24 movies and actors who didn't deserve their Razzies

Winner of the 2nd Annual Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Picture, "Mommy Dearest," a highly campy biography of screen legend Joan Crawford, had some stiff competition in 1981. But of the five films nominated (including turkeys "Tarzan the Ape Man" and "Heaven's Gate"), "Mommy Dearest" is by far the best and still most watchable of the bunch. Also, it teaches a valuable lesson: no wire hangers, ever.

Complementing "Mommy Dearest's" Razzie for Best Picture, Faye Dunaway, who portrayed Joan Crawford, was tied with Bo Derek for Worst Actress ("Tarzan, the Ape Man.") Given that one was an actual actress and the other eye candy for director/husband, John Derek, it would've been better if Bo ran away with the award and just let the rest of us enjoy Dunaway's insanely terrifying yet endearing performance.

While it may have been a long road...from being a good movie, "Rambo: First Blood Part II," the unlikely and wholly implausible sequel to 1980's "First Blood," stars Sylvester Stallone as a formerly imprisoned Vietnam Vet who uses his PTSD as a superpower (no, really) to refight the Vietnam War and single-handedly win it while freeing POWs who supposedly didn't exist. What about that isn't awesome, especially when compared to Al Pacino pretending he would've looked like anyone fighting in the Revolutionary War in the awful "Revolution"?

Full disclosure: The Razzies HATE Sylvester Stallone. Since their inception in 1981, no other actor has been nominated (14 times) or won (four) more than Stallone. In 1985, Stallone was "honored" for both "Rambo: First Blood Part II'" and "Rocky IV," beating out Al Pacino, John Travolta and Divine. Divine, people. Divine once ate feces in a John Waters movie. Some of Stallone's performances might be poop, but he never ate it on screen.

In 1987, Hollywood was really interested in making pop megastar Madonna into the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe. Beyond the mole and bleach blonde hair, there was little actual comparison. "Who's That Girl" is a prime example of Hollywood not really knowing what to do with a burgeoning actress who had plenty of charm but not much in the way of acting chops. That said, her role as Nikki was infinitely better than Debra Sandlund in "Tough Guys Don't Dance." (Also, who is Debra Sandlund?)

The film is known in some circles as "Robin Hood: Prince of Cheese," and Kevin Costner's lack of any sort of English accent was probably one of the biggest red flags for a movie that wasn't awful, particularly in the case of Alan Rickman's performance as the villainous Sheriff of Nottingham. So to nail Costner as Worst Actor in a year that boasted fetid performances from Vanilla Ice in "Cool as Ice" and Stallone in the box office flop "Oscar" just doesn't seem fair.

Yes, "Showgirls" is a bad movie. But like "Mommie Dearest," it's a wonderfully bad movie that you simply cannot sit down enough to watch. Whether it's the salacious sex or the over-the-top dialogue, even Elizabeth Berkley's well-deserved Razzie win as Worst Actress cannot stop this guilty pleasure from being just that: a pleasure. Besides, anyone who thinks this piece of delectable trash was worse than "Congo" or "Waterworld" probably needs to step away from movies for a while.

Somehow, we keep hoping "Striptease" gets its due as an underrated film. Based on a novel by journalist Carl Hiaasen, "Striptease" is largely remembered for the hyped-up nude scenes from Demi Moore (and quite a few others). But the gem here is in the performances, particularly those by Burt Reynolds as an affable but rotten politician and Ving Rhames as a bouncer with a heart of gold. It's a film that deserves a second look, not a Razzie disdain. We don't think the same can be said of fellow nominees "Barb Wire" and "The Island of Dr. Moreau."

Demi Moore's biggest crime in the largely underappreciated "Striptease" isn't so much her performance, which is largely fine. It's that she was the one straight character in a film full of weird characters, something which a black comedy certainly doesn't benefit from. In that, it's easy to think she was on autopilot, letting her toned body do the driving, something totally unfair in a year when Whoopi Goldberg stunk up the screen alongside a talking dinosaur cop in "Theodore Rex."

Another bad rap for the Material Girl — this time on the Worst Supporting Actress side — who spends more time on the promotional materials for the overly ambitious "Four Rooms" than she does in the actual film. Starring in one of four segments in the anthology, she plays a modern-day witch looking to resurrect her idol with the help of steadfast and aloof bellboy Ted (Tim Roth). Beating out Amy the Talking Gorilla in "Congo" is just a slap in the face to Madge.

Let's make this one short and sweet: In 1997, Fran Drescher was allowed to star in a major motion picture. Next.

We get it: Kevin Costner likes his overlong Western-style epics. Instead of the American Frontier of the 1800s, "The Postman" is practically the same film, just in a post-apocalyptic America. While it could've used a trim here and there, the story is solid and the execution isn't nearly as bad as fellow nominees "Speed 2: Cruise Control" or "Fire Down Below."

In another case of mistaken bad movie identity, Kevin Costner's performance as a drifter in a post-apocalyptic wasteland who attempts to bring hope to the downtrodden as a mail carrier in the maybe overlong but much-maligned "The Postman" is another example of reverse robbery. This was a year when the Razzie could've found a much better home in the hands of Jon Voight, who pretended he had a South American accent in "Anaconda" or Shaquille O'Neal, who pretended he could read a script in "Steel."

