Since the black-and-white era, Hollywood has celebrated the best that filmmakers have to offer. The Oscars and Golden Globes reward actors, directors, and technical teams for their artistic achievements in creating the movies that stand out in a given year. That’s all well and good, but let’s be honest: not every movie-stirring conversation deserves an Oscar.
As much as we love a good Oscar contender here at PixlParade, we aren’t immune to the charms of bad movies. And of course, not all trash is created equal. That’s exactly why the Golden Raspberry Awards exist. Some of these Worst Picture winners are genuinely entertaining trainwrecks you can watch with friends on a Friday night. Others are joyless corporate cash grabs that feel like a punishment to sit through. Today, we’re here to settle the matter: Which Razzie winner is the best?
Vote for the Best Razzie Winner
Below, we have listed some of the most famous—and infamous—films that have taken home the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Picture. We want to hear your opinion on which of these cinematic disasters is a secret masterpiece and which truly belong in the garbage bin of history. Vote in our poll for the Razzie winner you think deserves redemption!
And just for fun, let’s see which movie viewers dislike the most. Vote for your least favorite Razzie winner below:
If you need a refresher on the last four and a half decades of cinematic sludge we’re dealing with, check out our rundown below.
What Is a Razzie Award?
More commonly known as the Razzies, this award was created in 1981 by film fan and publicist John J. B. Wilson. The Razzies began as a small living room party where friends jokingly handed out awards for the worst movies of the year. The idea caught on quickly, and within a few years, it became an annual Hollywood event.
The Razzies traditionally take place the night before the Academy Awards. Instead of gold statues and tearful speeches thanking the academy, they hand out cheap plastic and gold-spray-painted berries to the absolute lowest common denominators of cinema. Over the decades, this ceremony has become a fun tradition for movie fans who thoroughly enjoy watching mega-budget misfires and misguided vanity projects get publicly roasted. Some winners are genuine disasters that vanished the moment they left theaters. Others slowly turned into cult favorites. And to add to the fun, some stars will even show up to accept their plastic berries in person.
Golden Raspberry Award; image credit: djrioblog.com
Razzie Rundown
The 1980s
After the strange, experimental films that emerged from the ‘70s and continued into the early ‘80s, the Razzie Awards were practically inevitable. During this time, Hollywood had lost some footing after the Golden Age of cinema started to dry up, and films got weird. The very first Razzie winner is a perfect example. In 1980, the trophy went to Can’t Stop the Music, a disco musical starring the Village People that aired just past the peak of the disco era in America, making it feel horribly dated even at release.
Can’t Stop the Music; image credit: Associated Film Distribution
A year later came Mommie Dearest, the infamous Joan Crawford biopic starring Faye Dunaway. The movie is pure melodrama, and critics tore it apart at release. However, decades later, it’s become a staple of queer culture, and “No wire hangers!” has outlived most Oscar-winning dialogue.
There were also plenty of baffling vanity projects, like Prince directing Under the Cherry Moon and Bill Cosby trying his hand at a spy spoof with Leonard Part 6. Neither of those gambles paid off, but the crowning achievement of 1980s bad cinema has to be Howard the Duck. George Lucas backed this wildly expensive film about an anthropomorphic alien duck who drinks beer and hits on human women. It terrified children and confused adults, and the confusing decision to greenlight a giant animatronic duck movie perfectly encapsulates the wild swings studios were taking back then.
Howard the Duck; image credit: Universal Studios
The 1990s
Moving into the 1990s, the Razzies found a new favorite genre to mercilessly mock: erotic thrillers. The decade was packed with movies trying desperately to be edgy and sexy, only to end up looking completely ridiculous. The undisputed queen of this era is Paul Verhoeven and his NC-17 nightmare Showgirls, which swept the awards in 1995. Critics absolutely despised it at the time, calling it trashy and devoid of acting talent, but these days it’s become a cult classic.
Showgirls; image credit: MGM Studios, United Artists
Similarly, Indecent Proposal, Color of Night, and Striptease featured big stars and sexy scandals, but critics weren’t impressed.
Poor Kevin Costner, coming off his highs of Dances with Wolves and Field of Dreams, had a couple of nominations in the ‘90s. In 1997, he “won” with The Postman, a nearly three-hour post-apocalyptic epic about delivering mail.
