21 Best Golf Movies Ranked (Happy Gilmore 2)

(Photo by Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection. HAPPY GILMORE 2.)

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The latest: Happy Gilmore 2 is out now on Netflix!

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Golf may not have lined its shelf with as many movies as other sports (such as baseball, football, and basketball), so you’ve got to appreciate what is available. Let’s take a look at the top 10 golf movies according to the Tomatometer, with Certified Fresh films first. Golf movies may be on an upswing since the best-reviewed movie came out within the past few years: 2021’s The Phantom of the Open, starring Mark Rylance in the true story of a 46-year-old making his way to the British Open having never played before. Further on the Certified Fresh fairway is Caddyshack, the classic, raucous party movie starring Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, and Bill Murray.

Kevin Costner, already the king of baseball movies with the likes of Bull Durham and Field of Dreams, stars in Tin Cup, a popular adult-oriented favorite from the ’90s. Two classic golf comedies came out within a year of each other in the ’50s: Pat and Mike and The Caddy. The former is one of the nine movies Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy starred in together (with Hepburn doing all of her golf work on-camera), and the latter is also from a famous Hollywood duo: Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. The Caddy is right near the middle of their 17 movie collaborations.

We similarly got two ace golf movies within a year in 2016: Swing Away (starring Shannon Elizabeth, soaking in the sunshine in Greece) and Tommy’s Honour (a biopic of legendary Scottish golfer Old Tom Morris, and his relationship with his son). Another biopic to check out is Seve: The Movie, the story of Spanish golfer Seve Ballesteros, who popularized the sport globally for three decades.

Documentaries round out the rest of the top 10 best-reviewed golf movies: The Short Game, in which you can witness the most competitive 7-year-old golfers in the world, and Loopers, which explores the relationship between caddie and golfer to the narration of Bill Murray.

Outside of the top 10 are plenty of audience favorites, including Adam Sandler’s Happy Gilmore, Shia LaBeouf’s The Greatest Game Ever Played, and The Legend of Bagger Vance. —Alex Vo

150 Essential Comedy Movies To Watch Now

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The latest: Grab some garlic bread, Scott Pilgrim is celebrating 15 years! (Actually, you know what? he just left.)

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What makes a comedy a classic? Something that floats on the changing tides of time and taste, remaining relevant – and hilarious? It probably takes more than a football to the groin or a juiced-up fart on the audio track. (Though we’re not not saying those can sometimes be the pinnacle of professional-grade jokes.) We don’t have the answer, but with our Essential list assembling 150 of the best comedies ever made, we’re getting closer to laugh-out-loud enlightenment than humanly thought possible. We’re melting minds, splitting sides, and slapping knees here.

To that end, we’ve included all forms of the comedy movie. From slapstick (Dumb & Dumber, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World) to silent (The General, Modern Times). Rom-coms (Moonstruck, Annie Hall) to screwball (It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby). Parody (Airplane!, Scary Movie) to postmodern (Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Galaxy Quest). These 150 movies will take you to college (Animal House), past some fan favorites (Step Brothers, Super Troopers), and all around the globe (Kung Fu Hustle, Amelie).

There’s no minimum review count for this list. We opened it up to movies of yesteryear, which typically don’t get as many reviews as their modern comedy rivals. Many of these inducted films have high Tomatometer scores and are Certified Fresh, but the Tomatometer was not our only guide. Some comedies that stand the test of time did not necessarily pass the critical test on release, and we’re honoring those here. These are not the best-reviewed comedy films ever released, but they are the essential comedies, movies that broke the Laugh-O-Meter – we’ll totally trademark that soon, so dibs – shaped the genre, molded generations, and which audiences return to time and again, to lift the spirits.

That said, we did ultimately sort the movies by Tomatometer, with Certified Fresh films first. But follow your filthy laughing heart on which to tackle first!

Ready to whip out your funny bone and bash it violently on the nearest flat surface? Then you’re ready for our list of the best comedy movies ever: Rotten Tomatoes’ 150 Essential Comedies! —Alex Vo

150 Best Sports Movies of All Time

In the arena of the sports movie, every story can be told. The impossible underdog team that survives a brutal season into the final game. The kid who’s just starting out and the veteran being pulled back into the game, who both share the same odds: Against. Stories of the power of coming together as a selfless team, and myths of individual strength when you remove all the limits. Sports movies make us cheer, laugh, cry, and scream. They even make us think about renewing that gym membership.

We’re going all the way to the end zone with our list of the 150 Best Sports Movies of All Time, sorted by Adjusted Tomatometer from at least 20 reviews each. The Adjusted Tomatometer is our special formula which takes into account, among other factors, the movie’s year of release and its number of reviews.

