best worst movie reviews

Cookie banner

We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy . Please also read our Privacy Notice and Terms of Use , which became effective December 20, 2019.

By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies.

Follow The Ringer online:

Follow The Ringer on Twitter
Follow The Ringer on Instagram
Follow The Ringer on Youtube

Filed under:

Pop Culture

The 50 Best Good Bad Movies

The bad special effects, the awful acting, the nonsensical plots — there’s something enchanting about a movie that’s hopelessly bad. After rewatching all the films your favorite actors wish you’d forget, we determined which are the best (well, best worst) ones ever.

Share this story

Share this on Facebook
Share this on Twitter
Share All sharing options

Share All sharing options for: The 50 Best Good Bad Movies

All week, The Ringer will be celebrating Good Bad Movies, those films that are so terrible they’re endlessly amusing and — dare we say it? — actually good. Please join us as we give the over-the-top action movies, low-budget romance thrillers, and peak ’80s cheese-fests the spotlights they deserve.

Here’s a thing I’m not afraid to admit: I’ve seen Road House more times than I’ve seen The Godfather . I’ve seen Citizen Kane twice in my life — but once watched She’s All That twice in a weekend. You, too, are guilty of something like this.

There’s just something enjoyable about a movie that’s hopelessly committed to its (very bad) vision. Whether it’s due to bad special effects, awful acting, or a completely absurd or nonsensical plot, these films create a sense of sheer wonderment and force you to exclaim, "How is this a movie?!" But the mere fact that something so illogical, or low-budget, or ill-conceived exists is at the root of why we like these movies. They’re so bad that … they’re actually kind of good.

Because it’s summertime — the season when so many Good Bad Movies have bloomed — we wanted to give the subgenre the attention it deserves. We’ll be exploring the genre at length, but no project would be complete without a big list that definitively determines the greatest Good Bad Movies to ever be released. It was a Herculean task (and in this case we’re specifically using that adjective with the Rock’s Hercules in mind); here’s how we did it.

The Qualifications

The Good Bad Movie genre is not easy to define. The line between so-bad-it’s-good and so-bad-I-left-the-theater is quite thin; taste is subjective, and what one person finds to be amusingly bad others may consider plain bad. The emergence of parody movies, meanwhile, raises questions about how integral artistic intent is in giving a film the Good Bad label. Therefore, following these three rules is a solid, efficient way to determine whether a movie is Good Bad:

Enjoyment of the movie must be derived from its badness. Its badness needs to be the thing that creates a sense of bewildered enjoyment.
There must be a pervading sense that those who made the film thought what they were doing was great, or at least good. Good Bad Movies have minimal self-awareness. Here are two examples that may help explain this sentiment: (1) MacGruber is not a Good Bad Movie, it’s a tribute to Good Bad Movies, and (2) Fast Five is not a Good Bad Movie, it is a movie that intentionally wades into ridiculousness (and then manufactures a reaction similar to the one a Good Bad Movie elicits naturally).
The movie must have been something of a critical failure when it was released. Critics, god bless them, hold movies to a high standard as an art form and generally don’t reward a movie for being of low quality. In that way, they’re a helpful, as-objective-as-possible resource in determining which films are bad, and therefore eligible to be Good Bad.

After solidifying what qualifies a Good Bad Movie, we moved toward constructing a definitive top-50 list.

The Process

It started in-house, with staff members of The Ringer nominating candidates. After weeding out the nominees that did not adhere to Rule No. 3 above — any film with over a 60 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes was deemed ineligible — the remaining movies were put through this formula:

I know. Stay with me.

CR stands for Cultural Relevance, and was determined by multiplying a movie’s number of Google News hits in the last year (with 1 point being awarded per 100 hits) by the number of years it’s been since that movie’s release. A Good Bad Movie’s ability to stay in the cultural conversation years after it came out is important, and indicates how a respective movie is gaining appreciation and growing a fan base.

RT — this one’s easy — stands for Rotten Tomatoes score. Because Good Bad Movies must overcome an astonishingly low level of quality, our system favors the films with truly abysmal critical receptions, rather than the ones that were reviewed as mediocre to bad.

PO stands for Public Opinion. Overall enjoyment is the absolute end goal of a Good Bad Movie, and how much a Good Bad Movie is liked is core to its rating against other Good Bad Movies. To determine PO, a couple of weeks ago we tweeted out a list of every candidate and asked readers to pick their 10 favorites. After the poll closed and total votes were tabulated, each movie was ranked from 1 to 64, with first place being awarded 64 points, second place 63 points, and so on. Do the 6,700 or so people who voted in this poll appropriately represent the opinion of the viewing public? Probably not. But until the government adds Good Bad Movie questions to census forms, this is the best we’ve got.

GBS stands for Good Bad Score. The higher a movie’s GBS is, the more esteemed it is as a Good Bad Movie.

All right! Now that math class is over, it’s time to learn the 50 best Good Bad Movies ever. — Andrew Gruttadaro

The Ranking

50. ‘Idle Hands’ (1999)

Good Bad Score: 43.2 Rotten Tomatoes: 16% Andrew Gruttadaro : Here’s how I picture how the pitch meeting for Idle Hands went:

Guy 1: Hey, ya know that saying, "Idle hands are the devil’s workshop"?

Guy 2: Kinda.

Guy 1: What if that was a movie?

Guy 2: Here’s $25 million.

Idle Hands is literally about a stoner whose hand develops a mind of its own and goes on a killing rampage. It’s unbelievably stupid and bizarrely tone deaf: This guy’s hand kills his parents and best friends, and it all plays out like a comedy. But Idle Hands is Good Bad because of how sharply of a time it feels — it’s 1999 in a VHS tape. The entire movie is scored by the Offspring — which the trailer goes out of its way to mention; ’90s heartthrob Devon Sawa is the lead; Seth Green, that era’s go-to witty sidekick, is the witty sidekick; and a pre-Honest Jessica Alba is the literal girl next door who is … into the hand situation? I don’t know how and/or why — but I do know that Idle Hands is a gem of a bad movie.

49. ‘Lionheart’ (1990)

GBS: 45.1 RT: 33% Shea Serrano : A seven-part formula for creating a Good Bad Movie: First, you cast Jean-Claude Van Damme. Second, you make the movie a thing where the main part of the plot is that he has to fight in a tournament or in an off-the-books fight circle to avenge something or someone. Third, you make sure to have an impossible-to-defeat bad guy waiting for JCVD at the end. Fourth, don’t forget to sprinkle in, say, something like 10 percent worth of moments when JCVD interacts with a woman in some charming way. Fifth, also be sure to have a point in there when he gets hurt pretty badly but not so badly that it totally stops him from fighting. Sixth, have at least one funny scene. And then seventh, let it end with JCVD all busted up but still triumphant. It works just about every single time. (Except for the The Quest . I don’t know what TF happened there.)

48. ‘Cellular’ (2004)

GBS: 46.8 RT: 55% Micah Peters : There’s a number of things counting against the 2004 thriller Cellular : Jason Statham in a villain role, which always feels off; entirely illogical plot choices; the fact that it’s extremely not Phone Booth 2 . But then again, it’s just over 90 minutes and either entertaining or unintentionally funny enough ("How did you get involved?" "I just answered my phone" is an actual exchange) to hold your attention until the credits roll. You won’t think too hard, maybe one or two details will actually stay with you — like Statham and Chris Evans beefing over whose crewneck tee is most medium, or how the movie feels like it was made specifically for MTV2 daytime programming — and both William H. Macy and Jessica Biel are in it.

47. ‘Dante’s Peak’ (1997)

GBS: 48.6 RT: 27% Alyssa Bereznak : Pierce Brosnan looks really cool on a mountain and near explosions. As long as you accept that as the only unifying premise of the objectively bad 1997 action flick Dante’s Peak , you’ll be able enjoy it. The film takes place in a peaceful town that gets blown to pieces after a once-inactive volcano suddenly erupts. Brosnan plays a noted vulcanologist who spends the first half of the movie squinting at rocks and warning people that danger is coming. He’s scarred by the loss of his girlfriend, who "loved volcanoes" but was also killed by one. And even though he convinces town mayor/single mom Linda Hamilton to fall in love with him in the span of a day, he asserts that he’s "always been better at figuring out volcanoes than people and politics." $100 million worth of molten lava CGI later, he emerges from the mountain hellscape with a broken arm and a new family. Being is a vulcanologist is a trip, man.

46. ‘Obsessed’ (2009)

GBS: 51.3 RT: 19% Hannah Giorgis : How many times can you watch a pre–Blue Ivy Beyoncé say "You touched my child" to the white woman (Ali Larter) trying to steal her husband (Idris Elba)? The limit does not exist. What Obsessed lacks in believable dialogue, premise, and overall quality, it makes up for with Beyoncé–Ali Larter fight scenes and the very idea of Beyoncé and Idris Elba as a couple. Sorry, Unforgettable .

45. ‘Stone Cold’ (1991)

GBS: 51.8 RT: 29% Serrano: There are a bunch of ways to figure out if a movie is just a regular bad movie or if it’s a Good Bad Movie, but probably the easiest is to just ask yourself, "Does this movie star Brian Bosworth as a renegade cop who has to go undercover to take down a white supremacist biker gang? And is there a scene where a guy gets his hand mutilated because someone else shoves it into a spinning motorcycle wheel? And does Brian Bosworth’s character have a komodo dragon that he feeds smoothies made of Snickers and potato chips? And is there a part where a guy dresses like a member of the clergy so he can sneak a bunch of weapons into a courtroom?" Because if the answers to those questions are all yes, then you know it’s a Good Bad Movie.

44. ‘The Wicker Man’ (2006)

GBS: 62 RT: 15% Lindsay Zoladz : A movie is only as Good Bad as its corresponding drinking game. I can say with confidence, then, that the 2006 Nic Cage remake of The Wicker Man is a Great Bad Movie, because the drinking game my friends and I played once while watching it made us so belligerent that I was nearly evicted from my home. Rules included "drink every time Nic Cage raises his voice," "drink every time Nic Cage makes an unreasonable demand," and, the one that my liver will never recover from, "drink every time Nic Cage strikes anything with intent to damage (this includes people also)."

The most ridiculous moments of The Wicker Man have, rightfully, become memes: Cage’s overdramatic read of the line "How’d it get burned?" ; his death wail "NOT THE BEES!"; and, of course, the scene where he punches a woman in the face while wearing a bear suit, which is only slightly more ridiculous when put into slow motion and set to the Chariots of Fire song . From top to bottom, this movie is basically just an hour and 42 minutes of Nicolas Cage striking the viewer with intent to damage, which means you have to drink for the entire thing.

43. ‘Youngblood’ (1986)

GBS: 66.6 RT: 38% Gruttadaro: Youngblood is what would happen if you threw Dirty Dancing , St. Elmo’s Fire , and a hockey puck into a cauldron. It’s deliciously ’80s, with an absurd amount of slow-motion hockey scenes, a fantastic training montage , an extremely cheesy but fun "hotshot athlete hooks up with the coach’s daughter" plotline, and a murderer’s row of icons from the decade: Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze, and a brand-new Keanu Reeves. Out of every entry in Swayze’s ’80s oeuvre, Youngblood probably gets the least reverence, but it’s absolutely deserving of a cult movement. I mean, c’mon, just look at this:

42. ‘Hercules’ (2014)

GBS: 69.2 RT: 60% Sam Schube : The first thing we need to talk about is Hercules’s lion hat. Hercules has plenty of great, horrible, very good-bad moments — cheese god Brett Ratner’s gory direction, John Hurt’s heel turn, the fact that the Rock’s Hercules has luscious shoulder-length hair and a club that makes him look like Bam-Bam — but we need to start with the lion hat. This lion hat:

The hat was once the head of the Nemean Lion, which Hercules slayed as one of his famous 12 labors. Naturally, Ratner’s film yada-yadas those endeavors to make a movie about Herc training an army of farmers. But that’s part of the film’s appeal. Hercules assumes that no one would ever see a Hercules movie that’s … you know, about the legend of Hercules. ("His father was Zeus — the Zeus, king of the gods," the narrator intones. Got it — that Zeus.) In its place, we get a sturdy swords-and-sandals epic, a very confused Dwayne Johnson performance, and — yes — the lion hat. Long may it roar.

41. ‘You Got Served’ (2004)

GBS: 74.6 RT: 16% Giorgis: 2004 was a simpler time. A time when dance movies reigned supreme, when B2K ruled the airwaves and teen girls’ hearts. A time that brought us the true gem that is You Got Served , a delightfully terrible dance-competition movie that stars Omarion (and the rest of B2K, too, in theory), Marques Houston, Meagan Good, and Steve Harvey. Watch for choreography far more compelling than the characters themselves, gratuitous predictable drama, and the iconic titular catchphrase.

40. ‘Battleship’ (2012)

GBS: 86.2 RT: 34% Amanda Dobbins : Rihanna & Neeson & Kitsch & Berg & Plemons & Decker & Jerry Ferrara & a World War II ship that gets attacked by aliens

God bless everyone — literally every single person in the cast — who took this board game movie so seriously.

39. ‘Save the Last Dance’ (2001)

GBS: 88.3 RT: 53% Giorgis: Upon rewatch, Save the Last Dance is almost unbearably corny. The story line — white-girl ballet dancer (Julia Stiles) moves to the hood and learns how to dance hippity hop after falling for a black classmate (Sean Patrick Thomas) — is eye-roll worthy enough, but the worst part of the movie is Stiles’s dancing. If you watch it entirely to cackle at the movie attempting to sell you on Stiles as the next J.Lo, Save the Last Dance is quality entertainment. Quality reads from Bianca Lawson’s and Kerry Washington’s characters don’t hurt, either.

38. ‘The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift’ (2006)

GBS: 116.5 RT: 37% Victor Luckerson : A great bad movie is full of semifamous actors/celebrities — often referred to as "that guy" — who immediately seem worse off for having appeared in the film. Tokyo Drift is full of such revelations. Main character Lucas Black is that guy from Friday Night Lights and the Wonderful World of Disney movie Flash . The dude he races at the start of the movie is that kid from Home Improvement ( not Jonathan Taylor Thomas, who is too ’90s-iconic to be "that guy"). Black’s high school buddy is that guy from mediocre early-2000s rap, also known as Bow Wow. And the movie ends with the ultimate cameo — Vin Diesel, that guy from the original The Fast and the Furious ! Before it could become a blockbuster action franchise, F&F had to devolve into B-movie schlock. Watching fame-adjacent actors muddle through the franchise’s critical and commercial nadir is one of life’s great joys.

37. ‘Just One of the Guys’ (1985)

GBS: 128.8 RT: 40% Sean Fennessey : I don’t even think there’s a fun way to write about this movie anymore. Notions of gender have evolved so acutely and precisely in the past 10 years that the fundamental premise doesn’t seem so much insensitive as it does just plain weird. What mitigates the complications though: It’s terrible. But also enrapturing. You can’t look away from the high-stakes drama that ensues when a disgruntled, beautiful teenage girl (played by 28-year-old Joyce Hyser, perhaps best known as a former paramour of both Warren Beatty and Bruce Springsteen) is told she can’t succeed at her local high school newspaper, so she poses as a slick teen boy in a rival high school to do some serious journalism and prove her doubters wrong, all while trying to stave off suitors and ultimately land the man of her dreams. Simply typing the plot has bent me over into a right angle. And yet, this movie is cable crack. That isn’t an explanation. But it’s the truth.

36. ‘Bad Boys II’ (2003)

GBS: 130 RT: 23% Gruttadaro: Before the Transformers series, Bad Boys II was the peak example of director Michael Bay’s scorched-earth maximalism. The action is over the top — a chase on a Miami highway has cars AND BOATS barrel-rolling through balls of fire (no mention of casualties though); there’s an entire side plot focused on Martin Lawrence’s character’s struggle with erectile disfunction, which is solved when he accidentally ingests ecstasy; a then relatively unknown Michael Shannon plays a member of the KKK, which is depicted more as a hokey group of rednecks rather than a hate group. Bad Boys II is bad, but in a way that makes you shake your head until you’re somehow smiling and then laughing. Blame buddy-cop duo Lawrence and Will Smith, who commit to the (awful) material harder than anyone would ever expect them to.

35. ‘Spice World’ (1997)

GBS: 143.1 RT: 36% Giorgis: Twenty years later, does anyone remember the actual plot of Spice World ? For the unfamiliar, the film followed the Spice Girls as they drove around London in their tour bus. Rather than track average encounters with fans, Spice World took the girls on strange, unexpected adventures including encounters with aliens and a night in a haunted castle. None of the girls can really act (sorry, boos), but the movie is more about their outrageous antics than any sort of plausibility. Mel B, Mel C, Emma, and Geri all spiced up our lives back in 1997; if you wanna be my lover now, you still gotta get with this film.

34. ‘Battlefield Earth’ (2000)

GBS: 156.1 RT: 3% Gruttadaro: So you’re telling me that a movie based on a book written by the guy who invented Scientology, starring John Travolta as a 9-foot-tall alien in dreadlocks, was not the greatest film of 2000? Many actually consider it "the worst movie ever made" ? I AM SHOCKED!

Yes, at the time, Battlefield Earth was excoriated for being one of the "most uninvolving and incomprehensible major-studio fantasies" ever. The thousands of words of criticism written about the movie all still stand. But here is a great example of a movie that became Good Bad over time. Almost two decades removed from its release, with Travolta reduced from movie star to an "Adele Dazeem"–uttering caricature, it’s incredible to revisit this woefully misguided passion project. A failure of this magnitude needs to be appreciated. Right, dreadlocked Travolta?

OK, sure. I’ll take that as a yes.

33. ‘Surviving the Game’ (1994)

GBS: 164.6 RT: 27% Gruttadaro: Rich guys played by Rutger Hauer, Gary Busey, F. Murray Abraham, and Charles S. Dutton hunt down a homeless man played by Ice-T — that is an incomprehensible, can’t-miss movie premise. Surviving the Game has too many Good Bad moments to count: Ice-T’s loquacious summary of how it felt to lose his family; the way he says, "Well done … bitch," after Busey’s character dies in a fire; and of course, Busey’s three-minute monologue about killing a childhood dog with his bare hands:

I think Busey thought he was going to get an Oscar nomination for this. He did not.

32. ‘Mission: Impossible II’ (2000)

GBS: 183.2 RT: 57% Gruttadaro: John Woo is a Good Bad genius, and his Mission: Impossible II may be the movie that’s most saturated with his brand of slo-mo, hyperstylized action. Before a climactic scene in which Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt emerges to take down a henchman, a flock of doves inexplicably flutter across the screen. Motorcycle stunts alone seem to make up about 65 percent of the film:

Add to that how truly ridiculous it is how much of the plot rides on absurd face-switching technology — and the fact that M:I-2 is a pinnacle for Cruise’s hair — and you’ve got a bona fide Good Bad action classic.

31. ‘Nothing but Trouble’ (1991)

GBS: 185.4 RT: 8% Charlotte Goddu : This Dan Aykroyd film has all the bright carnivalesque absurdity of Ghostbusters — only applied with a heavier hand. Demi Moore and Chevy Chase find themselves imprisoned in the small town of Valkenvania, inside a haunted-house-ride mansion full of secret conveyor belts and moving walls. The movie should by all rights be 100 percent goofy: There’s a deathly roller coaster called "Mr. Bonestripper" and a fight scene where the weapon of choice is a chamber pot; Tupac makes a cameo as a member of Digital Underground, rapping while the decrepit grandpa who’s imprisoned Chase and Moore plays a killer organ solo. But the goofiness is sprinkled with oddly classic moments. Chase slips into a Jimmy Stewart cadence every once in a while; he and Moore share a tender kiss on a train rolling off into the night. Nothing but Trouble doesn’t define itself as only absurd; it also seems to think it’s a real love story, which is just precious and sincerely silly.

30. ‘Demolition Man’ (1993)

GBS: 206.6 RT: 64% Gruttadaro: "Now all restaurants are Taco Bell." That’s a direct quote from Sandra Bullock’s character in Demolition Man . Don’t worry, she also explains why: "Taco Bell was the only restaurant to survive the franchise wars." This bit of dialogue is Demolition Man in a nutshell, a preposterous Sylvester Stallone action vehicle about a police officer who, in the future, is thawed out from his cryogenic chamber to catch his archnemesis (Wesley Snipes). The movie joyously skates by on "this is what life will be like in the future" fantasies: Beyond the Franchise Wars, in the future police refer to homicide as a "murder-death-kill" — because who needs vocabularial efficiency? — and this is how they have sex:

How could you not love a train wreck like this?

29. ‘The Chase’ (1994)

GBS: 228.4 RT: 37% Gruttadaro: Here’s movie critic James Berardinelli on The Chase : "As an example of modern cinematic art, The Chase is an utter failure. As a character study, it can’t get past the comic book stage. As a tightly plotted thriller, it’s missing about half the story line. But, as a piece of unfettered, unpretentious entertainment, it hits the bullseye." That’s a perfect distillation of the Good Bad Movie genre. To further Berardinelli’s point, and to give you some highlights if you haven’t seen The Chase , here are a few things that happen:

Charlie Sheen, a children’s party clown, is on the lam after a string of robberies perpetrated by a clown are pegged on him. (They got the wrong clown!)
Charlie Sheen, in order to evade police, takes Kristy Swanson hostage and initiates the titular chase.
Two vigilantes — played by Anthony Kiedis and Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, of course — try to apprehend Sheen, only for their car to crash in a fiery explosion.
Swanson empathizes with Sheen, and the two have sex DURING THE CHASE.
At the end of the film, Swanson, now in love with Sheen, steals a helicopter, and the two abscond to Mexico and live happily ever after.

I love The Chase.

28. ‘The Last Action Hero’ (1993)

GBS: 234.8 RT: 37% Fennessey: Unlike many of the awful, shrill, silly, cynical stuff on this list, I actually like-like the good-good Last Action Hero . But I’ll play along for the sake of this package. Briefly, here’s the like-like: This movie can be a learning tool for young cinephiles! In practical respects, yes, John McTiernan was once one of the most gifted action-sequence filmmakers of late capitalism. And it features Schwarzenegger at the height of his fame delivering groan-bombs with aplomb. There’s high-level villain performances from Future Tywin Lannister, the great Charles Dance, as well as Tom Noonan as "Ripper" (and also Tom Noonan, playing himself in the real world). And the movie satisfyingly subverts and redefines what to expect from Arnold. But for aspirant movie obsessives it also winks at temporal loops and fourth-wall erosion, utilizes Bergman’s Death from The Seventh Seal as an ancillary bad guy, and identifies the concept of "the movie trope" decades before the internet made explaining things easy. Upon release, critics called this movie too clever for its own good. To that I say, "Have you seen Baywatch ?"

27. ‘The Happening’ (2008)

GBS: 250.4 RT: 18% Fennessey: I don’t care about spoiling the reveal of M. Night Shyamalan’s hysterical, painfully slow, idiot tour de force: The trees are killing everyone. Not just the trees — the gaseous compound emitted by trees. Technically a scientifically minded warning about global warming (I think?), The Happening applies the kind of story logic a dog might find in a Choose Your Own Adventure book, which is to say: woof. The most elite aspect of this movie is Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel evincing the chemistry of two starfish suctioned to the bottom of the Dead Sea. They play educators trying to escape the viral scourge and get to the bottom of the world’s outbreak. And no matter who survives, we win.

