After one month of polling, 3,167 votes from Australian film fans have been tallied.
Here we list 1st to 10th placings, SEE THE FULL TOP 20 IN OUR ORIGINAL FEATURE HERE. And see our breakdown of the Best & Worst Movies here, showing which directors and genres appear most
1. Battlefield Earth
Here it is, the worst film of all time: the John Travolta-starring adaptation of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s 1982 novel Battlefield Earth. It ticks all the right boxes: commercial failure, critical failure, any-reasonable-measure failure. Criticisms reach every facet of production: the acting, the script, the score, the camerawork and the art direction. The story here covers only half of Hubbard’s book, Travolta planned on a sequel to cover the second half.
Widely regarding as one of the worst ever, screenwriter J.D. Shapiro even penned an open apology. “Let me start by apologising to anyone who went to see Battlefield Earth“, he says, “The only time I saw the movie was at the premiere, which was one too many times… Now, looking back at the movie I can’t help but be strangely proud of it. Because out of all the sucky movies, mine is the suckiest.”
2. Sharnado
Here’s a bad movie that wants to be bad, and excels. The story sees sharks unleashed on the streets of Los Angeles after a waterspout plucks them from the ocean. Cue flying sharks, a screaming Tara Reid, plot holes big enough to fit a… shark… and CGI created by Satan himself. Features this gem of an exchange – Baz: “Storm’s dying down.” Nova: “How can you tell?” Baz: “Not as many sharks flying around”.
3. Batman & Robin
It’s easy to forget (actually it’s not) that Batman – who can reach the dizzying heights of The Dark Knight – can also sink so low. Returning to its high-camp screen origins, Joel Schumacher ‘s 1997 version chose bat nipples over verisimilitude, and excessive puns over being good. There’s a lot wrong with it. Schumacher apologised, and so did George Clooney this year on Graham Norton: “I always apologise for Batman & Robin, let me just say that I’d actually thought I’d destroyed the franchise until somebody else brought it back years later and changed it. I thought at the time that this was going to be a very good career move. It wasn’t.”
4. Australia
Well this is harsh. This 2008 outback epic by Baz Luhrmann didn’t lack for visual beauty, but it did lack characters. And plot. While fourth-worst movie ever may seem rough, Australia cleary rubbed Australia the wrong way. Said the Sydney Morning Herald (in a not totally unflattering review): “It’s much too long at almost three hours, deliriously camp and shamelessly overdone… To quote Oklahoma, one of the few Hollywood classics not to lend its influence to Luhrmann’s style, or rather medley of styles, the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye.”
5. The Room
Even with The Room being an inadvertent cultural treasure, it still manages to surprise on both first and subsequent viewings. A testament to blind ego and an indictment of the “evils” of women, Tommy Wiseau may now try to retrospectively paint this vanity project as a black comedy, but the reality is that it’s both an often-inept trainwreck and compellingly watchable. The only thing stranger than the film is the story behind it, as recounted in the book The Disaster Artist.
6. Gigli
What is it with Ben Affleck turning lesbians straight on film? As if Chasing Amy wasn’t enough of a reach, here he tames the Sapphic tastes of a badass crim, played by real-life girlfriend of the time Jennifer Lopez. “It’s turkey time. Gobble gobble”, she entices, in this bizarre “thriller”. Elsewhere Al Pacino and Christopher Walken inexplicably cameo, Justin Bartha (The Hangover) unwisely goes full retard as Affleck’s Baywatch-obsessed, mentally handicapped brother, and yet it’s still a tough watch and predictable box office bomb.
7. Troll 2
There’s stiff competition in the worst movie ever stakes, but this proudly makes its case before a single frame rolls. That’s because there isn’t a single troll in the movie! The evil creatures in this wonderfully uneven horror are goblins, vegetarian goblins, who want to eat people, but have to transform them into plant form first. Relentlessly quotable, topped only by The Room, this similarly has to be seen to be believed – before viewing the doco about it, Best Worst Movie.
8. 50 Shades of Grey
There was plenty of curiosity surrounding the big screen adaption of the lite-porn literary phenomenon. In a post-internet world, would Fifty Shades reach the heights of soft-core VHS-era flesh-fests like spiritual predecessors 9½ Weeks? Well, in a word, no. Despite its leads looking the part, this fantasy gone wrong simply does not translate onscreen, not helped by awful dialogue. We can only wonder how much worse the series is gonna get…
9. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
If you placed a potato-coloured model in hot pants shaking her ass next to a dryer with car engine shrapnel in it while playing continuous audio of Shia Labeouf screaming “No no no no no no no no!” for two and a half hours, then you would have faithfully recreated this hilariously bad sequel from Michael Bay. (But hey, it’s still one of the highest grossing films of all time.)
10. Dumb & Dumber
What the hell is your problem with Dumb & Dumber, Australia? It’s hilarious. Annoying hilarious, but hilarious nonetheless.
SEE THE FULL TOP 20 IN OUR ORIGINAL FEATURE HERE.