Because this is a movie list, there are no TV movies (we pour one out for Brian’s Song), and nothing rated Rotten — even fan favorites like Any Given Sunday. Please deal with your rage accordingly before continuing.

And with our most recent updates, we welcome in new popular hits like The Fire Inside, Best Picture nominee Ford v Ferrari, wrestling family drama Fighting With My Family, the vertigo-inducing Free Solo, and Maiden, about the first all-woman crew in a global yacht race.

Ready? For the leisure, life, and love of the game, here are the 150 Best Sports Movies of All Time! —Alex Vo

(Photo by Touchstone/courtesy Everett Collection)

All Bill Murray Movies Ranked

From tales of crashing bachelor parties and kickball games, to intimate fan pranks that he knows the public will never believe, to his unavailabity outside of a 1-800 number, the antics of lord of chaos Bill Murray could overshadow his actual job as an actor. But this decade alone has seen Certified Fresh hits like Moonrise Kingdom, The Jungle Book, Grand Budapest Hotel, and St. Vincent.

The output compares handsomely even to his ’80s heyday, which saw the likes of Ghostbusters, Stripes, Caddyshack, and Scrooged put into theaters. The ’90s not only had his lead-starring masterpiece Groundhog Day, but also the zany What About Bob?, and his first reinvention as the patron saint of comedic melancholia, Rushmore. All that paved the way for his towering 2000s output, featuring The Royal Tenenbaums, Lost in Translation, his Best Actor-nominated Broken Flowers, and Garfield…which we’re mentioning because it led directly to his inspired cameo in Zombieland.

Now, take a look at Bill Murray movies ranked by Tomatometer. —Alex Vo

(Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images)

It would be easy — and egregiously dismissive — to say that the X-Men character Wolverine alone made Hugh Jackman the star that he is today. Plenty of actors land big roles early in their careers, only to squander the opportunity or fade from memory soon after. From the outset, it was clear that Jackman possessed the kind of onscreen charisma not only to play the gruff hero but also to break off and lead a solo franchise of his own, culminating in a swan song for the character that earned some of the best reviews of any film in 2017, period.

Of course, Jackman is more than just the iconic mutant who helped raise his profile. He has starred in films in a wide variety of genres and worked with several acclaimed directors to establish himself as one of the more versatile leading men working today. This week, for example, he appears in multiple Oscar-nominated director Jason Reitman’s political drama The Front Runner, in which he plays former U.S. presidential candidate Gary Hart, whose 1988 campaign was derailed by reports of an extramarital affair, and it ranks as one of Jackman’s most challenging roles to date. The film is currently in select theaters in New York and Los Angeles before it expands on November 21, and ahead of its release, Jackman chatted with RT to give us his Five Favorite Films, then talked about the new film, the evolution of political journalism, and whether or not he thinks his Wolverine might make a comeback.

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Ryan Fujitani for Rotten Tomatoes: You have this reputation for being one of the nicest people in Hollywood, but that’s gotta be tiring, isn’t it? Is it difficult for you, just having everyone sort of expect you to be the most charming person they’ve ever met?

Hugh Jackman: [laughs] No. What you’ve got to understand is most people assume people in movies are dicks, and arrogant, and expect everything. And I actually think I’m being a slightly watered down version of the way I was brought up, as in my parents would expect me to be nicer, more polite, more appreciative, never allow anyone to do anything for me. So I kind of get away with it, I think, in a way. People go, “Wow.” I always feel what they’re saying is, “For a movie star, you’re kind of nice.”

RT: It’s not, “He’s a nice guy.” It’s, “He’s a nice guy for a movie star.”

Jackman: “For a movie star.” Exactly. Like, people say to me, “Oh, that was so sweet. You remembered my name.” And I’m just like, “You just told me three seconds ago.” You know? Anyway…

If you’re a parent, you go up and you say, “Oh, hello, Mrs. Lacey.” And they say, “Oh, you remembered my name.” And it’s like, “Yeah. I’m looking after your stinking kid all this time. Of course you remember my name.”

RT: So that works to your advantage.

Jackman: Oh, totally. Expectations are low. Easy to deliver.

RT: Well, so far, you’re a pretty nice guy for an actor.

Jackman: Right, thanks man. For an actor. [laughs]

RT: So, let’s talk about The Front Runner. Obviously the Gary Hart story was a big one here in the States when it happened, but I’m wondering how much of it you were aware of before you took on the role.