26. ‘Gigli’ (2003)

GBS: 270.3 RT: 6% Bereznak: Gigli is an all-around offensive movie. It’s offensive to the LGBT community for centering its plot on one straight man’s (mind-bogglingly successful) goal to turn a lesbian into a straight woman. It’s offensive to people with disabilities for relentlessly exploiting a mentally disabled character for cheap laughs. And it’s offensive to mobsters across the land, who would definitely never trust the dopey duo of Larry Gigli (Ben Affleck) and Ricki (Jennifer Lopez) to kidnap a federal prosecutor’s family member. But the 2003 flop remains valuable for one main reason: It’s the most revealing artifact we have left of Bennifer, an ill-fated two-year relationship that began at the height of the gossip news boom and ended with a short-lived and very expensive engagement. That these two read Gigli ’s cringeworthy script — one in which Affleck yells, "I am the rule of fuckin’ cool. … I’m the fucking original straight first foremost pimp mack fucking hustler original gangster’s gangsta" — and still agreed to star in the movie proves that they were deeply, foolishly, blindly in love. Just as Christopher Walken’s and Al Pacino’s brief cameos in the film were completely incongruous to its tone and plot, so was Affleck and Lopez’s two-hour long chemistry. Gigli gave the public a chance to ogle at hot famous people who were dating for a full two hours, and it did so without putting forth even the slightest effort to offer anything else of substance. For that, it will always be a nonsensical gem in the history of tabloid-driven casting.

25. ‘Catwoman’ (2004)

GBS: 291.4 RT: 9% Gruttadaro: I don’t have the words to explain this one, but I do have the video:

Yep. That is Halle Berry — ACADEMY AWARD–WINNING ACTRESS HALLE BERRY — rubbing a bunch of catnip on her face because she is a cat-woman.

24. ‘Con Air’ (1997)

GBS: 310.7 RT: 56% Fennessey: There is no greater premise for a movie than a rogue’s gallery let loose upon the world. Seven Samurai . The Wild Bunch . Ocean’s Ocho . Con Air is the most self-consciously rogue of all galleries with the easiest elevator pitch in modern movie history: Good-hearted, wrongly convicted Nicolas Cage must battle a plane full of felons. Con Air has had a fascinating life cycle that has toggled from anticipated to celebrated to mocked to mockingly celebrated. At its best, it mixes knowingly schlocky sub-Seagal dialogue, mad-eyed commitment from John "Cyrus the Virus" Malkovich, and director Simon West’s operatic camp approach to set pieces. Put the bunny back in the box. And remember this: Just a year removed from his Oscar win for Leaving Las Vegas , Cage starred in Con Air and Face/Off , which opened IN THE SAME MONTH in 1997. This is like Pablo Prigioni scoring 50 points in consecutive NBA Finals games.

23. ‘The Room’ (2003)

GBS: 330.6 RT: 32% Zoladz: There are bad movies, there are really bad movies, and then there is The Room , a film so iconic in its terribleness that it has become — on the midnight movie circuit at least — one of the most beloved movies of the century. For one thing, it’s spawned one of the most hotly debated philosophical questions of our time: Is Tommy Wiseau fucking with us? The low-budget melodrama seems to have been made in complete earnestness and with a lack of comprehension about how awful it is — and yet Wiseau has spun the whole ordeal into an enduring stardom that will become only more entrenched this December when James Franco’s hotly anticipated The Disaster Artist is released. There is already award-season buzz for Franco’s film (in which he plays Wiseau), and even the vaguest possibility that a movie about The Room could be nominated for an Oscar somehow makes the whole Good Bad Movie cycle complete, proving how slippery the cinematic distinction is between treasure and trash.

22. ‘Troll 2’ (1990)

GBS: 403.7 RT: 6% Gruttadaro: Troll 2 is maybe the movie that best exemplifies this genre’s ability to conjure cult followings. Troll 2 is quite possibly the worst movie ever made — it sounds like a sequel to a 1986 movie called Troll , and yet it is not connected to that film in any way; it’s not a sequel at all — but a fervent movement arose in appreciation of Troll 2 ’s badness. Long after the movie should have drifted into obscurity, screenings were being held in cities like Los Angeles and New York, and fans of the campy fantasy movie packed in to revel in the schlock. In 2009, Michael Stephenson, child star of Troll 2 , went on to make a documentary about the movie’s second life as a cult classic called Best Worst Movie , which got pretty solid reviews. That right there is a story with a happy ending, which also proves how much value a Good Bad Movie can have.

21. ‘Road House’ (1989)

GBS: 453.8 RT: 38% Gruttadaro: People in the ’80s had so much irrational confidence and Patrick Swayze had so much juice that they literally said, "OK, let’s act like America is a country where club bouncers are revered and renown like celebrities, and where small towns completely lack police departments and bend to the whims of whoever is the wealthiest." That’s Road House . Swayze plays Dalton, a martial arts expert who also has a philosophy degree from NYU (just incredible). Dalton is a mercenarial "cooler" who goes town to town cleaning up dive bars, and his latest challenge is Jasper, Missouri, a town that’s being terrorized by a businessman who literally drives a monster truck through a car dealership parking lot. Do I need to write more? I could — like, 10,000 words more. But I think you get the picture why this movie is so exhilaratingly bad/good.

20. ‘Fear’ (1996)

GBS: 462.2 RT: 39% Dobbins: Say the words "roller coaster scene" to any woman in her 30s and you will understand the role this film played in a generation’s sexual awakening. It is a truly preposterous two minutes: the awkward, Lifetime-y glances between Mark Wahlberg and Reese Witherspoon, the Sundays’ "Wild Horses" soundtrack, Reese’s li’l ’90s kilt, and also the part where the roller coaster’s down-swoop is used as a clumsy visual metaphor for an orgasm. I’m so embarrassed, but also it’s important — that’s what this list is about, right?

19. ‘Mortal Kombat’ (1995)

GBS: 639.3 RT: 34% Rob Harvilla : Should we start with the music, or end with the music, or talk only about the music? Fact: This goofball cinematic reimagining of the mega-popular and absurdly gory arcade game has the third-best soundtrack of the ’90s, behind Pulp Fiction and The Crow . This is the reason. If you’ve never exercised to that gonzo techno earworm (courtesy of the Immortals, an offshoot of industrial-dirtbag crew Lords of Acid), can you even claim to be truly fit? As for the film itself, it’s Big Trouble in Little China if it took itself way too seriously, an uneasy mix of ludicrous fight scenes and Very Bad Acting. Linden Ashby is bad as pompous movie star Johnny Cage. Bridgette Wilson (a.k.a. Mrs. Pete Sampras, and the romantic lead in Billy Madison ) is worse as scowling cop Sonya Blade, in a role originally slated for (!?!?) Cameron Diaz . And here is a GIF depicting what happens if you ask Christopher Lambert what it was like to play Raiden, god of thunder and wooden dialogue:

This is very arguably the best video-game movie ever made, which gives you some idea of how dire the video-game-movie industry situation really is .

18. ‘Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie’ (1993)

GBS: 640.8 RT: 39% Luckerson: I’m not sure there’s ever been a good film that had a title ending with "The Movie," but this one embraces its craven capitalist mission so fully — to make the most badass, butt-rock-fueled episode of Power Rangers ever — that there is absolutely no reason to hate or even dislike it. What exactly could you be looking for in a film called Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie besides cringey one-liners (" Have a nice trip, see you next fall " remains a go-to insult of mine during street fights), a legitimately sinister villain in Ivan Ooze, plentiful Bulk and Skull high jinks, sky-surfing soundtracked by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers , and honest-to-goodness ninjas? The only person with any right to disparage this movie is the Black Ranger, who got saddled with a frog when they upgraded Zords near the film’s climax.

17. ‘Deep Blue Sea’ (1999)

GBS: 698.2 RT: 57% Luckerson: This film can be distilled into a two-minute scene that has become one of the most iconic movie deaths of all time. Samuel L. Jackson, in a stirring portrayal of Samuel L. Jackson, is giving a motivational speech to the few comrades who have survived at an aquatic research facility overrun with three genetically modified super-intelligent sharks. As his resonant words reach their crescendo, a poorly rendered CG shark leaps out of a nearby pool and devours him.

It’s a baffling moment in a movie that careens from one unlikely set piece to the next. (Remember when LL Cool J set a shark on fire in the water for eating his bird?) Every creative decision in this movie feels like it was made with the hope of one-upping Jaws . Instead, Deep Blue Sea turns killer sharks into an inadvertent punch line. A really, really funny punch line.

16. ‘Honey’ (2003)

GBS: 719 RT: 21% Kate Knibbs : I’m not going to sit here on the internet and lie to you and tell you that Honey is a well-made film with believable acting or a plot that makes sense. But I will tell you that the movie, about Jessica Alba as a down-on-her-luck choreographer with a dream, is a delightful early-aughts music artifact. Not only does it feature a surprisingly meaty cameo by Missy Elliott and a full-on supporting role for Lil’ Romeo, it also features appearances from Ginuwine, Jadakiss, Blaque, Tweet, and Sheek Louch. Also, it costars Mekhi Phifer, who is a good actor who deserves a better career than he’s had. It’s the perfect movie to put on in the background if you’re having a ’00s theme party, and Jessica Alba’s abs remain an inspiration to us all.

15. ‘xXx’ (2002)

GBS: 788.3 RT: 48% Gruttadaro: This movie is for the group of people who watched other action movies and exclaimed, "THIS ISN’T EXTREME ENOUGH, BRO!" xXx is what would happen if Mission: Impossible and the X Games had sex. Xander Cage (A-plus name) does everything Ethan Hunt or Jason Bourne would do, just more EXTREME and with more bravado — because that’s what we all needed in 2002. Vin Diesel snowboards, skateboards, dirt bikes, and base jumps. The opening scene is Xander (he also goes by just "X") exacting revenge on a politician who tried to ban rap music. God, it’s so good.

14. ‘No Holds Barred’ (1989)

GBS: 1,151.6 RT: 11% Gruttadaro: This one’s tough, because it’s pretty hard to laugh at anything Hulk Hogan–related anymore. But it’s a great example of both cheesy ’80s action and a recurring miscalculation in the movie industry that maximum fame in one field will translate to the big screen seamlessly. (It happened with the Rock too.) Despite his starpower in professional wrestling, Hulk Hogan turned out to not be a fantastic film actor, though it is fun to watch him jump through the roof of a limousine , or feign shock (or is it anger? Or maybe amusement? How does one propose I read this scene?) over making one henchman poop his pants.

13. ‘Showgirls’ (1995)

GBS: 1,190.6 RT: 19% Zoladz: Here Kyle MacLachlan, one of the stars of Showgirls , recalls watching Showgirls for the first time:

That was how much of the world felt about Paul Verhoeven’s stilted, gloriously over-the-top Razzie winner when it was first released in 1995. (It remains the only NC-17 movie to see a wide release in the U.S., and it bombed so hard at the box office that it’s probably the sole reason there haven’t been any more.) But in recent years, Showgirls has undergone a reappraisal by critics, filmmakers, and fans who believe the whole thing was just one slyly brilliant satire about the American Dream. Which, maybe it is? Kind of? But it’s also a smorgasbord of porn-worthy acting and Elizabeth Berkley’s manic, sub–Miley Cyrus gyrations, all amounting to a glittering car crash of a movie that you can’t take your eyes off of for a second.

12. ‘She’s All That’ (1999)

GBS: 1,212.3 RT: 38% Serrano: Let me tell you just eight things about She’s All That : (1) It’s one of those high school movies where a really popular person starts hanging out with a less popular, less attractive person as part of a bet. (2) The less popular, less attractive person is considered less popular and less attractive only because she wears glasses and drops things while she’s walking. (3) There’s a reveal scene where we see the unattractive girl all made over and guess what: She took off her glasses so now she’s very beautiful! (4) There’s a part in it where someone gets forced to eat pubic hair in a cafeteria. (5) The most profound moment happens during a scene where a guy plays hacky sack onstage as part of an impromptu art performance. (6) Lil’ Kim and Usher have small parts in it. (7) It ends with that "Kiss Me" song by Sixpence None the Richer. (8) It’s perfect.

11. ‘The Beach’ (2000)

GBS: 1,420 RT: 19% Michael Baumann : This is a so-bad-it’s-good movie because its components are so good. Director Danny Boyle? Good filmmaker. Story by Alex Garland? Good writer. Leonardo DiCaprio? Good lead actor. Tilda Swinton? Good creepy bad guy. Guillaume Canet? Good ineffectual French douchecanoe.

The Beach didn’t age well because, by dint of coming out in that beautiful, fleeting moment between the end of the Cold War and 9/11, it has a frosted-tipped, optimistic aesthetic that makes it read like an LFO music video. But really, it’s a utopian collectivist vision: We could be a polyglot socialist society of beautiful people who do nothing but fish, get high, and play cricket on the beach, but our perfect world was ruined by pettiness, deceit, greed, and the arrogance of clumsy American men who think the rules don’t apply to them. In that respect, The Beach is a prescient and essential piece of pre–War on Terror, pre-2008 economic collapse filmmaking, perhaps the greatest piece of turn-of-the-century cultural criticism.

10. ‘Speed 2: Cruise Control’ (1997)

GBS: 1,558 RT: 3% Justin Charity : 1997 gave us Titanic . It also gave us Speed 2: Cruise Control .

I don’t want to hoodwink anyone here: Let me be perfectly clear that Speed 2 is a movie that one comes to love at an impressionable age only because they were overexposed to its syndication on cable in the early 2000s. It is by no means a good movie, but it is a comfortable movie. It’s a movie whose goofy narrative beats rock me into a state of complacent bliss. Rarely am I able to follow a plot so faithfully despite its making no sense whatsoever. Willem Dafoe hijacks a cruise ship off the coast of Saint Martin, and weary sequel passenger Sandra Bullock teams up with Jango Fett (Temuera Morrison) and one of the Lost Boys (Jason Patric) to ground the ship safely before Dafoe — who’s a bit daffy and vague about all this business — can crash them into an oil tanker. This is all well and good as an excuse to have Dafoe torment three armed and attractive screen actors in a novelty setting for two hours, though it falls apart as a proper conflict. The whole movie feels like a giant misunderstanding: of what made the original Speed so thrilling, of why people love single-setting action flicks, of Sandra Bullock’s value as a lead. But it’s funny to watch this misunderstanding play out as a sincerely dumb send-up of the original Speed that Lorne Michaels might’ve dreamed up first.

9. ‘Over the Top’ (1987)

GBS: 1,596 RT: 43% Serrano: Sylvester Stallone’s movie characters have faced a lot of impossible things. They’ve stared down a foreign super boxer built in a laboratory ( Rocky IV ), an endless supply of Vietnamese soldiers ( Rambo: First Blood Part II ), gravity ( Cliffhanger ), the industrial prison complex ( Lock Up ), and more and more and more. None of those things, though, was ever as impossible a task as what he faced in Over the Top , which was: rekindling his relationship with the son he abandoned as a baby by being really, really, really good at arm wrestling. That’s the real and actual plot. And here’s the even better part: IT FUCKING WORKS. After having been gone for 10 years, he shows back up, hangs out with his son for a couple of days, wins an arm-wrestling tournament, and then they’re best friends. They bond so thoroughly over arm wrestling, in fact, that neither one of them seems to care that the kid’s mother dies while they’re hanging out, which is incredible.

8. ‘Final Destination’ (2000)

GBS: 1,657.8 RT: 34% Claire McNear : Someday you will die, and it will probably happen in a boring way. You’ll trip over your rug or your feeble immune system will give out or you’ll slip on some ice and bonk your head and that’ll be that. What Final Destination proposes is … what if your death was intensely, acutely interesting? What if death itself were coming for you, but it cared so much that it wasn’t content to mix up a garden-variety aneurysm or E. coli outbreak? Final Destination is basically a rom-com starring lovely young people and the Grim Reaper, who will do whatever he/it (??) can to impress them. I have recounted characters’ deaths to concerned loved ones in the breathless over-detail that a 5-year-old might use to describe a particularly riveting playdate. "She filled her coffee cup with vodka … but it was cold so it cracked the cup … and then it left a trail of vodka … and the computer sparked … and then suddenly she was on the ground and she reached for a towel but there was a knife on it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Final Destination is all you’ll ever need.

7. ‘Anaconda’ (1997)

GBS: 1,681 RT: 38% McNear: What if Brazil … but bad? What if snakes … but big? What if J.Lo … but 1997? Jon Voight gives an all-time performance, Danny Trejo shows up, Ice Cube does his thing. The villains are the villainiest and the snake-crushings are the snake-crushingest. The special effects have aged like … well, not fine wine, but like "H.A.G.S." messages in your sixth-grade yearbook. How sweet, were things ever so simple, look how hard they tried, etc. It’s an entire movie of yelling BUT WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT, DON’T GO IN THE WATER, NO, STOP, LOOK OUT at your TV — which, really, is what all the best horror movies should aspire to.

6. ‘White Chicks’ (2004)

GBS: 1,789.1 RT: 15% Luckerson: The early 2000s featured a curious comedic subgenre of "cops dressing in drag for weeks/months to solve cases" that probably wouldn’t fly in 2017. White Chicks was the most absurd of these films. Disguised as the mega-rich Brittany and Tiffany Wilson (complete with ghoulish whiteface), FBI agents Shawn and Marlon Wayans are taking such obvious swings at issues of race, class, and privilege that you’d be hard-pressed to classify this film as "social commentary." Forget the message and stay for the musical numbers, including the breakdance battle between the Wayans Crew and another cadre of New York socialites, and most iconically, Terry Crews belting out "A Thousand Miles" with the passion of a thousand teenagers. Mean Girls may be the iconic 2004 movie about the white-girl experience, but White Chicks , released just two months later, is broad and dumb and obvious enough to make you laugh in spite of yourself.

5. ‘Batman & Robin’ (1997)

GBS: 1,918.2 RT: 11% Dobbins: "Look, I apologize," director Joel Schumacher told Vice recently . "I want to apologize to every fan that was disappointed because I think I owe them that." That’s fine. It’s probably wise to apologize to superhero fans, because they are a deeply vengeful community with a disproportionate influence on internet message boards. But we’re not here today to apologize; we are here to honor the movie that asked George Clooney to wear rubber bat-nipples and cast a damn ice luge as a villain. Alicia Silverstone as an extremely miscast Batgirl! Uma Thurman as a poisoned vine making out with people so they die! This movie is a two-hour-long recreation of an acting class exercise: "Now imagine you are a cartoon character! Feel the bright colors; feel the little squiggly lines that are meant to convey slapstick humor." I vividly remember arguing for the excellence of this movie, because I was 12, in love with Chris O’Donnell, and dumb. It’s OK, Joel Schumacher; preteen girls and train wreck enthusiasts have your back.

4. ‘Masters of the Universe’ (1987)

GBS: 2,845.7 RT: 17% Gruttadaro: This 1987 adaptation of a Mattel toy line has everything a Good Bad Movie needs: Dolph Lundgren, a villainous turn by a future Oscar-nominated actor , an utter lack of a budget, an astonishing amount of terrible special effects , and an ability to truly make you question how the movie was ever green-lit. From conception to execution, everything seems like an unmitigated mistake. Taken as a whole, though, it’s just a remarkable thing to behold.

3. ‘Congo’ (1995)

GBS: 3,323.9 RT: 23% Fennessey: A signature trope of the Good Bad Movie is the bland white guy who is ostensibly the star but has been completely blotted out by the miasma engulfing his surroundings. Think Thomas Jane in Deep Blue Sea , or Freddie Prinze Jr. in She’s All That . In the case of Congo — a gloriously stupid Michael Crichton adaptation that trivializes civil war, animal rights, and the search for King Solomon’s mines — that guy is Dylan Walsh. Surrounding Walsh, and obviating his entire existence, is a ludicrously talented cast devouring a ham sandwich of a script artisanally crafted by Oscar-winning playwright John Patrick Shanley. Laura Linney tightens her ponytail as heiress-archaeologist Dr. Karen Ross, Ernie Hudson chomps his way through 10,000 cigars as Captain Munro Kelly, and Tim Curry does career-best/worst work as mythology-hunting explorer Herkermer Homolka. These folks quest to the titular African region with Walsh and Amy, a gorilla with advanced learning that allows her to communicate via a sign-language-assisted speaking computer. Seriously.

Congo had a long run as a "It’s 4 p.m., what’s on HBO?" movie that led to countless viewings for a latchkey teen like me. There are still remnants of it — particularly Delroy Lindo’s "Stop. Eating. My. Sesame Cake." rant — that have etched themselves in the creases of my brain. Nothing says good-bad like unforgettable, inexplicable dialogue, gorilla warfare, and Tim Curry.

2. ‘Wild Wild West’ (1999)

GBS: 3,425.6 RT: 17% Gruttadaro: In 1999, Will Smith was the biggest movie star in Hollywood. By then, Kevin Kline and Kenneth Branagh were already Oscar winners. Salma Hayek was Salma Hayek. What could possibly screw up a movie featuring those heavy hitters? Turns out, a gigantic mechanical tarantula. Wild Wild West is an epic misfire with overly bombastic special effects and next to no coherence. Watching it now, it may be the film that is most capable of eliciting the question, "What were these people thinking?" But all of that chaos — bearing witness to such an utter failure in filmmaking — makes for quite a fun viewing experience. Plus, the Will Smith–Sisqo collab that accompanied the movie, "Wild Wild West," is an iconic BANGER.

1. ‘Godzilla’ (1998)

GBS: 3,480.6 RT: 16% Luckerson: The first major Hollywood adaptation of the iconic Japanese franchise transformed Godzilla from the bipedal terror of Tokyo into a Jurassic Park stunt double that really, really wants to have babies in Madison Square Garden. Yes, this movie has a shoestring-thin plot barely held together by Matthew Broderick and two Simpsons cast regulars (Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer). Sure, the special effects — that mostly involve a giant lizard’s feet smashing Manhattan taxis — no longer impress. Fine, the idea that a horde of baby Godzillas trapped in the Garden would raid the concessions stand for popcorn may not pass biological scrutiny. I don’t care — Godzilla , the movie, was as big and dumb as its title character, but for a generation of reptile-obsessed children, it was also thrilling. Director Roland Emmerich has said kids love it more than his other films. I, for one, am still waiting for the full trilogy that was originally planned.

Next Up In Movies

‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Trailer, ‘Shogun’ Finale, and ‘X-Men ’97’

‘Hardcore’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey

‘Hit Man’ Was Made for Movie Theaters
Which Bidder Is Best for Paramount?
Hall of Fame: Tony Stark, Iron Man
‘Abigail,’ ‘Late Night With the Devil,’ and the 10 Best Horror Movies of 2024 … So Far

Sign up for the The Ringer Newsletter

Thanks for signing up.

Check your inbox for a welcome email.

Oops. Something went wrong. Please enter a valid email and try again.

‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Trailer, ‘Shogun’ Finale, and ‘X-Men ’97’

The Midnight Boys also chat about the festivities from Van’s birthday party

The Oklahoma City Thunder Feel Different This Time Around

Playoff basketball is back in Oklahoma City. And despite the parallels to the Baby Thunder from a generation ago, the new iteration of this team is its own beast.

Bouncing Around the Room: Scenes From a 4/20 Phish Sesh at Sphere

Clouds shaped like seahorses; psychedelic exploding trees; the earth’s biggest screen in your face. Phish at Sphere on 4/20 was a feast for the senses—and a celebration of the four friends we’ve made along the way.

