Plenty of bad movies get rated on Rotten Tomatoes, but it’s rare to see a movie score a flat 0% without a single critic to defend something about the flick. If you didn’t think it was possible, take a walk down the cinematic hall of shame and feast your eyes on some of the worst movies (according to Rotten Tomatoes) to date.
Each film on this list has managed to achieve a flat 0% rating, implying a time suck of epic proportions should you choose to watch them. Obviously, these movies should only be viewed at your own risk. Consider yourself warned!
Look Who’s Talking Now (1993)
Although the original Look Who’s Talking film scored a mere 57% among critics, it was a viewer favorite, which prompted the creators to make not one, but two sequels. The first two featured John Travolta, Kirstie Alley and a series of talking babies. Cute, right?
In the third film, Look Who’s Talking Now, the filmmakers instead swapped the babies out with crude talking dogs who make constant sexual references. Very kid-friendly, right? It’s impossible to understand how anyone making the film failed to consider this strategy would completely alienate the target audience and critics.
MAC and Me (1988)
Although Hollywood may occasionally be able to stomach a bad movie, there’s nothing it hates more than a blatant rip-off. Such was the case when MAC and Me was released in 1988. The story features a young, wheelchair-bound boy who meets MAC (Mysterious Alien Creature), an alien who needs help finding his way home. Sound familiar?
Apparently, the filmmakers thought that putting the poor kid in a wheelchair would keep everyone from realizing they had obviously hijacked the plot of E.T. It didn’t work — Duh! — and critics weren’t shy about letting everyone know what they thought about it.
Jaws: The Revenge (1987)
As Steven Spielberg told a film festival audience in 1975, “Making a sequel to anything is just a cheap carny trick.” The fact that he understands what so many other filmmakers fail to grasp, however, didn’t keep three sequels to his hit movie Jaws from being made by other misguided industry professionals.
The tales of terrified beachgoers just kept coming until finally Jaws: The Revenge, the franchise’s fourth movie, finally sank things once and for all. The movie’s nonsensical plot, bad special effects and sloppy execution were more than critics or moviegoers could handle with a straight face.
Staying Alive (1983)
Ever noticed that there’s something about dance movies that seems to inspire a million sequels? Before the days of the Step Up franchise, Staying Alive led the way toward insipid dance movie franchises of the future. Unfortunately, this questionable sequel to the successful Saturday Night Fever came nowhere near the success of its predecessor.
John Travolta returned as Tony Manero in a plot set six years after he won the legendary disco contest in the first film. The plot mostly serves as a filler for additional dancing that the filmmakers mistakenly counted on to carry the movie.
Bolero (1984)
Poor Bo Derek. One day, her career was off to a great start, and the next, her husband, John Derek, had a not-so-brilliant idea called Bolero. Written and directed by John himself, the film features Bo as a recently graduated woman in the 1920s who traipses all over the globe in an attempt to lose her virginity.
The whole thing turned out to be one of those movies that’s funny for all the wrong reasons, and it was largely considered a huge mess by critics. On the other hand, it won six of its 10 Razzie award nominations. Maybe that counts for something — or not.
Dream a Little Dream (1989)
You know you have failed in a spectacular fashion when not even teen heartthrob Corey Feldman could save your ’80s movie. Such was the case with Dream a Little Dream, a bizarre story about an elderly couple who undertakes a mystical experiment.
As a result, they end up trapped in the bodies of two teenagers, whose lives don’t turn out to be what they had expected. Not surprisingly, the film itself turned out to be epically incoherent. Roger Ebert dubbed it “an aggressively unwatchable movie,” while other critics questioned whether the writers had any idea what they had created.
Problem Child (1990)
A couple adopts a young boy who turns out to be an absolute nightmare who is determined to make their lives hell. While this might sound like a solid premise for a horror movie — maybe it would have worked that way — Problem Child actually tried to present itself as a slapstick comedy.
The problem was that none of the jokes were the least bit funny, and the plot itself came across as more mean-spirited than fun. The result was a mess of a film with a lead character that neither adults nor children could bring themselves to understand, let alone like.
Megaforce (1982)
Megaforce was supposed to chronicle the tale of an elite group of international warriors, but it turned out to be something most critics had to force themselves to watch. As one reviewer put it, the film was “the kind of bad that makes you wish you were somewhere, anywhere else.”
The movie barely grossed a fourth of its $20 million budget, little of which appeared to have been used to improve anything about the film. With bad dialogue, cheesy special effects and a ridiculous plot, Megaforce ended up being the most unintentionally funny action movie of all time.