Jackman: Oh, I really was not aware. In fact, I was like most people. Most people would say to me, “Oh, yeah, Gary Hart. Monkey business? What was the name?” And, “Didn’t he tell them to follow him around?” And it would usually happen in that order. I was probably… I would know even less than that. I didn’t know the “follow me around.” I think I’d heard of Monkey Business.

I think what’s really interesting about this film — Jason’s highlighted something that’s been pretty much forgotten. It feels like a blip in terms of political history, right? But actually, when you look at that moment, you really get an idea of how and why we got to where we are today. And I think that’s what makes Jason such a great storyteller.

And also, I’m proud of the way he kind of treats everybody in the movie, and every character, and someone who might’ve been, “What was her name, that girl on the boat?” You know? But by the end, you really feel and understand and empathize with her story as much as the woman at the Washington Post, or the campaign worker who has to take care of Donna. You see it from so many perspectives.

RT: And the actors playing all of those characters. It’s a fantastic cast you’re working with in this film.

Jackman: Oh yeah, a phenomenal cast. And Jason had this technique which was really interesting. He really wanted a very believable atmosphere. He used to grab extras. So I’d be doing a scene, and an extra would be… He would just say, “I want you to go and interrupt, and I want you to go and do this,” and so they would just come in and interrupt. We’d have to deal with it.

When we did the press conference [scene], we didn’t know what order the questions were going to come in. They were just sort of being fired. He just said, “Can you see that?” He would point — they were all in there, and I wasn’t allowed to go in. We’re peeking through the door, and he says, “Can you see that white cross on the floor?” And I said, “Yeah.” And he goes, “If you stand around there, and go for it.” I’m like, “Like now? Like go?” And he goes, “Yeah.” So we just sort of walked in. So it was really interesting what he did.

RT: The film paints a complex portrait of Gary Hart, because it builds him up as this superstar candidate, but it doesn’t shy away from his faults. It must have been a challenge to portray someone who is so charismatic and charming and seemingly upstanding, but also has these big gaping flaws, because you had to show how he was so likable at the same time that he was, in a sense, morally compromised. How did you strike that balance?

Jackman: It was a definite challenge for me on many levels because I’m more of an open book. We’ve only spoken for ten minutes. A lot of the characters I play have their heart beating out of their chest, and this is someone who will allow you close. He is very charismatic and enigmatic — some people called him elusive. He was hard to get to know. He would let you get close to a point, but then not, and he never really felt comfortable personally letting everybody in. It just wasn’t his personality, nor did he think that was important for the job he was going for, and thought it was distracting.

He thought about things very, very differently than any other politician, and this is really the turning point. After this point, it’s very clear to every political candidate that there is your personality, your ability or willingness to entertain, to be an entertainer, is part of the process. There was a reason why, I think, Clinton played saxophone on Arsenio Hall, whereas that wasn’t happening before. Things certainly did change in this era, and I think the challenge for me was having the restraint to not let people in fully, because that is my instinct.

Of course, I had to have that inner life, and you needed to see that, but there’s moments of kindness, which are actually true. Like on the plane to the reporter who was going through that fright with a fear of flying.

RT: That was a real thing that happened?

Jackman: Yeah, that actually happened. Yeah, you know, he would hand books to people, and he would buy drinks for the press. But, at the same time, you never really fully felt that you got to know every part of him, and that was the challenge. It was a big challenge for me, and I really relied and leaned heavily on Jason for that.

RT: You touched on this already, but while this film is certainly about the rise and fall of Gary Hart, it’s clearly also about how journalism and especially political journalism changed at the time, particularly with respect to the privacy of candidates running for office. I think the film lets the audience decide where they stand, between “the press should be free” and “candidates deserve their privacy.” Where do you stand on that?

Jackman: Look, it’s a far more important job than probably anything else out there, so I do understand that people need to feel like they know the character of all these candidates. I learned this — this is a new world — prior to 1970, there was no primary system. So now you’re expecting everyone around the country to judge 12 people that are running for a Republican ticket. So there is a responsibility of the press to get to know these people, and to let us know. You don’t have time to do it.

I think the question more for rather than putting it all on the press, and it’s the press’s job, and have they gone too far or not, I think if we as voters or citizens, whichever country we’re at, have a very strong sense of what is important to us, what do we need to know, because that is different for everybody. And I don’t judge it, the film doesn’t judge it. Some people will judge a person on how they are in their marriage, you know? I’m not, except for the person I’m married to, but that’s not me. But I do judge someone’s character. I want to know that they are smart enough to see problems that I can’t see coming, and that they have the conviction to follow through on what they say they’re going to do. So that is a character judgment.

