Believe it or not, earning a zero percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes is quite an achievement.
Reviewing a film is subjective, of course, so critics pretty much always have opposing
arguments on the quality of a movie.
But once in a while, a movie comes along that brings even the most stubborn critics together
to unanimously agree the film is not worth your time.
Here are some of the unlucky films that managed to pull off a zero percent rating.
Jaws: The Revenge
Even if you haven't seen the fourth Jaws movie, you may have read or heard Michael Caine's
famous quote on his involvement with the ill-fated picture.
According to The Telegraph, he admitted,
"I have never seen it, but by all accounts it was terrible.
However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific."
1987's Jaws: The Revenge single-handedly ended the killer shark franchise by being incompetent
on every level.
Developed from conception to completion in less than a year, the movie was rushed and
careless, with director Joseph Sargent telling Starlog magazine at the time,
"This is probably the quickest gestation of any project, I think, in film history."
"How did we get involved in something that idiotic?"
The lack of filmmaking expertise on display, along with an utterly nonsensical premise,
makes for a viewing experience that unfortunately isn't worth your time, and the critics all
agreed.
Gotti
Within days of its limited theatrical release in 2018, this John Travolta-starring John
Gotti biopic was being confidently hailed as "the worst mob movie of all time."
It's hard to be 100 percent certain if that's true, but it's also hard to see how things
could get much worse.
Gotti's greatest sin is that it's incredibly boring.
Bizarrely edited and difficult to follow, the movie is essentially a long collection
of technically uninteresting scenes, stitched together into something that only sometimes
looks like a film.
It's confusing how they even got a movie star in the lead role.
In an effort to combat its 0 percent rating, producers of the film rolled out an ad campaign
claiming that it's not a movie for critics, but rather something general audiences would
enjoy.
"I don't think so."
Dark Crimes
Jim Carrey became widely-known in the '80s and '90s for his committed slapstick comedy
performances.
But he later surprised viewers with impressive turns playing against type in more serious
films like Man on the Moon and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
With all that dramatic talent, it's unfortunate that 2018's Dark Crimes was such a fail.
Focusing on a detective who discovers startling similarities between a cold case murder and
the plot of a recent novel, Dark Crimes has an interesting enough concept to root for
the movie from the start, but it never, ever meets you there.
Uncomfortable and unengaging, Dark Crimes earns its 0 percent rating not through apathy
or blandness.
Instead, it actively repulses, digging its way down to the bottom of the barrel, one
scene of intense violence at a time.
Look Who's Talking Now
Capping off the Look Who's Talking trilogy, 1993's Look Who's Talking Now takes the first
two movies' conceit of tough-talking babies and broadens it with the introduction of a
team of talking dogs.
The insane execution is the main problem here, with a seemingly-family-friendly concept perverted
by enough bad language, innuendo, and adult humor to shut out the age group that you'd
think would be the movie's entire audience.
"Whaddya say you and me go play bury the bone?"
As a sequel, Look Who's Talking Now is one of the all-time-classic examples of the concept
of diminishing returns.
The unexpected franchise had already given audiences a retread with Look Who's Talking,
Too, making the completely unnecessary third outing feel all the more puzzling.
The Ridiculous 6
Adam Sandler's early successes have helped to sustain an entire career's worth of unholy
crapola.
But 2015's The Ridiculous 6 is his rock-bottom, one of the few films that truly deserves distinction
among the worst movies of all time.
In Sandler's early movies, the lowbrow quality of his humor was still stupid, but it felt
like you were in on a joke.
With The Ridiculous 6, it feels like you are the joke.
It's like the actor took a dare to make the most offensive, least-capable movie that people
would still watch.
The film also comes across as mean-spirited, steeped so heavily in harmful Native American
stereotypes that several actors reportedly left the set in protest
Max Steel
Superhero movies have spent the last decade cleaning up at the box office, but that doesn't
mean the genre is a safe bet.
Based on a toy line from Mattel, 2016's Max Steel is a false-start of an effort to bring
a new franchise to life.
It focuses on a young man named Max and a robotic life-form from outer space named Steel,
the latter of which is a joke-cracking snark machine capable of enveloping itself entirely
around Max like a suit of armor.
The result is a movie that tries to combine the best elements of Iron Man and Transformers,
failing to accomplish either by ultimately being too bland.
Everything in the movie is something you've seen before, and unfortunately, all this unforgivably
boring film does is remind you of other films that did it all better.