Luka Doncic Is Evolving

We know the Dallas Mavericks superstar can score, but it’s his growth in other areas that carried the Mavs in Game 2 against the Los Angeles Clippers—and that will ultimately determine how far they can go

Fulham FC v Liverpool FC - Premier League

What If Liverpool Win the League?

James and Chris also dive into who should be the next Liverpool manager after looking at all the possible options

Bill, Chris, and Sean rewatch the 1979 neo-noir thriller ‘Hardcore,’ starring George C. Scott, Season Hubley, and Peter Boyle

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

Upcoming Movies and TV shows
Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

What's the Tomatometer®?
Login/signup

Movies in theaters

Opening this week
Top box office
Coming soon to theaters
Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

Fandango at Home
Netflix streaming
Prime Video
Most popular streaming movies
What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

Challengers Link to Challengers
Abigail Link to Abigail
Arcadian Link to Arcadian

New TV Tonight

The Jinx: Season 2
Knuckles: Season 1
The Big Door Prize: Season 2
Them: Season 2
Velma: Season 2
Secrets of the Octopus: Season 1
Dead Boy Detectives: Season 1
Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story: Season 1
We're Here: Season 4

Best Worst Movie

Where to watch.

Rent Best Worst Movie on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

What to Know

Good-natured and mirthful, Best Worst Movie is a sweet deconstruction of how a cinematic folly can become a triumph.

Audience Reviews

Cast & crew.

Michael Stephenson

George Hardy

Darren Ewing

Jason Wright

Randall Colburn

More Like This

Movie news & guides, this movie is featured in the following articles., critics reviews.

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, i see no reason to doubt the claim of "troll 2".

Now streaming on:

I bought the DVD of “Troll 2” because a friend advised me to see it. “You're busy,” he told me. “You don't have time to see every bad movie. So you might as well see the worst of all time.” Yes, “Troll 2” has a coveted zero percent rating on the Tomatometer: the lowest-rated film ever made. A critic could become the most-hated person in fan circles by awarding it even half a star and spoiling the perfection of that zero.

I always intended to view “Troll 2” but, I dunno, never found the time. Now comes “Best Worst Movie” to save me the trouble. This is a documentary about what happens to you when you appear in “Troll 2.” It stars the star of the original film, a dentist from a town in Alabama named George Hardy. This is one nice guy. Even his ex-wife says so. He has a Harrison Ford head of hair and a smile so wide, it's like a toothpaste billboard. He treats poor kids for free.

He made the movie 20 years ago when he was living in Utah. It was being directed by an Italian named Claudio Fragasso, who didn't “speaka the English” but said he understood Americans better than they understood themselves. The movie was originally named "Goblin" but the title was changed to "Troll 2" because that sounded more commercial. There was a "Troll" (1986), but there was no connection between the two movies, not even trolls, other than that "Troll" ripped off the title.

We catch glimpses of “Troll 2” in “Best Worst Movie.” Don't ask me to explain it. It's about vegetarian goblins who cause their human victims to start growing branches and leaves. The special effects make the victims look like people who have tree limbs strapped to their arms with duct tape. The goblins wear homemade masks a child wouldn't be caught dead wearing on Halloween. The budget was so low, actors had to provide their own clothes. One actor recalls a scene where it was necessary to nail his shoe to the ground. “They used my own shoe,” he moans.

For some time, George Hardy forgot all about having made the movie. Then some of his patients started looking at him strangely and asking him if he'd appeared in this horror film they'd seen on cable. The film had been discovered and embraced by the bottom feeders of horror film fandom, and soon Hardy found himself being invited to revivals and conventions. The other actors were also suddenly in demand.

One of them, Michael Paul Stephenson , who played the kid in the movie, directed this documentary. Neither he nor anyone else knew what Fragasso was attempting or even if he was serious. One actor explains he was out on a pass from a mental institution when he was cast as the ominous store owner: “The actor they hired didn't turn up and they said, OK, you've got the job.” Watching himself in a scene, he says, “You can see I was crazy.”

If the film didn't make much of an impression at the time, its rediscovery certainly did. The actors got standing ovations and started autographing photos, T-shirts and body parts at conventions. Fragasso himself, who looks very slightly like an embittered Fellini, attended revivals at the Nuart in Los Angeles and in Salt Lake City, and said his actors were morons then and are morons today. He adds that to make the worst film is as great an honor as making the best one.

But this curiously touching doc has a bittersweet ending. Stephenson follows Hardy to conventions where only half a dozen people attend his panel. He films him standing at the “Troll 2” table at a horror exhibit, completely ignored. Hardy is reduced to drumming up business: “Have you heard of ‘Troll 2'? You haven't? You should see it! It's the worst movie of all time!” Depressed, he observes, “There's a lot of gingivitis in this room.”

There's something irresistible about the movies. If you've been the star of a famous one, that means something, doesn't it? Even if it's the worst? How many people get even that far? The lesson, I guess, is that you can only be the flavor of the month for about 30 days, sometimes 31. “Troll 2” was February.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

Now playing

You'll Never Find Me

Sheila o'malley.

The People's Joker

Clint worthington.

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World

Late Night with the Devil

Matt zoller seitz.

Stress Positions

Peter sobczynski.

Simon Abrams

Film credits.

Best Worst Movie (2010)

Written and directed by.

Michael Paul Stephenson

Latest blog posts

25 Years Later, Alexander Payne’s Election Remains as Relevant as Ever

Sharp Writing, Excellent Cast Keep Spy Thriller The Veil Engaging

Take Another Trip to the End of the World with Sony’s Stellar Blade

He's Got Something Going On: David Proval on Mean Streets, and Acting for Martin Scorsese

The Best of the Worst-Ranked Rotten Tomatoes Movies, Including Corey Feldman and Pauly Shore Classics

Pop-quiz hotshot. You have ten students craving alcoholic beverages in a store containing your high school principal. What do you do? What…do…you…do??

Over the years, masses of movie lovers have come to rely on the review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes as a source they can trust as to whether a film is worth watching or not. It’s not a bad system: the site averages the good and bad reviews of each film and comes up with a percentage score and a status of either fresh or rotten. But there are many large and small factors that can easily affect the accuracy of this system. Whether it’s that most of the critics who reviewed a particular film are not “top critics” (the status given to professional critics at the most trustworthy of entertainment sites), or that only a very small number (maybe only one, in fact) of reviews are actually accumulated for a movie’s score, Rotten Tomatoes is not infallible. Below are some of the films that may have been given a raw deal thanks to the RT system. Give them a shot, won’t you?

1) Bio-Dome – 4%

Viva los bio-dome! For those who remember that incorrectly stated Spanish sentence, this is a shout-out to one of the most ridiculous, absurd movies in Pauly Shore ’s portfolio. And that’s stating a lot. Yes, it’s dumb, it’s trashy, it’s got Pauly Shore and the least respected Baldwin brother ( Stephen Baldwin ) running the show. But it is a stoner comedy for the ages. When these two nitwits get locked inside an experimental bio-dome for a year, they need to make the best of it. That means eating all the stored food supplies, sucking down tanks of nitrous oxide, and hitting on the two gorgeous (of course) female scientists in the dome, one of which is played by pop singer Kylie Minogue . However, after a major rager and an attempted bombing by Dr. Noah Faulkner (the always annoying William Atherton from Ghostbusters , the guy who shut down the team’s containment unit), Pauly and company pull together to make the bio-dome an ecological success! I love a good underdog story.

2) Dream a Little Dream – 0%

This would only really mean something to a fan of the Coreys: the eighties/nineties actors Corey Haim and Corey Feldman , who starred in a number of movies together. This wasn’t one of their most popular. They reached their height in The Lost Boys , and did a pretty good job with License to Drive as well. But Dream a Little Dream is not without its good points. First of all, it’s one of the only movies in which Feldman got top billing over Haim, which is just plain interesting to see. Also, it features a supernatural premise in which an old man’s soul trades places with that of Feldman’s, and Feldman must spend much of the movie figuring out how to switch bodies back. The answer is, of course, love. Doesn’t that just warm your heart?

RELATED: 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' Is Now the Worst-Reviewed 'Star Wars' Movie

3) Fantastic Four – 7%

Fantastic Four (2015) was Fox’s attempt to reboot the Marvel comics property after two less-than-successful entries in the franchise. Even the Silver Surfer himself couldn’t save the aforementioned sequel. The 2015 version stars a fresh cast of talented young actors ( Miles Teller , Kate Mara , Michael B. Jordan , etc...) and a premise based more on the Ultimate Universe of the Marvel mythology. While it’s not nearly what fans had hoped for, it’s head and shoulders above the previous incarnations, and a solid attempt at kickstarting the franchise back into life. No doubt Disney will soon save this beloved property from mediocrity, but until then, this movie remains the best of what Fox could offer with the material at hand. It deserves better than the critical killing that it received.

4) Cool World – 0%

This movie was a deep dive into a dark world mixing animation and live action – something that doesn’t come along very often. Even Who Framed Roger Rabbit ’s voluptuous Jessica Rabbit didn’t come close to the crazy adult content present in this film. That’s not to say that Kim Basinger ’s cartoon form is enough to promote a viewing here. The point is that this is some wild, wacky material that deserves some attention, if just for the rarity of the experience itself. Plus, this is where Brad Pitt came into the public knowledge, and he’s never looked better or cooler. Hey, it’s in the title.

5) National Lampoon’s Senior Trip – 0%

Now this really is a movie that deserved better. It was a classic stoner teen comedy, with a plethora of talent behind it, including the hilarious Matt Frewer as the principal, who will sink to any depths for a laugh, Tommy Chong of Cheech and Chong fame as the pill-head bus driver, Kevin McDonald , my own personal favorite member of The Kids in the Hall comedy troupe as a psychotic Star Trek-obsessed crossing guard, and the very first appearance of the MCU’s Hawkeye, Jeremy Renner , as, well… the popular idiot in charge of the proceedings. It was funny, it was poignant (to a degree), and it was just a really, really fun watch. Watch this movie. You will laugh.

6) The Stoned Age – 0%

Now this one is a real obscurity. It was a movie about two dudes driving around in the seventies trying to find chicks. The plot deepens about a half an inch, but it’s a fun ride, with a kick-ass soundtrack featuring "Blue Oyster Cult," a bunch of seventies easter eggs including Frankie Avalon , and a whole bunch of ridiculous pot-fueled jokes, many of which make their landing. It’s also the first appearance of the very talented Clifton Collins, Jr. , and features an ending about what really matters in relationships, and about how to handle bullies, even if they’re your friends. This may all sound trite, but when mixed together, it forms a really funny, nostalgic, cohesive whole.

7) An American Werewolf in Paris – 7%

How do you follow up a cult classic gem like An American Werewolf in London ? Not like this. However, the sequel did have many things going for it. The cast included Tom Everett Scott , who has made quite a few vehicles better for having had him, as well as Julie Delpy , the French actress who made Before Sunrise and Before Sunset such beautiful experiences. Further, the werewolf transformation technology was pretty good for its time. The supporting cast, featuring Vince Vieluf and fan favorite Phil Buckman afforded the proceedings much in the way of comedy and action. I remember seeing this movie in a theater and being pleasantly surprised when the audience did a standing ovation after Buckman parkoured his way out of a basement window, escaping from an imprisoned werewolf. I had to stand up and applaud myself. It was bad-ass.

KEEP READING: 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' Is Now the Worst-Reviewed 'Star Wars' Movie

Awesome, you're subscribed!

Thanks for subscribing! Look out for your first newsletter in your inbox soon!

The best things in life are free.

Déjà vu! We already have this email. Try another?

By entering your email address you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and consent to receive emails from Time Out about news, events, offers and partner promotions.

Love the mag?

Our newsletter hand-delivers the best bits to your inbox. Sign up to unlock our digital magazines and also receive the latest news, events, offers and partner promotions.

Things to Do
Food & Drink
Arts & Culture
Time Out Market
Coca-Cola Foodmarks
Los Angeles

Get us in your inbox

🙌 Awesome, you're subscribed!

The 40 best bad movies ever made

From crass cash-grabs to no-budget disasters, these cinematic monstrosities must be seen to be believed

Nobody sets out to make a bad movie. But strange things can happen between the thwack of the clapperboard and a film’s release date: ever so slowly, they mutate, swelling and splitting until they ooze onto screens as malformed beings far removed from their authors’ intentions. ‘No, this is a serious movie…’. ‘Actually that’s not meant to be funny…’. ‘Audiences just didn’t get it…’. Oh, we got it alright. The thing is, it’s ours now – and we can do what we want with it.

It’s the audience’s job to decide what’s good, what’s bad, and what occupies that genre Elysian in between. We’ve been doing it for decades, though bad films are by no means a thing of the past. It’s unwise to look at a 1950s sci-fi and deem it poor on the basis of dated effects and performances alone, just as it’s foolish to assume that modern blockbusters can’t be every bit as shambolic as the works of Ed Wood. Sometimes it’s studio interference, sometimes it’s the wrong actor in the wrong role, sometimes it’s the director’s bone-deep (and bone-headed) misunderstanding of the material – the hurdles are legion.

You’ll notice recurrent hurdles throughout this list too, small details that inexorably lead to dodgy movies: directors for whom English was far from a first language; excessively horny children’s characters that’ll have you reconsidering your views on childcare; the presence of John Travolta – the list goes on.

Yes, there are infinite flavours of bad film. Here we present 40 of the most palatable (mostly), entertaining (hopefully) and unique (absolutely) in cinema (or at least direct-to-video) history. Watch at your own risk.

Recommended:

💩 The schlock and awe world of brilliantly bad movies 🤘 The 40 best cult movies of all-time 🫠 20 great movies to watch when you’re high 😵 The 15 most monstrous vanity projects ever made

An email you’ll actually love

Best Bad Movies

1. Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)

Dredged from the well of history in the 1990s by purveyors of trash cinema, Mystery Science Theatre 3000 , this no-budget satanic-panic horror flick has since earned a ‘legacy’ far greater than anyone involved ever intended. It was essentially made on a dare, and after screening a few times locally in El Paso, it disappeared without a trace, only to miracuously reappear decades later to be mocked on cable television by a pair of snarky androids. It really is a miracle, too, because Manos is transcendently bad. It could almost be called ‘proto-Lynchian’ if there was any indication that its many continuity errors, technical mistakes and head-scratching narrative digressions were purposeful…but there isn’t.

TL;DR: an unassuming family on a road trip is besieged by a Satanic cult with a hand fetish.

Highlight: John Reynolds’ bizarre, idiosyncratic turn as Torgo, the caretaker of the cult’s compound.

2. The Room (2003)

Is Tommy Wiseau a mad genius or just a rich weirdo who tried to make a prestige indie drama about romantic betrayal and whiffed spectacularly? Whether or not The Room is an honest failure or some kind of performance-art long-con is still up for debate, but no matter the reality, it’s one of the strangest works anyone has chosen to make available to the public. While those who insist the many, many bizarre narrative decisions are actually evidence of Wiseau’s brilliance are certainly pushing it, it’s a film everyone should see at least once – preferably at a raucous midnight screening.

TL;DR: it’s a glimpse of what would happen if an alien crash-landed on Earth and decided to make a movie without ever having seen one.

Highlight: uh, the flower shop scene? Back-alley tuxedo football? ‘You’re tearing me apart, Lisa!’? How about we just say ‘all of it’?

3. Troll 2 (1990)

John Carl Buehler had to be pissed. He goes and makes a perfectly crappy late ‘80s horror flick about murderous trolls, only to have it fully overshadowed in the bad movie canon by some unaffiliated knockoff Italian ‘sequel’ that doesn’t even have any trolls in it . Instead, there are goblins – referred to as such, despite the title – who turn humans into shrubbery before eating them. Why not just make the monsters carnivorous man-eaters? Because the director’s wife had a vendetta against vegetarians. That insane backstory – combined with the Spirit Halloween-level effects, Google Translate dialogue and sub-community-theatre acting – earned the movie a place in infamy even in the already infamous realm of no-budget horror.

TL;DR: vegetarians are the real monsters.

Highlight: a young townsperson witnesses a friend being consumed by goblins and reacts with the shock and terror of someone realising his bus going to be five minutes late.

4. Plan 9 from Outer Space

Science fiction

Long considered the Citizen Kane of bad movies, time has been kind to Ed Wood’s legendary sci-fi disasterpiece. Yes, the ‘effects’ are spectacularly bad even for the era of UFOs-on-strings, and the technical gaffes are only accentuated by the earnestness of Wood’s screenplay. But in the more than half-century since, the world has seen much worse, made for much more money, and done for much worse reasons than the sheer love of cinema. Any kid who borrowed their parents’ camcorders and made a movie with whatever was lying around the house will see a piece of themselves in Plan 9. And while its deficiencies will still make you laugh, it might also make you wonder what you could do if you still had a camera and a little bit of time. There are worse legacies.

TL;DR: aliens invade, as well as zombies, but maybe it’s mankind that’s the real enemy?

Highlight: anything involving the stand-in for the late Bela Lugosi – who was spliced into the film via footage from a different, unfinished Ed Wood project – who is very obviously not Bela Lugosi.

5. Showgirls (1995)

For years, Paul Verhoeven smuggled socio-political satire inside big, loud, absurdly entertaining blockbusters pretending to be much dumber than they are. With Showgirls , whatever message he was trying to get across about the corruption of the American Dream was drowned out by its deafening surface-level stupidity. In retrospect, it’s hard to believe critics saw his many odd choices – casting teen-sitcom star Elizabeth Berkley as a violent drifter-cum-stripper, the sex scenes seemingly modeled after a 16-year-old’s conception of sex – and didn’t think Verhoeven was trying to get another one over on everyone. Years later, the movie has been reappraised as a camp classic, no smarter than it was in 1995 but oodles more hilarious.

TL;DR: Jessie Spano breaks bad.

Highlight: the poolside bone-down where Kyle McLachlan can’t seem to figure out if Berkley is having an orgasm or a seizure

6. Gotti (2018)

Viewed straight, this is an overlong and irresponsible mob glorification story that paints crime boss John Gotti – murderer, tax evader, general scumbag – as a loving family man who jus-a wanted ta make a lil’ dough, eh . Pull on your bad goggles, though, and Gotti reveals itself as a low-key I Think You Should Leave sketch stretched out for two hours. As the Teflon Don, John Travolta (hello again) mugs his way through the whole thing in a variety of shit wigs and worse make-up as the timeline hops around with impunity. It took 44 producers to make this movie.

TL;DR: gangster film created by a duff algorithm

Highlight: Travolta literally opens the film with: ‘New Yawk is da greatest fuggen city in da world’

7. Freddy Got Fingered (2001)

One can only look back in awe at the influence Tom Green wielded over the late ’90s zeitgeist. The dude got famous by humping a dead moose and pranking his parents on MTV, then somehow married Drew Barrymore and convinced a major studio to put out a movie with the title Freddy Got Fingered . The film itself is a kind of social experiment to see what Hollywood will let a briefly famous person get away with if they think it’ll make them money. Playing child sexual assault allegations for laughs? Swinging a freshly born baby around by its umbilical cord? A song called ‘Daddy Would You Like Some Sausage’? Uh, sure! It ended Green’s mainstream career, but the fact the movie even exists counts as some kind of pyrrhic victory.

TL;DR: a loser manchild gets revenge on his mean dad by falsely accusing him of sexually abusing his brother. Highlarious!

Highlight: exiled in Pakistan, Green jerks off an elephant until it ejaculates a firehose of semen on his father, played by Rip Torn

8. Verotika (2019)

As a horror anthology directed by goth-jock reprobate Glenn Danzig, you might expect Verotika to be fun for at least some of the right reasons. It isn’t. Based on the ‘adult’ comics of Danzig’s own company, Verotik, this borderline soft-core film features three segments seemingly designed to showcase the director’s personal turn-ons: women bathing in blood; women wearing other women’s faces; women with eyes for nipples whose magic tears summon anal-obsessed six-armed man-spiders – you know how it is, guys. The accents are uniformly atrocious, the script is dismal, and Danzig’s idea of cinematography begins and ends with zooming in and fading to black. Watch this with a beer – you’ll need it.

TL;DR: edgelord fetish film made by a teenage man in his sixties

Highlight: When one ‘French’ cop says to another: ‘ Sahjeant… ’er breast… eyes? ’. ‘ Oui ,’ comes the reply. Fade to black. End of segment

9. Battlefield Earth (2000)

Action and adventure

For those exhausted by the stranglehold Marvel and Star Wars currently hold on popular culture, know that it could be much, much worse: if this bloated and incompetent sci-fi actioner was even just slightly better than absolutely awful, we’d probably be on Phase 5 of the L Ron Hubbard Cinematic Universe by now. Instead, this adaptation of the Scientology founder’s novel of the same name bombed in just about every capacity, nerfing any possibility of ever seeing the sequel that producer, star and avowed Scientologist John Travolta very clearly wanted to happen. It also cratered Travolta’s career (for the second time), turning him into more meme than actor. But he’s the best part of the movie, albeit unintentionally, skulking around with Predator dreads and delivering every terrible line with heavy-handed seriousness that’s impossible not to laugh at.

TL;DR: it’s the end of the world as we know it, and my Thetan levels feel fine!

Highlight: a depressed Travolta, as a villainous alien named Terl, delivers a drunken soliloquy at a space bar.

10. The Man Who Saved the World (1981)

Known as Turkish Star Wars , this is a riotous example of Turkey’s cut-and-paste attitude to midcentury cinema. The Man Who Saved the World takes Death Star-sized liberties with copyright – you’ll see stolen footage from Star Wars and hear music from Flash Gordon , Raiders of the Lost Ark and more. There are ninjas, zombies, skeleton warriors, and a 1,000-year-old wizard, and the late, great Cüneyt Arkın is in god mode throughout. If you’ve ever felt like Star Wars has become bogged down by incomprehensible budgets and unfathomable lore, this apocalyptic sci-fi fantasy martial-arts superhero adventure movie might be your antidote – because it doesn’t have either.

11. The Wicker Man (2006)

On the one hand, the creators of the 1973 British folk-horror classic could probably mount a successful defamation suit against everyone involved with the remake. Then again, the memeification of Neil LaBute’s baffling pass-through probably brought more eyes to the original than any critical proselytising. Such is the duality of Nicolas Cage in full gonzo mode. His off-the-rails performance as a cop infiltrating a pagan community dooms the movie to unseriousness from the start, but also makes it more memorable than it would’ve been otherwise. What would you rather have, a straight-faced redo of a film that didn’t need to be redone or Cage screaming about bees? Here, you can have both.

TL;DR: Nic Cage freaks out and does karate on an island of prairie women

Highlight: Cage, in a bear costume, absolutely wrecking a young pagan girl with a right cross.

12. Robot Monster (1953)

Of all the atomic-age cheapies, this one features the shoddiest monster. The story unravels in the mind of an excitable young man named Johnny. Ro-Man Extension XJ-2, a pear-bodied gorilla with a TV for a head, has used his death-ray to wipe out all but eight (or is it five? or six? or four?) of the two billion people on Earth. Now he’s out to strangle the rest. The moon brute throttles a young girl and throws a dude off a cliff before having a crisis of conscience (read: he gets horny for Johnny’s older sister). Eventually his boss gets so fed up with his fannying about that he kills Ro-Man and literally ‘smashes the Earth out of the universe’. How’s that for an executive decision?