So on some level, I do want to know them. I would like that to be uncovered. I don’t need to know if they wear boxers or briefs, or their dog’s name, whether they played piano in school, or what their girlfriend’s name is, or whether they smoke marijuana. I don’t really care about that. But that’s different for everybody.

RT: Before we go, I feel like I have to ask this. There’s obviously been a lot of talk about the whole Disney-Fox deal and the fact that Bob Iger confirmed that Marvel’s Kevin Feige will be the new caretaker of the X-Men franchise. If — and I know this is a big if — at some point, if they figure out a way to incorporate the X-Men into the existing Marvel Cinematic Universe, and they come knocking on your door, would you be willing to come back in some capacity, whether big or small?

Jackman: Now, in terms of opening windows, you just left a crack so small. Like, “Would you like to just smell what is going on in the room?” I love what you did there.

For many, many years, I often thought how cool would it be to have Wolverine in a scene with Iron Man, or Hulk, particularly Hulk, and all of that. I totally get that. It frustrated me that that was not… And I, for many years, thought that that was an impossibility. But, mate, I think the ship has sailed.

You know, when you get into a party, you leave the party, all is good. You’re in the cab. You’re just about to get home, and someone goes, “You’ve got to come back, dude. Such-and-such has turned up,” and you go, “You know what? I’m going to bed.”

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The Front Runner opens in limited release on November 7.

When the first of January hits, chances are you’ll be stuffed with holiday goodies, full of various meats and/or cheeses, and all partied out. You’ll also probably be looking for something to watch as you recover from all the festivities. Luckily, Netflix is releasing a ton of new stuff, particularly on January 1, that should keep you entertained. See below for the full list of new movies, TV shows, and originals coming to Netflix in January.

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It’s the very first streaming column of 2017, which means it’s also the first streaming column of the month, which means the subscription services are releasing a ton of new titles, and we’re culling them down to the very best. Read on for all the Certified Fresh choices available on Netflix and Amazon Prime this week.

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It’s the first streaming column of the month, which means streaming services Netflix and Amazon Prime have released a ton of new titles. As usual, we’ve pared the selection down to the cream of the crop, so read on for all the new Certified Fresh selections.

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Let’s get this out of the way right up front: We wish only the best for Ted 2, and hope it turns out to be one of the year’s funniest comedies while making plenty of money for everyone who worked on it. But we also know that the track record for comedy sequels isn’t terribly encouraging, and while waiting for Seth MacFarlane and Mark Wahlberg to return for another round of R-rated hijinks between a man-child and his talking stuffed bear, our thoughts turned inexorably to the many times when the sequels kept coming long after the laughs stopped. If comedy equals tragedy plus time, then perhaps the movies featured in this week’s list are still waiting for their moment — or maybe they’re just bad. Either way, it’s time for Total Recall!

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Mannequin Two: On the Move (1991) 12%

How, pray tell, does one go about putting together a sequel to the 1987 hit Mannequin without the raw sexual magnetism between Kim Cattrall and Andrew McCarthy, or the wan unctuousness of James Spader? The sensible answer is “one does not,” but the folks behind Mannequin Two: On the Move had other ideas — mainly consisting of re-enlisting flamboyant Mannequin second banana Meshach Taylor to reprise his role as mincing window dresser Hollywood Montrose for a follow-up with different stars (William Ragsdale and Kristy Swanson, trying in vain to duplicate Cattrall and McCarthy’s unforgettable chemistry) but the same basic plot. Chiefly of interest for fans of prolific character actor Terry Kiser, who used his downtime between Weekend at Bernie’s movies to work in his appearance as Mannequin Two villain Count Gunther Spretzle, this is a sequel so bereft of ideas that it even recycles the original’s theme song, the Starship hit “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.” As Variety wearily observed, “It took four writers to struggle with another idea of why a mannequin would come to life in a department store and what would happen if she did.”

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Weekend at Bernie’s II (1993) 13%

Is the original Weekend at Bernie’s a comedy classic? Assuredly not, but there are still plenty of chortles to be wrung from the sight of a couple of corporate drones panicking their way through a scheme that involves using the body of their recently deceased boss as a comically ineffective prop, and we would be lying if we said we’d turn it off if we happened upon that first Weekend while scrolling through channels. It most certainly did not, however, need a sequel — and yet theatrical grosses dictated that stars Jonathan Silverman, Andrew McCarthy, and Terry Kiser (as Bernie) reunite for a humiliatingly absurd caper involving a voodoo ritual gone awry and millions in stolen cash. “Frankly,” opined Scott Weinberg for eFilmCritic, “I’m stunned that every American who paid to see it didn’t file a class action suit against Tri-Star Pictures for their blatant misrepresentation of the word ‘comedy.'”