Highlander 2: The Quickening (1991)
Few movies brought fans, critics and even its own crew together in mutual disgust quite like Highlander 2. The original Highlander at least achieved a cult following, but the sequel pretty much just borrowed the title and absolutely none of the good parts of the storyline.
The filmmakers bizarrely tossed much of the original movie’s plotline and twisted the premise to include aliens battling on an environmentally plagued Earth in 2024. Rumor has it that even director Russell Mulcahy asked to replace his name with a fake one but was forbidden by his contract from bailing out.
American Anthem (1986)
If you have never heard of this ’80’s gymnastics story, then you’re not alone. The story centers around a young male gymnast who works through various issues, meets a girl and trains for the Olympics — you know, the usual athlete coming-of-age story. Who better to play him than an actual Olympic gold medal gymnast, right?
Apparently not. While production didn’t have to worry about training Mitch Gaylord to do the gymnastics, they probably should have focused a little more on training him to act. The sloppy story and overload of cliches came in second only to his less than gold-medal acting performance.
Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (1987)
You know how even the funniest joke loses all its hilarity if the same person keeps telling it over and over? That’s sort of what happened with the Police Academy franchise. While the original was hilarious, nobody was laughing anymore by the end of the sixth sequel.
Among the most painful of the follow-ups was the fourth installment, in which Commandant Lassard decides to recruit civilians to work alongside the cops. The movie seems less concerned with a plot of any sort and plays out more like a string of gags tied together in the longest YouTube compilation ever.
Deadfall (1993)
Based on the cover alone, Deadfall looks like a movie that could attract plenty of unsuspecting viewers. It has Nicolas Cage, James Coburn and even Charlie Sheen among its cast, not to mention a Coppola in the director’s chair.
As it turns out, it’s merely a lesson in never judging a book — or a movie — by its cover. The film is basically an attempt at film noir gone terribly wrong. Although the filmmakers managed to get the look right, they forgot the part where you really need a strong plot to make the whole thing work.
A Thousand Words (2012)
When your movie is shot four years before anyone dares to actually release it in theaters, you know you’re in for a rough ride. A Thousand Words made the mistake of taking the hilarious Eddie Murphy and pretty much forcing him to pull off an hour and a half of recorded silence.
Why? Because if his character spoke too much, he would be doomed to become a magical tree in his backyard. By the time the film was over, audiences everywhere were more desperate for Murphy to regain his speech than his character was.
Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star (2011)
Despite its name, this film ironically did more to tank the career of lead actor Nick Swardson than help it. If you didn’t see it, fear not. It’s pretty much just one long joke that keeps struggling to tell itself for the most painful 96 minutes ever.
You get a socially challenged loser kid who moves to L.A. to follow in his porn-star parents’ footsteps. Unless the previous sentence made you laugh hysterically, then trust us when we assure you that you didn’t miss anything. Seriously, it doesn’t get any funnier from there.
Gotti (2018)
Although it was released a mere two years ago, Gotti has already gained the popular vote for the worst mob movie of all time. John Travolta stars as infamous mobster John Gotti in this biopic, which attempts to cram the guy’s entire life into 105 minutes.
Gotti was many things, and an interesting guy was certainly one of them. Unfortunately, the film fails to capture this fact and also manages to be ridiculously boring in its attempt to entertain. One critic actually said he would prefer to “wake up next to a severed horse head than ever watch Gotti again.” Yikes!
Dark Crimes (2018)
In the ’90s, most of us thought of Jim Carrey as the hysterically goofy star of films like Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and Dumb and Dumber. Then, one day, he suddenly stunned the world with his obvious dramatic talent in movies like The Truman Show and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
So, when Dark Crimes came along, it seemed promising. The film cast Carey as a detective, and he did a pretty good job with what he was given. That said, the film was less the thriller it was intended to be and mostly just too disturbing to actually watch.
The Ridiculous 6 (2015)
It seems like we all fell so in love with Adam Sandler during his early career that we just can’t bring ourselves to give up on him. It was probably his early success that made him rich enough to start bankrolling his own movies, and things have been going downhill ever since.
Among the worst of his creations is The Ridiculous 6, a would-be Western satire that is just painful to watch. Aside from its lame jokes, the flick is insanely racist and disrespectful toward Native Americans — to the degree that several Native American actors walked off the set.