Rounding out the millennium was Will Smith’s Wild Wild West. While big mechanical spiders are fun in theory, they didn’t land like the aliens in Men in Black. To make matters worse, Smith famously turned down the role of Neo in The Matrix for his own project.
Wild Wild West; image credit: Warner Bros.
The 2000s
If the early to mid-20th century was the Golden Age of cinema, then the early 2000s were the golden age of bad celebrity vanity projects. Gigli in 2003 is the ultimate example. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez were the biggest tabloid couple on the planet that year, and their mobster romantic comedy was so bland that it didn’t even have lasting power as a “so bad it’s good” movie. Madonna also took a massive hit when she teamed up with her then-husband Guy Ritchie for Swept Away in 2002. Then, Mike Myers actually managed to kill his own momentum from Austen Powers entirely with The Love Guru in 2008, a comedy so painfully unfunny that audiences actively walked out of theaters. All three films were so bad that they have nearly been forgotten in the annals of bad film history.
Swept Away; image credit: Screen Gems
However, the decade was really kicked off by Battlefield Earth. Between John Travolta’s alien dreadlocks and platform boots, the bad acting, terrible writing, and weird cinematography choices, this movie was destined for a Razzie Award.
A year later, Freddy Got Fingered offended and confused us all, taking home the Golden Raspberry for its gross, absurdist humor. (But, to be fair, “Daddy, would you like some sausage,” is still a recognizable meme today.)
Before the era of big superhero blockbusters, comic book character movies were smaller, riskier productions. In 2004, Halle Berry delivered Catwoman, teaching us all why ignoring the source material in this genre was not the sort of risk that paid off. However, showing up to accept her award with her previous year’s Oscar in hand was a brilliant move.
Halle Berry with her Razzie Award and Oscar; image credit: razzies.com
The 2010s
Avatar: The Last Airbender is considered one of the best shows of all time, and M. Night Shyamalan started the decade off by butchering its live-action adaptation, earning the first Razzie of the 2010s.
The Last Airbender; image credit: Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon Movies
Movie 43 arrived in 2013, featuring a truly impressive roster of A-list celebrities who were somehow tricked into participating in a series of unbelievably gross and unfunny sketch comedies. Then, making history, Jack and Jill in 2011 swept nearly every Razzie category, with Adam Sandler playing both twins in a comedy that felt like it was derived from a leftover sketch from his SNL days.
While The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 and Fifty Shades of Grey were both massive financial successes, they each took home a Razzie (although Twilight is seeing quite the ironic renaissance among fans a decade on).
Thankfully, the decade ended with a masterpiece of modern trash. Cats in 2019 was one of the most cursed things ever to make it to the big screen, and no matter how good Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music is, it turns out some stage plays can’t be translated to live-action films without making a Razzie winner.
Cats; image credit: Universal Pictures
The 2020s
We are only halfway through the 2020s, but the Razzies have already collected an impressive pile of cinematic garbage thanks to streaming services. The decade kicked off weirdly with Absolute Proof in 2020, a bizarre political documentary that didn’t quite land.
Blonde, released in 2022, stirred controversy for its bleak portrait of Marilyn Monroe. The backlash was less about its performances and direction than about its cruel portrayal of the iconic Hollywood Star, which won it the award that year.
Blonde; image credit: Netflix
In 2023, just one year after its source material became public domain, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey won the top prize. This low-budget slasher film featured Pooh Bear murdering college students and didn’t work past the shock value of its gimmicky premise.
Finally, for 2025, the big win went to War of the Worlds, yet another remake of H.G. Wells’ famous story. This version stars Ice Cube and, thanks to its excessive Amazon product placement and bad acting, has earned it a remarkable 6 out of 100 on Metacritic, as well as a Razzie.
War of the Worlds; image credit: Amazon Prime Video
So, what do you think? Which of these Razzie award winners deserves to be celebrated as a misunderstood gem and which one actually hurts your brain to think about? If you haven’t yet, scroll on up and cast your votes.
Once you have locked in your choice, stick around to check out our other polls, read our reviews of movies that actually deserve your time, and stay up to date on today’s pop culture.
See more:
- The Worst Comedy Movies of All Time, According to Audiences
- What Is the Best Movie of All Time?
- POLL: Which Marvel Cinematic Universe Film Is the Best? And Which Is the Worst?
Source: Wikipedia
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