TL;DR: chunky gorilla tries to choke out the last ‘hoo-mans’ on Earth

Highlight: ‘We enjoyed her as long as she was with us,’ says a professor, seconds after burying his murdered daughter. Nice one. Cheers, dad.

13. The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987)

In the 1980s, it seemed like every kids movie was designed to permanently scar the childhoods of its target audience. When the sight of David Bowie’s thin white package in Labyrinth and the dystopian nightmare of Return to Oz didn’t work, Hollywood brought out the big guns: a live action Garbage Pail Kids movie. Rushed to production to capitalise on the fleeting popularity of the gross-out trading cards that were briefly the scourge of school teachers across America, the studio rounded up a bunch of dwarf actors, shoved them into some truly upsetting costumes, spent the rest of the budget on stage vomit, then crossed their fingers that oblivious parents wouldn’t know what they were taking their children to se. It, uh, didn’t work out.

TL;DR: grotesque alien children teach a bullied teen to stand up for himself, then take part in a fashion show for some reason.

Highlight: Windy Winston uses his signature flatulence to keep his buddies from getting shanked by a biker gang, blowing off one of the assailants’ moustaches in the process.

14. Elves (1989)

Kirsten has a lot of problems – her mom’s a lunatic shrew, her brother’s a desperate little perv, and she does not care for Christmas. She’s about to hate the holiday season a lot more when she she learns that it’s her destiny to mate with a ‘fucking little ninja troll’ in order to bring about a Fourth Reich master race of magical elf-human hybrids. Thankfully, the local department store’s brick-shithouse Santa is a former detective, which means he knows how to use a gun. This Nazisploitation holiday schlock sits somewhere between unpleasant and hysterical – and its risible pseudo-religious mythmaking isn’t even its biggest sin. Worse? There is only one killer elf in the movie Elves .

TL;DR: a young woman is pursued by a single Nazi elf desperate to get laid

Highlight: ‘Are you asking if I believe in Elves? No, I don’t… but God did!’

15. Mac and Me (1988)

Half the entries on this list are monuments to crass commercialism, but none is more vulgar in that regard than this glorified Happy Meal toy masquerading as a movie. A bald-faced ripoff of ET that redefines shamelessness, the name of the titular lost alien – who looks like a shaved chicken – is an acronym ‘Mysterious Alien Creature’ but once the copious amounts of McDonald’s product placement hits the screen you realise what it really stands for. (The producer pitched the movie as a promotional tie-in with the fast food chain, with part of the profits going to the company’s charity.) The film did, however, give us the long-running Paul Rudd/Conan O’Brien gag , so it’s not all bad.

TL;DR: an off-brand ET shills for McDonald’s

Highlight: the scene from the aforementioned Paul Rudd prank – in which the movie’s wheelchair-bound human protagonist rolls off a cliff – is probably the most exemplary, though the dance number in McDonald’s is maybe more emblematic of what the movie is really about

16. Howard the Duck (1986)

Long the ugly duckling of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Howard the Duck has earned ironic reappraisal through the character’s cameos in Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers: Endgame , but the film itself still has ‘bad idea jeans’ written all over it. It’s not that you can’t make a good movie about a randy anthropomorphic mallard from a foreign planet who travels to Earth and bangs Lea Thompson, but you should probably decide if you’re making an interspecies sex comedy or a kids movie and not just combine the two. Still, those who saw it at a certain age hold a nostalgic soft spot for it, even if the design of Howard himself is pure nightmare fuel.

TL;DR: a horny space duck charms and disturbs earthlings.

Highlight : the implied post-coital bedroom scene between Howard and Lea Thompson which raises many questions we don’t really want answered.

17. Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)

The killer Santa Claus movie so nice they made it twice! Like, literally – the first Silent Night, Deadly Night did well enough, relatively speaking, that the cheap-ass producers initially wanted to simply recut the first film and pass it off as a sequel. About a third of the movie is indeed recycled footage, but it’s far eclipsed the original Christmas-themed slasher in Z-movie lore thanks to the nutso performance of Eric Freeman. Playing the brother of the murderer from the first iteration, he cranks the Insane-O-Metre to 11, his eyebrows nearly dancing off his face as he delivers evil ‘ha-ha-ha’s’ as if they were wrapped in speech bubbles above his head.

TL;DR: a department store Santa goes on a hilarious killing spree

Highlight: if you’ve been on the internet long enough, the phrase ‘Garbage Day!’ has lived in your head rent-free for over a decade now. But the full six-minute suburban killing spree where that scene comes from is a gift from schlock cinema heaven

18. Super Mario Brothers: The Movie (1993)

What should a live-action adaptation of the world’s most beloved, kid-friendly video game franchise look like? Not many fans back in the ’90s would’ve said ‘like a Terry Gilliam acid nightmare’. The end result of numerous rewrites and changes in direction, the story takes a fairly wild detour from the source material, venturing into an alternate-reality New York run by reptilian mafiosi, led by a lizard-tongued Dennis Hopper as ‘President’ Koopa. That honestly sounds kinda awesome on paper, but the film’s tumultuous production left it a weird jumble of ideas that never cohere. The visuals are pretty insane, though, and Bob Hoskins, as the titular princess-saving plumber, turns out to be the best Mario this side of Captain Lou Albano.

TL;DR: a video game movie made by people who’ve never played a video game before.

Highlight: the scene in which a group of towering, pin-headed ‘goombas’ inexplicably slow-dance inside a crowded elevator

19. Samurai Cop (1991)

American machismo as rendered by an Iranian émigré. Amir Shervan’s delirious Lethal Weapon rip-off rehashes almost every Hollywood action cliché you can think of and lashes them together with little regard for continuity or basic logic. Our ‘hero’ is sleazier than the villains, is supposedly fluent in Japanese but never speaks a word of it, and his shaggy black mane is sometimes real and sometimes a wig. The dialogue is brain-breaking, the editing is helicopter-crash bad, and the love scenes are gratuitous and hideous. Worst of all, nobody in this movie seems to know what a samurai is. Essential viewing.

TL;DR: clinically dopey cop film that likes to dick around with swords

Highlight: within a minute of meeting him, a nurse asks the protagonist whether he’s been circumcised, then ridicules him and walks away

20. Bratz: The Movie (2007)

What this live-action adaptation lacks in substance, it more than makes up for in Bratitude. Bratz fizzes along with a bubblegum energy that’s difficult to resist. The flick follows fashionable freshmans Jade, Yasmin, Sasha and Cloe as they compete with high-school nemesis Meredith to see who can be the most abysmal role model for young women. Expect a tone-deaf deaf character, a fresh-faced Chet Hanks, and Jon Voight in a prosthetic nose. All of this is far more fun than you’d think.

TL;DR: living dolls put their school to rights

Highlight: the film’s ludicrously placed two-year leap forward in time (curse you, Comic Sans)

21. Leprechaun in the Hood (2000)

Through four movies, the Leprechaun franchise had already gone to both outer space and Las Vegas, so there was really only one other option left to keep the series going: inner-city Los Angeles. In the horror-comedy brand’s fifth entry, the evil Irish stereotype faces off against a crew of rappers who’ve stolen his magic flute. As usual, Warwick Davis, as the titular murderous elf, bumps up the proceedings by giving way more effort than is required, but he’s joined by Ice-T, whose never met a ridiculous line of dialogue he won’t try to deliver with upmost seriousness.

TL;DR: well my name is Lubdan and I’m here to say/Give me me magic flute before I ruin your day!

Highlight: the movie-ending Leprechaun Rap.

22. No Holds Barred (1989)

Hulk Hogan is still the one pro-wrestler almost everyone can name, but that’s only because guys like the Rock and John Cena have become legit movie stars and transcended their fake-fighting roots. The Hulkster certainly tried to do the same, but stuff like Suburban Commando and Santa With Muscles wasn’t getting it done, brother. Neither was No Holds Barred , his first star vehicle, but at least it captured the live-cartoon energy of his day job. Hogan, more or less playing himself, is a wrestling champion coerced by a slimy TV exec into an anything-goes fight to the death against a massive ex-con named Zeus (Tiny Lister).

TL;DR: Rocky for audiences who find the sophistication of Sylvester Stallone intimidating.

Highlight: A growling, bug-eyed Hogan grabs a weasley henchman by the collar and inquires about a sudden foul stench. His response? ‘ Dooookiiiiiieeeeee!’

23. Miami Connection (1987)

Yes, there are many, many ninja flicks worthy of this list. But only one of them features your new favourite band. Dragon Sound are a taekwondo-based yacht rock act made up of five cohabiting orphaned adult men who hand-feed each other grapes. For reasons that aren’t quite clear, the local coke dealers and their ninja affiliates really hate yacht rock. The film culminates with the band’s wholesale slaughter of their enemies before a parting message advocates for the abolition of violence. Most of it takes place in Orlando.

TL;DR: Hall & Oates fight back.

Highlight: ‘ Friends ’. Or ‘Against the Ninja’. Or ‘Tough Guy’. Or ‘Tae Kwon Do Family’. You know what, all the songs are Oscar-worthy

24. Blackbird (2022)

The quasi-mythical backstory of Blackbird – shady festival premieres, a four-year disappearance, irrepressible rumours – threatened to overwhelm the film before it even hit screens. Thank the Lord, then, that this spy thriller is every bit as bad as we’d hoped. Written, produced, funded, directed by and starring Michael Flatley as former MI6 agent Victor Blackley, this is a magnitude 10 ego trip destined to become a legendary midnight movie. The 64-year-old Lord of the Dance swears it’s not a vanity project. We beg to differ: men say ‘he’s irreplaceable’; women readily disrobe before him; he beats a ‘big unit’ to death with his bare hands; there’s an uproariously unnecessary topless shaving scene… we could go on.

TL;DR: ego-drunk dancer remakes Casablanca and Casino Royale simultaneously but without the action, charm or tension.

Highlight: when Flatley’s on-set hat assistant helps him swap his flat cap for a fedora.

25. For Y’ur Height Only (1981)

Bondsploitation comes in many shapes and sizes, and Filipino actor, stuntman and martial artist Weng Weng’s version is at the Nick Nack-sized end of the spectrum. As Agent ‘00’, he’s 2’9” of jet-packing, nut-cracking charisma. The film has fun with his stature but Weng is never the butt of the joke. He can do everything Bond can – up to and including being a ‘sexual animal’. He’s a formidable fighter too. A merciless killer, even. Weng’s body count hits 80 here – that’s more than Sean Connery racked up in his six Bond flicks put together. Don’t worry about the plot; each scene careens into the next with no regard for structure or tension, and the English-language dubbing artists are absolutely on one throughout. For sheer brain-frying nonsense, this is tough to beat.

TL;DR: Pint-sized James Bond murders his way through the Phillipines.

Highlight: Weng stops to slap a kiss on a stranger midway through his amazing umbrella escape.

26. The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (1964)

Director Ray Dennis Steckler is one of the kings of 1960s and 1970s American kitsch, and his most beloved and absurdly titled film is a bona fide trash classic. Tenuously billed as both a monster movie and a musical, the plot is gossamer-thin but it’s really the grimy aesthetic and queasy atmosphere that you’re here for. Films like this exist far beyond the purview of such obstacles as good taste. There’s nothing good about The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? , which is precisely its brilliance.

TL;DR: free spirits caught up in an occult carnival are forced to suffer through terrible, interminable dance numbers.

Highlight: every one of actor Atlas King’s disorientingly daft line readings.

27. The Fanatic (2019)

For a while it looked like Limp Bizkit’s cover of ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ would be the nadir of Fred Durst’s career. Not quite. His third(!) directorial feature opens with a title quote from one of its own characters and only gets more incredulous from there. John Travolta (hello again again) miscalculates every move as Moose, an autistic film buff whose obsession with action star Hunter Dunbar takes a dangerous turn. The Fanatic continues to confound even as the whole thing curdles into grim hilarity. Fred Durst, who hurt you?

TL;DR: Limp Bizkit frontman’s private revenge fantasy

Highlight: when Hunter Dunbar forcibly makes his son listen to Limp Bizkit before saying: ‘Oh my God, that is nice. That is nice’

28. Supersonic Man (1979)

Believe it or not, there are more good-bad superhero films out there than MCU movies (until phase five wraps up anyway). Spain’s Supersonic Man is one of the silliest. The titular trouble-quasher can see through walls, deflect bullets, dematerialise trucks, turn guns into fruit, and steal champagne from restaurant kitchens. It’s down to this gormless goody-goody to defeat Dr. Gulik, who plans to take over the world using robots, cigarillos and science. Hey, how come Paul has a moustache but his alter ego doesn’t? That’s because the dude in the glaring orange spandex and glittering blue cape is a different actor.

TL;DR: desperately skewed, extremely European take on 1978’s Superman

Highlight: Supersonic chases Dr. Guliik into space and flies right up his ship’s big ol’ exhaust pipe (not a euphemism)

29. Skinned Deep (2004)

This retro-styled family slasher’s marketing suggested that Surgeon General, who has an ‘evil bear trap’ for a mouth, would be its breakout horror icon. We prefer his brothers: Brain wears denim dungarees and has an inexplicably huge head; and Plates (Warwick Davis in his wildest role) flings porcelain at people and carries a crockery quiver on his back. Like Plates, director Gabriel Bartalos slings surprises left and right – just wait till you find out what the headless bodybuilder is hiding. Perhaps the biggest bombshell though? Nobody gets skinned at any point during this film.

TL;DR: fathomlessly surreal comedy masquerading as a humble slasher

Highlight: when a Brain daydream sequence shows him – engorged cortex and all – galloping naked down around Manhattan, a scene for which actor Jason Dugré was arrested.

30. Cats (2019)

You just knew that someone was eventually going to take a shot at turning Andrew Lloyd Webber’s inexplicably mega-popular musical Cats into a movie. And it was always going to be terrible, because it’s a story about humanoid felines slinking, singing and dancing around the back alleys of London. But if it was destined to happen, at least director Tom Hooper also managed to make his adaptation unintentionally terrifying, the bad CGI making everyone from Judi Dench to Taylor Swift look like they crawled out of one of those creepy AI meme generators. Hooper does deserve some kudos for embracing the full weirdness of Webber’s vision, without the safety of ironic distance. But please, Tom: release the butthole cut already!

TL;DR: a bunch of famous people sing, dance and purr in the uncanny valley

Highlight: the introduction of anthropomorphic cockroaches – all of which are designed to look like women, complete with implied breasts – doing a Busby Berkeley routine before being eaten by Rebel Wilson

31. The Pumaman (1980)

No actor has ever looked less comfortable flying through the air than Walter George Alton. In this Italian production, he plays a palaeontologist reluctant to learn that he’s the descendant of an Aztec space god. As the new ‘Pooma-man’, he must defeat Donald Pleasance’s evil Dr Kobras, who’s using an ancient golden puma mask and a bunch of mannequin heads to mind-bully world leaders. This is another fine slice of superhero euro-kitsch – a trashy throwback to a time when supermen were milksops and not wise-cracking one-man armies.

TL;DR: w hite-bread palaeontologist retrains as a flying man-cat

Highlight: When our hero goes to sleep for a while and pretends to be dead – we feel you, Puma

32. Hard Ticket to Hawaii (1987)

Andy Sidaris directed coverage of countless sports events, and even won an Emmy for his coverage of the 1968 Summer Olympics. His movies, however, are less top-drawer and more top-shelf. In Hard Ticket to Hawaii , buxom babes Donna and Taryn are secret agents who get embroiled in a drug baron’s diamond-smuggling operation. Meanwhile, due to a snake mix-up down the warehouse, there’s a boa with rat cancer slithering around the island. Eventually, after much love-making, hang-gliding and casual misogyny, the ladies prevail – but not before the snake smashes through a porcelain toilet bowl and takes a missile to the head for its troubles. Enjoy the Sidaris brand of Playmate-led 1980s machismo? Good news: all of his movies are exactly the same.

TL;DR: Playboy Playmates play with Uzis (did we mention the cancer snake?)

Highlight: a henchman gets his throat opened by a razor blade frisbee.

33. Foodfight! (2012)

You know a children’s animated movie is unhinged when the fact that its characters are about 100 times hornier than necessary is only the second-most disturbing thing about it. The first? Fascism. Dex Dogtective, voiced by a presumably prostrate Charlie Sheen, has to defend a supermarket micro-world populated by beloved brand mascots – and, inexplicably, loads of tiny humans – against the tyrannical Brand X, whose plot to replace them with generic products reads a lot like ethnic cleansing. Don’t worry, it’s all played for laughs! This is up there with the most unappealing-looking films ever released. Do not let your children near it.

TL;DR: What if Toy Story but food?

Highlight: Whenever the film cuts away from Cheeso the Weasel, who looks like a carrier bag full of worms and loose hot dogs

34. Morbius (2022)

Even the fiercest defenders of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have had a hard time justifying the existence of this utterly superfluous entry to the canon. A sleek, corporate-synergistic fusion of horror and superhero blockbuster, it stars Jared Leto as a doctor who undergoes an experimental procedure to cure a rare blood disorder and ends up turning himself into a vampire. Full of incoherent plotting, even more incomprehensible action sequences and a typically self-serious lead performance from Leto, it was critically panned upon entry, bombed at the box office, and then memed into oblivion. Everyone making fun of it somehow convinced the studio to re-release the movie in hopes of salvaging its investment. It failed.

TL;DR: Jared Leto vants to suck your blood, but he mostly just sucks.

Highlight: the dual post-credits scenes that confuse the established comic book mythology and try to shoehorn Spider-Man into the whole mess.

35. Dangerous Men (2005)

It took director John S Rad more than 20 years to finish Dangerous Men . It takes less than 20 minutes to work out how wild it is. This 1980s/1990s crime drama concerns a wronged woman who becomes a sex worker and starts slaying johns for fun – until the film forgets about her anyway. When actor Melody Wiggans broke her leg, Rad refused to pay her hospital bills, so naturally she refused to return to set. No matter. The rest of the film, shot years later, follows a cop hunting down a debauched biker named Black Pepper instead. Imagine a movie drunk enough to slur its scenes and you’re halfway there.

TL;DR: Men Are Creeps: The Movie

Highlight: the comically jaunty electronic slap bass, which scores almost every scene, no matter how inappropriate

36. Twisted Pair (2018)

Alien auteur Neil Breen operates on a plane inaccessible to mere mortals. In his fifth feature, he stars as Cade, a ‘Humanoid’ secret agent whose mission to mete out justice is somehow complicated by his evil twin Cale, also Breen but wearing the world’s worst fake beard. The plot concerns an evil business magnate who plans to use ‘programmable virtual reality – the corrupt version’ to execute his ‘biological mutant warfare plans’. Human translation: Neil Breen mopes around a college campus while things explode. The special effects are a hazard to your health.

TL;DR: bizarre sci-fi techno-thriller made by a man with delusions of grandeur

Highlight: any scene that features computer-generated imagery

37. Serenity (2019)

Steven Knight’s colossal flop features Matthew McConaughey as the preposterously named Baker Dill, a fishing-boat captain obsessed with an elusive tuna, the preposterously named Justice. No, Serenity is not subtle. The big fish isn’t the only thing lurking beneath the surface of this deeply stupid mystery thriller either. Spoiler: Dill is long dead and the entire world of the film is a digital construct designed by his dweeb son – as well as a director who has no better understanding of virtual spaces than Neil Breen.

TL;DR: Matthew McConaughey screams at a big fish (but does he really?)

Highlight: Baker Dill swanning around naked and copping off with local gadabout Diane Lane – why would any son want to see so much of his dad’s butt?

38. Masters of the Universe (1987)

It should’ve been fairly easy to make a passable He-Man movie, or at least a popular one, particularly with an ideal muscle-man like Dolph Lundgren in the lead role and an exceedingly gung-ho Frank Langella as the villainous Skeletor. As with the Super Mario Brothers movie, though, the creators just had to go and futz with the established lore, sending the cast of interdimensional warrior gods to Earth to interact with Courtney Cox and her doofus boyfriend. All the young target audience wanted was to see their action figures come to life and have magical sword fights, and instead had to suffer through interminable stretches of forced culture-clash comedy.

TL;DR: He-Man comes to life, spends an inordinate amount of time with Monica from Friends .

Highlight: the decidedly anticlimactic-climcatic duel between He-Man and Skeletor.

39. Old (2021)

M Night Shyamalan takes his high-concept schlock seriously. Old is a big-budget blockbuster about a beach that makes you old. Stay and you go senile. Try to escape and you get a headache. Even if you go into this film with no good-bad preconceptions, it will eventually beat you into giddy submission with its absurd science and the creative but clunky ways Shyamalan writes his way out of narrative trouble. Yes, there’s a twist. No, it doesn’t make sense. Expect Old to age gracefully indeed.

TL;DR: bad beach makes tourists get old real quick (but why?)

Highlight: whenever Rufus Sewell starts ranting about Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson

40. Ninja Terminator (1985)

There are many ninja flicks worthy of this list. But only one of them has a Garfield phone. Director Godfrey Ho has been called the Ed Wood of Hong Kong cinema, which should give you a clue as to how ruthlessly incoherent this is. Here’s another: Ho frequently cut his footage together with that of other films. His half of Ninja Terminator follows an empire of ninjas seeking fragments of a golden statue but, given that the other half is made up of scenes from a now-lost Korean film from 1984, don’t assume you’ll ever really know what’s going on. The fight scenes are spectacularly nonsensical.

TL;DR: a ninja movie made using William S Burroughs’ cut-up technique

Highlight: the protagonist receives a death threat via a toy robot before answering a call on his Garfield telephone. Stop laughing, this is serious

[image] [title]

Discover Time Out original video

Press office
Investor relations
Work for Time Out
Editorial guidelines
Privacy notice
Do not sell my information
Cookie policy
Accessibility statement
Terms of use
Modern slavery statement
Manage cookies
Advertising

Time Out Worldwide

All Time Out Locations
North America
South America
South Pacific

So Bad They’re Good: The Best Worst Movies

By Grant Hermanns

We’ve all seen them and indulged in some really guilty pleasure movies, but the ones that truly matter are the ones that are so bad they’re fantastic. The release of the recent biographical comedy The Disaster Artist revived audiences’ interests in some of their favorite worst movies, so let’s take a look back at some of the movies that are so bad you can’t help but go back for laughs.

Release: 2003
Director: Tommy Wiseau
Stars: Tommy Wiseau, Greg Sestero, Juliette Danielle, Phillip Haldiman
Rotten Tomatoes: 26% from Critics, 46% from Audiences

It’s arguably the best worst movie ever made, being one of the longest-running theatrical films with constant midnight screenings being held primarily in Los Angeles, along with other cities nationwide, in which audiences interact with the film in the same vein as The Rocky Horror Picture Show . Whether viewed as an intentional black comedy or a romantic drama, writer/director/producer/star Tommy Wiseau’s cult classic The Room ‘s atrocious dialogue, bizarre plotting, bad CGI and terrible performances have made it one of the best films to rewatch strictly for laughs. The making of the film was detailed by star Greg Sestero in the non-fiction book The Disaster Artist , which was recently adapted into a film with James Franco directing and starring as the mysterious creator of the film. James’ brother Dave Franco portrays Sestero in the film.