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Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (2005) 9%

It would take a profoundly silly person to argue that Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo was at all deserving of a sequel on qualitative grounds, but Rob Schneider’s comedy pulled in nearly $100 million at the box office, so a sequel was bound to happen — and it did in 2005, when fans of putative comedies about male sex escorts were treated to Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, which sent Schneider to… oh, we don’t need to talk about the storyline, do we? The only thing that really matters about this movie is what it triggered offscreen: the infamous dustup between Schneider and Roger Ebert, who lambasted it in his review (“Aggressively bad, as if it wants to cause suffering to the audience”) and later distilled his thoughts regarding European Gigolo to a simple message he relayed directly to Schneider: “Your movie sucks.” The two later had a moving reconciliation during Ebert’s last days, setting an example that almost (but not quite) justifies spending an hour and 28 minutes of one’s life to watch the film.

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Revenge of the Nerds 2: Nerds in Paradise (1987) 7%

It’s difficult to watch the original Revenge of the Nerds today without cringing at some of the embarrassing stereotypes and rampant misogyny that passed for comedy at the time, but there were a few kernels of legitimately forward-thinking ideas embedded in all the lewd gags, and in some respects, it can be argued that the first Nerds was a movie slightly ahead of its time. No such arguments have ever been made on behalf of Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise, in which our gentle-hearted (and yet oh so horny) heroes descend upon Fort Lauderdale for some old-fashioned spring break debauchery — and once again find themselves forced to contend with persecution from their beefy jock nemeses. With twice the jiggle and half the reason for actually existing, Nerds in Paradise needed to worry less about musclebound frat boys than it did about critics: Carrie Rickey of the Philadelphia Inquirer summed up the nigh-universal scorn of her colleagues when she sneered, “By all evidence, to make Nerds II, it took over 1,000 people with an aggregate IQ of under 1.”

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Teen Wolf Too (1987) 8%

Jason Bateman is an immensely likable performer with sharp comedic timing and a gift for playing the straight man, but he’s also had some pretty rough luck when it comes to picking film scripts, and that snakebitten streak extends all the way back to his big-screen debut. The original Teen Wolf barely got by on Michael J. Fox’s fresh-faced charm and an eager enthusiasm for low-budget B-movie tropes (not to mention Mark Safan’s “Win in the End,” an unsung ’80s teen movie sports montage soundtrack classic), but not even Fox’s refusal to return for more kept the studio from commissioning a sequel in which his character’s cousin (played by Bateman) heads off to college and discovers that he too is burdened with the family curse. While producers may have thought they were recapturing lightning in a bottle by tapping another young TV sitcom star — and Bateman may have made for a more imposing teen werewolf than the diminutive Fox — none of it mattered in the face of a screenplay that barely bothered pretending to go through the motions. “The pacing is near-cataleptic and the movie’s intended comic highlight is a frog-fight in the biology lab,” fumed Michael Wilmington for the Los Angeles Times. “Isn’t that just what you’re dying to see and hear? Bad dialogue, lugubriously paced; awful jokes about werewolves, and guffawing actors churlishly hurling around a lot of little frogs?”

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Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (2015) 6%

If you’re somehow able to finance and film one movie about a Segway-riding mall cop with a main gag that revolves around the fact that his last name rhymes with “fart,” you might as well make another one, right? Hence Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, in which Kevin James returns to ride his motorized scooter of justice — and in the time-honored sequel tradition, finds himself in a new location (Las Vegas) and in the middle of even more high-stakes action (a hotel heist involving the theft of some priceless art). It all added up to another $100 million-plus outing for the increasingly pratfall-dependent James, whose brightest moments in Mall Cop 2 included fighting an ostrich and punching an elderly woman in the stomach — none of which were enough to distract critics from delivering a swift and vicious pummeling for the film that Joe Neumaier of the New York Daily News referred to as “the cinematic equivalent of biting into an old brown banana.”

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Major League II (1994) 5%

In theory, a sequel to 1989’s Major League wasn’t necessarily such a bad idea. The first movie made a pile of money, it had a solid cast (most of whom were willing to return for a follow-up), and the seasonal nature of baseball meant it would be relatively easy — and narratively feasible — to bring the gang back together for another round of yuks. Add in the fact that director/co-writer David S. Ward (who doggedly pitched the original for years before it was released) was returning, and Major League II should have been (ahem) a home run. But even with all that going for it, this belated sequel — which opened five years later but picked up the season after Major League — just didn’t have the same zip as the original, and based on the box office, audiences no longer really cared whether Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughn (Charlie Sheen) and his motley crew of teammates had what it took to send the Cleveland Indians to the World Series. Sighed Caryn James for the New York Times, “There has rarely been such a steep and strange decline between a movie and its sequel as the one between the fast, silly original and the dismal, boring Major League II.”