Max Steel (2016)
Not all superhero movies are created equal, as Max Steel will be the first to grudgingly admit. While many action films spawn toy lines, this one did things backwards and attempted to make a movie out of an old toy from the late ’90s.
The movie tells the story of a boy named Max who meets a metallic alien being that can wrap around him like a knock-off Iron Man suit. The rest of the movie follows suit with one superhero cliche after another, none of which are executed half as well as they are in the films they shamelessly mimic.
Simon Sez (1999)
Remember when Dennis Rodman was still around? Well, of course, there was someone out there who just had to ride the coattails of his 15 minutes of fame by dropping him into an action flick. Hence, Simon Sez, the sequel to Double Take, was born.
While Rodman at least had Jean-Claude Van Damme to back him up in the first film, he has to resort to teaming up with a pair of random computer hacking monks in the sequel. Prepare to spend the whole movie wishing he would just give it up and do a couple of dunks instead.
Return to the Blue Lagoon (1991)
Although The Blue Lagoon didn’t even garner a 10% fresh rating from critics in 1980, that didn’t stop someone out there from thinking a sequel would still be a great idea. 1991 saw the ill-fated release of Return to the Blue Lagoon, which fared even worse than the original.
The film plopped then-teenagers Milla Jovovich and Brian Krause onto a desert island, threw in a little romance and a lot of flesh, and hoped for the best. Unfortunately, the movie tanked and was even deemed by one critic to be “for pervs and frustrated holidaymakers only.” Ouch.
The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987)
Back in the ’80s, there was a card collecting trend featuring the Garbage Pail Kids. With characters meant to be knock-offs of Cabbage Patch Kids, the cards featured kids that were super gross in ways that only young boys find fascinating.
To the horror of parents everywhere, someone decided to turn the trend into a truly terrifying live-action film. While the cartoonish creatures may have looked harmless enough on the cards, their puppet counterparts were the stuff that nightmares — and years of intense therapy — were made of.
Top Dog (1994)
While Chuck Norris may have spawned a series of hysterical memos detailing his epic levels of greatness, Top Dog is his Achilles Heel that refuses to die. How could an action-comedy starring not only Norris but also an adorable dog possibly go wrong?
Well, the first mistake was inserting our heroes into a “family-friendly” film laden with Neo-Nazis terrorists and White Supremacists. (What?) The second was having the poor taste to release it two weeks after the Oklahoma City bombings. All this added up to an epic fail that was virtually booed out of the box office.
Jury Duty (1995)
This Pauly Shore flop was enough to leave most movie fans preferring actual jury duty to sticking around until the final credits rolled on this movie. The tale revolves around an uninspired slacker who gets the brilliant idea to sign up for jury duty so he can take advantage of the free room and board. (Exactly where is this jury duty?)
The rest of the film mostly focuses on him coming up with the most annoying ways possible to keep the case going, simply so he doesn’t lose his temporary digs. By the end, you’re sure to be just as frustrated as his fellow jurors.
Ed (1996)
You could almost hear the collective shatter of the hearts of Friends fans around the globe when this bad boy flop came out. The sports comedy featured Matt LeBlanc — of Joey Tribbiani fame — and a lovable, baseball-playing chimpanzee named Ed. What could go wrong?
So much. Although the premise could have been a solid kid feature in the right hands, the filmmakers fell back on a string of potty jokes and very little else to make the movie funny. The whole thing just seemed like such a waste for LeBlanc’s comedy skills, and it didn’t do the chimp any favors either.
3 Strikes (2000)
Starring Brian Hooks and written by the same guy who penned the hysterical Friday, this comedy gem seemed destined to be a winner. Wrong! By the time it was all said and done, critics were ready to lock this one up and throw away the key.
The plot centers around a two-strike felon who is trying his best to stay out of trouble, a task that turns out to be surprisingly complicated. The movie relies mostly on super lowbrow humor, which might have been excusable if it had actually managed to be funny.
Redline (2007)
You know those bargain bin DVDs that look like dollar store versions of popular movies? Redline is pretty much their king. Imagine The Fast and the Furious but without the plotline and with women depicted as nothing more than arm candy. That pretty much sums up the movie.
Rather than attempt to tell a story of any sort, the film is a blatant vanity project meant to show off a bunch of flashy cars, complete with the calendar girl side pieces. Save your time and flip through a car calendar at a truck stop instead.
