) also casts a pall. Among the titles that could use a friend: Columbia Pictures' "Seven Pounds," (Will Smith, suicidal IRS agent), Miramax' s "Doubt" (Meryl Streep, nun confronting sexually abusive priest), Warner Bros.' "Gran Torino" (Clint Eastwood, Korean War vet reforming teen carjacker), Paramount's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (Brad Pitt aging in reverse) and Focus' Features "Milk" (Sean Penn, America's first openly gay city official, assassinated). Says Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan: "The studios all say, 'A film is a film. We can handle those releases.' But the question is, 'Can they?' " [Ad Age]