Actors can make or break a movie, and that isn’t limited to the leading men or women. A cast of actors can either lift a movie to Oscar glory or at least make it very popular, or they can drag a movie to the absolute dregs. No actors are immune to this, whether they are newcomers or Oscar winners. A select few bad movies have the infamy of having not just one or two bad acting performances, but a whole cast full of them.
These are special movies for connoisseurs of bad acting, but not so much for the unlucky actors involved who screwed up so badly. These are the worst acted movies in recent memory.
Attack of the Clones
Star Wars fans often have a hard time picking which episode had the worst acting. But Attack of the Clones barely wins out. Mainly because the Attack of the Clones actors are all out performed by a CGI, jumping around Yoda, for one thing. Another factor is Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman dragging all of Attack of the Clones down. Though Christensen gets most of the bashing from Star Wars fans, Portman’s work in Attack of the Clones is an historical low for the entire Star Wars saga. C-3PO even joins in on it with some of the worst lines in Star Wars history during a key battle scene.
Batman and Robin
Batman and Robin is picked on enough already, especially after what Dark Knight did. But Batman and Robin still has to be honored as a masterpiece of bad acting. The only thing worse than seeing Governor Arnold deliver bad puns like a robot is having him snarl his way through 5,000 ice puns. To compensate in the villain department, Uma Thurman delivers 2,000 plant puns in a faux-Mae West voice. George Clooney was sadly chosen to play Batman before he actually became a real actor, while Chris O’Donnell delivers one long whine for two hours on end. And Batman fans may still be looking for Alicia Silverstone’s lost pulse.
Arnold’s second film on this list has nearly as many bad puns as Batman and Robin. Both films make it clear that Arnold’s bad acting gets decidedly worse with the more bad lines he gets, if possible. But like in Batman and Robin, Arnold doesn’t carry the bad acting alone. Rae Dawn Chong’s whimpering helps, as does Dan Hedaya’s “South American accent.” But the actor who out Arnold’s Arnold with terrible action acting is Vernon Wells, whose Bennett is still the most homoerotic villain in 80’s cinema.
Dungeons and Dragons
Fantasy movies can’t always have big time actors like Lord of the Rings got. Dungeons and Dragons gets overacting newcomer Justin Whalin for starters. Dungeons and Dragons also got a whispy Thora Birch, who left behind her acting ability on the set of American Beauty. Then there’s Marlon Wayans, who magically made the stereotype of Stepnfetchit reappear. Dungeons and Dragons even took Jeremy Irons, who was two of cinema’s best villains in Claus von Bulow and Scar, and left him a snarling, bug eyed shell of an actor.
Rocky V
Like with the Star Wars series, the Rocky series has many candidates for the worst acted episode of the franchise. Rocky IV probably wins most of these polls, but it is Rocky V that truly earned it. Rocky V not only killed the franchise for 16 years, it brought every actor involved to a career low, or outright killed their careers. Rocky V finally made Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky turn into a full blown, punch drunk idiot, almost forever killing Rocky’s dignity. Rocky V then allowed Talia Shire and Burt Young to be more naggy and drunk than ever, respectively. Almost mercifully, Sage Stallone Jr and Tommy Morrison were exposed by Rocky V as the amateurs they were before they did more acting damage. As the evil promoter, Richard Gant narrowly avoided being sued by Don King for copyright infringement by the skin of his teeth. All of this could have been Rocky’s final legacy if Rocky Balboa wasn’t made.
The Saw horror series is more about traps than acting, so some slack may have to be cut. But the original Saw still has not been beaten for bad acting. When the entire human cast of Saw is out acted by the voice of Tobin Bell, something is up. Cary Elwes and Danny Glover are already in bad acting history for their career-worst performances in Saw. Co-writer Leigh Whannel really shouldn’t be far behind for trying to act. Amateurs and B-movie actors fill out the rest of Saw’s victims. Any movie that has Lost star Michael Emerson in the cast really shouldn’t be on a worst acted film list. But Saw’s gruesome cast and Emerson’s mere few minutes of work make it possible.
The Specialist
Sylvester Stallone is no stranger to films with bad actors, often being one himself. In The Specialist, however, Stallone’s biggest acting sin is appearing naked in laughable sex scenes with Sharon Stone. This time, Stallone isn’t even the fourth worst actor in his own movie. Eric Roberts is in third, with Rod Steiger second for a Cuban accent almost as awful as Tony Montana. Taking the number one slot is James Woods, in the kind of typical Woods performance that makes a film both entertaining and awful all at once. It takes a special actor to sink lower than Stallone and still stay legitimate, but Woods does it.
The Wicker Man
Nicolas Cage has already inspired tons of Youtube tributes for the kind of awfulness he shows in the new Wicker Man. The old Wicker Man may have been a creepy thriller that was actually good, but it was clearly missing something. Clearly, it missed Cage going overboard even by Cage standards. That was actually a good thing for the rest of the Wicker Man cast. If Cage wasn’t so deranged, Ellen Burstyn might have taken some flack for having Braveheart like face paint. If Cage wasn’t a bigger loon than usual, the other women in The Wicker Man might have gotten blame for their work instead of being victims of Neil LaBute’s alleged sexism.