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Caddyshack II (1988) 4%

Caddyshack is a comedy classic that virtually hums with the madcap energy thrown off by director Harold Ramis and his incredible cast, a marvelously motley bunch that included Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight, Bill Murray, and Chevy Chase. Naturally, the sequel brought back virtually no one who’d been involved the first time around, limiting the classic Caddyshack vibes to a supporting appearance from Chase and a new song from Kenny Loggins on the soundtrack. This might not have been such a bad thing if these crucial absences had been filled by the right people or a suitably funny storyline, but director Allan Arkush was presented with a cobbled-together script that virtually reprised the original and asked Harvey Mason to serve as a Dangerfield facsimile with Robert Stack as Knight’s proxy. Audiences saw through the flimsy carbon copy and so did critics; the result was, as Steven Rea wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer, “a sight not to behold.”

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The Whole Ten Yards (2003) 4%

Just because a movie makes a bunch of money doesn’t mean it needs a sequel. Case in point: The Whole Ten Yards, the 2004 travesty that reunited the cast of the 2000 hit The Whole Nine Yards simply because the studio seemed to take the first film’s box office receipts as some sort of mandate. Once again, Matthew Perry (as nebbishy dentist Nicholas “Oz” Ozeransky) and Bruce Willis (as retired hitman Jimmy “The Tulip” Tudeski) find themselves in hot water with vengeful mob boss Laszlo Gogolak (Kevin Pollak), and the sequel’s retreaded plot — as well as a marked decrease in the original’s laughs-per-minute quotient — left critics openly questioning why anyone would bother. “So mirthless is this misbegotten enterprise,” grumbled Peter Howell for the Toronto Star, “the sound of fake chucklers busting a gut would at least have given us valuable clues as to when we’re supposed to laugh.”

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Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (1987) 0%

If film franchises were professional sports teams, the Police Academy movies would hover somewhere near the 2011-’12 Charlotte Bobcats in the standings, with Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol representing the most painfully lopsided defeat in a long stretch of stunning futility. All of which is to say that critics loathed each of the Academy films in their own special way, and no fewer than four of the seven installments in the series boast a 0 percent Tomatometer rating, but with 20 uniformly negative reviews, it’s 1987’s Citizens on Patrol that represents the jewel in the franchise’s crown of failure. We could go into plot, but it’s a Police Academy movie, and the plot’s all laid out in the title; really, all you need to know is that there’s definitely something better to watch. As Dave Kehr pointed out in his review for the Chicago Reader, “Jim Drake is credited with the direction and Gene Quintano with the script, though they’d probably appreciate it if you kept it to yourself.”

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Look Who’s Talking Now (1993) 0%

Look Who’s Talking was a pleasantly undemanding comedy that reminded audiences they still liked John Travolta and featured some funny voicework from Bruce Willis as the inner monologue of a baby. Three years later, Look Who’s Talking Too tried to double down on the toddler-driven laughs by adding Roseanne Barr as the voice of Willis’ sister, but that gambit proved woefully unsuccessful — so three years after that, we got Look Who’s Talking Now, in which the kids are old enough to speak with their own voices… and old enough to have pets who, you guessed it, the audience can hear speak. As concepts go, it’s pretty thin, but Now still might have benefited from the talents of its new voice cast if someone had written a worthy script; alas, Danny DeVito (as a streetwise mutt named Rocks) and Diane Keaton (as Daphne the purebred poodle) were left to try and wring a few laughs out of a premise long past its prime while the human stars of the series, John Travolta and Kirstie Alley, bore the onscreen brunt of a series of humiliations that included Alley dressing up as an elf. “The first film had maybe a shred of realism to flavor its romantic comedy,” lamented Roger Ebert. “This one looks like it was chucked up by an automatic screenwriting machine.”

