Hollywood faces an eternal challenge: perfecting the science of movie making. To maximize profit and boost quality, moviemakers often pack their films with all-star casts, hoping to rake in revenue based simply on the power of famous names. Unsurprisingly, the cast is not the only key to a successful movie, and such a strategy often leads to the production of disappointing films, despite their stellar actors and actresses.
In order to identify the poorest performing movies with the strongest casts, PrettyFamous considered a movie’s Smart Rating and PrettyFamous score. The Smart Rating assesses a movie’s overall success and considers ratings on Gracenote, Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb, Metacritic and the movie’s cumulative, inflation-adjusted U.S. box office gross. The PrettyFamous score, meanwhile, calculates the collective fame of a film’s cast based on the actors’ award wins and nominations, combined box office gross as well as their current popularity online.
Among movies with a PrettyFamous score of 99 or 100 and at least 50,000 Rotten Tomatoes audience ratings, we collected the films with the lowest Smart Ratings to provide a list of Hollywood’s worst movies with the best casts.
#25. Evan Almighty
Smart Rating: 27.69
Release Year: 2007
In the sequel to the wildly successful “Bruce Almighty,” God contacts Congressman Evan Baxter and tells him to build an ark in preparation for a great flood. The movie featured the best special effects a $175 million budget could buy, but only made $31 million during its opening weekend and failed to recover its costs for the studio. Even Steve Carell couldn’t sell the script.
#24. Be Cool
Smart Rating: 27.03
Release Year: 2005
After losing interest in the film industry, Chili Palmer (from “Get Shorty”) tries to break into music while having an affair with a record executive’s widow. The Rotten Tomatoes audience summarizes the film as “tepid, square and lukewarm,” and a music industry parody with “two left feet.”
#23. Fred Claus
Smart Rating: 26.65
Release Year: 2007
Fred Claus, Santa’s bitter older brother, has made a living quite differently from his jolly sibling: He is a repo man who steals everything he repossesses. When his antics land him in jail, he’s forced to move home to the North Pole and face the wrath of his family. Though it might have been an interesting premise, the movie only got a 21 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and the most common complaint from critics concerned the movie’s uneven tone.
#22. Wild Hogs
Smart Rating: 26.23
Release Year: 2007
A group of middle-aged suburbanite dads try to spice up their lives with a motorcycle trip on the open road, but encounter trouble when they cross paths with a New Mexico biker gang called the Del Fuegos. The movie fared better with audiences than critics, and it definitely didn’t hurt the careers of any of its stars.
#21. Grown Ups
Smart Rating: 26.16
Release Year: 2010
After their high school basketball coach passes away, five good friends and former teammates reunite for the Fourth of July weekend to mourn his passing and reconnect after years apart. With a score of only 10 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, “Grown Ups” is just one of nearly 50 of Adam Sandler’s critically hated films. Inexplicably, it spawned a sequel in 2013.
#20. Transformers: Age of Extinction
Smart Rating: 25.57
Release Year: 2014
The first in the franchise led by Mark Wahlberg, “Age of Extinction” follows the Autobots in their escape from a shadowy group trying to change the history of earth. Spoiler alert: The movie had a lot of explosions and made over $1 billion worldwide despite nearly 150 negative reviews.
#19. Transcendence
Smart Rating: 25.04
Release Year: 2014
Johnny Depp plays Dr. Will Caster, a scientist determined to create the ultimate sentient machine. His work takes on a newer and more dangerous edge, however, and “Transcendence” explores the horrifying consequences of one man acquiring the world’s knowledge. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 19 percent, and the film made back less than half of its $100 million budget at the box office.
#18. Valentine’s Day
Smart Rating: 23.67
Release Year: 2010
“Valentine’s Day” is the first of Garry Marshall’s ridiculously star-studded holiday movies exploring relationship drama around the titular day. Critics hated this rom-com but audiences packed the theaters for it: The movie made over $215 million and ranks as one of New Line Cinema’s most profitable films.
#17. The Hangover Part III
Smart Rating: 21.85
Release Year: 2013
The lowest-rated film of the Hangover franchise, the final film in the trilogy follows the Wolf Pack as they rescue one of their kidnapped crew members. Rotten Tomatoes called the supposed comedy “an angrily dark action thriller.”
#16. G-Force
Smart Rating: 21.79
Release Year: 2009
Highly trained and armed with high-tech gadgets, a squad of guinea pig spies are tasked with saving the planet from a maniacal billionaire who plans to take over the world using household appliances. Neither critics nor audiences gave it a favorable rating, and the film only made $32 million during its opening weekend in the U.S.
#15. The Smurfs
Smart Rating: 21.11
Release Year: 2011
The first major motion picture of the legendary cartoon franchise takes our blue heroes out of the world of hand-drawn animation to New York City. Critics unanimously gave the movie a thumbs down, but it was a smashing success with kids and made over $500 million in global box offices.
