On the eve of Oscar Night, the Golden Raspberry Awards, or the Razzies as they are more commonly known, celebrate (?) the worst movies of the year. It’s a tradition going on its 33rd year, and Life’d now recognizes the Top, er, Bottom 20 Worst Picture Razzies of All Time. (Note: No. 20 is the least worst; No. 1, the crap de la crap.)
20. Shining Through (1992)
Plot: A woman with a mix of German and Jewish descent goes behind enemy lines in WWII Germany.
Why It Sucked: Okay, so sucked is a little harsh in this case, but it is a drab romantic thriller, and we’re not buying Melanie Griffith as the intelligent woman. Michael Douglas phones in his performance as well. Props to the setting and costume design, though.
Budget: $30 million
Box office: $43.838 million
IMDB Rating: 6.1 / 10
Trailer:
19. Color of Night (1994)
Plot: A psychiatrist becomes the target of a killer when he takes over for a murdered colleague.
Why It Sucked: A slick killer and a cool plot are overshadowed by gratuitous sex in an empty effort to keep up with what came naturally for Basic Instinct two years earlier. Add the fact that Willis is severely out of place in the role of psychiatrist, and you’ve got a missed opportunity.
Budget: $40 million
Box office: $19.75 million
IMDB Rating: 4.9 / 10
Trailer:
18. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
Plot: Megatron, the Decepticons and a new villain, the Fallen, cause havoc for Earth once more. Autobots to the rescue.
Why It Sucked: Excellent as the first film was, this thing had a high bar to reach, and boy did it fail miserably. Beyond a few cool-looking fight scenes, nothing works. The humor falls flat. Characters aren’t developed in the slightest. Really stupid final act that involves robot heaven. All style and zero substance.
Budget: $200 million
Box office: $836.303 million
IMDB Rating: 5.9 / 10
Trailer:
17. Striptease (1996)
Plot: A single mom takes up stripping to support herself and provide a better life for her daughter but encounters a lowlife Congressman along the way.
Why It Sucked: Based on the Carl Hiaasen novel, this should have been an incredible exercise in comedy and suspense, but instead it’s a very watered-down misinterpretation of the book. That being said, Demi Moore never looked finer. Just fast-forward through the story parts.
Budget: $40 million
Box office: $113.309 million
IMDB Rating: 4.1 / 10
Trailer:
16. The Last Airbender (2010)
Plot: A young Avatar is the only hope against the Fire Kingdom in this adaptation of the Nickelodeon animated series.
Why It Sucked: Beyond Unbreakable and, to a lesser degree, The Sixth Sense and Signs, pretty much every film M. Night Shyamalan has made sucks, so no surprise here. This one doesn’t suck in the same way as The Happening, The Village, or Lady in the Water, though. It’s not an exercise in attempting to trick the audience by leaving no stupid-stone unturned. It’s just a bad movie.
Budget: $150 million
Box office: $319.713 million
IMDB Rating: 4.5 / 10
Trailer:
15. Basic Instinct 2 (2006)
Plot: Ruthless novelist Catherine Tramell once again wrecks a man’s life and is implicated in murder.
Why It Sucked: As erotic thrillers go, the first Basic Instinct is one of the very best. Yes, it pushed the envelope, but it didn’t do it at the expense of story. This one did. The public largely ignored BI2 with total U.S. gate not even hitting the $10 million mark. Considering what a hit the first film was, that’s a disaster of biblical proportions.
Budget: $70 million
Box office: $38.629 million
IMDB Rating: 4.0 / 10
Trailer:
14. The Love Guru (2008)
Plot: Love guru Maurice Pitka is enlisted to help a struggling hockey star overcome his humiliating breakup.
Why It Sucked: Mike Myers wowed audiences with Austin Powers 1 and 2, but then forgot how to make any film other than Austin Powers 1 and 2. By the time his humor showed up in The Love Guru, every single joke was so played out, you had to be embarrassed for the guy. Creatively, anyway. The paychecks are still a nice consolation.