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Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (2004) 0%

Jon Voight is a very famous, highly respected actor, but he also has bills to pay, which may explain how he ended up alongside Scott Baio and Vanessa Angel playing second fiddle to a diaper-clad quartet in Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2. Then again, if you take Voight at his word, he chose the project because “When you look around the world, everybody’s really in a fearful state in some way, and kids are getting that, they’re getting that fear, and they need to be given a kind of empowerment in some sense” — but no, you know what? We prefer the “bills to pay” explanation. Either way, this alleged action comedy about an evil media mogul who’s out to kidnap four freakishly smart toddlers has gone down as one of the more shockingly awful stinkers to seep out of Hollywood in recent memory — as well as, sadly, the final effort from Porky’s director Bob Clark. “The first Baby Geniuses, released in 1999, was one of the most inane, humorless, ill-conceived, poorly acted comedies of the year,” wrote Jean Oppenheimer for the New Times. “As difficult as it is to imagine, the sequel is even worse.”

No awards season — even a strike-tainted one — would be complete without the Razzies, right? Of course not. And that’s why we’ve thoughtfully assembled all of this year’s nominees in one convenient location.

The Razzies, now entering their 28th year, have been celebrating the worst in film since 1980, when John Wilson took a raspberry trophy, spray-painted it gold, and stuck it to Can’t Stop the Music. This year’s nominees are suitably distinguished, and they all follow below (with Tomatometers in parentheses). ‘Fess up, Vineketeers — how many of these have you seen? And enjoyed?

Worst Picture:
Bratz (7 percent)
Daddy Day Camp (1 percent)

I Know Who Killed Me (8 percent)
I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (14 percent)
Norbit (9 percent)

Worst Actor:
Nicolas Cage, for Ghost Rider (27 percent), National Treasure: Book of Secrets (32 percent), and Next (30 percent)
Jim Carrey, for The Number 23 (8 percent)
Cuba Gooding, Jr., for Daddy Day Camp and Norbit
Eddie Murphy, for Norbit
Adam Sandler, for I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry

Worst Actress:
Jessica Alba, for Awake (21 percent), Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (35 percent), and Good Luck Chuck (3 percent)
Logan Browning, Janel Parrish, Nathalia Ramos & Skyler Shaye, for Bratz
Elisha Cuthbert, for Captivity (7 percent)
Diane Keaton, for Because I Said So (5 percent)
Lindsay Lohan (as Aubrey), for I Know Who Killed Me
Lindsay Lohan (as Dakota), for I Know Who Killed Me

Worst Supporting Actor:
Orlando Bloom, for Pirates of the Carribbean: At World’s End (45 percent)
Kevin James, for I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
Eddie Murphy, for Norbit
Rob Schneider, for I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
Jon Voight, for Bratz, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, September Dawn (13 percent), and Transformers (57 percent)

Worst Supporting Actress:
Jessica Biel, for I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry and Next
Carmen Electra, for Epic Movie (2 percent)
Eddie Murphy, for Norbit
Julia Ormond, for I Know Who Killed Me
Nicolette Sheridan, for Code Name: The Cleaner (4 percent)

Worst Screen Couple:
Jessica Alba with Dane Cook (for Good Luck Chuck), Hayden Christensen (for Awake), and Ioan Gruffudd (for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer)
Any combination of two totally air-headed characters in Bratz
Lindsay Lohan and Lindsay Lohan, for I Know Who Killed Me

Worst Remake or Ripoff:
Are We Done Yet? (8 percent, remake/ripoff of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House)
Bratz (a ripoff if ever there was one)
Epic Movie (ripoff of every movie it rips off)
I Know Who Killed Me (ripoff of Hostel, Saw, and The Patty Duke Show)
Who’s Your Caddy? (7 percent, ripoff of Caddyshack)

Worst Prequel or Sequel:
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (16 percent)
Daddy Day Camp
Evan Almighty (24 percent)
Hannibal Rising, (15 percent)
Hostel: Part II (44 percent)

Worst Director:
Dennis Dugan, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
Roland Joffe, Captivity
Brian Robbins, Norbit
Fred Savage, Daddy Day Camp
Chris Sivertson, I Know Who Killed Me

Worst Screenplay:
Geoff Rodkey and David J. Stem & David N. Weiss, Daddy Day Camp

Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer, Epic Movie
Jeffrey Hammond, I Know Who Killed Me
Barry Fanaro and Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
Eddie Murphy & Charles Murphy, Jay Sherick & David Ronn, Norbit

Worst Excuse for a Horror Movie:
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
Captivity
Hannibal Rising

Hostel: Part II
I Know Who Killed Me

Source: Razzies

In this week’s Ketchup, we snuck a peek at the "Spider-Man 3" trailer, Keira Knightley may jump ship before the "Pirates" franchise walks the plank, and MGM seems to be putting all its eggs in a few baskets.

Also, "The Simpsons Movie" trailer made it’s first official appearance, and at least two people want a "Daredevil" sequel. Read on.

