18 times the Razzies got it wrong
From Friday The 13th to The Blair Witch Project, the Razzies haven't always been good at picking what's bad
Film Features the Razzies
In 1981, a full 50 years after the first Oscars ceremony, a film publicist decided it was time to start honoring the year’s worst movies, and thus the Razzies (the Golden Raspberry Awards if you want to get technical) were born. Unfortunately, the Razzies have been woefully inept at determining which films were actually worthy of their, um, honors from day one. In the first year alone, they nominated horror classic Friday The 13th, cult musical Xanadu, and visionary director Stanley Kubrick. And over the past 43 years, for every The Last Airbender or The Emoji Movie nomination, there have been choices—like nominating Whitney Houston for The Bodyguard—that landed with a thud.
The Razzies will hand out awards for the class of 2022 on March 11. This year’s nominees include obvious picks like Machine Gun Kelly’s stoner comedy Good Mourning, Disney’s maligned remake of Pinocchio and, of course, Morbius (It’s Morbin’ time!). More controversial are the inclusions of Oscar nominees Blonde and Elvis, and the nomination 12-year-old Firestarter Ryan Kiera Armstrong, which was rescinded after an outcry accusing the Razzies of bullying a child. Of course, the Razzies (which are voted on by individuals who pay to be a part of the voting committee) have always been chaotic in their mix. Sometimes they feel spot-on. Sometimes they feel a little mean. Sometimes they’re just flailing about. With this year’s ceremony right around the corner, we thought it would be fun to look back at some of the Razzies’ biggest nomination gaffs.
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I’m still not willing to get on the “Heaven’s Gate is actually a great movie” train. Yeah, the vicious reaction to it is based on that butchered cut that got released at the time, but the Director’s Cut isn’t all that much better. The movie is still bloated as hell, and you can basically hear Cimino screaming off camera “NOW THIS IS SOME GOOD FUCKING DIRECTING RIGHT HERE!” all the time. I know I am quoting Family Guy here, but it is the perfect example of a film that insists upon itself.
I’ve seen 3 movies about the Johnson county business and they’ve all been boring. The idea ( rich folks invade a county of immigrants with a death list, etc) is a good idea , but then Nothing Happened. Hard to make a good third act with that limitation.I liked the Cimino version because of the really brilliant production design and cinematography ( and my favorite pre-release poster of all time. Kristofferson and the flag – gorgeous).
The problem with Worst Picture is the same problem as Best Picture: Box office numbers are not equivalent to quality, and time has a way of reshaping perspective.
That “worst over $100MM box office” probably sounded like a good idea since shitty movies make bank all the time, but none of those specific picks is terrible.
Independence Day is one of the dumbest movies ever made but that is why it’s kinda great. I hate the idea of “it’s so bad it’s good” because I feel that is rarely true but I do see some movies that are written with the mindset of “This isn’t high art, it’s entertainment”. Road House, Independence Day, Top Gun(both), Point Break, most of the MCU frankly. The Oscars are trying to give awards to films that are “Artistically” the best and the Razzies are trying to be the counter to that. I’d argue both endeavors are flawed.
It’s not that those movies are good because they’re bad. They have legitimate good, even great parts. There’s just some laughable ways they got to there. And I would argue a sophisticated movie watcher knows to look past them to enjoy what’s on the screen
Yeah, in fact I’d say all those movies are good to great.
Independence Day is kind of a terrible film but it’s so well done I love it. I really love it.
That is one of the problemsThere are others 1) Sometimes movies aren’t for the people who critique them. It’s different these days but in the last most reviewers and awards voters were middle age white men with journalism and film degrees. I’m 100% if “Everything Everywhere All at Once” had come out in 1985 it would have been critical panned and be up for a Razzie. 2) Along with number 1, sometimes movies age into being better or more liked. Back in the day frequent cable play would do it. Sometimes a theatrical cut of a movie is a mess that distracts you from seeing a beautiful movie that would influence others for decades(see Blade Runner)3) This is reductive but sometimes people make fun movies and know they aren’t high art. Road House is a great example that
4) There are almost certainly some much worse movies being made every year, but no one’s ever heard of them. “Worst movie” ends up being “worst movie that wasn’t too obscure.”