The Nutcracker in 3D (2010)
Seriously, how do you even mess up The Nutcracker? Sadly, this misguided children’s film pulled it off, much to the dismay of horrified film critics everywhere. The Hollywood Reporter called it “an apparent Scrooge-like attempt by Russian filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky to forever ruin children’s associations with the classic Yuletide ballet.”
Despite the film’s solid cast, which included Elle Fanning and Nathan Lane, it veered so far away from the much-loved traditional tale that it became something else entirely. You had one job, Nutcracker. Step away from the 3D glasses and stick to the beloved story.
National Lampoon’s Gold Diggers (2003)
This sincerely misguided attempt at a comedy stars Will Friedle, who played the lovably bumbling Eric Matthews on Boy Meets World, and Chris Owen as the two least funny guys in any comedy ever. The hijinks begin when the boys decide to marry two older women, in hopes that they will soon die and leave them a large inheritance.
Before long, everyone is trying to murder everyone else, and the mystery of why this mean-spirited flick was ever considered a comedy just keeps getting deeper. If you want a real laugh, read the film’s Rotten Tomatoes reviews instead.
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002)
Look no further than this 2002 gem for proof that star power alone can’t save a bad film. Starring Lucy Liu and Antonio Banderas, the movie is about two government agents who are fighting over who can get their hands on some new diabolical weapon first.
An understandable plot, however, seems to be the last thing on the filmmakers’ minds. The entire movie is more like one big string of explosions, bullets and plotlines gone rogue (and wrong). With more than 100 bad reviews to its name, if it’s not the worst movie of all time, it’s definitely pretty close.
Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas (2017)
As one critic summed this one up, “Saving Christmas is basically 80 minutes of Cameron lambasting Christians for not being his equal when it comes to intolerance and close-mindedness.” The film left both believers and nonbelievers alike wondering what had just happened to the incredibly confusing last 80 minutes of their lives.
The bizarre undertaking looks more like something Cameron filmed on his phone after a few too many egg nogs and is more or less him preaching a sermon he didn’t bother to research. The whole thing comes across more like a vanity piece than an inspirational message.
Folks! (1992)
Tom Selleck, the actor who resembles a real-life Ken doll, made a major mistake when he took the lead role in the incredibly problematic Folks. In the film, Selleck’s Jon Aldrich tries to manage his work and personal life while his parents, particularly his father who lives with dementia, continued to make his life more and more problematic.
Folks! was heavily panned for its negative portrayal of anyone over the age of 50, but especially for the low-brow humor at the expense of someone living with dementia. You couldn’t find any folks in the archives who had a good thing to say about this poorly-written movie.
A Low Down Dirty Shame (1994)
A movie with the likes of Keenen Ivory Wayans and Jada Pinkett Smith sounds like it would be a recipe for a good movie, right? Wrong. This action/comedy dud written, directed by and starring Wayans was panned for its terrible plot lines and story structure.
Legendary film critic had some particularly cutting words for the LAPD-focused flick: “Here is a movie about guns. Take away the guns, and the movie would be about nothing much. The plot, the dialogue and all but one of the characters are so shallow that, without murder for a punch line, they’d deflate.” What a shame.
Precious Cargo (2016)
Sigh. Poor Bruce Willis. This movie was so bad it makes other bad movies look good. Willis played the role of Eddie Filosa, who convinces a crime boss and his gang to steal $30 million in diamonds from another crime gang in exchange for a woman.
Another film whose plot points and story structure are just filled with guns and high-speed chases. The cheap dialog and intentionally funny moments turned into a piece of painful, gut-wrenching cinema. It should honestly be retitled “Total Garbage”.
Transylmania (2009)
A group of sexy college co-eds party abroad in a vampire-filled Romania. What could possibly go wrong? When the lead character Rusty arranges the Eurotrip so he could meet his Internet girlfriend Draguta, you realize how much actually will go wrong in this far-from-campy movie.
The movie is filled with a bunch of tired gags, monsters that aren’t scary and too many characters to develop an affinity towards any of them. For a movie from the National Lampoon franchise, this screwball comedy really fails to deliver any “mania” outside of pure nausea.
London Fields (2018)
The clairvoyant Nicola Six, played by Amber Heard, learns that she will die at the hands of a man in her life. Naturally, she begins to date three men to discover which one will be her killer. That makes total sense, right? Nothing confusing to contemplate there.
The film grossed $168,575 on its opening weekend, with a per-screen average of $261. The Independent’s critic Kaleem Aftab claimed, “Most scenes lack pace, are performed badly and are accompanied by a running commentary of action we can see for ourselves.”