Budget: $62 million
Box office: $40.863 million
IMDB Rating: 3.8 / 10
Trailer:
13. Gigli (2003)
Plot: Gigli, a good-hearted hitman, kidnaps a mentally handicapped man for his bosses, falls for Ricki, and then goes on the run with his two new buddies in tow.
Why It Sucked: Huge step back here for director Martin Brest, whose Midnight Run, Beverly Hills Cop, and Scent of a Woman, are among our favorite flicks ever. He didn’t get a lot of help from his cast with Ben Affleck in the title role and Jennifer Lopez as the sometimes-lesbian killer, who falls in love with him. The chemistry is way-off. Life later agreed as the real-life relationship that blossomed on-set soon disintegrated.
Budget: $75.6 million
Box office: $7.266 million
IMDB Rating: 2.4 / 10
Trailer:
12. Jack and Jill (2011)
Plot: A family man dreads a holiday visit from his obnoxious sister.
Why It Sucked: Movies where one actor plays multiple characters rarely work. That’s the rule, and that rule holds firm here. Sandler is way over-the-top, and it doesn’t help. Jokes will bounce off you here like bullets off Superman. And as the tagline says, “It ain’t pretty.”
Budget: $79 million
Box office: $149.673 million
IMDB Rating: 3.5 / 10
Trailer:
11. Inchon (1981)
Plot: The Battle of Inchon during the Korean War unfolds in crap-tastic color.
Why It Sucked: It shouldn’t have. Directed by Terence Young (From Russia with Love). Starring Laurence Olivier, Jacqueline Bisset, Toshiro Mifune, and Richard Roundtree. Seriously, how do you screw this up? Beats me, but they managed it. While not the worst film ever made, it’s certainly one of the dullest. Megaforce, The Pirate Movie, Butterfly, and Annie(!?) were also nominated.
Budget: $46 million
Box office: $5.2 million
IMDB Rating: 2.9 / 10
Trailer:
10. Catwoman (2004)
Plot: Complete bastardization of the DC Comics character.
Why It Sucked: Every star eventually has a humbling experience if they stay in the game long enough. Halle Berry has had a few of those, but none bigger than Catwoman. While she and villain Sharon Stone look amazing here, the film is nevertheless a disaster and a valuable lesson of what happens when you stray too far from popular source material.
Budget: $100 million
Box office: $82.102 million
IMDB Rating: 3.2 / 10
Trailer:
9. Wild Wild West (1999)
Plot: An Edison-esque villain sets his sights on President Ulysses S. Grant. Only two gunslingers can stop him.
Why It Sucked: “Style over substance” is a phrase hard not to overuse when discussing some of the worst films ever made, but it certainly applies here. Smith’s star was flying high at the time, so he could afford a bomb, which this was not but it sure should have been. Lots of dumb special FX set-pieces and a complete insult to the intelligence of movie audiences everywhere.
Budget: $170 million
Box office: $222.105 million
IMDB Rating: 4.6 / 10
Trailer:
8. Swept Away (2002)
Plot: A snobbish rich woman and the rugged sailor who hates her are stranded on an island and begin to fall for one another.
Why It Sucked: At her best, Madonna is a mediocre actress. This is not her best. In 1996, she won some acclaim in Evita, but following that, she slumped with The Next Best Thing and this knock-off of Overboard. She’s no Goldie Hawn, and Adriano Giannini is definitely no Kurt Russell. Don’t know what Guy Ritchie was thinking when he directed this film.
Budget: $10 million
Box office: $598,645
IMDB Rating: 3.4 / 10
Trailer:
7. Showgirls (1995)
Plot: Nomi comes to Vegas in search of a dream and engages in one rough-and-tumble climb to the top of the showgirls community.