Willis definitely got the short end of the stick in 1998, getting dinged for three roles that were nowhere near as bad as some of his competition, including a bloated, doddering Ryan O'Neal in the barely a film "An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn."  "Armageddon," "Mercury Rising" and "The Siege" may not all have been great, but what they were was way better than Ryan Phillippe in "54."

"The Blair Witch Project" was by far the runaway hit of 1999, ushering in an era of "found footage" films starring relatively unknown actors to ramp up a sense of faux reality. Actress Heather Donahue will forever be known for her work in "Blair Witch Project," largely for her screams and hysterical crying. But to say that it was the worst performance in a year when Milla Jovovich tried to be Joan of Arc in yet another one of her then-husband's passion projects (likely killing their marriage) is just an unfair blow to an actress who never had a chance to escape the role that defined her.

Tom Green is a Fearless Lunatic, and He's Funny, Part I: In 2001, despite knowing who he was based on in his run on MTV's "The Tom Green Show," audiences were nowhere near ready for a film that exhibited the same kind of comedy that made him a star in the first place (wait, what?). In an extremely absurdist fashion, "Freddy Got Fingered" is more concerned with making audiences laugh than telling anything that resembles a coherent story, and that is actually OK, since the comedy, often at the expense of Rip Torn, is hilarious. Green accomplishes exactly what he set out to do. Can the same be said of "Glitter" or "Pearl Harbor," Michael Bay's only real cinematic cardinal sin?

Tom Green is a Fearless Lunatic, and He's Funny, Part II: Of course Tom Green acts as if he is in constant need of mental help, and practically every moment he's on screen might be looked at by some as an advertisement for reading a good book instead of watching a movie. But that's part of the absurdity that makes Green genuinely funny. In the years since his performance in front of and behind the camera in "Freddy Got Fingered," he admits he may have overshot the mark. That's why his performance is funny and memorable. You know what we don't remember? John Travolta in "Domestic Disturbance." Now that was Razzie-worthy.

The Affleck Trifecta. 2003 was not kind at all for Ben, as he was thrice nominated in 2003, and all his performances "won" at the Razzies. It's quite an indignity for the Academy Award winner, who somehow managed to sink lower than "American Idol" runner-up Justin Guarini, who is relegated these days to an imitation of Prince in Diet Dr. Pepper commercials. Even though Affleck accepted his award (before destroying it) on an episode of "Larry King Live," even now he should demand a recount.

When it comes to Worst Actress, 2009 actually got it right with Sandra Bullock winning for her really bad performance in "All About Steve." (Never mind that she would win Best Actress for "The Blind Side" the next day.) So we're forced to go to the Best Supporting Actress category instead, where Sienna Miller's barely there performance as the Baroness wasn't nearly as cringe worthy as Ali Larter in "Obsessed," a really bad rip-off of "Fatal Attraction."

We get it. Adam Sandler is a limited actor. Sandler, for the most part, gets it too. However, he has one particular sweet spot for comedy, and 2012's "That's My Boy" is pretty much it — honestly his funniest film in years, literal years. Besides, any year that has Tyler Perry starring in a serious role in any capacity should be a win for him by default.

Many critics simply don't like director Michael Bay. Even more critics hate his bombastic directorial style, particularly as seen in his "Transformers" series of films. At the 35th Golden Raspberries Awards, Bay was voted Worst Director for "Transformers: Age of Extinction." While the film wasn't great, it wasn't completely awful either, and in a year where Bay is competing against Renny Harlin for "The Legend of Hercules" and Jonathan Liebesman for his remake of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle," this race to the bottom is not one Bay got anywhere close to winning.

Another actor getting a bum rap for his performance in a film loathed by critics was Eddie Redmayne in 2014's "Jupiter Ascending." Directed by the Wachowskis, this sci-fi flick was largely maligned in the press, even though it wasn't the worst film of the year by any measure. Redmayne co-starred as villain Balem Abrasax, whose biggest crime was probably speaking his dialogue in a really soft and low voice. As bad as anyone thought it was, it paled in comparison to fetid performances from Josh Gad and Kevin James, both nominated for their work in the truly awful "Pixels."

Let's be clear: "The Mummy," Universal Studios' latest attempt to build a franchise based on its monster roster, is not a good movie. However, to single out Tom Cruise as the film's fated star as deserving of a Razzie in a year when Jamie Dornan was up for another Razzie with his increasingly bland performance as Christian Grey in "Fifty Shades Darker" simply seems unfair to Cruise, whose biggest crime is being slightly miscast in a film that he wasn't in any way the worst part of.

Yes, the film was mind-numbing and made one wonder what happened to the comedy duo that made "Stepbrothers" into an instant classic, but in a year that featured Jaime Foxx slumming his way through yet another Robin Hood remake literally no one asked for, to give the Razzie for Worst Supporting Actor to John C. Reilly is almost as big a crime as it was to accept a paycheck for "Holmes & Watson."