Disaster Movie

Release: 2008
Directors: Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer
Stars: Matt Lanter, Vanessa Minnillo, Gary “G Thang” Johnson, Kim Kardashian
Rotten Tomatoes: 1% from Critics, 19% from Audiences

The Movie franchise has always been held to the lowest standards, as its vulgar humor, bland parodies and trashy scripts have offended nearly every critic with each film seemingly earning fewer positive reviews and growing worse in quality. But the one film that was so bad it actually had laughably awful moments was the lowest-reviewed in the series, Disaster Movie . Set around a group of friends trying to save the Earth from multiple disasters, the film featured almost 50 various parodies, ranging from Hannah Montana to Indiana Jones to Enchanted , all of them poorly written and poorly performed in such an outrageous manner one can’t help but let out some laughs along the way.

Release: 1997
Director: Luis Llosa
Stars: Ice Cube, Jennifer Lopez, Jon Voight, Owen Wilson
Rotten Tomatoes: 38% from Critics, 24% from Audiences

Two musical artists, an animatronic snake and six Golden Raspberry nominations. Need I say more? Centered around a documentary crew taken hostage by a snake hunter, Anaconda was such an over-the-top entry into the creature feature adventure horror genre that as it went on and the film reached new heights, it became worse and yet more fun, with the ridiculous performances from Jon Voight ( National Treasure, Ray Donovan ), Ice Cube ( 21 Jump Street, Friday ) and Jennifer Lopez ( Monster-in-Law, The Back-Up Plan ) making it a terribly entertaining outing.

Birdemic: Shock and Terror

Release: 2010
Director: James Nguyen
Stars: Alan Bagh, Whitney Moore, Janae Caster, Colton Osbourne
Rotten Tomatoes: 19% from Critics, 25% from Audiences

Many movies that appear on lists of films so bad they’re great are often straight rip-offs of other, better films. Not only was Birdemic one of the biggest on this list, but it was also one of the best on this list, thanks in most part to its atrocious special effects, as well as its poor writing and even worse sound design. Incorporating a romance story into a horror story a la Shaun of the Dead , the film follows a young couple traveling to northern California for a vacation that comes under attack by endless swarms of malicious birds attacking and killing people. The element that drives audiences to revisit this film time and again is the terrible special effects of the birds, nearly all of which are poorly animated vultures or JPEG images of birds randomly rotating 360 degrees, and this love/hate relationship with the film drove the filmmaker to return to the series with a sequel in 2013.

Release: 1999
Director: Rodman Flender
Stars: Devon Sawa, Jessica Alba, Seth Green, Elden Henson
Rotten Tomatoes: 16% from Critics, 58% from Audiences

Two undead stoners, a hand possessed by demons and a soundtrack comprised mostly of The Offspring and David Garza, it must be the nineties. Named after the saying “idle hands do the devil’s work,” the film follows a stoner teenager whose hand becomes possessed by a demon on Halloween and goes on a killing spree, killing both his parents and his two best friends that come back to life as zombies. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with the film aside from endless cliches and ripoffs from previous films, it still is certainly a film where the humor is so dumb-minded and over-abundant that it registers as a bit of guilty pleasure for both comedy fans and horror fans alike.

The Wicker Man

Release: 2006
Director: Neil LaBute
Stars: Nicolas Cage, Leelee Sobieski, Ellen Burstyn, Frances Conroy
Rotten Tomatoes: 15% from Critics, 17% from Audiences

We all know that remakes can never top or come close to the original, but there are some remakes that fall incredibly short of the mark, especially 2006’s The Wicker Man, starring notoriously over-the-top actor Nicolas Cage as a policeman who travels to a neo-pagan island in search of his ex-fiancee’s missing daughter. While the original received widespread praise from critics for its chilling premise and shocking ending, the remake became a cult hit for its terrible dialogue and poor performances resulting in countless moments of unintentional hilarity that still entertains audiences many years after its release.

You Got Served

Release: 2004
Director: Chris Stokes
Stars: Marques Houston, Omari Grandberry, Jarell Houston, De’Mario Thornton
Rotten Tomatoes: 16% from Critics, 69% from Audiences

This is one of the few movies that not only still retains its cult following nearly 15 years after its release, but also become one of the most referenced and parodied movies on the list, with the plot becoming inconsequential compared to the highlight of the film: the dance competitions. The film’s story, which no one truly remembers, is about two friends with dreams of opening their own hip-hop dance and recording studio and must overcome struggles of friendship and win a dance tournament to fulfill that dream. While its story is bland and predictable, and it dialogue is quite often atrocious, the cast of mostly hip-hop performers do good with their characters and the dance scenes are thrilling enough to watch to make this an enjoyable terrible film.

Battlefield Earth

Release: 2000
Director: Roger Christian
Stars: John Travolta, Barry Pepper, Forrest Whitaker, Kim Coates
Rotten Tomatoes: 3% from Critics, 11% from Audiences

Back before it became popular to ridicule the Church of Scientology in the mainstream, actor John Travolta was living it up in the religious group, becoming one of its most prominent members, which was both a blessing and a curse for the actor, especially when it came time for him to try and bring his pet project, Battlefield Earth , to the big screen. Based on the first half of the 1982 novel written by the founder of the Church of Scientology, the film follows a human in an Earth ruled for 1,000 years by aliens who leads a rebellion to rescue his species from becoming mining slaves. This is one of the legitimate worst movies on this list for good reason, thanks to its ridiculous over-usage of the Dutch camera angle, in which most viewers practically stumbled over after watching it, unsure which way was up and forgetting how to walk, its terrible visual effects, including the infamous shooting the leg off the cow scene and awful performance from Travolta, with the film becoming a fan hated/favorite a while after its release.

The Master of Disguise

Release: 2002
Director: Perry Blake
Stars: Dana Carvey, Jennifer Esposito, Brent Spiner, Harold Gould
Rotten Tomatoes: 1% from Critics, 32% from Audiences

It’s a shame to see what has become of comedian Dana Carvey’s career. Once a star thanks to Saturday Night Live and the hit spin-off movie series Wayne’s World , his career status took a hit following the critically-hated but audience-adored The Master of Disguise , with many critics unfavorably comparing it to his former SNL co-star’s hit movie series, Austin Powers . In the film, Carvey plays Pistachio Disguisey (yes, you read that right), a bumbling waiter who discovers his family’s hidden secret of being able to transform into any persona they can imagine and must use this gift when his parents are kidnapped by an evil thief. Due to its routine story, family-oriented humor and insanely short running time, it was regarded by many critics as one of the worst films of the decade, but thanks to these bizarre range of character personas and outrageous performance from Carvey, it’s become a cult hit with audiences in the years since its release.

Release: 1990
Director: Drake Floyd
Stars: Michael Stephenson, George Hardy, Margo Prey, Connie McFarland
Rotten Tomatoes: 6% from Critics, 43% from Audiences

“They’re eating her, and then they’re gonna eat me. OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOODDD!”

Behind The Room , this is easily the best worst movie ever made. Not even accounting for the fact this film has zero connections to the first Troll film released in 1986, this film featured no actual trolls, atrocious writing and terrible performances from its cast. But all of these aspects added up to one of the campiest and most guiltily enjoyable films ever made. The film centers around a family traveling to a rural farming community for a vacation that is filled with vegetarian goblins who transform people into plants to eat.

Mortal Kombat

Release: 1995
Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
Stars: Christopher Lambert, Linden Ashby, Robin Shou, Bridgette Wilson
Rotten Tomatoes: 34% from Critics, 58% from Audiences

It’s certainly one of the more quality efforts in the video game movie genre, but if you need some kind of hint at how bad this movie truly was, look at the photo above, just look at that terrible hair on the top of Christopher Lambert’s head. Following three fighters mentored by the Japanese thunder-god Raiden in a battle against the evil sorcerer Shang Tsung in a tournament to save the Earth, the film was criticized for cheap visual effects and terrible dialogue, but became a smash with fans that, though disappointed in the bloodless victories in comparison to the games’ grisly deaths, enjoyed the film for its campy feel that still captured the fun and thrill of the games on the big screen.

White Chicks

Director: Keenen Ivory Wayans
Stars: Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Terry Crews, Jamie King
Rotten Tomatoes: 15% from Critics, 55% from Audiences

The Wayans family have been one of the most financially successful and audience-adored group of artists in the film industry, and though not every movie made was enjoyable schlock, the one that’s still so dumb that it remains one of their best is the 2004 comedy White Chicks . Following two African-American FBI agents who must go undercover as white women to thwart a socialite kidnapping ring, the film was full out insanely predictable, yet hilarious, gags that still can be seen throughout social media memes today, namely Terry Crews’ car karaoke of “A Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton, of which he recreated in the first season of Lip Sync Battle .

Batman & Robin

Director: Joel Schumacher
Stars: George Clooney, Chris O’Donnell, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Uma Thurman
Rotten Tomatoes: 10% from Critics, 16% from Audiences

Bat nipples, endless ice puns and the death of the ’90s Batman franchise. Need I say more?

Release: 1998
Director: Roland Emmerich
Stars: Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Hank Azaria, Maria Pitillo
Rotten Tomatoes: 16% from Critics, 28% from Audiences

If time has told us anything, it’s that Americans can very rarely bring over properties from foreign countries without severely screwing them up and causing disgust from the source’s fan base. Though the second Americanized Godzilla proved to be a smash hit in 2014, helping to spawn the Monsterverse being developed by Legendary Pictures, the first attempt was an absolute travesty of a film according to both critics and audiences alike, especially those that were fans of the original Toho’s original franchise that debuted in 1954. Toho themselves hated the film so much that, rather than eliminate the film from its canon, it renamed the creature seen in this film as “Zilla” and featured it in future incarnations of their franchise, including Godzilla: Final Wars , in which this film’s iteration was quickly defeated, a not too subtle message from Toho discrediting this version of the titular monster. However, for those unfamiliar with the franchise, or those looking for mindless action, this was the perfect bad film to watch, as its visual effects were solid for the time and the performances from Azaria and Broderick help deliver a fun and terrible adventure.

What do you think are the worst movies ever made? Let us know in the comments!

28 Years Later Cast Adds Aaron Taylor Johnson & Ralph Fiennes

Owen Wilson Turned Down $12 Million to Star in O.J. Simpson Conspiracy Movie

Axed Angelina Jolie-Led Cleopatra Movie Had ‘Political Thriller’ Elements

Marvel and dc.

deadpool 3 synopsis plot what happens movie story wolverine

Rob Liefeld Praises Deadpool & Wolverine Action Scenes: ‘Best Action Since Winter Soldier’

Creature Commandos Update Given by James Gunn for First DCU Show

New X-Men Movie’s Story Synopsis Reportedly Revealed

The Harder They Fall Streaming: Watch & Stream Online via Netflix

Deadly Revisions Streaming: Watch & Stream online via Amazon Prime Video

Interview: Quvenzhané Wallis Talks Breathe

Interview: Quvenzhané Wallis Talks Intense Apocalyptic Thriller Breathe

American Fiction Streaming Release Date Rumors

American Fiction Blu-ray Release Date Set for Oscar-Winning Comedy

RANKED: The best worst movies you need to watch

Fuel your hate-watching with movies so bad, they're actually kind of good..

Natalli Amato

Posted on Mar 29, 2022 Updated on Apr 11, 2022, 3:32 pm CDT

Watching a bad movie on purpose can seem absurd, especially when streaming has given us on-demand access to some of the best movies of all time . However, anyone who’s ever sat through a movie completely bewildered, wondering who thought this would be a good idea knows that there’s a certain kind of joy in watching a cinematic train wreck. In the spirit of hate-watching, here are ten of the best worst movies you can stream right now.

1) Best bad movie of all time: Troll 2

Let’s set the stage here with some facts: Troll 2 is not a sequel to anything. It is in no way shape or form related to the 1986 horror film Troll , as one might assume. There is not even a single glimpse of a troll in the entire 94 minutes that this film goes on for.

There are, however, vegetarian goblins running amuck in the town of Nilbog, who aim to turn people into vegetables so that they can eat them while adhering to their vegetarian diet. When the Waits family visits Nilbog, nobody listens to young Joshua when he warns his family about the goblins. As if all of this wasn’t absurd enough, the production is amazingly, awe-inspiringly horrible. Yet by some strange alchemy, it’s impossible not to enjoy it.

2) A most excellent bad movie, dudes: Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure

When Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure graced the world in 1989, the critics wrote it off as a Bad Movie. The Washington Post called it “dilapidated.” The New York Times called it “ painfully inept .” However, in other circles, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure has always been beloved for being the time-traveling, Van-Halen-loving, historically-inaccurate bodacious trip that it is. Rolling Stone declared it one of the ten best stoner movies of all time .

It’s easy to see why it’s gotten that accolade: A young Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter play two teens who are failing in school but have high hopes for their rock band, Wyld Stallyns. Unbeknownst to them, the music of the Wyld Stallyns will one day form a utopian future society. Is it unquestionably silly? Yes. But it’s also stupendously fun.

3) Best bad rom-com: Serendipity

Somehow, Sixteen Candles and Say Anything are not John Cusak’s most dated movies. The 2001 cheese-ball Serendipity makes the early 2000s seem like an alternate reality. Cusak and Kate Beckinsale have a meet-cute over a pair of cashmere gloves, have dessert, and go ice skating, even though they’re seeing other people.

Beckinsale has a problem with personal accountability and wants fate to make all of her choices. So instead of this man’s number and following her true feelings, she makes him write it on a five-dollar bill and then uses the bill to buy mints. If it’s meant to be, she reasons, the bill will come back to her. In the age of smartphones, Google, and social media, this experiment is less romantic than it is laughably hokey and nonsensical.

4) Best worst Adam Sandler movie: Jack and Jill

Rivaled only by Hubie Halloween , Jack and Jill is Adam Sandler’s worst movie. If you’re not a natural-born hate-watcher, Jack and Jill will be your crash course. There is no need to watch Adam Sandler play himself and his twin sister, yet you probably won’t turn the movie off in time to not see it through.

It’s not just Sandler’s portrayal of his own sister that’s so bad. The plot revolves around Sandler trying to entice Al Pacino to do a Dunkin Donuts commercial. One has to wonder, what made Pacino agree to do this movie? In the end, Pacino does the commercial and is unhappy with it, telling Sandler to “Burn it.” Why did this movie not meet the same fate?

5) The greatest disappointment: Life Itself

In 2018, my mother and I decided to watch Life Itself. It’s listed as a comedy, and we like comedies. Instead of enjoying a few laughs, we were the most bamboozled that we’ve ever been in our entire lives. Life Itself is overflowing with trauma, darkness, and bad luck. Suicide, disease, car accidents, and untimely deaths abound. Even the Bob Dylan soundtrack does not redeem the movie. Instead, it leaves me angry that Columbia Records agreed to let such an awful movie use his songs.

My best friend was also lured into the movie under its “comedy” facade and shared in the bleak disappointment. Even though none of us enjoyed this movie, it is one that we all still talk about to this very day. So that must count for something.

6) Best worst Nicholas Sparks movie: The Best of Me

It’s hard to pick just one bad Nicholas Sparks movie to represent its kind, but The Best of Me floats to the top of the muck. One of my greatest grievances against this film is that they ask us to believe that Luke Bracey grows up to be James Marsden. Why couldn’t they have just picked one actor and used the wonders of makeup and costuming to age him?

From there, the grievances snowball out of control until they manifest in perhaps the most hated ending in the Sparks canon. Watching The Best of Me will surely make you angry–it’s best to hate-watch this one with a friend.

7) Best accidental stoner movie : Reefer Madness

Reefer Madness may be one of the worst movies of all time for the fact that it accomplished the exact opposite of its intended goal. The 1936 film was made by a church group as a propaganda film. It was to be shown to parents to teach them about the harm that could befall their children should they smoke marijuana.

However, in the 1970s, the movie was embraced by stoners and has since become a cult favorite of those who appreciate cannabis and a good heap of irony.

8) The best worst teen romance: Twilight

Beloved by some, loathed by others, the Twilight saga is the best in its class when it comes to ridiculous teen romance dramas. As someone who has not re-watched Twilight since the dark days of 2008, simply re-watching the trailer raises an intense feeling of befuddlement. Was the omnipresent blue-hue really necessary? Why weren’t we concerned for Bella’s wellbeing when she told Edward, “I’d rather die than stay away from you?” Alas, the sparkling vampires and the promise of young love were simply too distracting at the time.

9) Matthew McConoughey’s worst rom-com: Fool’s Gold

Reuniting Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson was a great idea going off of their iconic How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days. Reuniting them for a movie in which the major plot points revolve around treasure hunting? Bad idea. The critics agreed: the 2008 comedy earned an 11% rating from Rotten Tomatoes. That being said, diehard rom-com fans can’t skip out on a McConoughey flick.

10) Marvel’s biggest failure: Howard the Duck

George Lucas has given the world many gifts through his creation of Star Wars. He has also given the world a true stinker: Howard the Duck, a film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. It isn’t hard to see why the movie was such a failure: It’s a live-action feature starring an animatronic duck. The duck is just plain weird and hard to like. Even by the standards of 1986, the special effects are poor. Yet in some corners of the world, Howard the Duck has been embraced for its badness and has developed a cult fanbase.

The Daily Dot may receive a payment in connection with purchases of products or services featured in this article. Read our Ethics Policy to learn more.

Featured Local Savings

Best Worst Movie (2009)

Best worst movie.

In “Best Worst Movie,” Michael Paul Stephenson makes his directorial debut by taking us on an offbeat journey into the undisputed worst movie in cinematic history, Troll 2, in which he starred in as a child. In 1989, Italian director Claudio Fragasso cast small-town dentist Dr. George Hardy and a group of unwitting Utah actors, including Stephenson, in the ultra-low budget horror film. Soon after Troll 2’s disastrous release, Dr. Hardy retired from his short-lived acting career and returned to dentistry in his hometown of Alabama, unaware of the legions of fans that would one day recognize him as a cult movie luminary. Twenty years later, Dr. Hardy’s days of drilling cavities are met by nights of signing autographs at sold-out revival screenings throughout the world. Admiring fans champion Troll 2 through fan sites, viral videos, and even homage in one of the most successful video games today: Sony Playstation’s Guitar Hero 2. “Best Worst Movie” unravels the improbable, heartfelt story of the Alabama dentist-turned-cult movie icon and the Italian filmmaker who come to terms - or not - with this genuine, internationally revered cinematic failure. The result is a hilarious and tender offbeat journey that pays homage to lovers of bad movies and the people that make them. Stephenson, alongside Lindsay Stephenson and Brad Klopman serve as the producers on the film.

10 Halloween Horror Movies Streaming Now on Netflix

From A Nightmare Before Christmas to Satan's Little Helper. The perfect holiday movie party is ready to queue up!

Bob Odenkirk to Write and Star in Girlfriend's Day

The Breaking Bad star will play a greeting card writer trying to recapture his past glory by creating the perfect card for a new holiday called Girlfriend's Day.

Michael Stephenson Talks The American Scream [Exclusive]

The Best Worst Movie director discusses his documentary about home haunters, debuting on Chiller TV Sunday, October 28 at 8 PM ET.

The American Scream Trailer

We also have a photo gallery for director Michael Stephenson's documentary about three home-made haunted houses in Massachussets.

The American Scream Poster

Michael Stephenson directs this documentary about three families preparing for their home-made haunted house attractions.

Zero Charisma Trailer

Production will begin April 2 in Austin, Texas on this comedy about a gamer who defends his turf against a hipster.

Untitled Haunted House Documentary Now Casting Haunted House Curators

The makers of Best Worst Movie turn their eye on Halloween and those adults who go to frightening lengths to create the ultimate homemade haunted house.

Michael Stephenson Will Destroy

The Best Worst Movie director will make his first narrative feature about a man who thinks he's slaying vampires, although he's just murdering older men.

Win Troll 2 on Blu-ray

This horror cult classic inspired the documentary Best Worst Movie and will be available on BD for the first time October 5.

BOOS! & WHOOP-DOOS!: Corey Feldman Terror Inside Film Premiere!

B. Alan and his dogs host the wood floor debut of the new horror film from Jozef Lenders.

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Dr. George Hardy & Michael Stephenson Triumph with Best Worst Movie

The director and his muse take a behind-the-scenes look at this documentary about the making of Troll 2.

BOX OFFICE BEAT DOWN: Shrek Forever After Has a Fairy Tale Weekend with $71.2 Million

The forth installment of the animated series knocked Iron Man 2 off from the top spot.

BOX OFFICE BEAT DOWN: Iron Man 2 Defends Its Title with an Additional $53 Million

The Marvel sequel protects its place on the charts against Robin Hood and takes the number one position.

Best Worst Movie Review

One of the best documentaries ever made about the film industry, the movie has heart and tenderly looks at the people and the community who twenty-years produced one of the worst films ever made.

Area23A to Distribute Best Worst Movie

The documentary will be released theatrically this spring.

The 75 worst movies of all time, according to critics

We turned to review aggregator Metacritic to find out what the worst movies of all time are, based on critic reviews.
They include two controversial political documentaries from Dinesh D'Souza, as well as ill-advised sequels.
A recent addition includes 2019's "Haunting of Sharon Tate."

To find out which movies film critics have been collectively hated the most, Insider turned to the reviews aggregator Metacritic to compile this list of the most critically panned movies in history.

From ill-advised sequels like "Scary Movie 5" and "Caddyshack II" to two dubious political documentaries by conservative filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza, these films drew the ire of critics and provoked the repulsion of many.

Most recently, 2019's critically panned "Haunting of Sharon Tate," starring Hilary Duff, made the list, as did "Grizzly II: Revenge," which was originally filmed in 1983 but didn't debut until this year.

Here are the 75 worst movies of all time, according to critics:

Note: Only movies with seven or more online reviews appear in the ranking, so it skews toward more recent films.

John Lynch contributed to a previous version of this post.

