Audiences have a love-hate relationship with the opinions of acclaimed critic, Roger Ebert. His fiery opinions on movies he deemed the worst of all time often did not represent the majority of audiences who are more willing to give movies a pass for their shortfalls. The romance genre was not left untouched by Ebert's divisive thoughts, especially his low ratings of iconic movies like The Wedding Singer, Dirty Dancing, and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. He balked at films that alleged love stories too good to be believable, those that used love as an excuse for voyeuristic sex scenes, and ones that diminished the romantic experience for the sake of crude, raunchy comedy.
The best romance movies feature complicated and passionate love stories in which their protagonists sometimes don't end up together. Movies of this genre demand the emotional investment of its viewers in believable, and often tragic, pursuits of love and happiness while also making room for comedic relief. The worst romance movies of all time do none of these things, while simultaneously setting the bar so low for what is acceptable in the eyes of love.
10 'The Blue Lagoon' (1980)
Directed by Randal Kleiser
Image via Columbia Pictures
A teen survival movie based on the novel by Henry De Vere Staacpoole, Blue Lagoon is one of the genre's top contenders on Ebert's Most Hated Movies List. The movie stars Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins as two unsupervised teens who grew up on a Pacific Island following a childhood shipwreck, learning to survive and thrive while quickly discovering the nature of maturing. Ebert's one-and-a-half-star review called it "a wildly idealized romance" with so much potential to be an installment in the adventure genre, but landed with teenage prurience and an Adam and Eve-style tale instead.
"'The Blue Lagoon' is the dumbest movie of the year. It could conceivably have been made interesting, if any serious attempt had been made to explore what might really happen if two 7-year-old kids were shipwrecked on an island."
Surprisingly, the movie has one Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography. With a rotten reception from critics and audiences, Blue Lagoon holds a complete lack of substance while treading around the edges of a soft-core porn movie. Ebert took issue with the movie's ending, calling it "enraging" and a "cop-out," but ultimately made sense given the filmmakers' feeble attempts to adapt the source material.
This Oscar-winning symbolic 80s movie earned a Most Hated List spot and a one-and-a-half-star award from Ebert. Flashdance is the story of Alex Owens (Jennifer Beals), an 18-year-old welder by day and go-go dancer by night with big dreams of attending a prestigious ballet school in Pittsburgh. Along the way, she falls for her boss Nick (Michael Nouri), who encourages her pursuit of a fulfilling career. Ebert argued that the real-life story of Beals' rise to the role would've been a better story than what was written in Flashdance.
"If this movie had spent just a little more effort getting to know the heroine of its story, and a little less time trying to rip off 'Saturday Night Fever,' it might have been a much better film."
For Ebert and the critic consensus, Beals' performance was one of the few highlights of the film that lacked the character development her talent deserved. The movie is jam-packed with elements that the writers masked as an extension of Beals' Alex, but felt too genre-trope-y. The romance felt like an add-on to what could've been a strong female-driven movie about the hustle of the pursuit to create a better life. Ebert called it "one of those movies that goes for a slice of life and ends up with three pies."
8 'Stealing Home' (1988)
Directed by Steven Kampmann & William Porter
Image via Warner Bros.
Despite overwhelming audience adoration for the tragic story of love and loss, Ebert wept no tears for what he called "paralyzing sincerity" in his one-star review. The movie stars Mark Harmon as a failing baseball player, Billy, who makes the emotionally arduous journey back to his seaside town to collect the ashes of his childhood sweetheart, Katie (Jodie Foster). Stealing Home is told through Billy's present journey and flashbacks detailing the nostalgic romance of Billy and Katie's relationship. The movie is allegedly based on real-life experiences of the co-writers and directors, Steven Kampmann and William Porter.
"Much of the film suffers from the 'you shoulda been there' syndrome, in which scenes feel suspiciously like family legends that should have been left around the dinner table instead of being inflicted on us."
From questionable casting choices for Billy's younger versions to the predictable clichés viewers see before the characters, Stealing Home stole only Ebert's time trying to make sense of it. While audiences view the movie as one of Foster's most underrated movies, Ebert couldn't get past the emotionally charged nature of the premise, calling it "so earnest and sincere and pathetic and dripping with pathos that it cries out to be satirized."
