Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • There's nothing quite as unsatisfying as a bad comedy.

  • An awful horror flick might provide some unexpected laughs, and an atrocious action film might have a few impressive stunts.

  • But watching someone who's supposed to be funny and failing in every possible way is just downright painful.

  • From pathetic sequels to ill-advised passion projects, here are some of the cringeworthy comedies that bombed with a zero rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

  • True Memoirs of an International Assassin

  • If you visit Kevin James' page on Rotten Tomatoes, you'll see a lot of green splotches.

  • But if you're looking for the ultimate Kevin James calamity, then head over to Netflix and check out True Memoirs of an International Assassin, the worst-reviewed film of the comedian's career.

  • This 2016 film follows James as a schlubby writer who pens a bestselling novel about an international assassin.

  • Unfortunately, his publisher is marketing the book as nonfiction, so everybody thinks James is a real-life assassin.

  • As a result, he's kidnapped and taken to Venezuela, where he finds himself in the middle of a deadly game involving South American revolutionaries and a Russian gangster.

  • "I punched you. You punch like a small child.

  • It hurt you. It tickled."

  • Honestly, it's not a bad premise, but the execution is completely lackluster.

  • The A.V. Club described the film as "a poor man's Edgar Wright movie," while RogerEbert.com noted that it keeps using the same gags over and over.

  • "Never bring a knife AAAAAAAHHHHHH! You brought a knife to a gunfight!"

  • All Nighter

  • The 2017 film All Nighter finds J.K. Simmons playing an ultra-manly dad whose daughter has disappeared,

  • so he teams up with her ex-boyfriend, a banjo-loving hippie played by Emile Hirsch.

  • As they look for her, they encounter a whole host of bizarre characters while Simmons teaches Hirsch how to be a real "man."

  • Aside from its very specific views on manhood, critics agreed the movie suffers from some shoddy directing and a weak script.

  • "A man should know how to drive.

  • I have a bicycle.

  • Well, congrats on that.

  • It's actually considered very masculine in the Netherlands"

  • As Derek Smith of Slant Magazine put it, All Nighter jumps back and forth from "mystery" to "mismatched-buddy movie" to "inspirational redemptive drama,"

  • and sadly, it can't stick any of its landings.

  • Still, Simmons does his best to get audiences laughing, because slump or no slump, the man is always a pro.

  • The Con Is On

  • The Con Is On boasts a pretty incredible cast led by Uma Thurman, Tim Roth, Alice Eve and Sofia Vergara.

  • The plot revolves around Thurman as a con artist who owes money to a dangerous kingpin, so she decides to steal a priceless jewel from her alcoholic husband's ex-wife.

  • But it just can't compare to better heist films, as it relies on "edgy" humor that really isn't all that edgy.

  • "You haven't ---- me."

  • That impressive cast actually weighs the movie down, as the characters are just loud, eccentric, and lacking any real human elements.

  • So while it's always nice to see Uma Thurman in action, it's hard not to wish this particular film wasn't trying to con audiences into wasting an hour and 30 minutes of their time watching it.

  • Surfer, Dude

  • 2008's Surfer, Dude was a bit of a passion project for Matthew McConaughey, as it combined catching waves, smoking weed, and walking around without a shirt on.

  • The plot, very predictably, involves a stoned surfer who just wants to enjoy the ocean.

  • "Not feeling it.

  • Not into it.

  • I just wanna surf.

  • Beat the stove day to day."

  • Unfortunately, Mother Nature and the Man are getting in the way, so McConaughey fights back with the power of pot.

  • And as this movie co-stars Woody Harrelson and Willie Nelson, there's a whole lot of ganja going on.

  • Sadly, it was a complete wipeout with the critics, but fortunately, The Lincoln Lawyer came along in 2011 and saved McConaughey's career,

  • leaving Surfer, Dude adrift in the sea of bad Hollywood comedies.

  • Look Who's Talking Now

  • John Travolta's career has seen some incredible highs and some embarrassing lows, but he a hit rock bottom with Look Who's Talking Now,

  • the final installment in the Look Who's Talking trilogy.

  • The series got started in 1989, with Travolta playing a cab driver who falls in love with a single mom played by Kirstie Alley,

  • who has a talking baby that sounds like Bruce Willis.

  • In the sequel, Alley and Travolta have a daughter who sounds like Roseanne Barr.

  • In part three, we meet two bickering dogs voiced by Danny DeVito and Diane Keaton, who eventually fall in love.

  • Multiple critics slammed the movie as a ripoff of Lady and the Tramp.

  • But instead of of romantic spaghetti dinners, Look Who's Talking Now is loaded with lousy quips, poop jokes, and lines that feel a little out of place in a kid's film.

  • "It's Daphneeee, you tick magnet.

  • Tick magnet?

  • Like you've never sniffed a butt."

  • The movie also desperately tries to pad out its running time with jaw-droppingly bad fantasy sequences, one of which features a pointless Charles Barkley cameo.

  • "Can I play?

  • With me?

  • Let's get busy."

  • Homer and Eddie

  • Starring James Belushi and Whoopi Goldberg, 1989's Homer and Eddie has largely been forgotten by comedy fans, and that's probably because it just isn't funny.

  • Sure, it tries to be, but it also wants to be a heavy-handed drama.

  • And while that convergence of tears and laughter might work for some films, here it results in disaster.

  • The movie follows a mentally challenged man named Homer who wants to visit his long-lost parents, so he decides to hitchhike his way to Oregon.

  • Along the way, he gets picked up by Eddie, a murderous maniac who's dying of cancer and just escaped from a mental ward.

  • Naturally, the two form a friendship, learn about life, and give Oscar-bait performances that involve a lot of screaming, squealing, and super sappy discussions.

  • "And you want me - and you want me to brush my teeth?

  • You want to brush your teeth now?"

  • In between the conversations about God and the gags involving an overweight prostitute,

  • Belushi and Goldberg's eccentricities keep piling up until you can't help but lose your mind.

There's nothing quite as unsatisfying as a bad comedy.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it