#14. Righteous Kill
Smart Rating: 21.09
Release Year: 2008
After 30 years on the force, two veteran New York City homicide detectives are called to find the culprits behind a series of executions of criminals who escaped justice, a case that bears striking similarities to a mystery they solved years before. Though audiences enjoyed it slightly more than critics, it failed to recover its $60 million budget at the box office.
#13. Tammy
Smart Rating: 19.78
Release Year: 2014
After losing her job and learning that her husband was having an affair, Tammy abandons her life for a road trip with her crude, hard-drinking grandmother. Melissa McCarthy’s awesome screen presence was not enough to save the film from bad reviews, but she proved she could sell almost $100 million in tickets.
#12. Alexander
Smart Rating: 19.54
Release Year: 2004
“Alexander” follows the life of one of the greatest military leaders in ancient history and his quest to conquer the entire known world. The Oliver Stone biopic was heavily criticized for its long length and lack of emotional involvement. It failed to get any major award nominations, excluding its six well-deserved Razzie nominations.
#11. The Day the Earth Stood Still
Smart Rating: 19.39
Release Year: 2008
Despite outstanding special effects, the remake of the 1951 classic sci-fi film received abysmal ratings on Rotten Tomatoes from critics and audiences alike. The marketing team must have done something right, however, because the film earned quite a profit internationally.
#10. Bewitched
Smart Rating: 18.57
Release Year: 2005
In the self-referential, big screen adaptation of “Bewitched,” Nicole Kidman stars opposite Will Ferrell as a real-life witch who is cast in the big screen adaptation of “Bewitched.” Critics underscored the film’s lack of direction, and it garnered nominations from the Razzies and the Stinkers Bad Movie Awards.
#9. New Year’s Eve
Smart Rating: 18.06
Release Year: 2011
The follow-up to Garry Marshall’s box office killer “Valentine’s Day,” “New Year’s Eve” maintains the star-studded formula to tell a handful of intertwining romantic stories all happening on the most exciting day in New York City. “New Year’s Eve” earned a well-deserved 7 percent on Rotten Tomatoes but still made New Line Cinema almost $100 million in profit.
#8. Little Fockers
Smart Rating: 17.86
Release Year: 2010
The third in Stiller’s “Meet the Parents” franchise, “Little Fockers” adds kids to the mix and forces the struggling patriarch of the Focker family to take a second job, which raises red flags for his overbearing father-in-law. The lowest rated of the three films, “Little Fockers” still performed well at the box office, but it likely will not be revived for a fourth installment.
#7. The Women
Smart Rating: 17.63
Release Year: 2008
A remake of the 1939 classic, this update of “The Women” follows a circle of wealthy, successful women in New York City and the chaos that ensues after one of their marriages is upset by an affair. The film only received a 13 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and critic Stella Papamichael sharply commented, “The 1930s original feels more cutting-edge than this re-do.”
#6. Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore
Smart Rating: 17.55
Release Year: 2010
In this sequel, the warring cats and dogs call a temporary truce to thwart a rogue feline spy named Kitty Galore and her quest for world domination. Inexplicably premiering almost a decade after the first installment in the franchise, the second film hardly made a splash at the box office and wasn’t well received by critics or audiences.
#5. Marmaduke
Smart Rating: 17.24
Release Year: 2010
Based on the 50-year-old comic strip created by Brad Anderson, the live-action adaptation of “Marmaduke” reimagines the title character as a smart-talking, angst-ridden teenage dog causing trouble for his family after they relocate to Southern California. Marmaduke was a far more successful dog on paper, however, and the movie earned less than $37 million at U.S. box offices.
#4. Sphere
Smart Rating: 17.15
Release Year: 1998
A group of scientists explore a mysterious spacecraft discovered under three 300 years’ worth of coral growth at the bottom of the ocean. Based on the best-selling Michael Crichton book and directed by Barry Levinson, the project should have been a huge success, but turned out to be both a critical and box-office flop.
#3. The Love Guru
Smart Rating: 15.93
Release Year: 2008
This gag-filled comedy follows Pitka, an aspiring self-help guru who uses the wisdom he gleaned from life in an Indian spiritual community to heal the relationships of troubled American couples. Even though it brought back much of the iconic “Austin Powers” cast, “The Love Guru” was not well received by critics and made less than $40 million in box offices worldwide.
#2. Old Dogs
Smart Rating: 14.65
Release Year: 2009
“Old Dogs,” a movie with only a 5 percent critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes, follows two friends and business partners whose lives are turned upside down when a series of strange circumstances land them in the care of 7-year-old twins. Critics almost universally hated the film, but audiences responded well to the Williams-Travolta collaboration.
#1. Batman & Robin
Smart Rating: 14.26
Release Year: 1997
Featuring Clooney’s only turn as Batman, this aesthetically unpleasant adaptation of the iconic DC Comics series saw the title characters facing off against Poison Ivy and a bizarrely cast Mr. Freeze. Nearly two decades after its release, the audience still talks trash about the movie. Both George Clooney and director Joel Schumacher have been kind enough to apologize for making such a horrible film.
