The 15 Worst Movies Ever Made

mentalfloss.com/article/503248/15-worst-movies-ever-made

August 10, 2017

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BY Jennifer M Wood
August 10, 2017

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When it comes to declaring whether a movie is “good” or “bad,” there’s no one person who
can make that call. Sure, there are celebrated critics—some of whom you may always
agree with—but even still, that’s just a matter of opinion. The only fair way to give a movie
a general thumbs up or thumbs down is to consider a range of opinions and reviews,
which is exactly what we did.

To figure out which movies both critics and audiences have deemed the worst movies ever
made, we cross-referenced the lowest-rated movies on both Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb,
then figured in the opinions of several critics who’ve contributed to a handful of all-time
worst-ever movie lists (like this one from Empire Magazine) to calculate which films the
moviegoing populace has determined to be the medium’s biggest turkeys. Here they are—
in all their terrible glory.

1. BALLISTIC: ECKS VS. SEVER (2002)

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Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/Tme_SdRv2gk

Thai director Wych Kaosayananda has directed five feature films. Only once did he ever
choose to use a pseudonym. That film was Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, the clunky action sci-
fi film that starred Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu as two former government agents each
trying to get their hands on what is supposedly the world’s most dangerous weapon. But if
you look at the film's credits, you’ll see that it was directed by “Kaos,” which could be a
nickname—or a statement on the production itself.

In 2014, Kaosayananda admitted that the experience of making this bomb turned him off
to the idea of moviemaking altogether. “For the first two years after Ballistic, I couldn't
really bring myself to do movies,” the director told Film Combat Syndicate. “The
experience I went through in post-production on that movie was very painful. I still did
take meetings after just signing with CAA and they were doing a great job of sending me
out and getting me to meet execs. I even got a couple of directing offers, but I simply
didn't have an interest."

Though it’s certainly not the only film to earn a zero percent rating on the Rotten
Tomatoes Tomatometer, it’s one of the few films to maintain a nothing score after more
than 115 critical reviews. (Audiences were only slightly more forgiving with their 17
percent rating.) “For many viewers,” wrote AP critic Jocelyn Noveck in her review of the
film, “the big question may be not whether Ecks and Sever will get together, or why they
are fighting in the first place, but why am I sitting here, anyway?"

2. SUPERBABIES: BABY GENIUSES 2 (2004)

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Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/hyJuSjpoMfg

Just when we thought the ‘90s had offered up its final talking baby movie with 1993’s
Look Who’s Talking Now, along came Baby Geniuses (1999). While hardly a box office
behemoth with its $36 million haul, the film (which was shot for $12 million) made
enough of a profit that, five years later, we got a sequel. Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2
saw a gaggle of talking toddlers banding together to rid the world of an evildoer intent on
controlling the minds of the entire human population. And it was all kind of creepy (or,
according to The Wall Street Journal, “unspeakably ghastly”).

The A.V. Club’s Nathan Rabin articulated what most people were thinking when he wrote,
“Why? Seriously, why? Why would anyone make a sequel to Baby Geniuses, a 1999 film
whose existence, from its title on down, appeared to be a cruel joke about the gullibility of
the lowest common denominator? It would be easy to say that the answer has more to do
with commerce than art, but it's probably a mistake to factor art into the equation at all.”

3. UNITED PASSIONS (2015)

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Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/cKLNPlwxTPA

If Leni Riefenstahl were alive today, she probably would have been the first choice to
direct United Passions, a cinematic retelling of how the Fédération Internationale de
Football Association (FIFA) came to be. Unfortunately, the timing of this movie could not
have been worse, or more intentional: At the same the movie was playing film festivals
and art-house theaters, 16 FIFA officials were being indicted on charges of racketeering,
money laundering, and wire fraud, following decades of alleged corruption wherein they
used the organization to line their own pockets.

While not necessarily poorly made, the film—which stars Gérard Depardieu, Sam Neill,
and Tim Roth—is propaganda at its most obvious (which isn't surprising, considering 90
percent of its production budget came directly from FIFA). Or, in the words of The Wrap’s
Tim Appelo, it’s “One of those rare films so unfathomably ghastly you could write a better
one while sitting through its interminable 110 minutes.”

4. JAWS: THE REVENGE (1987)

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Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/opiCMIN3PNg

When Jaws 2 was released three years after Steven Spielberg’s groundbreaking summer
blockbuster, nobody went into the theater thinking it would be able to even come close to
the original. And they were right. By the time the fourth film, Jaws: The Revenge, rolled
around, even the very obviously fake-looking shark couldn’t be bothered.

Though some (read: this author) consider it a guilty pleasure, the film is, well, pretty
damn awful. Especially when you consider the plotline: that the shark is essentially a
serial killer with a taste for the Brody family, and swims all the way from Amity Island to
the Bahamas to finish off its last remaining members.