Exactly, just look at whatever crap Kevin Sorbo made last year
Yup; the major issue with the Razzies is they’ve positioned themselves as purely reactionary. An anit-awards show which actually concerned itself with seeking out the truly worst movies and performances of the year, regardless of how popular they were, could be a lot of fun and unearth some truly weird shit.
I’d disagree with that. There are some stupendously bad indie movies made every year (hell, I’ve made some of them), but putting a spotlight on them to shit on them would just feel like bullying. It might be awful, but someone’s gone to the effort of making it, usually against the odds. If nobody ever watches the thing outside their family & friends then that’s a fair response, but to put them in an awards show to laugh at them just feels wrong.
I guess the principal’s no different when the movie’s a bigger budget thing, but it feels more fair in that case, and less bullying.
That is the problem with Tyler Perry movies, they are garbage but make money
However, decades later, when a much longer cut was released, opinions about the film changed, with some critics even lionizing Heaven’s Gate as a masterpiece.Those critics are wrong. It’s a bad film just made even more overly long.
Scarface was panned as being too violent and profane. As time went on, this critique held less and less water
Is it not extremely violent and profane?
we can forgive the Razzies this time for not being able to immediately register high camp
They are supposed to be selecting bad movies, and a movie “so bad” qualifies.
You can’t really blame the Razzies for this one since, though, it took the whole world years to figure out what was happening.
The “whole world” has not in fact come around on Showgirls. It’s just only weirdos who still talk about it.Your response on Stallone is irrelevant whenever you cite post-2000 work that the Razzies could not have known about.
Pattinson & Stewart may have done good work post-Twilight, but the specific award is for them as a bad onscreen couple, and they haven’t done anything to disconfirm that. Sometimes even good actors have poor chemistry with each other.
I was not aware David Ayer’s Suicide Squad ever got a longer cut. And at any rate, it’s nonsense to ding the Razzies by judging the cut actually released in theaters rather than one that wouldn’t be released until later.
The whole point of Scarface from the jump was its violence and profanity as critique of the American dream. I don’t know that there’s every been a reevaluation of the movie based on some years-later revelation. I’ll buy the Showgirls argument a bit more since we know Verhoeven loves his subversive satire but I’m not convinced there was anything going on beneath the surface of that one. And yeah, Pattinson and Stewart were a terrible onscreen couple. Like legendarily bad. I still don’t think much of her as an actress but he’s proven to be must-see.
I thought the whole point was cocaine is a helluva drug.
That’s a key (heh heh) takeaway as well, yes.
Also, annual awards shows award the version of the movie that came out in cinemas that year, not a director’s cut version that came out years later. If the original theatrical cut of Heaven’s Gate was bad, then hey, maybe it deserved a Razzie. (I have not seen any version of it, so I’m speaking purely hypothetically. Please don’t @ me.)And yeah, it’s possible for good actors to do good AND bad work. Look at Sandra Bullock who showed up with her Oscar in hand to accept her Razzie the same year. (Though I would argue that wasn’t the movie she should have worn for. Still, she has done Oscar worthy work.) Just because someone happens to be a really good actor most of the time doesn’t mean they didn’t deserve that one Razzie for a movie where they did a terrible job.
Agree mostly, but:The Stallone thing is a bad take. The man’s done a lot of trash but we’ve all seen him in a handful of great stuff, so we know he’s CAPABLE of being a very good to excellent actor, even if he mostly chooses to grunt, bellow, mumble, and otherwise phone in dogshit performances like Judge Dredd, Demolition Man, Cliffhanger, and some of the glorious 80s trash that’s fun to watch but, you know, ridiculous, etc.Scarface is not bad because it’s “violent and profane” it’s bad because it’s a fucking cartoon, and I can’t believe I read an AV Club article claiming it’s “one of Pacino’s best performances.” WTF? Is the writer not familiar with his 70s work at all?
