A great performance can leave a permanent impression on moviegoers.
Then again, bad acting can leave a similarly permanent impression...but for very different
reasons.
Over the years, we've seen plenty of awful acting, and these scenes represent some of
the very worst.
"No, not the bees.
Not the bees!
Ahhhhh!
They're in my eyes!
My eyes!
Ahhh!
Ahhhhh!"
Here are some of our favorite poorly acted movie scenes...
Power of Law
Of all the ridiculous scenes in the Sylvester Stallone-starring dystopian disaster Judge
Dredd, none play out quite as badly as the long-awaited confrontation between Judge Dredd
and his brother Rico at the end of the movie.
What begins as a slow-burning war of words quickly escalates to the point where Stallone
and Armand Assante forget how to pronounce basic English.
"Why did you judge me?
"You killed innocent people."
"The means to an end."
"You started a massacre!"
"I caused a revolution."
"You betrayed the Lawrgh!"
"Law!!"
Not like Stallone has that great a grasp of English to begin with…
(speaking gibberish)
What kind of places?
Pretty much any scene from Showgirls is bad enough to make this list.
But the one that always sticks out as being the Very Worst happens to be toward the beginning
of the movie, when Nomi meets her future roommate, Molly, for the first time.
As we saw on Saved by the Bell, Elizabeth Berkley tends to crank each line up to 11.
"I'm so excited.
I'm so...scared."
(cries)
Berkley might have been channeling that very scary moment when performing in this scene,
when she vigorously files her nails, violently stabs her beverage and pours ketchup over
french fries as if she's auditioning for a commercial about anger management.
Eventually, Molly asks where Nomi's from...and that's when things get really dramatic…
"Where are you from?"
"Back east."
"From where back east?"
(takes anger out on fast food)
"Different places!"
That's a pretty extreme reaction, huh?
But maybe it's not the line of questioning that's got her upset — maybe she just doesn't
have the right snacks.
"Doggy Chow…
I used to love Doggy chow."
"I used to love Doggy Chow too."
Feeling burned
Nicolas Cage's performance in The Wicker Man is so bad, people who haven't even seen the
movie are able to quote infamous lines, like this one.
"Now why in the hell would you let them to do a sick thing like that?"
Things get particularly loopy when Cage's character — a policeman who interrogates
a group of neo-Pagans after his daughter goes missing — discovers a burned doll he believes
belonged to his daughter.
That's when we get a glimpse into the "Nicolas Cage School of Interrogation."
"How'd it get burned?
How'd it get burned?
"I don't know!"
"Tell me!"
Anakin’s beach blues
Even after we got The Force Awakens, the ill-advised Star Wars prequels continue to linger painfully
in fans' souls, like some kind of cosmic penance.
(nonsensical Jar Jar jargon)
And few scenes are as hatefully remembered as Hayden Christensen's chat with Padme in
Attack of the Clones about — that's right — sand.
Because when you've got a movie with lightsabers and an army of clones marching around with
laser guns, and galactic stability hangs in the balance, we need to stop and talk about
how annoying it is when sand gets in your crack.
"I don’t like sand.
It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere."
Over a decade later, people are still joking about it.
Talk about a scene that has legs!
Ooh...just realizing about that whole "has legs" thing.
Really insensitive.
Sorry about that.
What's happening?
What do you do when you try to calm down a crazy lady?
You deny her accusations with the convictions and believability of a four-year-old boy.
At least, that was Mark Wahlberg's plan during his confrontation with Betty Buckley in M.
Night Shyamalan's The Happening.
"Planning on stealing something?"
"No, ma'am, we're not."
"Plan on murdering me in my sleep?"
"What?
No!"
Even Wahlberg himself admitted the movie sucked during a press conference for The Fighter
two years later:
"You can't blame me for wanting to try to play a science teacher, you know?
I wasn't playing a cop or a crook."
Mark Wahlberg, doing a bad job of acting in a forgettable movie?
"What?
No!"
Don't feed the trolls
Picture this scenario.
You realize you're about to be eaten alive by trolls.
What do you do?
What do you say?
Maybe you take a cue from Arnold, the nerdy teenager from Troll 2, and do something like
this?
"They're eating her... and then they're going to eat me...
Oh my goddd!!"
Alas, it was too late to save Arnold.
"What?
No!"
Sorry, Mark Wahlberg.
There was nothing we could do.
And of course...The Room
Skip to any random scene in The Room, Tommy Wiseau's writing, acting, and directing debut
from 2003, and it's painfully bad… in the very best way.
"I did not hit her!
I did not!
Oh, hi Mark!"
The film is so poorly constructed that it's been dubbed "The Citizen Kane of bad movies,"
making it hard to narrow it down to just one laughable scene.
"Chicken, Peter, you're just a little chicken!"
But the most popular, best of the worst moment came when Wiseau's cuckolded Johnny confronts
his thought-to-be-cheating fiance, Lisa, in this now iconic exchange:
"You're lying, I merely hit you.
You're tearing me apart, Lisa!"
Believe it or not, according to Wiseau's costar and friend Greg Sestero, the moment was inspired
by James Dean, who uttered a virtually identical line in Rebel Without a Cause.
"You're tearing me apart!"
"You're tearing me apart, Lisa!"
Who performed it better?
We think it's time for Tommy to celebrate.
"Do you want me to order a pizza?"
"Whatever, I don't care."
"I already ordered a pizza."
"You think about everything."
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