Why It Sucked: The Joe Eszterhas script is bad, Paul Verhoeven’s direction is at its most voyeuristic, and lead actress Elizabeth Berkley is laughable. All this makes for an undeniably bad film that is nevertheless fun to watch if you’re watching it for the right reasons.
Budget: $45 million
Box office: $37.702 million
IMDB Rating: 4.3 / 10
Trailer:
6. Howard the Duck (1986)
Plots: Humanlike duck Howard is transplanted, against his will, to earth, where he must fight an alien invader and save the world.
Why It Sucked: Howard the Duck actually shared the Golden Raspberry this year with Under the Cherry Moon (starring Prince). In retrospect, the Prince film isn’t as bad as critics at the time let on, but this one sure is. Director Willard Huyck completely neuters the comic book creation of Steve Gerber, but he does give us a glimpse at a young (and smoking hot) Lea Thompson. Thanks for that.
Budget: $37 million
Box office: $37.962 million
IMDB Rating: 4.3 / 10
Trailer:
5. Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)
Plot: The government lets John Rambo out of jail to go kill baddies in modern-day Vietnam.
Why It Sucked: Compare this to the thoughtful, intense drama that was First Blood, and you’ll see what we’re talking about. The character of John Rambo was badly mishandled after the first film until Stallone finally got it right again in 2008 with the fourth in the series. This one, however, might as well be called Braddock: Missing in Action Part III with its ridiculous situations and lack of character development for both hero and targets. It was a huge hit, though.
Budget: $25.5 million
Box office: $300.4 million
IMDB Rating: 6.2 / 10
Trailer:
4. Can’t Stop the Music (1979)
Plot: Musical comedy follows a retired supermodel and her songwriter friend as they look for the perfect act to bring the songwriter’s music to the world. Guess who they picked.
Why It Sucked: Only in the Seventies could you get the greenlight for a $20 million major motion picture that stars The Village People. But even people in the Seventies had some level of quality they expected from entertainment, and the abysmal showing of Can’t Stop the Music is relieving evidence that TVP didn’t measure up.
Budget: $20 million
Box office: $2 million
IMDB Rating: 3.7 / 10
Trailer:
3. Battlefield Earth (2000)
Plot: The year is 3000. Humanity has been nearly wiped out by an alien race. Time to fight back.
Why It Sucked: Travolta came dangerously close to becoming the Kirk Cameron of the Scientology movement with this film. Of course, he hasn’t really been knocking them out of the park since perpetrating B:E on the public, so it’s doubtful there were any lessons learned here. The film has overacting to the Nth degree and a heavy-handed philosophy that is tiresome.
Budget: $44 million
Box office: $29.725 million
IMDB Rating: 2.4 / 10
Trailer:
2. The Lonely Lady (1983)
Plot: A lady screenwriter makes herself a doormat for Tinseltown’s more lecherous in a bid for the big time.
Why It Sucked: Terrible acting on the part of lead actress Pia Zadora is probably what led to her box office demise. Let’s just say that after 1983 she didn’t go the way of Meryl Streep. Still, this bomb is worth a look, if for nothing more than to see Ray Liotta was as good at playing crazy then as he is now.
Budget: $5 million
Box office: $1.223 million
IMDB Rating: 2.3 / 10
Trailer:
1. Leonard Part 6 (1987)
Plot: A retired secret agent makes his comeback against a cruel villain intent on turning God’s creatures against us.
Why It Sucked: The director Paul Weiland and star Bill Cosby (who also created the story) did not get along during production. Weiland didn’t think Cosby’s comedy translated well to the film, and so the constant bickering – and the fact Cosby trashed the film before its release date to any press outlet that would listen – made for a terrible hodgepodge of a movie.
Budget: $24 million
Box office: $4.615 million
IMDB Rating: 2.2 / 10
Trailer:
Will you be following the Razzies this year? What are your picks for worst picture of 2012? The Golden Raspberry nominations: That’s My Boy, A Thousand Words, Battleship, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2, and The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure.