In 1987, Michael Caine—whose career was on a downswing—famously had to skip the

Academy Awards, where he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Woody Allen’s
Hannah and Her Sisters, because he was on location shooting Jaws: The Revenge. When
asked about his role as Hoagie in the shark drama, Caine admitted that, “I have never
seen [the movie], but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it
built, and it is terrific.”

5. BUCKY LARSON: BORN TO BE A STAR (2011)

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Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/cRT93a8xE5s

Adam Sandler co-wrote and produced this totally misguided “comedy” about a buck-
toothed grocery bagger from Iowa who, upon discovering that his ultra-conservative
parents were two of the 1970s’ biggest porn stars, decides to head to Hollywood and
attempt to follow in their footsteps. There’s just one very, well, small problem: Bucky is
not very well endowed. Ultimately, he manages to use this shortcoming to his advantage.

“I’m not sure how many tedious sex jokes and humorless physical gags people can take
before they run out of the theater screaming, but Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star
certainly tests the limits,” wrote We Got This Covered’s Amy Curtis.

6. MAC AND ME (1988)

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Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/iQmFycd_AwA

In the wake of the amazing success of E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, every studio in
Hollywood wanted in on the alien action. The most memorable of them, for all the wrong
reasons, just might be MAC and Me. It’s the story of a family of aliens who are kidnapped
from their home planet and brought back to Earth to be studied. After a brazen escape
attempt, the youngest alien, MAC—short for Mysterious Alien Creature—befriends a
young boy named Eric. Yes, it’s as blatant a rip-off as it sounds, but with none of the
sincerity of the Spielberg classic. Oh, and it’s so full of product placement that it may as
well have been a commercial for McDonald’s and Coke.

“Possibly aware that they have something less than a classic on their hands,” wrote the
Philadelphia Daily News, “the makers of MAC and Me have cut their losses by making
the film into a kind of cinematic billboard: all space is for sale.”

7. ALONE IN THE DARK (2005)

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Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/ubK53b-VZL0

More than a decade before Christian Slater won a Golden Globe for his role in Mr. Robot,
he starred in what might have been the very worst film of 2005. Alone in the Dark, a loose
adaptation of the video game, follows a detective (Slater) with a heightened sixth sense
that allows him to observe the paranormal. Frankly, the plot doesn’t really matter. All you
need to know is that Tara Reid co-stars as Slater’s love interest, a curator at a natural
history museum, and it was directed by Uwe Boll, the temperamental moviemaker who
once challenged his harshest critics to a series of boxing matches. That list only grew with
the release of this bomb, with Rue Morgue’s Jovanka Vuckovic declaring that, “How Uwe
Boll manages to scrape together enough investment money to give wing to this type of
overblown, amateurish gibberish is truly a mystery of the cosmos.”

8. DISASTER MOVIE (2008)

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Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/D5Z8XYXKWLY

The jokes practically write themselves here. For more than 20 years, Jason Friedberg and
Aaron Seltzer have made a career out of spoofing popular movies and genres. They’re the
guys behind the Scary Movie franchise, and are currently at work on Star Worlds Episode
XXXIVE=MC2: The Force Awakens the Last Jedi Who Went Rogue. In between, there
was Disaster Movie, which is arguably their biggest disaster yet, and led critic Elizabeth
Weitzman to wonder: “Why would you watch a bad movie about better movies, when you
could just rent the originals instead?”

The Village Voice’s Jim Ridley had an even harsher criticism: “Rushed into production
with no better drape for its threadbare gags than Cloverfield, this carpet-fouling mongrel
of a movie no more deserves release than do anthrax spores.” Also: It stars Kim
Kardashian.

9. SIMON SEZ (1999)

Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/0mWdEwRtTok

We’re really not sure who told Dennis Rodman that he should try his
hand at acting, but we’re holding that person responsible for the many
travesties he has brought to the screen, including 1997’s Double Team
(co-starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and a pre-Comeback Mickey
Rourke) and this abominable actioner, in which Rodman plays the titular Simon—an
Interpol agent who is tasked with saving the world from an evil arms dealer. “If you must
watch it—and I shudder to imagine the circumstances under which one must—watch it in
a light mood, perhaps under the influence of something,” advised critic (and Mental Floss
contributor) Eric D. Snider.

10. ED (1996)

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Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/6Ns29dh4yok

Being a star of one of the most popular television shows ever can be a double-edged
sword: Sure, it brings you fame and fortune and the opportunity to hone your skills in
front of an enormous audience. But when the credits on that show roll for the final time, it
can be hard to escape that character. Which is probably why Friends star Matt LeBlanc
thought starring in a family movie would be a smart career move just a couple seasons
into Friends’s run. But there’s a difference between starring in a kids' movie and starring
opposite a monkey. Unless you’re Clint Eastwood, it rarely works out.

Such was the case with Ed, in which LeBlanc stars as a minor league baseball player who
could learn a lesson or two from his new teammate—a chimpanzee named Ed. Or, in most
of the scenes, a dude in a chimp suit that doesn’t even bother trying to make it look
realistic. Yet it was LeBlanc who got most of the blame. Writing for The New York Times,
Stephen Holden said that, “Mr. LeBlanc ... is so blank that the only impression he makes
is of having teeth that are very large and unnaturally white.”