75. "Don Peyote" (2014)

Critic score: 14/100

User score: 3.0/10

What critics said: "There's no rhythm or rules, and the beyond-indifferent camerawork and community-access-TV-grade effects help nothing." — The Dissolve

74. "The In Crowd" (2000)

User score: 2.3/10

What critics said: "Isn't a movie, it's Gorgonzola, a crumbly summertime stinker veined with pop-cultural fungus." — Entertainment Weekly

73. "Cabin Fever" (2016)

User score: 2.6/10

What critics said: "It doesn't help that what passes for acting here seems more like a table read." — Los Angeles Times

72. "Bolero" (1984)

Critic score : 13/100

User score : N/A

What critics said : "Erotic, surely, only for the very easily pleased, with Dereks J and B and Cannon Films converging to form a matrix of sustained, tawdry silliness." — Time Out

71. "Love, Wedding, Marriage" (2011)

Critic score: 13/100

User score: 3.1/10

What critics said: "Only old pros James Brolin and Jane Seymour, as Eva's colorfully squabbling parents, occasionally rouse the film beyond its fate as fodder for a Snuggie-wrapped slumber." — Time Out

70. "Daddy Day Camp" (2007)

User score: 1.8/10

What critics said: "Filling in for Eddie Murphy in a septically humored kiddie sequel to 'Daddy Day Care,' Gooding gives a mug-job performance that consists mainly of reacting (again and again) to nasty smells." — Entertainment Weekly

69. "Fascination" (2005)

User score: N/A

What critics said: "Glacially paced, self-consciously acted and narratively risible." — Variety

68. "Fair Game" (1995)

What critics said: "A thriller primarily about the movement of Cindy Crawford's breasts beneath a succession of ever-smaller T-shirts." — Entertainment Weekly

67. "Freddy Got Fingered" (2001)

User score: 5.6/10

What critics said: "The movie is simply not professional. It's not, even by the lowest standards of Republic B-westerns in the '30s or bad, cheap horror films in the '50s, releasable." — The Washington Post

66. "A Beautiful Life" (2009)

User score: 1.7/10

What critics said: "This laughably clichéd dive into sexual masochism and hardscrabble survival replaces story with outline and characters with place holders." — The New York Times

65. "Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2" (2015)

User score: 2.4/10

What critics said: "While the original was no classic, it had a few mild laughs and the plus-sized actor displayed a certain buffoonish charm. Such is not the case with this painfully unfunny, slapdash follow-up in which the title character is so relentlessly obnoxious that you'll be cheering for the villains." — The Hollywood Reporter

64. "Down to You" (2000)

User score: 6.4/10

What critics said: "The confusion it mistakes for true soul-searching is about as realistic a look at the politics of youthful attraction as one of those 'Did somebody say McDonald's?' commercials is a look at mainstream American family values. Did somebody say McCheese?" — Austin Chronicle

63. "Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood" (1988)

What critics said: "Only a mote of humor graces the film, and that is Jason's cunning ability to come up with ever more dreadful weapons for each successive crime, graduating from stake to machete to circular saw. Dare we hope, in Part VIII, for a neutron bomb to obliterate the series altogether?" — Chicago Tribune

62. "Ski Patrol" (1990)

Critic score : 13/100

User score: N/A

What critics said: "Movies don't get more derivative or less comic than this." — New York Times

61. "New Best Friend" (2002)

User score: 4.8/10

What critics said: "A lurid, unsavory mix of 'Reefer Madness' hysteria, drive-in sleaze, and the queasy morality of '80s slasher film." — The AV Club

60. "Cannonball Run II" (1984)

What critics said: "Burt Reynolds and a host of notable performers seem to be having a hell of a good time wandering through this meandering, episodic farce, but rarely is their good mood shared by the viewer." — TV Guide

59. "Nothing But Trouble" (1991)

What critics said : "Unfortunately this isn't even half as fun as the shortest bumper-car ride, with the cast lost in a sea of unfunny situations and badly executed antique jokes on loan from The Munsters all obviously puzzled about why they are actually there." — Empire

58. "The Avengers" (1998)

Critic score: 12/100

User score: 2.5/10

What critics said: "It's a film to gall fans of the old television series and perplex anyone else." — The New York Times

57. "Nothing Left to Fear" (2013)

User score: 3.5/10

What critics said: "It's stale B-movie rubbish of a barely watchable sort, albeit slightly more depressing than many of its genre compatriots." — The Dissolve

56. "Strange Wilderness" (2008)

User score: 5.1/10

What critics said: "Aside from the waste of a talented cast, the only thing that really caught my attention was the tomblike silence of the audience--at least until the bong jokes started." — Chicago Reader

55. "Cocktail" (1988)

Critic score: 124/100

What critics said: "There isn't a scene in 'Cocktail' that isn't cheap and dumb, and whether its camp entertainment value compensates for its contempt for women is a question. 'Cocktail' makes beer commercials look deep, makes 'Top Gun' look like 'Hamlet.'" — Boston Globe

54. "Left Behind" (2014)

What critics said: "This failed epic — really, an epic failure — would barely be noticed, were it not for former Oscar-winner Nicolas Cage taking on a 'Sharknado'-quality remake of a Kirk Cameron movie." — New York Daily News

53. "The Emoji Movie" (2017)

Critic score: 12/100

User score: 2.0/10

What critics said: "A work so completely devoid of wit, style, intelligence or basic entertainment value that it makes that movie based on the Angry Birds app seem like a pure artistic statement by comparison." — RogerEbert.com

52. "Slackers" (2002)

User score: 4.5/10

What critics said: "'Slackers' is supposed to be a gross-out comedy, but the tastelessness of its jokes is nothing compared to its sheer cluelessness." — Salon

51. "The Adventures of Pluto Nash" (2002)

User score: 4.8/10

What critics said: "A limp Eddie Murphy vehicle that even he seems embarrassed to be part of." — The Globe and Mail

50. "The Master of Disguise" (2002)

User score: 2.4/10

What critics said: "The individual scenes are just random, uninspired riffs by Carvey or awkwardly flat cameos by the likes of Jesse Ventura and Olympic sprinter Michael Johnson." — New York Daily News

49. "King's Ransom" (2005)

Critic score: 11/100

User score: 1.4/10

What critics said: "Generic hip-hop soundtrack? Check. Aerial stock footage of milieu? Check. Hardy-har homophobia and misogyny? Check. Emasculated sub-Gump white dude played by Jay Mohr? Double check." — Entertainment Weekly

48. "Persecuted" (2014)

User score: 3.4/10

What critics said: "This terrible attempt at a political thriller for the religious right is aimed not at Christians in general but at a certain breed of them, the kind who feel as if the rest of the world were engaged in a giant conspiracy against their interpretation of good and truth." — The New York Times

47. "3 Strikes" (2000)

User score: 4.0/10

What critics said: "Feels like a very long late-night comedy sketch that occasionally veers beyond tastelessness toward something worse." — The New York Times

46. "Mortal Kombat: Annihilation" (1997)

Critic score: 11/100

User score: 8.0/10

What critics said: "It's cynical and it's depressing, and I would lock a child in a room before I'd show him 'Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.'" — L.A. Weekly

45. "Love, Weddings and Other Disasters" (2020)

Critic score : 11/100

User score: N/A

What critics said: "The scenes with Keaton and Irons, too, rise above the mediocrity-unto-badness of Love, Weddings & Other Disasters on the strength of the actors' charisma alone." — Boston Globe

44. "Date Movie" (2006)

User score: 2.9/10

What critics said: "'Comedy is hard,' said Steve Martin. For the writers of 'Date Movie,' it's apparently impossible." — New York Daily News

43. "Pinocchio" (2002)

What critics said: "It's an oddity that will be avoided by millions of people, this new Pinocchio. Osama bin Laden could attend a showing in Times Square and be confident of remaining hidden." — The New York Times

42. "Death Wish II" (1982)

Critic score : 11/100

User score : 7.8/10

What critics said : "The shamelessly rehashed Death Wish II finds Kersey in L.A., methodically hunting down those responsible for his daughter's death (just as she's recovering from her assault in the first Death Wish)." — EW

41. "Nine Lives" (2016)

User score: 2.8/10

What critics said: "At 87 torturous, laugh-free minutes, the film could change the most avid cat fancier into a kitty hater." — Rolling Stone

40. "Scary Movie 5" (2013)

User score: 2.7/10

What critics said: "'Scary Movie V' murdered my capacity to feel joy. " — Village Voice

39. "Some Kind of Beautiful" (2015)

User score: 5.0/10

What critics said: "Some kind of hideous, a perfect storm of romantic-comedy awfulness that seems to set the ailing genre back decades with the sheer force of its ineptitude." — Variety

38. "Whipped" (2000)

Critic score: 10/100

User score: 6.3/10

What critics said: "Ugly. And unpleasant. And clueless on a grand scale." — San Francisco Chronicle

37. "Unplanned" (2019)

Critic score: 10/100

User score : 9.4/10

What critics said: "Unplanned isn't a good movie, but it's effective propaganda — or, at least, it is if you belong to the group it's targeting: those who believe that abortion in America, though a legal right, is really a crime. It's hard to imagine the movie drawing many viewers outside that self-selected demographic." — Variety

36. "Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers" (1995)

User score: 5.6/10

What critics said: "Not even the addition of satanic rituals, farm implements or a Howard Stern-like shock jock (Leo Geter) is enough to paint over the creaky trappings." — Variety

35. "Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo" (2019)

Critic score : 10/100

What critics said: "No filmmaker has ever loved anything as much as Abdellatif Kechiche loves butts." — Indiewire

34. "Johnny Be Good" (1988)

What critics said : "But mostly the satire is as dated as the recruiters' plaid jackets, as lame as the Johnny Walker joke." — New York Times

33. "Saturn 3" (1980)

Critic score: 9/100

What critics said: "The level of intelligence of the screenplay of 'Saturn 3' is shockingly low - the story is so dumb it would be laughed out of any junior high school class in the country - and yet the movie was financed. Why?" — Chicago Sun-Times

32. "Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star" (2011)

User score: 2/10

What critics said: "This may be the worst movie Pauly Shore has ever been in. Think about that." — The New York Times

31. "Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000" (2000)

Critic score: 9/100

What critics said: "A picture that will be hailed without controversy as the worst of its kind ever made." — Slate

30. "The Tortured" (2012)

User score: 4.2/10

What critics said: "Lean, nasty, and patently absurd, 'The Tortured' plays like one long scream of agony." — Village Voice

29. "Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2" (2004)

User score: 1.8/10

What critics said: "So bad that I predict there will be drinking games set around viewing it someday." — The Washington Post

28. "Alone in the Dark" (2005)

User score: 1.6/10

What critics said: "So mind-blowingly horrible that it teeters on the edge of cinematic immortality." — San Francisco Chronicle

27. "Atlas Shrugged III: Who Is John Galt?" (2014)

User score: 3.0/10

What critics said: "The movie's so slipshod and half-assed that I almost feel for Rand, whose ideas have proved enduring enough that they at least deserve a fair representation, if only for the sake of refutation." — Village Voice

26. "Meet The Spartans" (2008)

User score: 2.8/10

What critics said: "Gamely alternates between unfunny gay jokes and violent pratfalls for a good 80 minutes, finding time for not one, but two musical dance numbers set to 'I Will Survive.'" — The AV Club

25. "Dirty Love" (2005)

What critics said: "Dirty Love wasn't written and directed, it was committed. Here is a film so pitiful, it doesn't rise to the level of badness. It is hopelessly incompetent." — Chicago Sun-Times

24. "State Property" (2002)

User score: 4.9/10

What critics said: "Result is a fairly good-looking video shot down by a hackneyed script, atrocious acting and a total lack of redeeming social value." — Variety

23. "The Mangler" (1995)

Critic score: 8/100

What critics said: "It is not a compliment to suggest that a demonically possessed piece of machinery embarked on a bloodthirsty rampage has more personality than most of the flesh-and-blood characters in 'The Mangler,' a horror movie based on a Stephen King story." — The New York Times

22. "The Haunting of Sharon Tate" (2019)

Critic score: 8/100

User score: 2.9/10

What critics said: "A run-of-the-mill home invasion thriller, and while Farrands is a solid genre craftsman — as evidenced by his similarly creepy true-crime film from earlier this year, The Amityville Murders — his taste remains suspect." — Los Angeles Times

21. "Among Ravens" (2014)

User score: 1.6/10

What critics said: "Featuring unlikeable characters, preposterously contrived plotting, ham-fisted dialogue and strained attempts at poeticism, Among Ravens is a misfire on every level." — The Hollywood Reporter

20. "Septic Man" (2014)

Summary: "Jack, a sewage worker who's determined to uncover the cause of the town's water contamination crisis, gets trapped underground in a septic tank and undergoes a hideous transformation."

What critics said: "Beyond its mere unfunniness and stupidity, Septic Man is criminally unimaginative." — The Dissolve

19. "Transylmania" (2009)

User score: 8.7/10

What critics said: "The current vogue for all things vampiric is ripe for a satirical drubbing, but this repulsive comedy is part of the problem, not the solution." — Chicago Reader

18. "Grizzly II: Revenge" (2020)

Critic score : 7/100

What critics said: "It's a pity Grizzly II: Revenge isn't giddy-bad, the way Tommy Wiseau's 'The Room' delights so many. But it's here, it's seriously disoriented and disorienting." — Chicago Tribune

17. "Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?" (2016)

Critic score: 7/100

User score: 2.7/10

What critics said: "The movie tries to wrap an important social message in comedy, but it's unpalatable all the way through." — Los Angeles Times

16. "Miss March" (2009)

User score: 4.3/10

What critics said: "Writer-director-stars Zach Cregger and Trevor Moore, of the Whitest Kids U'Know, here prove the crassest, most maladroit moviemakers you know." — Entertainment Weekly

15. "Screwed" (2000)

User score: 8.2/10

What critics said: "A confusedly misconceived hybrid of interracial buddy comedy and imitation Marx Brothers farce." — The New York Times

14. "The Hottie & the Nottie" (2008)

What critics said: "Great actors make the craft look easy. In the Paris Hilton comedy 'The Hottie and the Nottie,' acting looks very, very difficult." — New York Post

13. "Caddyshack II" (1988)

What critics said: "'Caddyshack II,' a feeble follow-up to the 1980 laff riot, is lamer than a duck with bunions, and dumber than grubs. It's patronizing and clumsily manipulative, and top banana Jackie Mason is upstaged by the gopher puppet." — The Washington Post

12. "Baby Geniuses" (1999)

Critic score: 6/100

What critics said: "Bad films are easy to make, but a film as unpleasant as Baby Geniuses' achieves a kind of grandeur." — Chicago Sun-Times

11. "National Lampoon's Gold Diggers" (2004)

What critics said: "So stupefyingly hideous that after watching it, you'll need to bathe in 10 gallons of disinfectant, get a full-body scrub and shampoo with vinegar to remove the scummy residue that remains." — The Washington Post

10. "The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence)" (2015)

Critic score: 5/100

What critics said: "It's only fitting that a series that began with the concept of linking the digestive tracts of three people would end by feasting on its own sh-t." — The Dissolve

9. "Vulgar" (2002)

User score: 2.2/10

What critics said: "Sure to appear in everyone's worst-of lists at year's end, to say nothing of a few bad dreams, Bryan Johnson's Vulgar is an unclassifiably awful study in self- and audience-abuse." — Village Voice

8. "Strippers" (2000)

What critics said: "Unbelievably awful celluloid-waster." — New York Post

7. "Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party" (2016)

Critic score: 2/100

User score: 4.7/10

What critics said: "Little more than an extended version of the kind of political screeds that can be found online with only a minimum of effort, this is just a terrible movie." — RogerEbert.com

6. "The Singing Forest" (2003)

Critic score: 1/100

User score: 3/10

What critics said: "'The Singing Forest' was written and directed by Jorge Ameer, whose film 'Strippers' opened three years ago and remained the single worst movie I had ever reviewed -- until now." — The New York Times

5. "The Garbage Pail Kids Movie" (1987)

Critic score: 1/100

User score: 0.8/10

What critics said: "Imagine parents sitting in the audience with their naughty children (who used their Cabbage Patch dolls as driveway obstructions for their Big Wheel obstacle courses) and feeling ruefully double-crassed." — Slant

4. "United Passions" (2015)

User score: 0.7/10

What critics said: "As propaganda, 'United Passions' is as subtle as an anvil to the temple. As drama, it's not merely ham-fisted, but pork-shouldered, bacon-wristed, and sausage-elbowed." — Village Voice

3. "Bio-Dome" (1996)

User score: 7.1/10

What critics said: "The sheer ineptitude of the movie is supposed to be funny, but there's no lunacy behind it: Shore and his writers are like comedians on Prozac, smiling through the fart jokes without a hint of desperation." — The New Yorker

2. "Chaos" (2005)

What critics said: "Writer-director David DeFalco's ugly, pointless and dishonest remake of Craven's remake." — L.A. Weekly

1. "Death of a Nation" (2018)

What critics said: "D'Souza fans and Trump apologists will flock to this, misguided moths to a misleading flame. In that way, it's a perfect representation of the current climate. In every other way, it's a mess." — Arizona Republic

Main content

Beautiful, interesting, incredible cinema.

BEST WORST MOVIE

Stephenson investigates the improbable rise of a critically panned horror flick of the early ’90s to a pop-culture touchstone. Stephenson, who starred in Troll 2 nearly 20 years ago, chooses to focus on his on-screen father as he comes to terms with his strange, newly found celebrity.

Letterboxd — Your life in film

Forgotten username or password ?

Start a new list…
Add all films to a list…
Add all films to watchlist

Add to your films…

Press Tab to complete, Enter to create

A moderator has locked this field.

Add to lists

Where to watch

Best Worst Movie

2009 Directed by Michael Stephenson

The Story Behind The Worst Movie Ever Made - Troll 2

A look at the making of the film Troll 2 (1990) and its journey from being crowned the "worst film of all time" to a cherished cult classic.

Michael Stephenson George Hardy Jason Steadman Jason Wright Zack Carlson Randall Colburn Adam Deyoe John Gemberling Patrick Gibbs Paul Gibbs Eric Gosselin Rocky Jalil Timothy Marklevitz Ryan Martin Scott Pearlman Chris Pudlo James M. Tate Scott Weinberg Bryn Hammond Simon Robb Darren Ewing Connie Young Margo Prey Erika Anderson

Director Director

Michael Stephenson

Producer Producer

Writer writer, composer composer.

Bobby Tahouri

OJO Entertainment

Primary Language

Spoken languages.

Italian English

Releases by Date

14 mar 2009, releases by country.

Premiere Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_Worst_Movie

93 mins More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by James 5

This is a great documentary...but I'm left torn about how it made me feel overall. There were a lot of parts that were just a lot of fun to watch. All the viewing parties. George Hardy (the dad) while he's still in his Cult Hero honeymoon phase. The silly recreations of some hilarious scenes. Don Packard (the creepy general store owner) saying how much he hated Michael Stephenson (Joshua) while they were filming in such a way that seriously made me wonder if he knew he was talking to Michael Stephenson...

Then there was Margo Prey (the mother). Her interview was incredibly sad and uncomfortable. The way she compares Troll 2 to Casablanca really makes you realize that she desperately…

Review by Jake Cole ★★

I get so uncomfortable with movies like this and Winnebago Man, happy that the people involved in pop culture items elevated into an ironic pantheon accept this with good humor but uncomfortable with parading them before a dubiously sincere audience for appraisal. Sure, the kid from Troll 2 is the director, and the dad is thrilled to stand before a crowd, but even those who get genuine pleasure from Troll 2 (like yours truly) can turn appreciation into exploitation. It's hard to watch the daughter, still an actor, discuss the fear and despair that fills her when a casting director looks up her name and finds the credit she won't list on a CV. Even worse to catch up with…

Review by {Todd} ★★★½

“I hope he understands, you know, how wonderful Troll 2 was, I don’t even want to call it a bad film… it’s an amazing film.” - Fan,

If I was ever in a famous bad film I would milk that celebrity dry... I mean to the bone... I'd show up for everything I'm a fame whore that way.

In this documentary, a grown up child actor deconstructs his experience with a camp classic. Best Worst Movie allows you to crawl inside the film Troll 2 and meet all of the actors, and experience the fandom around the classis bad film. What sets the documentary apart from other movies about movies is the meta-narratives about what fandom means and how being…

Review by Kevin Majestyck

“People laugh at the funny things. But they also laugh at the less funny things.”

Claudio Fragasso’s realization that enjoyment of his movie isn’t as straightforward as he thought — that he has made…a good bad movie — is one of the highlights of this documentary. Not in a schadenfreude way of “haha your movie sucks”, but rather from seeing an artist work though what their art ultimately becomes: something outside of their control, or intent.

Is it better or worse that TROLL 2 didn’t fall into oblivion, like so many other low budget genre fare, and instead lives on in the often genuine, frequently ironic nerd-space of communal screenings?

Claudio ultimately learns to stop worrying and love his bomb :

“I’ve made an impression.”

Review by Taylor Heider ★★★½ 8

“What I don’t accept is a cold, emotionless movie.”

I love Troll 2. I have said that countless times. I’m gonna have a hot take here though and say that Troll 2 is not really a horrible movie. It’s a weird movie! It suffers from a language barrier and it’s clear watching this that the director and the actors did not always see eye to eye, but to say it’s the worst movie ever is kinda crazy to me. That’s why all of the fan interactions always leave a poor impression on me. It almost feels mean-spirited to round up these actors that you’re shitting on and then laugh at them because they were so awful in a movie you…

Review by Evan ★★★★

I had a blast watching Troll 2 for the first time. This documentary made me love Troll 2 even more. I am now going to search eBay and buy the Blu-Ray copy of Troll 2 immediately.

George Hardy seems like a genuinely awesome guy. If I lived in Alexander City, Alabama he would totally be my dentist.

Review by Geoffrey Broomer ★★★★★

Michael Stephenson unwrapping the Troll 2 VHS on Christmas morning, makes this the...

Best Xmas Movie.

Holiday Road continues...

Review by FoundOnYouTube ★★★½

Shoutout to @dragonsblood23 for the request.

Best Worst Movie is a documentary about Troll 2, which is probably one of the funniest movies ever made. It focuses more on the cult phenomenon that it spawned than any behind-the-scenes action. The third act will hit you with an unexpected bleakness. George Hardy, Margo Prey, and Robert Ormsby really expected this film to boost them into stardom, but ended up in disappointment, as Troll 2 became their sole credit. Just a stark and cruel reminder that not everybody makes it to showbiz. Well, at least, Hardy has a successful career as a dentist in Alabama.

Big ups to Claudio Fragasso for still defending Troll 2 to this day. Most directors would…

Review by Nathan Rabin ★★★★

A powerful message movie about the dangers of pissing on hospitality.

Review by 8 b i t m u r d e r b o t ∆ ∆ ★★★ 4

A specific doc that takes you through the green hues of the emotional spectrum. Many of us spent our childhood watching this oddity on HBO and inadvertently falling for it. I didn't even know back then it was bad. For many years when I looked back on my young years Troll 2 was in my nostalgic favorites in the same list as Friday the 13th part 5. And then my brain developed and I started to distance myself from it. For years, I assumed it was a film that no one else had even heard of and it was just some bullshit from my childhood like how my wife liked the Hugga Bunch.

Then... the internet. You start to realize…

Review by belial_carboni ★★★★ 5

Absolutely delightful.

Nothing beats the good vibes of people getting together to appreciate such a bad (amazing) film. I watch a ton of trash films and after every one of them I always think to myself "why don't more people love this???" At least one of the millions of underappreciated so bad it's good films got some much earned recognition!

I still remember when I first watched my blind buy of Troll 1 and 2 that I bought when working at a music/DVD store back in 2006. Troll 1 was fun but when I put on Troll 2 I knew it was something different... something special...

For the years that followed I would use Troll 2 as my go to…

Review by joakim dreams of peace ★★★ 2

Hooptober 6.0 - Hit the feels - The 3rd entry, 17.9.2019.

Review contains spoilers

" You don't understand nothing "

10th anniversary! Best Worst Movie , directed by the one and only Joshua Waits aka Michael Stephenson , is probably one of the most bizarre documentaries I've seen and this rewatch confirms that thought. It starts as your The Disaster Artist type of story, where Joshua - I mean Michael - tries to gather the original crew together, discover how the hell did this all happen and celebrate the joy of terrible yet hilarious films.

That's the premise, yeah... but it becomes something else. In the beginning the excitement of the fans are portrayed in a clumsy but heartwarming way, yet…

Similar Films

Select your preferred poster

Upgrade to remove ads.

Letterboxd is an independent service created by a small team, and we rely mostly on the support of our members to maintain our site and apps. Please consider upgrading to a Pro account —for less than a couple bucks a month, you’ll get cool additional features like all-time and annual stats pages ( example ), the ability to select (and filter by) your favorite streaming services, and no ads!

