Every year as Hollywood stars are running around getting prepared to give each other gold statues on TV a few months after having given each other gold statues on TV, the real heroes that present The Golden Raspberry Awards are busy paying their respects to Hollywood’s worst achievements. And they’ve just announced this year’s class of nominees, one of the best yet.
WORST PICTURE
Gotti
The Happytime Murders
Holmes & Watson
Robin Hood
Winchester
That’s almost too close to call, but I’m going to go with The Happytime Murders. I just have a gut feeling about the puppets.
WORST ACTRESS
Jennifer Garner / Peppermint
Amber Heard / London Fields
Melissa McCarthy / Happytime Murders and Life of the Party
Helen Mirren / Winchester
Amanda Seyfried / The Clapper
Being nominated for two movies in the same year usually means you have a pretty good chance of winning, and since it’s worst actress and not worst person, I’m going to go with Melissa McCarthy.
WORST ACTOR
Johnny Depp (Voice Only) Sherlock Gnomes
Will Ferrell / Holmes & Watson
John Travolta / Gotti
Donald J. Trump (As Himself) Death of a Nation and Fahrenheit 11/9
Bruce Willis / Death Wish
This is another tough call, but I think they’re going to go with Trump. He’s won Worst Supporting Actor from the days where he used to insist he be filmed for the movie if people wanted to use Trump Tower as a location, and also he’s just awful.
WORST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Jamie Foxx / Robin Hood
Ludacris (Voice Only) Show Dogs
Joel McHale / Happytime Murders
John C. Reilly / Holmes & Watson
Justice Smith / Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
My money here is on Joel McHale. He’s charismatic but he’s not very good even in the stuff he’s in that’s good, which is basically only Community. If you’ve ever seen the American pilot of The IT Crowd, you’ll so how not great an actor he is compared to Chris O’Dowd in the same role with the same script.
WORST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Kellyanne Conway (As Herself) Fahrenheit 11/9
Marcia Gay Harden / Fifty Shades Freed
Kelly Preston / Gotti
Jaz Sinclair / Slender Man
Melania Trump (As Herself) Fahrenheit 11/9
This I think goes to Marcia Gay Harden. Kelly Preston has been acting like she doesn’t mind being John Travolta’s beard for so long I don’t even know why she’s on this list.
WORST SCREEN COMBO
Any Two Actors or Puppets (Especially in Those Creepy Sex Scenes) Happytime Murders
Johnny Depp & His Fast-Fading Film Career (He’s doing voices for cartoons, fer kripesakes!) Sherlock Gnomes
Will Ferrell & John C. Reilly (Trashing Two of Literature’s Most Beloved Characters) Holmes & Watson
Kelly Preston & John Travolta (Getting BATTLEFIELD EARTH type Reviews!) Gotti
Donald J. Trump & His Self Perpetuating Pettiness / Death of a Nation & Fahrenheit 11/9
I have a hard time seeing this going to anyone but Trump and his pettiness. Name a more iconic duo.
WORST REMAKE, RIP-OFF or SEQUEL
Death of a Nation (Remake of Hillary’s America…)
Death Wish
Holmes & Watson
The Meg (Rip-Off of Jaws)
Robin Hood
As much as I want to see ex-con Dinesh D’Souza pick up another one of these in person, I think The Meg has a really good chance here. It was a joke on Family Guy that got made into a movie, that’s pretty bad.
WORST DIRECTOR
Etan Cohen / Holmes & Watson
Kevin Connolly / Gotti
James Foley / Fifty Shades Freed
Brian Henson / Happytime Murders
The Spierig Brothers (Michael & Peter) / Winchester
I think this goes to Happytime Murders, only because Holmes & Watson‘s problem was the script.
WORST SCREENPLAY
Death of a Nation, Written by Dinesh D’Souza & Bruce Schooley
Fifty Shades Freed, Screenplay by Niall Leonard, from the Novel by E.L. James
Gotti, Screenplay by Leo Rossi and Lem Dobbs
Happytime Murders, Screenplay by Todd Berger, Story by Berger and Dee Austin Robinson
Winchester, Written by Tom Vaughan and The Spierig Brothers
Fun fact: D’Souza’s film Death of a Nation takes it title and politics from D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, a film about how the heroic Ku Klux Klan defended us from the savage Al Jolson-types. Despite it’s clearly racist plot, The Birth of a Nation is considered a landmark in early cinema, perhaps the first film to show that the medium could produce something that could be considered art. Death of a Nation doesn’t have anything to redeem its racist plot and as such is my choice for Worst Screenplay.
What does, “…savage Al Jolson-types,” mean, exactly?