This Week’s Most Popular News:

Unfinished "Spider-Man 3" Trailer — Now with Venom!
It might not survive on the internet for too long, so if you want to see what Venom is going to look like in "Spider-Man 3," and you don’t mind suffering through some obviously incomplete special effects, then you better click the goods right now — before they’re gone!

Ms. Swann Leaving the "Pirates" Nest?
With "Pirates of the Carbbean: At Worlds End" being primed for its summertime release, the actors are now sharing their thoughts on the future of the series. And as far as Keira Knightley is concerned, she seems fine with moving on when the trilogy ends.

MGM Promises More Panther, Bond, Crown, Rocky & Hobbit
It looks like the cash-strapped MGM is about to seriously scale back on its productions, but they still have five strapping franchises on which they’ll bet the ranch…

Trailer Bulletin: "The Simpsons Movie"
Just in case you missed it last night during (a rather amusing episode of) "The Simpsons," here’s the brand-new trailer for "The Simpsons Movie" — but don’t go in expecting anything in the way of spoilers or plot breakdowns.

"Daredevil" Director (and Villain) Want to Do a Sequel
Director Mark Steven Johnson recently opined that, yeah, he’d like to do a "Daredevil" sequel, provided anyone at Sony actually wanted to. And then big ol’ Michael Clarke Duncan spoke up and said "Me too! I’d do a sequel!"

In Other News:

• Australian director Peter Weir ("Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World") is in talks to helm Fox 2000’s "Shadow Divers," based on Robert Kurson’s best-selling nonfiction book "Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Discovered Hitler’s Lost Sub."

• "Letters From Iwo Jima," Clint Eastwood‘s follow-up to his critically acclaimed World War II drama "Flags of Our Fathers," will open domestically in limited release in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco on December 20, 2006.

• Tim Firth will adapt Ahmet Zappa‘s kids’ book "The Monstrous Memoirs of a Mighty McFearless" for Jerry Bruckheimer Films and Walt Disney Pictures.

• Screenwriter Russell Gewirtz is working on both the script for the "Inside Man" sequel and an untitled thriller starring Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock as Trump Tower janitors who scheme to rip off its luxury tenants.

• Dominic Purcell ("Prison Break") and Jesse Metcalfe ("John Tucker Must Die,") are heading to "Town Creek," a vampire horror movie that Joel Schumacher is directing.

• Rhona Mitra will star in the lead female role for writer/director Neil Marshall in Rogue Pictures’ futuristic action thriller "Doomsday," which is slated to begin production in early 2007.

• Beach Boy Brian Wilson has made a deal with producer Mark Gordon to tell his life story in a feature film. The deal also provides access to Wilson’s vast catalogue of music for use in the film.

• New Line Cinema has launched development of a feature based on the life of Daphne Sheldrick, a pioneer in efforts to save orphaned baby elephants.

• Paramount Vantage has scooped up film rights to Frank Portman’s debut novel, "King Dork," for Will Ferrell and Adam McKay‘s Gary Sanchez Productions to produce.

• National Lampoon Inc. is partnering with the Farrelly Brothers through their Conundrum Entertainment on National Lampoon’s "Bag Boy," centered on an underdog teen who discovers he’s got the talent to excel in the world of competitive grocery bagging.

• Universal Pictures has picked up "Walk of Shame," a pitch by Jessi Klein for Stuber/Parent to produce.The film is a romantic comedy about the lives of a group of young singles living in New York.

• Former 007 Pierce Brosnan is going back to the spy world, signing on to star in the comedy "Spy vs. Stu."

• "Battlestar Galactica" executive producer Ronald D. Moore is penning a script for a remake of John Carpenter‘s "The Thing" for Universal Pictures.

• DreamWorks has acquired film rights to actress Gina Gershon‘s children’s book "Camp Creepy Time," which she co-wrote with her brother, Dann Gershon.

• Warner Bros. has acquired the rights to "Funny Fat Guy," from the "Broken Lizard" comedy troupe members Kevin Heffernan and Steve Lemme.

The producers of the Ray Charles bio-pic "Ray" have purchased the rights to Rodney Dangerfield‘s life story, says Variety. The celebrated funnyman, who did the stand-up circuit for several decades while also appearing in movies such as "Caddyshack," "Back to School," "Easy Money," "Natural Born Killers," and several others I’ll not mention out of respect for the dead, passed away following heart surgery in 2004.

Producers Howard and Karen Baldwin were given permission to tell Rodney’s story on the silver screen, and the project will be based in part on Mr. Dangerfield’s 2004 autobiography "It’s Not Easy Bein’ Me."