The Worst Movies Of 2024 So Far

A fter a stellar year for movies in 2023, morale has been high among moviegoers for another solid year of noteworthy hits. As we make our way through 2024, we've been spoiled with an abundance of choices across theatrical and direct-to-streaming releases, but as we all know, quantity does not guarantee quality. While there have undoubtedly been some truly remarkable movies worthy of acclaim this year (see our Best Movies of 2024 list ), it's inevitable that alongside these standouts, there would also be a fair share of cinematic disappointments.

From lackluster and forgettable to downright disastrous and unwatchable, these movies serve as cautionary tales for what happens when there's a blatant disregard for decent storytelling and audience intelligence. The entries on this list were by no means chosen lightly. Based on internet chatter, respected critics' takes, review aggregate sites, and our own opinions, these worst of the worst 2024 movies overwhelmingly failed to captivate audiences and critics alike.

Read more: Movies That Permanently Damaged Actors' Bodies

Perhaps the most relentlessly criticized movie of the year so far, Sony Pictures' "Madame Web" has been dubbed the worst addition to Sony's Spider-Man Universe and, even more harshly, the worst comic book movie yet. This standalone superhero tells the origin story of Cassie (Dakota Johnson), a paramedic with newfound clairvoyant abilities, who races to protect three young women from a sinister figure who seeks to exploit their latent superpowers. The execution, however, is forgettable at best and an insult to the audience's intelligence and time at worst.

In a blatant cash grab and failed effort to keep a faltering franchise afloat, it was easy for audiences to see right through this lifeless, expositional, clunky mess. Even the cast themselves couldn't take the movie seriously, unable to salvage the lackluster material, with forced performances and uninspired dialogue. In Looper's review of "Madame Web," Alistair Ryder called it "a film that arrived fully formed as a cultural punching bag." From the lazy writing to the stilted editing, "Madame Web" offers little beyond fodder for internet memes.

Not scary enough for horror fans and too flat and predictable to pass as a psychological thriller, Jeff Wadlow's "Imaginary" joins his Blumhouse trifecta of disappointments, where his directorial touch seems to create mediocrity at best. (Wadlow also directed "Truth or Dare" and "Fantasy Island" for the horror studio.) The premise of a childhood imaginary friend seeking revenge after abandonment seems promising enough, but in reality, audiences were left wishing for a much more imaginative approach. The reliance on cheap scares, tedious storytelling, and recycled ideas detracts from what could have been a compelling exploration of childhood trauma and strained stepparent and child relationships.

The consensus among audiences and critics reflects the film's shortcomings, evidenced by its 1.9 rating on Letterboxd and 34 Metacritic score. Wilson Chapman of Indiewire aptly encapsulated the overarching sentiment in their review with a clever quip, writing, "Just like your childhood imaginary friend, you'll probably forget about it pretty quickly." The only thing worse than "Imaginary" is the fact that it isn't the only Blumhouse blunder of the year.

In 2014, Bryce McGuire and Rod Blackhurst's short film "Night Swim" went viral on YouTube. One decade later, McGuire made his feature directorial debut with the same story that broke him into the industry. Produced by horror's biggest production companies, Blumhouse Productions and Atomic Monster, this haunted pool flick is as absurd as it sounds, proving that a bigger budget and longer runtime don't automatically make a story better.

When the central conflict of the movie can be resolved simply by avoiding a dip in the swimming pool, it becomes challenging to view the stakes with any sort of seriousness. It also doesn't help that the film is overstuffed with tired clichés and watered-down scares, with Owen Gleiberman of Variety writing, "everything is as telegraphed as it is derivative. The film's fear factor is all wet." Its pitiful ratings of 1.8 on Letterboxd and 43 on Metacritic underscore just how bland and uninspired this failed attempt at horror truly is.

From the acclaimed director of the highly successful "Kingsman" franchise, Matthew Vaughn, "Argylle" was a failed attempt to sustain his momentum in the spy action genre. With a star-studded ensemble cast, Vaughn's distinctive signature flair, a whopping $200 million budget, and a promising premise centered around a recluse author (Bryce Dallas Howard) whose fictional work mirrors a real-life spy organization and their mission, expectations were obviously high. However, most were let down by the film's lengthy runtime and a convoluted plot that felt more like a drawn-out parody of its clear inspirations.

Scoring a 35 on Metacritic and a 33% on Rotten Tomatoes , it was clear critics would spare "Argylle" no mercy in their scathing reviews . Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian likened the film to a superficial men's magazine cover shoot: "thin, flimsy, lumbered with a dull meta-narrative and dodgy acting, and boasting a blank parade of phoned-in cameos from the supporting cast." Katie Walsh of The Los Angeles Times went even further, labeling it "one of the most expensive worst movies ever made" and suggesting that it "should be studied in a lab." Although audiences were more lenient, granting it a 72% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, the film's poor box office performance provides a more telling indication of moviegoers' true feelings.

Tyler Perry's films are often hit or miss, although they mainly lean toward the latter. While his previous Netflix venture, "A Jazzman's Blues," hinted at a potential shift in the right direction, "Mea Culpa" disappoints as a noticeable regression for the writer-director-producer. The legal drama about Chicago-based lawyer Mea Harper (Kelly Rowland) chronicles her familial turmoil and professional dilemmas as she navigates a complex web of deceit, betrayal, and desire that comes with taking on the controversial case of charismatic artist Zyair Malloy (Trevante Rhodes). While it succeeds as a familiar Perry-esque guilty pleasure, it falls flat on almost every other front.

With a 1.8 rating on Letterboxd , audiences are in agreement that "Mea Culpa" lacks the suspense, stakes, or sex appeal needed to pull off the kind of erotic thriller it's going for. Beyond the sheer boredom it provokes, the cringe-inducing dialogue and acting might just lead you to consider canceling your Netflix subscription. Benjamin Lee summed it up well in The Guardian , writing, "The stupidity of it all is certainly diverting but it's all too scattershot and at times stiflingly portentous to cross over into pure camp."

The Underdoggs

Snoop Dogg's sports comedy "The Underdoggs" was prophesized to fail the moment it skipped its planned theatrical release and went straight to streaming. In this Prime Video exclusive, has-been football player Jaycen "Two Js" Jennings (Snoop Dogg) finds redemption and rekindles his passion for football when he coaches his community youth football team in his hometown, ultimately transforming both the team and himself. If you think you've seen something similar before, it's because you probably have.

"The Underdoggs" accomplishes a fusion of inspirational sports drama and R-rated comedy but brings nothing new to the table for either genre. Brandon Yu of The New York Times observed, "It can't come up with any memorable jokes or genuine heart to fill in the beats that it mostly slogs through." While Snoop Dogg brings his signature charm to the role of Jaycen, his performance feels restrained, lacking the energy and charisma needed to elevate such a project. As a result, "The Underdoggs" ends up feeling like a watered-down imitation of better sports movies that have come before it, failing to leave a lasting impression despite its star power and genuine laugh-out-loud moments.

Megamind Vs. The Doom Syndicate

With its awful IMDb rating and single-digit Rotten Tomatoes score , "Megamind vs. The Doom Syndicate" may be the worst example of an animated sequel ever to see the light of day. While its memeified 2010 predecessor captured audiences with its fresh and humorous take on the superhero genre, the sequel butchers any sense of originality and charm with a 14-years-late downgrade. Kicking off the Peacock television series "Megamind Rules!," "Megamind vs. The Doom Syndicate" sees the return of Megamind (now voiced by Keith Ferguson, as Will Ferrell didn't return ) as the supervillain faces a crisis when his former menacing crew, the Doom Syndicate, challenges his hero status and threatens to launch Metro City to the moon.

Writing for RogerEbert.com , Nell Minow remarked the movie "is intermittently funny and briefly heartwarming, as though they ran the original through the washing machine a few times, and then faxed it." Still, director Eric Fogel defended the final outcome and blamed its shortcomings on a significantly smaller budget than the first. Beyond the disregard for the original's characterization, plot, and humor, the most glaring, cheapened element of the movie is by far the poor-quality animation, robbing it of its bare-minimum entertainment value and strengthening our distaste for this trend of lazy franchise reboots, remakes, and sequels.

The Kevin Hart-led, F. Gary Gray-directed heist comedy "Lift" is a stark reminder of Hollywood's tendency to churn out content solely for profit, often at the expense of originality. In this cheap-looking, copy-paste heist film, a seasoned thief (Hart) and his former Interpol agent love interest (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) join forces to lead a diverse crew in orchestrating a daring heist aboard a passenger plane mid-flight.

"Practically every scene is a cliché, every line of dialogue an echo of a better one you've already heard in a better film," Michael Nordine wrote in a review for Variety . Netflix seems to be the main offender here, releasing the same formulaic movies year after year — "Lift" follows in the unremarkable footsteps of other forgettable Netflix original action-comedies like "The Out-Laws," "Coffee & Kareem," and "Red Notice." Netflix obviously recognizes there's an audience for these kinds of movies ... but who, exactly? That we're still trying to figure out. Even Kevin Hart fans may struggle to find merit in his uncharacteristically serious and devoid-of-humor performance within this disappointingly predictable offering.

Air Force One Down

If given the choice between being cramped in a middle seat on a budget airline or sitting through 80-plus minutes of the action thriller "Air Force One Down," you're better off picking the former for the sake of your sanity. Katherine McNamara from "Shadowhunters" and Ian Bohen from "Yellowstone" star in this B-grade movie about a rookie Secret Service agent (McNamara) tasked with saving the President's (Bohen) life after an attempted hijacking of Air Force One. It's the type of mind-numbing movie you watch for the pulse-pounding action and high-stakes suspense, but "Air Force One Down" can't even deliver on those fronts.

The premise is far-fetched enough, but once you actually get into the movie — a low-effort hijacking of one of the world's most secure aircraft and a petite rookie agent fending off hordes of towering terrorists — the suspension of disbelief required becomes too much to bear. On his blog , critic Dennis Schwartz said of the movie, "The routine B-film is written by Steven Paul as if he fell out of the plane's emergency door and was still writing on his way down." Nonsensical and too boring to watch as a "so bad it's good" guilty pleasure, "Air Force One Down" crashes and burns as one of the worst movies to come out of this year.

Miller's Girl

In the erotic thriller "Miller's Girl," 18-year-old Cairo Sweet (Jenna Ortega) seeks inspiration for her Yale admission essay by seducing her teacher, Jonathan Miller (Martin Freeman), leading to a scandal that forces both mentor and student to confront their inner demons. The 30-year-plus age gap between the two leads takes viewers back to a time in cinema many of us hoped we'd never have to revisit. Between "Poison Ivy" and "The Crush," the '90s popularized the underage femme fatale trope, but not without sparking their own fair share of controversy. The question is why writer-director Jade Halley Bartlett felt the need to revitalize this trope in such a superficial way while introducing a new generation of moviegoers to these dangerous and tired narratives that distort the roles of predator and victim by portraying adult men as victims of manipulation by sexually self-aware minors under the guise of empowerment and agency.

Luckily, audiences aren't biting. With a 1.9 rating on Letterboxd , many reviewers compare the writing to amateurish Wattpad fanfiction. Critics aren't holding back, either. Brian Lowry of CNN wrote, "Dated and creepy in all the wrong ways, it's a movie that might have escaped derision in the 1980s but deserves to get slapped around today." Lacking nuance, originality, and depth, "Miller's Girl" is a misguided debut that fails to capture the complexity of its themes.

The Wages Of Fear

Despite the 1953 thriller "The Wages of Fear" achieving enduring classic status, marked by its impressive box office success in France and prestigious awards at the 1953 Berlin and Cannes Film Festivals, Netflix's 2024 remake directed by Julien Leclercq stands as a stark example of one of the worst remakes ever to exist. Following the same premise as the original, a group of unlikely allies race against time to transport volatile cargo through treacherous desert terrain in an effort to avert disaster. Even without watching the original, one could imagine the palpable suspense and tension that made this thriller so influential.

However, while everyone knows that in order to justify a remake, you have to maintain the core essence of the original while offering something fresh and new, Netflix's French remake "The Wages of Fear" disregards all of that and dilutes everything meaningful about the original. At the time of its release, "The Wages of Fear" has become one of Netflix's most popular titles worldwide , but that doesn't mean audiences are liking it. Instead, the overall consensus acknowledges "The Wages of Fear" as a lazily thrown-together direct-to-streaming remake stripped of any meaning and suspense.

Red Right Hand

The action-packed thriller "Red Right Hand" is yet another mindless, derivative VOD genre film. Taking place in the gritty Appalachian town of Odim County, "Red Right Hand" follows rough and tough Cash (Orlando Bloom) confronting his past as a ruthless enforcer for the sadistic kingpin Big Cat (Andie MacDowell), pushing him to desperate measures to protect his niece (Chapel Oaks) and his newfound semblance of family.

Although the film's two seasoned leads, plus Garret Dillahunt, and standout newcomer Oaks try their best with the material they're given, not even they can elevate this predictable and familiar formula of overused tropes offset by distracting violence. Critic Frank Scheck for The Hollywood Reporter also quibbled with the casting, writing, "Bloom is perfectly fine as the stalwart, soft-spoken hero seeking revenge, but MacDowell never proves remotely convincing as the ruthless female baddie." Audiences on Letterboxd have rated it 2.8 overall, whereas critic reviews on Metacritic even out to a mixed-to-average score of 48. While the captivating action sequences might offer some visual appeal, true fans of the genre will realize this overly lengthy thriller for what it really is — a generic and forgettable film.

Lindsay Lohan is back and better than ever. However, the same can't be said about the movies she's choosing to star in. After signing a multi-picture deal with Netflix, the fantasy rom-com "Irish Wish" marks Lohan's second project with the streaming service. Lohan plays Maddie, a book editor secretly in love with a bestselling author (Alexander Vlahos), and luckily, a magical encounter with a wish-granting fantastical figure (Dawn Bradfield) turns Maddie into the dashing author's bride-to-be.

One big cliché for the expression "Be careful what you wish for," the film does little to enhance or subvert its well-trodden genre. While all the praise for this film lands on Lohan's shoulders, it pretty much stops there. Samantha Bergeson of IndieWire described the movie as "cute yet very forgettable," while Benjamin Lee noted in their review for The Guardian that Lohan's "creep back to mainstream movies needs expediting with another junky Netflix offering that feels beneath her talent." The film, packaged as an escapist comfort watch that dropped around St. Patrick's Day, is an easy skip in a year filled with so many other great films to watch.

Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood And Honey 2

Director Rhys Frake-Waterfield is in the business of ruining everyone's childhoods by taking beloved children's properties and turning them into gruesome and terrifying slasher films. "Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2" is, as the name suggests, the sequel to the maligned slasher film "Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey" and the second installment in Frake-Waterfield's developing Twisted Childhood Universe. In this Winnie-the-Pooh horror reimaging, A.A. Milne and E.H. Shepard's original characters, Winnie-the-Pooh (Ryan Oliva), Piglet (Eddy MacKenzie), Tigger (Lewis Santer), and Owl (Marcus Massey), band together on a murder spree in Christopher Robin's (Scott Chambers) hometown of Ashdown in their ongoing revenge against Christopher, who abandoned them when he went off to college in the first film.

With a tenfold increased budget, aspects of the sequel improved from the first, most notably the character designs, but those small upgrades aren't enough to save this disaster of a film overly reliant on its conceptual gimmick. While fans of splatter horror with no substance may be satisfied, by refusing to fully embrace its innate campiness, the film undermines itself through an overly serious approach and a sloppy, unrealized story. As a result, the majority of moviegoers find this one hard to sit through, as reflected by its meager 2.7 rating on Letterboxd and a dismal 36 on Metacritic . However, despite being lambasted by critics and audiences, the characters of "Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey" will live to kill another day, as Frake-Waterfield is already developing more childhood-ruining spin-offs and sequels .

Read the original article on Looper

Maddie, Cairo, and Jaycen looking sideways

Screen Rant

Justice league: crisis on infinite earths - part two review - disappointing superhero film lacks urgency.

Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part Two is missing what the first film had in spades - heart, great action, and a sense of urgency.

Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part Two has limited character development, which impacts the emotional investment.
Low stakes and lack of urgency make the film's plot feel tedious.
Lack of focus and interconnection between characters weakens the overall story.

Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part Two begins directly after Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part One , an unexpectedly moving entry , ends, continuing the story of the Monitor (Jonathan Adams) and the multiverse of superheroes who are doing everything in their power to stop the destruction of their earths. The film is two of three that will close out the DC Universe Animated Movies’ Tomorrowverse , but while Part One had plenty of action and a lot of heart, Part Two falters and loses steam. The stakes aren’t as high and the characters are more scattered without focus.

The Justice League faces a universe-altering challenge as they confront the Anti-Monitor, whose destructive actions threaten every existence across the multiverse. Heroes and villains alike must unite to stop the cascade of collapsing realities.

Psycho-Pirate's story is intriguing enough to stay watching
The animated film has no sense of urgency
The stakes feel lower than in the first film
The central relationships lack heart

Crisis On Infinite Earths - Part Two Lacks Heart

There’s little development of character relationships.

The first film had a lot going on, but it was grounded by The Flash and Iris West. Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part Two writer James Krieg chooses to center Supergirl (Meg Donnelly) and her time with the Monitor (instead of with Brainy and others) after her ship is pulled in by his satellite (David Kaye). The Monitor grows fond of Supergirl, and they have a father-daughter relationship, but it’s one that barely registers. When she discovers the Monitor’s task is to observe and not interfere in multiversal happenings, their relationship takes a hit.

Their dynamic is an intriguing one, but it’s barely explored. Time passes, but we don’t get that same sense of heart or emotional investment that was so critical to Part One’s success. Supergirl and the Monitor’s relationship, as well as Supergirl’s overall journey, are devoid of emotion and neither are strong enough to carry the film through to the end. Elsewhere, Earth-3 Batman (Jensen Ackles) interacts with his multiverse family — Robin (Zach Callison), Batgirl (Gideon Adlon), Batman Beyond (Will Friedle), among others — but he’s resistant to their help and their affection.

There’s so little time spent on the Bat Family in general that, by the time they start fighting each other (influenced by an external source), the investment isn’t there to care very much about the outcome. There are scenes filled with potential, especially when it comes to the Monitor being influenced by Supergirl’s presence and conviction to help, but they ultimately fall flat. When Supergirl has a nightmare involving Brainy, a relationship that is largely talked about but not fully shown, I was unmoved by the horror she felt, but was obviously meant to stir something in us.

Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part Two (2024)

Justice league: crisis on infinite earths - part two has low stakes, it's also not as exciting as crisis on infinite earths - part one.

The underwhelming character dynamics affect the stakes of the mission. Saving the multiverse can start to feel a bit tedious when there’s little investment in everything else. Superheroes, including Wonder Woman and Superman, battle shadow demons, but there is no sense of urgency. It’s as though the film, directed by Jeff Wamester, is stalling. The multiverse, for all its vastness, feels small. With The Flash running around to different worlds, Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part One actually felt like the multiverse was ending. Part Two offers little interconnection between characters or intrigue in what’s happening that doesn’t quickly grow tiresome.

Even the drama involving Psycho-Pirate (Geoffrey Arand), a character who has the most interesting storyline and flair, can’t save Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part Two from being a subpar superhero outing. With so many characters to service and various earths to visit, DC’s animated film falls short of greatness because it doesn’t fully engage with all its moving parts. It drags on for too long and, when the Monitor discovers there is something more sinister going on behind the multiverse’s collapse, the interest in finding out what’ll happen (even if many already know) has deflated.

As it stands, Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part Two is a disappointing entry, failing to truly and comprehensively build a bridge between the first film and the third film. I was excited to see how the rest of the story would unfold, but with an overall lack of focus, stakes, and thrill, the second installment is weaker than the first film. Here’s hoping the third film in the trilogy can pick up the slack and deliver a solid conclusion.

Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part Two is now available on digital and Blu-ray.

an image, when javascript is unavailable

Taylor Swift Renews Her Vows With Heartbreak in Audacious, Transfixing ‘Tortured Poets Department’: Album Review

By Chris Willman

Chris Willman

Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic

Taylor Swift’s ‘Tortured Poets’ Becomes First Album to Get One Billion Streams on Spotify in a Single Week 9 hours ago
Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour to Release First Album in Nine Years 10 hours ago
Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Pearl Jam to Headline Ohana Festival 2024 1 day ago

Taylor Swift 'Tortured Poets Department" variant album cover vinyl LP review

Popular on Variety

For where it sits in her catalog musically, it feels like the synth-pop of “Midnights,” with most of the feel-good buzz stripped out; or like the less acoustic based moments of “Folklore” and “Evermore,” with her penchant for pure autobiography stripped back in. It feels bracing, and wounded, and cocky, and — not to be undervalued in this age — handmade, however many times she stacks her own vocals for an ironic or real choral effect. Occasionally the music gets stripped down all the way to a piano, but it has the effect of feeling naked even when she goes for a bop that feels big enough to join the setlist in her stadium tour resumption, like “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.”

The first time you listen to the album, you may be stricken by the “Wait, did she really just say that?” moments. (And no, we’re not referring to the already famous Charlie Puth shout-out, though that probably counts, too.) Whatever feeling you might have had hearing “Dear John” for the first time, if you’re old enough to go back that far with her, that may be the feeling you have here listening to the eviscerating “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” or a few other tracks that don’t take much in the way of prisoners. Going back to it, on second, fifth and tenth listens, it’s easier to keep track of the fact that the entire album is not that emotionally intense, and that there are romantic, fun and even silly numbers strewn throughout it, if those aren’t necessarily the most striking ones on first blush. Yes, it’s a pop album as much as a vein-opening album, although it may not produce the biggest number of Top 10 hits of anything in her catalog. It doesn’t seem designed not to produce those, either; returning co-producers Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner aren’t exactly looking to keep her off the radio. But it’s easily among her most lyrics-forward efforts, rife with a language lover’s wordplay, tumults of sequential similes and — her best weapon — moments of sheer bluntness.

Who is the worst man that she delights in writing about through the majority of the album? Perhaps not the one you were guessing, weeks ago. There are archetypal good guy and bad boy figures who have been part of her life, whom everyone will transpose onto this material. Coming into “Tortured Poets,” the joke was that someone should keep Joe Alwyn, publicly identified as her steady for six-plus years, under mental health watch when the album comes out. As it turns out, he will probably be able to sleep just fine. The other bloke, the one everyone assumed might be too inconsequential to trouble her or write about — let’s put another name to that archetype: Matty Healy of the 1975 — might lose a little sleep instead, if the fans decide that the cutting “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” and other lacerating songs are about him, instead. He might also have cause to feel flattered, because there are plenty of songs extolling him as an object of abject passion and the love of her life — in, literally, the song title “LOML” — before the figure who animated all this gets sliced down to size.

The older love, he gets all of one song, as far as can be ascertained: the not so subtly titled “So Long, London,” a dour sequel to 2019’s effusive “London Boy.” Well, he gets a bit more than that: The amusingly titled “Fresh Out the Slammer” devotes some verses to a man she paints as her longtime jailer (“Handcuffed to the spell I was under / For just one hour of sunshine / Years of labor, locks and ceilings / In the shade of how he was feeling.” But ultimately it’s really devoted to the “pretty baby” who’s her first phone call once she’s been sprung from the relationship she considered her prison.

