The Razzies Hate Fun
You can just say you don't have taste
The soulless gremlins who run the Razzies have once again come out of the dank pit in which they reside to tell us which movies they hated this year. Some of them, like Space Jam: A New Legacy and Dear Evan Hansen for Worst Picture, are to be expected. Those are, in fact, bad movies. Other choices, like the several nominations for Diana: The Musical, make me wonder what the actual eligibility rules are — does a Broadway show filmed for Netflix actually count as a movie? Then there are the nominations that reveal what is one of the undeniable truths about the Razzies: they hate when someone has any fun at all.
This year, both Ben Affleck and Jared Leto were nominated for what were arguably two of the best performances of the year in The Last Duel and House of Gucci, respectively. What these performances have in common is that both men are making choices and confidently standing by them. As Nicholas Russell wrote for this website, “Affleck’s dopey portrayal of a rich, powerful man so positively bored, unimpressed, and continually spoiled by life that he leaves his own taste about which shade of gold he likes best up to other people is a stroke of genius.”
Leto is giving a similarly genius performance as the goofy, scorned Paolo Gucci. Is his accent bad? Well, we’d have to define what “bad” means, but it definitely is an accent, and it is definitely fun, which is more than I can say for his co-star Adam Driver (from Girls). Despite all the prosthetics and Waluigi accent, there are parts of House of Gucci where Leto manages to be the most sympathetic character on screen, and I’m saying that as someone who usually does not care for him as an actor at all.
But this is nothing new for the Razzies. They are an awards show named after a fart noise after all. The people who vote on these awards pay at least $40 (and up to $500) in order to tell the whole world that they hated Lindsay Lohan’s performance in I Know Who Killed Me. Imagine being that miserable. Well, misery loves being tasteless, and without further ado here are some of the worst Razzie winners of all time.
Showgirls
Paul Verhoeven’s only-now understood classic basically swept the 1995 Razzies, derailing the careers of most of its stars along the way. It “won” Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Actress, Worst Screenplay, Worst Screen Couple, Worst New Star, and Worst Original Song. It was nominated for six other Razzies, and four years later it won Worst Film of the Decade. In conclusion, the Razzies hate women and are too dumb to understand satire. Elizabeth Berkley, I am so sorry.
Mommie Dearest
Worst Picture? Once again, shocking that these fearless cinephiles don’t appreciate camp.
Crossroads
I am not going to go to the mat for Britney Spears’s attempt to break into film. I don’t think she deserved to be named the Worst Actress of 2002, but that’s not the most egregious award Crossroads won that year. It took home the Razzie for Worst Song for “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman.” How fucking dare they. The song that won Best Original Song at the Oscars that year was “Into the West” from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Hum a few bars of that one for me right now. Meanwhile, “I'm not a girl, don't tell me what to believe/I'm just tryin' to find the woman in me,” is what I say to myself in the mirror every single morning.
Spice World
All five of the Spice Girls shared the Worst Actress Razzie in 1998. Sorry that five women got together to make one of the most fun movies of all time. First of all, they’re pretty good at what they’ve been tasked to do, and second of all, Mel B alone deserved some kind of accolade for the way she says “Yeah, no cheese.”
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2
The conclusion to the Twilight series winning seven Razzies is a shame, because it’s the most fun movie in the entire series. Michael Sheen’s head literally gets popped off as if it were spring loaded. Lee Pace plays a vampire from the Revolutionary War. You meet Renesmee, for Christ’s sake. The Bill Condon-helmed Twilight movies are arguably the only ones that understand that the entire premise is goofy, and play into that to great effect. Eclipse, on the other hand — well we can argue about that one later.