Some people aren’t interested in subtle Pacino.
Heaven’s Gate grew on me to become a masterpiece the last time I watched it on Price Charles Cinema. Hate it, hate Stallone, hate everything, safe there, in your dark dusty corner of hate.
May I suggest the Razzies get it wrong by existing?
This is honestly a far better argument than all the arguments in the slideshow.
hear hear
The Razzies as a funny in-joke between friends is one thing, but to turn it into a big official thing ruins the point of them.
The Razzies are so weird in that their whole existence is to like, snarkily pile on bad movies, but they’re also just weirdly humorless and uptight. Like, they really seem to take the whole “having a whole awards show dedicated to shitty movies” thing super seriously.
100% this, they are worse than the movies they shit on.
This is the correct take.
I figured people would’ve picked up on that after they had to be shamed into rescinding the one they gave to Bruce Willis
nope, they get it right 99% of the time
The Razzie’s often get it wrong; most of their picks are reactionary to the contemporary bandwagon (I’m sure nobody here’s familiar with the irony of dissing the “sheep” riding the Love bandwagon from the seats of the Hate bandwagon), as well as mocking women for the bad movies they’re in, or trying to be taken seriously in a better movie than they’re usually in. It’s a mess, and as you get older you realize it ain’t very charming.
Ok now I’ve read the list, I actually disagree with about half of these “re-evaluations:” I don’t know if the Kubrick win was a direct reaction to Kubrick’s treatment of Duvall, but if so, that’s a funny/poignant award. Independence Day is poorly written! If you pay attention to how the script would present itself on paper it’s complete nonsense, even if it works as entertainment. I completely understand the Worst New Star win for Jim Carrey in 1995; as a kid I loved him, but I remember adults like my parents being absolutely turned off by him, and that year consisted of some serious overexposure for the guy.Pattinson and Stewart were a terrible on-screen couple, especially after the first movie, when Pattinson started truly phoning it in!Oh, and nixing Cavill’s win because a “better cut” of the movie exists elsewhere is also pretty dumb. There’s a “better version” of my midterm paper which deserves an A.
Yeah, there are a lot of these that are based on shit that SHOULDN’T FACTOR IN TO THE AWARDS CONSIDERATION.“The actor is usually quite good/did a lot of great work later in their career and didn’t deserve such a dig.” I don’t care if it’s Meryl Fucking Streep. If she puts in a really bad performance, regardless of the reason (script, editing, she was having a lot of really bad days), all her Oscars don’t buy her a pass. It’s a bad performance. And unless the alternate cut that redeems her performance comes out the same year, it doesn’t diminish the bad performance from the original cut with respect to the Razzies.“The director’s cut of the movie that came out in a later year is actually really good.” So? That’s not the movie that was being Razzed. The Razzies are recognizing the movie that was released in cinemas that year, not some alternate version that will come out in the future.“It’s so bad that it’s become a cult classic!” And thus, maybe it really DID deserve that Razzie, eh? I would argue that’s exactly the perfect example of the type of movie that should win Razzies. If people only appreciate it for its badness, that’s prime Razzie material there.I totally agree there are a lot of bad things about the Razzies. This list makes some decent points with respect to some of those problematic aspects. But it seems to think that awards committees should be able to have some kind of prescient knowledge of actors’ future careers or cuts of movies that will appear in some later year. That’s not how that works.
The people that run these awards are talentless dicks so they prey on those who are simply trying to make a film that people might enjoy. I don’t like awards shows, but I hate the Razzies more.
Aren’t all the Razzies guys just cranky old men now and didn’t they admit they don’t even watch the movies they nominate? They just go off stuff that gets critical panned or they don’t personally like. Wasn’t there also some implications that they have been pretty homophobic and transphobic before as well?
