The Razzie nominations for the worst movies and performances of the 2023 movie year have just been announced. The Golden Raspberry Awards are handed out every year by a group of critics, journalists, and ordinary movie fans — anyone can pay an annual fee and become a voting member — and their most dishonored films of 2023 are Expend4bles, with seven nominations; The Exorcist: Believer and Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, with five noms each; and Shazam! Fury of the Gods and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, with four noms each.
Are the Razzies — or any discussion about the worst films in any given year — worth our time?
As Variety points out, the Razzies have gotten themselves into trouble with their awards before, as when they nominated a child in one of their worse-performances categories. That kind of punching down is totally uncalled for, but I do think there is value in talking about movie worsts, if they focus on the excesses of the big-budget movie machine. (Last week’s Loaded Question was What 2023 movie was the worst you saw?, and is still open for replies.) But I’ve heard the argument, too, that it’s much more useful to focus on good films and good work onscreen.
What do you think?
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I think you can learn as much about movies from looking at bad ones and why they don’t work as from looking at good ones. Just to pick a single movie that comes to mind, Cats offers an enormous and varied array of badness, far beyond the obvious (yet not inaccurate) observation that the CGI looks creepy. (For example, this video focusing on the music and why it’s bad.)
That’s the main problem with the Razzies, by the way – not so much punching down as punching at only the most obvious and most high-profile targets. This YouTuber has looked at every Razzie winner from the awards’ inception to now, and they seldom come close to “getting it right.” Lots of easy targets, celebrities who have already been knocked off their pedestals, etc. There are also lots of “guilt by association” awards, where actors are nominated for “worst performance” awards just because they appeared in a terrible film, even if their own performances were fine.
Bottom line, the Razzies as such are pretty much worthless, but looking at bad movies is not.
It’s very easy to pile onto a high-profile film, and there’s only so much mileage you can get out of “this is plain stupid entertainment that insults anyone who can read” (also, everyone and his dog can say this on the Internet now). I’d find it much more interesting to pick a film or a performance that may work quite well in some ways, that’s trying to rise above the generic multi-million-dollar bright coloured moving shapes, but which fails even so.
Another reason for looking at bad film, TV, books, etc.: very often there are good ideas that aren’t well used, and in particular that aren’t well integrated into the overall production. Those ideas can readily be borrowed, modified, and given a better home in one’s own work.