An adolescent romance movie that wound up on Ebert's Most Hated List, Friends earned a scathing review and a one-star rating from the critic. The movie is about two young lovers, an orphaned French girl (Anicée Alvina) and a rich English boy (Sean Bury) who flee the adult world to create a life of their own. Ebert called it "the most sickening piece of corrupt slop I’ve seen in a long time," bashing the movie for its undisguised cynicism and manipulation of coming-of-age romance with parading naivety.
"It has so many idyllic romps through the fields, so many sunsets, so many phony emotional peaks and so much pandering to the youth audience in it that, finally, it becomes a grotesque parody of itself."
Ebert took issue with the movie's voyeuristic approach to the sexual relationship the characters divulge into, calling the approach "just plain dirty. And the worst thing is that the movie seems to like it that way." The idyllic romantic escapism of Friends is what Ebert described as making "you squirm with embarrassment," making it one of Ebert's most-hated romantic movies.
A remake of Italian filmmaker Lina Wertmüller's 1974 film, in which Ebert gave a four-star glowing review, Guy Ritchie's attemptswapped the political and social context for sentimental. Swept Away stars Madonna as a self-centered socialite, Amber, who gets stranded on a deserted island with her ship's deckhand, Giuseppe (Adriano Giannini). To survive, Amber must relinquish the control she's used to brandishing and allow Giuseppe's survival skills to chart their course, the remoteness of their situation bringing them together. Ebert gave the remake a one-star rating, wishing the characters had taken the original movie with them to the island.
"This story was about something when Wertmuller directed it, but now it’s not about anything at all. It’s lost the politics and the social observation and become just another situation romance about a couple of saps stuck in an inarticulate screenplay."
While in love with the original film and premise, Ebert takes issue with the believability of Ritchie's movie. Madonna's character is too unlikable to win over the audience by the end with an arc that Ebert isn't sure really exists. The conventional love the pair seem to indulge in is questionable and does Giuseppe really love Amber or is it just a bond of shared experience? While it's not the worst romance premise for Ebert, it's one of the worst executions.
The movie's only saving grace was its Oscar-nominated song "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now."Mannequin stars Andrew McCarthy as an unemployed artist, Jonathan, who gets a job as a window dresser in Philly whose mannequin comes to life as a reincarnated Egyptian princess, Emmy (Kim Cattrall). Emmy inspires Jonathan to fuel his artistic ability into creating window displays. The pair fall in love along the way. Ebert gave the movie a half-star rating in his simple and unamused review.
"A lot of bad movies are fairly throbbing with life. 'Mannequin' is dead. The wake lasts 1 1/2 hours, and then we can leave the theater."
From the start, audiences were asked to suspend belief for the sake of a fantasy love story; however, the logic of an Egyptian princess coming back to 1987 Philadelphia while also understanding language and modern society was a bit much. The character roll call brings nothing new to audiences with reused clichés and "people [who] do exactly what we expect them to do, exactly when we expect them to do it." For Ebert, the movie was as lifeless as its source subject while not remaining inherently bad, but just one of the worst attempts at romance.
There was absolutely no love lost between Ebert and this 80s rom-com, the critic giving it a half-star rating in his tough review. Can't Buy Me Love stars Patrick Dempsey as Ronald Miller, an outcast dreaming of popularity who offers his dream girl, Cindy Mancini (Amanda Peterson), $1,000 to go out with him for a month. Cindy uses the money to get herself out of a jam at home and agrees. Unpopular Boy likes Popular Girl, a teenage love story audiences have seen before, but this time filmmakers eliminated the teenage innocence of the genre and went straight for cynicism and materialism.
"If 'Can’t Buy Me Love' had been intended as a satirical attack on American values – if cynicism had been its target – we might be on to something here. But no. On the basis of the evidence, the people who made this movie are so materialistic they actually think this is a 'teenage comedy.' Can’t they see the screenplay’s rotten core?"