The “punching down” thing is definitely a real problem.
Unlike the other movie awards, there’s nothing stopping any of us joining and voting. We can all join at any time and be the change we want to be. It truly is the award of the people.https://www.razzies.com/join-vote.html
No no no, you’ve got it wrong, you still don’t get to be a member until you give them some money for the registration fee as well!
Where you see a democratization of the awards process, I see a system that’s ripe for review bombing.
“Aren’t all the Razzies guys just cranky old men” you mean Oscar men
Heaven’s Gate is indeed a masterpiece.Cocktail though is utterly fucking dreadful and Kokomo is one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard so I would dispute that the film has “an incredibly strong soundtrack”.
Before Tom got wacky, a mindless but entertaining Tom Cruise movie was a good thing. I saw Cocktail in the movie theater, and no regrets.
Oh no, Showgirls is the perfect Razzie movie. It was way overblown and overhyped (Joe Eszterhas was the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood at the time), stars a former “Saved by the Bell” cast member (who gets nude!), and just completely bombs at the box office. They tried to do a satire of one of those “A Star is Born” showbiz movies and the result is just a movie where women in heavy makeup scream and try to kill each other.Though after watching it I finally understood what “camp value” was.
Paul Vehoeven was the first person to attend the Razzie awards and collect his award in person. He gave the quite an entertaining speech so I hear.
tldr; These movies were supposed to be bad and that’s what makes them good. And you idiots all fell for it.
Razzie for your worst writing of the piece: “While some people don’t like Carrey’s outlandish humor, there’s no denying he’s a talented comedian.” I would maintain that humor is the work of a talented comedian, and the people who do not like it are in fact denying that he is a talented comedian.
Indeed. What a tired cliché: Some people don’t like something – but the wildly successful artist that created the work IS talented! Quelle surprise!!
I’m not old enough to remember the start of the Razzies, nor am I someone who puts much stock in it, but I get get the sense that it would be much more successful if they sort of mocked the stuff that deserved to be mocked (e.g. pretentious oscar-bait films that miss the mark). Picking on a 12 year old girl isn’t it. Picking on successful low-budget horror flicks (Friday the 13th, Blair Witch) that are successful isn’t it.I also get the sense that the Razzies, like the MTV movie awards, started as a tongue-in-cheek joke that picked up steam and then became a sort-of serious actual institution that bought its own hype.
Thankfully, the Razzies have slowly been realizing how bad some of their policies are (which is why they won’t nominate kids anymore).
Credit where credit is due, they did walk that one back.
Have they rescinded Aileen Quinn’s nom?
Speaking of,
she plays Annie in Annie, which is obviously a lead role
The title character isn’t always the lead. (The leads in The Terminator, for example, are Sarah and Kyle.)
I would argue that a movie “so bad it’s great” is exactly the kind of movie that should win Worst Picture. It should be a movie so bad its badness will live in infamy. And what is Showgirls if not that?
Come on, Friday the 13th has only ever been a lower-budget cheapie ripoff of Halloween, and it’s not worth defending, even if there may have been worse movies to win that year’s Razzie.However, giving a Razzie to Road House is fucking inexcusable.
F13th is a culturally significant movie, but it’s not a GOOD movie. Did it deserve to win Worst Picture? Probably not, but please let’s not pretend like it’s some piece of high art just because it has become a slasher movie classic.
I just realized I misread the article — F13 didn’t “win” Worst Picture, Can’t Stop the Music did. So they’re bagging on the Razzies for merely nominating a shitty cash-in riding Halloween’s coattails.
Welllll….I was going to say “what do we care about the Razzies’ nonsense”…but Cocktail, Showgirls, and The Bodyguard? Those are pretty bad films.
Ehh, Blair Witch was pretty stupid
Yeah, I agreed with Blair Witch winning the Razzie… :p
It doesn’t hold up to repeat watching, and it is to blame for the overuse of hand-held cameras and nauseating shaky footage in the years after it was released, but I think The Blair Witch Project was very effective when I saw it the first time. But maybe that’s because I have a poor sense of direction and often get lost — so the fear that the terrain doesn’t make any sense and that they end up walking in circles hits home for me.