It’s complicated, as they say. For most of the album, Swift seesaws between songs about being in thrall to never-before-experienced passion and personal compatibility with a guy from the wrong side of the tracks. She feels “Guilty as Sin?” for imagining a consummation that at first seems un-actionable, if far from unthinkable; she swears “But Daddy I Love Him” in the face of family disapproval; she thinks “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can),” before an epiphany slips out in the song’s hilariously anticlimactic final line: “Woah, maybe I can’t.” Then the most devastating songs about being ghosted pop up in the album’s later going.

Now, that, friends, is a righteous tirade. And it’s one of the most thrilling single moments in Swift’s recorded career. “But Daddy I Love Him” has a joke for a title (it’s a line borrowed from “The Little Mermaid”), but the song is an ecstatic companion piece to “That’s the Way I Loved You,” from her second album, now with Swift running off with the bad choice instead of just mourning him. It’s the rare song from her Antonoff/Dessner period that sounds like it could be out of the more “organic”-sounding, band-focused Nathan Chapman era, but with a much more matured writing now than then… even if the song is about embracing the immature.

The album gets off to a deceptively benign start with “Fortnight,” the collaboration with Post Malone that is its first single. Both he and the record’s other featured artist, Florence of Florence + the Machine , wrote the lyrics for their own sections, but Posty hangs back more, as opposed to the true duet with Florence; he echoes Swift’s leads before finally settling in with his own lines right at the end. Seemingly unconnected to the subject matter of the rest of the record, “Fortnight” seems a little like “Midnights” Lite. It rues a past quickie romance that the singer can’t quite move on from, even as she and her ex spend time with each other’s families. It’s breezy, and a good choice for pop radio, but not much of an indication of the more visceral, obsessive stuff to come.

The title track follows next and stays in the summer-breeze mode. It’s jangly-guitar-pop in the mode of “Mirrorball,” from “Folklore”… and it actually feels completely un-tortured, despite the ironic title. After the lovers bond over Charlie Puth being underrated (let’s watch those “One Call Away” streams soar), and over how “you’re not Dylan Thomas, I’m not Patti Smith,” an inter-artist romance seems firmly in place. “Who’s gonna hold you like me?” she asks aloud. (She later changes it to “troll you.”) She answers herself: “Nofuckinbody.” Sweet, and If you came to this album for any kind of idyll, enjoy this one while it lasts, which isn’t for long.

From here, the album is kind of all over the map, when it comes to whether she’s in the throes of passion or the throes of despair… with that epic poem in the album booklet to let you know how the pieces all fit together. (The album also includes a separate poem from Stevie Nicks, addressing the same love affair that is the main subject of the album, in a protective way.)

There are detours that don’t have to do with the romantic narrative, but not many. The collaboration with Florence + the Machine, “Florida!!!,” is the album’s funniest track, if maybe its least emotionally inconsequential. It’s literally about escape, and it provides some escapism right in the middle of the record, along with some BAM-BAM-BAM power-chord dynamics in an album that often otherwise trends soft. If you don’t laugh out loud the first time that Taylor’s and Florence’s voices come together in harmony to sing the line “Fuck me up, Florida,” this may not be the album for you.

When the album’s track list was first revealed, it almost seemed like one of those clever fakes that people delight in trolling the web with. Except, who would really believe that, instead of song titles like “Maroon,” Swift would suddenly be coming up with “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys,” “Fresh Out the Slammer,” “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” and “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”? This sounded like a Morrissey track list, not one of Swift’s. But she’s loosened up, in some tonal sense, even as she’s as serious as a heart attack on a lot of these songs. There is blood on the tracks, but also a wit in the way she’s employing language and being willing to make declarations that sound a little outlandish before they make you laugh.

Toward the end of the album, she presents three songs that aren’t “about” anybody else… just about, plainly, Taylor Swift. That’s true of “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?,” a song that almost sounds like an outtake from the “Reputation” album, or else a close cousin to “Folklore’s” “Mad Woman,” with Swift embracing the role of vengeful witch, in response to being treated as a circus freak — exact contemporary impetus unknown.

Whatever criticisms anyone will make of “The Tortured Poets Department,” though — not enough bangers? too personal? — “edge”-lessness shouldn’t be one of them. In this album’s most bracing songs, it’s like she brought a knife to a fistfight. There’s blood on the tracks, good blood.

Sure to be one of the most talked-about and replayed tracks, “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” has a touch of a Robyn-style dancing-through-tears ethos to it. But it’s clearly about the parts of the Eras Tour when she was at her lowest, and faking her way through it. “I’m so depressed I act like it’s my birthday — every day,” she sings, in the album’s peppiest number — one that recalls a more dance-oriented version of the previous album’s “Mastermind.” It’s not hard to imagine that when she resumes the tour in Paris next month, and has a new era to tag onto the end of the show, “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” might be the new climax, in place of “Karma.” “You know you’re good when you can do it with a broken heart,” she humble-brags, “and I’m good, ‘cause I’m miserable / And nobody even knows! / Try and come for my job.”

Not many superstars would devote an entire song to confessing that they’ve only pretended to be the super-happy figure fans thought they were seeing pass through their towns, and that they were seeing a illusion. (Presumably she doesn’t have to fake it in the present day, but that’s the story of the next album, maybe.) But that speaks to the dichotomy that has always been Taylor Swift: on record, as good and honest a confessional a singer-songwriter as any who ever passed through the ports of rock credibility; in concert, a great, fulsome entertainer like Cher squared. Fortunately, in Swift, we’ve never had to settle for just one or the other. No one else is coming for either job — our best heartbreak chronicler or our most uplifting popular entertainer. It’s like that woman in the movie theater says: Heartache feels good in a place like that. And it sure feels grand presented in its most distilled, least razzly-dazzly essence in “The Tortured Poets Department.”

More From Our Brands

Kanye west announces ‘yeezy porn’ amid reports of adult film company, no kidding, swizz beatz owns a camel-racing team—and it could win him $21 million, sue bird joins seattle storm ownership group, be tough on dirt but gentle on your body with the best soaps for sensitive skin, tvline items: id’s nick and aaron carter docuseries, outlander prequel cast additions and more, verify it's you, please log in.

Cast & crew

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

Nobody is ready for the mayhem and surprises that ensue when six of the worst youngsters disrupt the town's yearly Christmas performance. Nobody is ready for the mayhem and surprises that ensue when six of the worst youngsters disrupt the town's yearly Christmas performance. Nobody is ready for the mayhem and surprises that ensue when six of the worst youngsters disrupt the town's yearly Christmas performance.

Dallas Jenkins
Platte Clark
Darin McDaniel
Ryan Swanson
Lauren Graham
Elizabeth Tabish

Self - Narrator

Reverend Hopkins

First-grade teacher

Mrs. Thomas

Alice Wendleken

Gladys Herdman

Mrs. Wendleken

Charlie Bradley

Claude Herdman

Ms. Graebner

Mrs. Hopkins

George Armstrong

Imogene Herdman
All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

More to explore

Taylor Swift Has Given Fans a Lot. Is It Finally Too Much?

Swift has been inescapable over the last year. With the release of “The Tortured Poets Department,” her latest (very long) album, some seem to finally be feeling fatigued.

Share full article

Taylor Swift, on a platform, surrounded by men in suits.

By Matt Stevens and Shivani Gonzalez

Four new studio albums. Four rerecorded albums, too. A $1 billion oxygen-sucking world tour with a concert movie to match. And, of course, one very high-profile relationship that spilled over into the Super Bowl .

For some, the constant deluge that has peaked in the past year is starting to add up to a new (and previously unthinkable) feeling: Taylor Swift fatigue.

And it is a feeling that has only solidified online in the days following the release of “The Tortured Poets Department,” which morphed from a 16-song album into a 31-song, two-hour epic just hours after its release .

Many critics (including The New York Times’s own) have suggested that the album was overstuffed — simply not her best. And critiques of the music have now opened a sliver of space for a wider round of complaint unlike any Swift has faced over her prolific and world-conquering recent run.

“It’s almost like if you produce too much… too fast… in a brazen attempt to completely saturate and dominate a market rather than having something important or even halfway interesting to say… the art suffers!” Chris Murphy, a staff writer at Vanity Fair, posted on X .

Which is not to say nobody listened to the album; far from it. Spotify said “Poets,” which was released on Friday, became the most-streamed album in a single day with more than 300 million streams .

And of course, many of Swift’s most ardent fans, known as “Swifties,” loved her 11th album or, at least, have decided to air any reservations in private conversations. The first days of the album’s release have been greeted with the usual lyrical dissections for key allusions hidden within the songs, attention to every word that few other artists receive.

But others, including some self-identified Swift fans, have freely admitted frustration. Fans and critics alike have contended that Swift’s lyrics have become a tad verbose and that the tracks on this latest album — many of them breakup songs — sounded a whole lot like others she has already put out . The internet has also provided an almost unlimited supply of jokes about the length of the album .

Some admonished Swift for selling so many versions of “Poets” only to double its size after those orders were in, part of a cynically corporate rollout . (Care for the CD , vinyl or the Phantom Clear vinyl ?) The Daily Mail cobbled together what it deemed “The 10 WORST lyrics in Taylor Swift’s new album — ranked!”

For its part, Reductress , the satirical women’s magazine, offered a post titled “Woman Doing Her Best to Like New Taylor Swift Album Lest She Face the Consequences.”

Those who dare to publicly criticize Swift are acutely aware of the potential for backlash. Murphy, the Vanity Fair writer, made a dark joke about it . At least one X user who posted a lengthy thread eviscerating Swift, the album and its rollout took the post private after it got more than three million views. Paste Magazine opted not to put a byline on its harsh review of Swift’s album, citing safety concerns for the writer.

In an unusual twist, even Swift herself is widely viewed as admonishing her most militant defenders in one particular song on the new album, “But Daddy I Love Him.” Some contingents of Swift’s fanbase strongly disapproved of her brief relationship with Matty Healy of the 1975 and appear to now be bristling at the amount of record real estate Healy consumes on the latest album .

Weird, complicated times in Taylor land.

“It might be a tough few days for the fanbase,” Nathan Hubbard, a co-host of the Ringer podcast, “ Every Single Album ,” wrote in a social media thread about “Poets” on Friday . “They’ll hear some valid criticism they aren’t used to (if the critics dare), and for many they’ll have to reconcile their own truth that this isn’t their favorite, while still rightly celebrating it and supporting her.”

Indeed, grinding through the 31-song double album after midnight had felt like “a hostage situation,” Hubbard wrote.

On a new podcast episode, which was released over the weekend, Hubbard and his co-host, Nora Princiotti, were among those who pointed out that while the album may be imperfect, Swift simply may have needed to purge herself of the songs on “Poets” to process a turbulent time in her life.

Princiotti said she enjoyed much of the album and was careful to stipulate that “Poets” did contain several “special songs.”

But she also allowed for some “tough love.”

“Musically, I do not really hear anything new,” she said, adding that Swift “could have done a little bit more self editing.”

“I don’t think the fact that this is a double-album that is more than two hours in length serves what’s good about it,” Princiotti said. “And I think that for the second album in a row, I’m still sort of left going, ‘OK, where do we go from here?’”

Princiotti ultimately graded “Poets” a “B.” And in the world of her podcast and universe of Taylor Swift, Princiotti acknowledged — that might have been an all-time low.

An earlier version of this article misstated the title of Taylor Swift’s new album. It is “The Tortured Poets Department,” not “The Tortured Poets Society.”

How we handle corrections

Matt Stevens writes about arts and culture news for The Times. More about Matt Stevens

Shivani Gonzalez is a news assistant at The Times who writes a weekly TV column and contributes to a variety of sections. More about Shivani Gonzalez

Inside the World of Taylor Swift

A Triumph at the Grammys: Taylor Swift made history by winning her fourth album of the year at the 2024 edition of the awards, an event that saw women take many of the top awards .

‘The T ortured Poets Department’: Poets reacted to Swift’s new album name , weighing in on the pertinent question: What do the tortured poets think ?

In the Public Eye: The budding romance between Swift and the football player Travis Kelce created a monocultural vortex that reached its apex at the Super Bowl in Las Vegas. Ahead of kickoff, we revisited some key moments in their relationship .

Politics (Taylor’s Version): After months of anticipation, Swift made her first foray into the 2024 election for Super Tuesday with a bipartisan message on Instagram . The singer, who some believe has enough influence to affect the result of the election , has yet to endorse a presidential candidate.

Conspiracy Theories: In recent months, conspiracy theories about Swift and her relationship with Kelce have proliferated , largely driven by supporters of former President Donald Trump . The pop star's fans are shaking them off .

COMMENTS

Bad Movies: The 100 Worst Movies of All Time
The Roommate (2011)3%. #62. Critics Consensus: Devoid of chills, thrills, or even cheap titillation, The Roommate isn't even bad enough to be good. Synopsis: When Sara (Minka Kelly), a young design student from Iowa, arrives for college in Los Angeles, she is eager to...
25 Movies So Bad They're Unmissable
Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959) 66%. Crowned as the "worst movie ever made" back in the 1980 book The Golden Turkey Awards, this is the movies' most famous Z-grade clunker. Despite a discernible lack of talent and resources, auteur Ed Wood Jr. staged an alien invasion epic.
Ebert's Most Hated
EDITOR'S NOTE: Sometimes, Roger Ebert is exposed to bad movies. When that happens, it is his duty -- if not necessarily his pleasure -- to report them (fairly, accurately) as he sees them. Whether they're so bad they're funny, so bad they're not funny, or so unfunny they're not funny, he must critique them. From bad Elvis to Deuce Bigalow, these are excerpts from reviews of some of the worst ...
15 Best Worst Movies Of All Time
M. Night Shyamalan has made some really great movies, with The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable topping the list. Of course, he's also made some really terrible movies. Selecting his poorest outing is a toss-up, given that he made After Earth and The Last Airbender, but his best worst movie is undoubtedly The Happening.In it, Mark Wahlberg plays a Philadelphia school teacher who tries to escape a ...
Best Worst Movie
Best Worst Movie is an inquiry into the precise manifestations of its subject's value for makers and fans alike rather than a simple tribute to it. Full Review | Jan 24, 2023.
The 50 Best Good Bad Movies
GBS: 46.8. RT: 55%. Micah Peters: There's a number of things counting against the 2004 thriller Cellular: Jason Statham in a villain role, which always feels off; entirely illogical plot choices ...
Best Worst Movie
Watchlist. TRAILER. The Room Best Worst Movie. Pan's Labyrinth Clueless Before Midnight. The Back-Up Plan. TOP CRITIC. Jun 28, 2013. TOP CRITIC. Dec 30, 2010.
Best Worst Movie movie review (2010)
Best Worst Movie (2010) Rated NR. 93 minutes. Michael Paul Stephenson. I bought the DVD of "Troll 2" because a friend advised me to see it. "You're busy," he told me. "You don't have time to see every bad movie. So you might as well see the worst of all time.". Yes, "Troll 2" has a coveted zero percent rating on the Tomatometer ...
15 of Roger Ebert's Most Hated Zero-Star Reviews
Not one to hold back when a movie was truly god-awful, Roger Ebert "hated, hated, hated" movies like Caligula, Dirty Love, and Freddy Got Fingered.
The Best Films Rated the Worst by Rotten Tomatoes
3) Fantastic Four - 7%. Image via Fox. Fantastic Four (2015) was Fox's attempt to reboot the Marvel comics property after two less-than-successful entries in the franchise. Even the Silver ...
The 40 Best Bad Movies Ever Made
Image: Lucasfilm. 16. Howard the Duck (1986) Film. Long the ugly duckling of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Howard the Duck has earned ironic reappraisal through the character's cameos in ...
So Bad They're Good: The Best Worst Movies
Director: Tommy Wiseau. Stars: Tommy Wiseau, Greg Sestero, Juliette Danielle, Phillip Haldiman. Rotten Tomatoes: 26% from Critics, 46% from Audiences. It's arguably the best worst movie ever ...
Best Worst Movie
8. Antony. Feb 12, 2012. Best Worst Movie covers the phenomena of the bad movie and, in this case, what imdb calls the "worst" movie ever made Troll 2. Like Tommy Wiseau's The Room or Ed Wood movies Troll 2 took off and became a cult hit phenomena amongst bad movie and horror movie fans. The star of this documentary was George Hardy, who ...
Best Worst Movie
Best Worst Movie DVD Review. Nov 17, 2010 - The strange story of Troll 2. Best Worst Movie Eric Goldman. Sep 16, 2010. Best Worst Movie Crowned. Sep 16, 2010 - Doc on bad movies rocks DVD.
RANKED: The best worst movies you need to watch
8) The best worst teen romance: Twilight. Amazon. Beloved by some, loathed by others, the Twilight saga is the best in its class when it comes to ridiculous teen romance dramas. As someone who has ...
The Best Worst Movies Ever Made: The Room, Super Mario Bros. and More
Plan 9 From Outer Space was the undisputed best worst movie ever made for decades until films like Troll 2 and The Room got notorious, and it's still a legitimate contender. Directed by the ...
Best Worst Movie (2009)
The Best Worst Movie director will make his first narrative feature about a man who thinks he's slaying vampires, although he's just murdering older men. By Brian Gallagher Feb 16, 2011 contests
The 25 best and 25 worst movies of 2019, according to critics
Using critic score data ranked by Rotten Tomatoes, Insider rounded up this year's best and worst films. Only three movies have received a perfect score of 100% positive reviews, while a thriller ...
The 75 worst movies of all time, according to critics
72. "Bolero" (1984) Bo Derek in "Bolero". YouTube. Critic score: 13/100. User score: N/A. What critics said: "Erotic, surely, only for the very easily pleased, with Dereks J and B and Cannon Films ...
20 Best Worst Movies Ever: Troll 2, The Room & More
3. Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959) Ed Wood assembled what is probably his best cast for this, dubbed the worst ever made by The Golden Turkey, a book released in 1980 that helped the modern trend ...
Best Worst Movie (2009)
Best Worst Movie: Directed by Michael Paul Stephenson. With George Hardy, Pita Ray, Micki Knox, Tommy Bice. A look at the making of the film Troll 2 (1990) and its journey from being crowned the "worst film of all time" to a cherished cult classic.
The Best Worst Movies Ever Made
All Reviews Editor's Choice Game Reviews Movie Reviews TV Show Reviews Tech Reviews. Discover. Videos. Original Shows Popular Trailers Gameplay All Videos. ... The Best Worst Movies Ever Made
Best Worst Movie (2009)
Stephenson investigates the improbable rise of a critically panned horror flick of the early '90s to a pop-culture touchstone. Stephenson, who starred in Troll 2 nearly 20 years ago, chooses to focus on his on-screen father as he comes to terms with his strange, newly found celebrity.
Best Worst Movie
Best Worst Movie, directed by the one and only Joshua Waits aka Michael Stephenson, is probably one of the most bizarre documentaries I've seen and this rewatch confirms that thought. It starts as your The Disaster Artist type of story, where Joshua - I mean Michael - tries to gather the original crew together, discover how the hell did this ...
The Worst Movies Of 2024 So Far
In 2014, Bryce McGuire and Rod Blackhurst's short film "Night Swim" went viral on YouTube. One decade later, McGuire made his feature directorial debut with the same story that broke him into the ...
Justice League: Crisis On Infinite Earths
Mae Abdulbaki • Movie Reviews Editor (1460 Articles Published) Mae is a writer and editor. She previously wrote about a variety of entertainment for Inverse, CinemaBlend, Pajiba, and The Young Folks. ... All 3 Dune Movies, Ranked Worst To Best Frank Herbert's Dune is notoriously difficult to adapt thanks to its dense story and themes ...
Netflix's 'Rebel Moon Part 2: The Scargiver' Debuts With Snyder's Worst
As you can see, critics have actually rated half of Snyder's movies positively, though with Rebel Moon Part 2 here, that will be 5/10. But if these scores stand, Part 2 will be his lowest rated ...
'The Tortured Poets Department' Is Taylor Swift's Most ...
Taylor Swift's new album 'The Tortured Poets Department' is a boldly candid breakup album, with some of her most quotable lyrics ever.
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (2024)
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever: Directed by Dallas Jenkins. With Judy Greer, Lauren Graham, Elizabeth Tabish, Kirk B.R. Woller. Nobody is ready for the mayhem and surprises that ensue when six of the worst youngsters disrupt the town's yearly Christmas performance.
Taylor Swift Has Given Fans a Lot. Is It Finally Too Much?
Four new studio albums. Four rerecorded albums, too. A $1 billion oxygen-sucking world tour with a concert movie to match. And, of course, one very high-profile relationship that spilled over into ...

Cookie banner

Follow The Ringer online:

Site search

The 50 Best Good Bad Movies

Share this story

Share All sharing options for: The 50 Best Good Bad Movies

The Qualifications

The Process

The Ranking

50. ‘Idle Hands’ (1999)

49. ‘Lionheart’ (1990)

48. ‘Cellular’ (2004)

47. ‘Dante’s Peak’ (1997)

46. ‘Obsessed’ (2009)

45. ‘Stone Cold’ (1991)

44. ‘The Wicker Man’ (2006)

43. ‘Youngblood’ (1986)

42. ‘Hercules’ (2014)

41. ‘You Got Served’ (2004)

40. ‘Battleship’ (2012)

39. ‘Save the Last Dance’ (2001)

38. ‘The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift’ (2006)

37. ‘Just One of the Guys’ (1985)

36. ‘Bad Boys II’ (2003)

35. ‘Spice World’ (1997)

34. ‘Battlefield Earth’ (2000)

33. ‘Surviving the Game’ (1994)

32. ‘Mission: Impossible II’ (2000)

31. ‘Nothing but Trouble’ (1991)

30. ‘Demolition Man’ (1993)

29. ‘The Chase’ (1994)

28. ‘The Last Action Hero’ (1993)

27. ‘The Happening’ (2008)

26. ‘Gigli’ (2003)

25. ‘Catwoman’ (2004)

24. ‘Con Air’ (1997)

23. ‘The Room’ (2003)

22. ‘Troll 2’ (1990)

21. ‘Road House’ (1989)

20. ‘Fear’ (1996)

19. ‘Mortal Kombat’ (1995)

18. ‘Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie’ (1993)

17. ‘Deep Blue Sea’ (1999)

16. ‘Honey’ (2003)

15. ‘xXx’ (2002)

14. ‘No Holds Barred’ (1989)

13. ‘Showgirls’ (1995)

12. ‘She’s All That’ (1999)

11. ‘The Beach’ (2000)

10. ‘Speed 2: Cruise Control’ (1997)

9. ‘Over the Top’ (1987)

8. ‘Final Destination’ (2000)

7. ‘Anaconda’ (1997)

6. ‘White Chicks’ (2004)

5. ‘Batman & Robin’ (1997)

4. ‘Masters of the Universe’ (1987)

3. ‘Congo’ (1995)

2. ‘Wild Wild West’ (1999)

1. ‘Godzilla’ (1998)

Next Up In Movies

‘Hardcore’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey

Sign up for the The Ringer Newsletter

‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Trailer, ‘Shogun’ Finale, and ‘X-Men ’97’

The Oklahoma City Thunder Feel Different This Time Around

Bouncing Around the Room: Scenes From a 4/20 Phish Sesh at Sphere

Luka Doncic Is Evolving

What If Liverpool Win the League?

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Email not verified

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

Movies / TV

Best Worst Movie

What to Know

Audience Reviews

More Like This

Movie Reviews

Roger Ebert

Now playing

You'll Never Find Me

The People's Joker