While audiences opted to not look below the surface meaning of the movie, Ebert led critics in bashing Can't Buy Me Love for its blatant minimalization of the adolescent romantic experience to a possession-oriented transaction. Ebert points out genre films that get it right, like Sixteen Candles and Lucas, where the binary love story focuses on the sincerity of a seemingly impossible match. It's safe to say Ebert's love wasn't bought with this movie.
A copy-and-paste cross-genre movie, The Pick-Up Artist and its recycled material earned a half-star rating, making it a contender for one of the worst romance movies of all time. The Brat-Pack movie stars Robert Downey Jr. as Jack Jericho, a womanizer who meets his match when he tries his luck with Randy Jensen (Molly Ringwald), who rejects his advances. As Jack's personality grows on Randy, he learns that her alcoholic father, Flash (Dennis Hopper), is in trouble with the mafia. Ebert called the movie "appallingly silly" and "ungainly and pointless."
"'The Pickup Artist' is so filled with borrowings and archetypes and cliches that there is no room for the one thing that might have saved it: Molly Ringwald’s charm."
The Pick-Up Artist suffers from an identity crisis as it tries to kindle a love story between the unlikeable tool and a fiery, well-meaning daughter made complicated by a gambling debt. The movie borrows from too many performances and movies to be original while failing to overcome being anything more than a "horny teenage movie" with a "dreadfully sincere conclusion."
The Pick-up Artist
A womanizer meets his match when he falls for a woman in debt to the mafia.
Director James Toback
Release Date September 18, 1987
Actors Molly Ringwald, Robert Downey, Dennis Hopper, Harvey Keitel, Danny Aiello
The Pick-Up Artist is not currently available for streaming in the U.S.
2 'Saving Silverman' (2001)
Directed by Dennis Dugan
Image via Columbia Pictures
A bromance film that squeaked by with a half-star review from Ebert, Saving Silverman is "a movie so desperately in need of laughs." The film stars Jason Biggs, Jack Black, and Steven Zahn as a trio of lifelong friends, two of whom are trying to prevent their best friend from marrying a woman he doesn't love but convincing him she's dead and reuniting him with his first love.
"... you should see it, as an example of the lowest slopes of the bell-shaped curve. This is the kind of movie that gives even its defenders fits of desperation."
In Ebert's professional opinion, he urged Biggs to forge a new genre career path instead of continuously starring in "dumb sex comed[ies]." What could have been a right love wrong time revisited romance movie turned into a pointless bro-bonding comedy that squandered away an opportunity to be a stand-up installment in the rom-com genre.
Ebert left absolutely nothing unsaid in his scorching review of Jenny McCarthy-Wahlberg's screenwriting debut. Dirty Love is a break-up rom-com about the dating failures of a woman named Rebecca (McCarthy-Wahlberg) after she catches her model boyfriend in bed with another woman. Love seems out of reach as she comes to terms with her break-up while going on a series of terrible dates. Ebert deemed the flick a thumbs down in his zero-star review.
"On the basis of 'Dirty Love,' I am not certain that anyone involved has ever seen a movie, or knows what one is. I would like to invite poor Jenny McCarthy up here to the Toronto Film Festival, where I am writing this review while wonderful films are playing all over town, and get her a pass, and require her to go to four movies a day until she gets the idea."
In addition to calling Dirty Love"hopelessly incompetent" and "so pitiful, it doesn’t rise to the level of badness," Ebert also took issue with the cultural appropriation of Carmen Electra's character and her offensive antics. The overall film is crude, laughless, and, in Ebert's opinion, a humiliating outing for McCarthy-Wahlberg, making it possibly the worst romantic movie of all time.
Image by Federico Napoli
Image via Columbia Pictures .jpg)
Image via Paramount Pictures 
Image via Warner Bros. 
Image via Paramount Pictures 
Image via Sony Pictures Releasing 
Image via Twentieth Century Fox 
Image via Touchstone Pictures 
Image via 20th Century Studios 
Image via Columbia Pictures 
Image via First Look Studios 
:quality(85):upscale()/2024/02/20/759/n/1922794/6ced926565d4dda2135788.24126660_.jpg)
:quality(85):upscale()/2024/10/24/034/n/49352476/77b7cf81671add0adc63a2.54797453_.jpg)
English (US) ·