I respect its minimalist approach and reliance on ambience rather than jump scares, and that you never see the impending threat. That always scares me more than a monster (ie: when you don’t see the Wampa vs when you do in the Star Wars Special Edition) but like Paranormal Activity afterwards the movie was hyped so much to be the scariest thing ever, and while parts were thrilling I still couldn’t get over how stupid most of the characters had to be
Counterpoint: it was not, and it’s aged very well.
BW 2 – yes. Very, very stupid!I thought BWP was pretty, pretty effective in what it set out to do.
BW 2 – yes. Very, very stupid!…and yet I still enjoy it.
The second one was so bad it was funny, so I had fun with it at least
You never got lost in the woods, pssh
I did for like 5 minutes in a rainforest but even then we had kind of an idea of where we were. I think the woods where they take place was a small state park in Maryland, so it was rather unrealistic that they’d get lost
Don’t forget Last Action Hero, which bombed at the box office and got 6 Razzie nominations, but has since been reevaluated and is now a cult classic.
No it’s not lol
Just because something has become a cult classic doesn’t make it good. (I’m not speaking specifically about LAH. I haven’t seen that in ages. I’m speaking more generally.) Cult classic can come about for a lot of different reasons to a wide variety of different quality movies.There are movies that become cult classics BECAUSE they’re bad (e.g. Reefer Madness, Showgirls, The Room). Some become cult classics because they are flawed but have some excellent aspects that make them still enjoyable (e.g. Highlander, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Jennifer’s Body).And some get that status for being a good/great movie that people just missed in the moment, possibly due to poor marketing and/or bad timing, which can be because it came out when another more prominent movie did or because audiences just weren’t ready for a movie like that (e.g. John Carpenter’s The Thing, Wet Hot American Summer, Heathers).All “cult classic” means is that it was a movie that wasn’t originally a hit (possibly even a bomb) that has somehow developed a decently sized following of people who love it in subsequent years. It doesn’t say anything about quality.
On Showgirls: You can’t really blame the Razzies for this one since, though, it took the whole world years to figure out what was happening.No. Just no. A small slice of the internet have been trying to push the whole “you just did not realize its brilliance” narrative. But honestly most people still think it is total crap. Funny crap at times, with tits, but still just crap and an embarrassing to watch performance by just about everyone.
It’s a great movie, what are you talking about?
Jennifer Lawrence, Mother! (2017)
“people saw it and liked it”Is this the standard we’re using to judge quality now? Because a lot of extremely popular things are complete shit. What the hell happened to this website? Can you imagine Nathan Rabin or Scott Tobias typing this?
I’ve written to the Razzies a couple of times with questions and they’ve always written back promptly.Also, anyone can join their voting body for a small subscription fee to determine nominees and then winners, so unlike the other awards ceremonies, it truly is one for the people.If you have a problem with with how the Razzies decide things, you may just have a problem with democracy.
it grossed $170 million at the box office, meaning that people saw it and liked itYes because this is clearly a key indicator of quality.
I went to see it for the titties.
Independence Day, Showgirls, and Blair Witch are all nonsensical, bloated, dull rubbish that fail to be entertaining even in a campy way. Just because Blair Witch is influential, that doesn’t mean it’s good.