11. A THOUSAND WORDS (2012)

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Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/N6AxRCP3e4s

Eddie Murphy has been one of Hollywood’s biggest comedic movie stars. He’s also been
nominated for an Oscar. In addition, he has starred in a handful of truly terrible films.
Just when you thought he could sink no lower than 2007’s Norbit, along came A
Thousand Words. The film sees Murphy playing a fast-talking literary agent who, after
lying to a spiritual guru, becomes cursed and can only speak as many words as there are
leaves left on a Bodhi tree on his property. Yes, it’s all a bit of a stretch and watching
Murphy trying to find ways to express himself without using words is a gag that loses its
funny pretty quickly. According to The Hollywood Reporter, “Eddie Murphy should have
just said the word ‘No’ to this tired, formulaic comedy."

12. SURFER, DUDE (2008)

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Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/7ekfP43ZLa4

A few years before he surprised the world by winning a Best Actor Oscar for Dallas
Buyers Club (2013), a pre-McConaissance Matthew McConaughey was better known as a
mediocre actor whose good looks and slacker charm made him an alright, alright, alright
choice to headline a movie—usually as some sort of laid back stoner dude who’d find a
reason to be shirtless much of the time. Surfer, Dude sort of did away with any pretense of
a real plot … unless you think seeing a surfer have his mellow buzz chilled by an
existential crisis has the makings of something you’d want to invest 83 minutes in.

Instead, the movie served more as a starring role for McConaughey’s abs. While it seems
it was meant to be a stoner comedy, it even fails at that. The Houston Chronicle’s Louis B.
Hicks wrote that, “Surfer, Dude is a bizarre throwback. It feels 25-30 years out of date and
seems to be meant to be watched on VHS, oops, make that DVD, while stoned."

13. IT’S PAT: THE MOVIE (1994)

Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/lKXbqsPhWJQ

With the exception of Wayne and Garth, Saturday Night Live

characters have a terrible track record when it comes to making the
transition from small to big screen. While Julia Sweeney’s
androgynous Pat brought laughs on the sketch comedy show, the joke
—is Pat a man or a woman?—is simply not enough to sustain even a meager 77-minute
running time.

Not even when Pat finds love with Chris, yet another person of an indeterminate gender,
which just exacerbates the tediousness of the one-joke plotline. “Ever hear the one about
the pic that was too bad to be released, so it escaped?,” wrote Variety critic Joe Leydon.

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“Well, that old joke now has a new punch line: It's Pat, a shockingly unfunny Saturday
Night Live spinoff.”

14. STOLEN (2009)

Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/Bzxq_JmFlpE

The past and present collide in Stolen (also known as Stolen Lives), a less-than-
enthralling murder mystery in which a detective (Jon Hamm) searching for his missing
son stumbles upon a 50-year-old murder of yet another young boy, which he desperately
tries to solve as a way to help find closure in his own loss.

The story unravels in two different time periods, 1958 and 2008, and is riddled with
clichés in both decades. “One poorly told story would be bad enough,” wrote critic Coley
Smith, “but with Stolen we have two.” To be fair, had the film not featured an impressive
cast—Jessica Chastain, Josh Lucas, Morena Baccarin, and James Van Der Beek all join
Hamm in this overwrought journey—it probably would have just fallen off the radar
completely. But a bad film filled with familiar faces is always going to be judged more
harshly.

15. KIRK CAMERON’S SAVING CHRISTMAS (2014)

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Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/z5-yA66kaVc

“Do you ever feel like Christmas has been hijacked?” That’s the question that kicks off the
trailer for this holiday offering from outspoken Evangelical Christian Kirk Cameron. Yes,
the man formerly known as Growing Pains’s Mike Seaver apparently isn’t a fan of the
inclusiveness that has led many people and businesses to exchange “Merry Christmas” for
“Happy Holidays,” and this movie was his attempt to do something about it. So much so
that, in the trailer alone, the filmmakers manage to compare the commercialization of
Christmas to a carjacking, “but like of our religion. And guess what? Santa got in the car,
kicked Jesus out, and was like, ‘Rolling, rolling, rolling’ and took it.” Cameron’s goal? For
audiences to join him and his family and “put the Christ back into Christmas.” Not a lot of
people were buying it, not even its intended audience.

The Chicago Sun-Times’s Bill Zwecker declared that, “This may be one of the least artful
holiday films ever made. Even devout born-again Christians will find this hard to
stomach.” Peter Sobczynski, writing for RogerEbert.com, was even more direct: “Perhaps
the only Christmas movie I can think of, especially of the religious-themed variety, that
seems to flat-out endorse materialism, greed and outright gluttony.” Within a month, the
movie made headlines when it managed to become IMDb’s lowest-rated film.

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