This article seems to tilt too much towards mainstream sentiment and fails to tap into the IMHO entertainingly snotty, snooty film-critic/film-snob viewpoint that the Razzies were presumably intended for. C’mon, don’t you *want* delightfully arrogant Pauline Kael acolytes to do this stuff?Was this writer *alive* when that shitty Bodyguard movie came out? God, that movie blew goats. It was really long and really boring. And yes, WHITNEY HOUSTON’S PERFORMANCE IS HORRIBLE! She’s fucking CARDBOARD. She SUCKS! Since when is financial success or mainstream popularity any measure of quality? Who cares if regular people loved it? The Razzies were clearly designed by, and intended for, people who think regular people are idiots. If the Razzies have similarly become too mainstream, well, maybe they shouldn’t be, and need to go back to being a niche thing for snooty critic types.The arguments defending Beavis and Butt-head and Jim Carrey are more solid, since they accomplish what they set out to do directly and concisely. B&B is actually low-key a really good satire. Jim Carrey worked in less-than-great movies often, but made them funny by being a bizarre rubbery-AF lunatic.
Scarface is a garbage movie.
Fuck the entire concept of this smug awards show. And the Razzie for Worst Award Show goes to….The Razzies!
cult musical XanaduOkay, look, I’m no Razzies stan, but let’s not pretend that was some kind of egregious oversight on their part. That movie was fucking slated when it was released, it bombed at the box office and even it’s cult appeal rests pretty much on its “bad movie people like to watch and mock” appeal. In fact, the Razzies is likely a key reasons why that film has a cult following in the first place.
Tom Cruise for “War Of The Worlds”? It’s one of his best. Watch the scene where his hitherto dick son leaps up the ferry’s ramp to help pull people onto the ship, and the slow realisation of pride that spreads across Cruise’s face. That, friend, is acting.
I feel like “The Filmgoing Public” deserve some sort of lifetime achievement Razzie at this point.
A lot of “it made money so it must be good” reasoning in this listicle. Appealing to the masses does not make a movie good. People can like movies for a variety of reasons, many of which are not related to their quality.“even in 1980 it performed miraculously well, earning nearly $60 million on a $500,000 budget. For a film with no known stars to become such a phenomenon signals some redeeming qualities that clearly the Razzies missed.”“it grossed $170 million at the box office, meaning that people saw it and liked it.”“became the second-highest grossing title of the year, so obviously it was beloved by a large swath of the population”“all three of his films did extremely well at the box office”
How often do the Oscars get things wrong?
This is a pretty well spot on article with the exception of Rocky Balboa. I love that movie. I suspect it won’t work for anyone not already significantly bought into the franchise. That’s undoubtedly a valid criticism however for me as very much the target audience I was surprised how much I liked it. For*that* speech alone, it gets a pass.
The Razzies has always had Big Virgin “I collect way too many Funko Pop toys” Energy.
How utterly disrespectful of this writer to validate the razzies for nominating Heather Donahue for Blair Witch and only denouncing the worst picture nod. Heather IS the movie. She improvised the idea to do the confession to the camera. Her performance is brilliant and raw and the film wouldn’t be anything without it. To not denounce her nod and Shelly Duvall’s for the shining. What about the 11 year old girl who was good in Firestarter? AV club is so bad at lists. Just stop.
Ironically raspberries are my favourite berry.
I suggest a much more challenging feature to write.3 times the Razzies got it right.
I remember being shocked by Sylvester Stallone in ‘Cop land’. I had not liked one of his rolls since Rocky.
I have no idea why now the Razzies are getting criticism only now for their nomination of children, they’ve been doing it forever. They nominated Aileen Quinlan (9 yo) for Annie and Mara Hobel (also age 9, nominated twice by the Razzies, way to stick to the Man, guys!) for Mommie Dearest. And I really think it’s only because they didn’t like the movies. Both Quinn’s and Hobel’s performances were fine. There is absolutely no reason to be so cruel to literal actual children. The whole thing just reeks of pimply incels living in Mom’s basement and lashing out.
The Razzies are more puritanical than I expected.
Also, The Blair Witch Project is a bad movie.
If you told me I had to watch, The Shining, Road House, Scarface, Basic Instinct, Independence Day, Beavis and Butthead, and Showgirls, over a weekend…that would be a great weekend.
This one was 100% written by AI.
Na, these movies are just bad Heaven’s Gate, Annie the last three versions, War of the worlds for the kids, Twilight for Stewart.