Romantic comedies so bad they'll make you glad you're single

What better place to start than a movie called “Valentine’s Day?” Garry Marshall, a director with some hits to his name, got dozens of Hollywood stars together for this ensemble movie. There are so many stories it’s hard to lock into any of them, so maybe it’s fortunate that they are all also so uninteresting you don’t care.

A lot of romantic comedies have premises that are a real tightrope walk. Some of them can pull it off. “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” can’t. Matthew McConaughey, a veteran of bad romcoms, plays a cad who wants to prove he can make any woman fall in love with him. Meanwhile, Kate Hudson is a magazine writer who is writing an article about how to drive a man away. She’s trying to annoy McConaughey through increasingly insane contrivances. McConaughey grits his teeth through it all. Sometimes they end up together.

In the 2000s, if you wanted to see a bad romantic comedy (for some reason) you could probably just go see whatever McConaughey or Jennifer Lopez was in that week. Here, those two join forces for the profoundly tedious “The Wedding Planner.” See, J-Lo is great at planning weddings, but she doesn’t have a successful relationship of her own! This is what they call occupational irony. We call “The Wedding Planner” a slog.

You know what’s a great movie about a bounty hunter and the person he’s hired to track down bickering for a while and then coming to a place of acceptance? “Midnight Run,” though Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin don’t get romantic. Do you know what’s a terrible movie with a similar premise? “The Bounty Hunter.” It’s almost as if Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston aren’t as good at acting as De Niro and Grodin.

Aniston carries over here to “Just Go With It,” though this is mostly considered an Adam Sandler movie. We know Sandler can be a good actor. However, most of the time his movies seem like everybody is making a C- effort at best. That’s definitely true of “Just Go With It,” where the premise is that Sandler convinces Aniston to pretend to be his soon-to-be ex-wife so that he can try and get with Brooklyn Decker.

The idea of the “Bridezilla” is well-trod territory at this point. Nowhere does that feel bleaker than in “Bride Wars.” Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway play two friends who suddenly become obsessed with getting married before the other one. There’s probably a way to make that premise work. “Bride Wars” is not that. At least the Chinese remake has an awesome poster.

Fresh off winning an Oscar (though it was basically a career-achievement award), Sandra Bullock won a Razzie for “All About Steve.” The movie is completely off the wall. Bullock’s character is hard to parse, even if you’ve seen the movie. This is a cringey comedy, but Bullock gives it her all. Bradley Cooper, on the other hand, seems to be able to tell that this movie is going to land with a thud.

Sorry, Mr. Marshall, but you’ve made two ensemble romcoms that are worthy of making this list. If we could have figured out a way to put “Mother’s Day” on this list we would have included it as well. This is basically the same movie as “Valentine’s Day,” but it’s about a less-romantic day where the only romantic thing is kissing to ring in the new year. And yet they made a romcom about it anyway.

Ellen DeGeneres has had an extremely successful career, but the truth is that she isn’t much of an actor. Her only real success on that front was when she had her own sitcom where she basically got to play herself (especially when her character came out). Movies were definitely not up Ellen’s alley, and watching “Mr. Wrong” clearly proves that.

A guy who has a crush on his strict boss’s daughter? That can work. However, “My Boss’s Daughter” is as much about a wacky night gone wrong when said daughter asks her coworker with a crush on her to housesit so that she can go to a party. Terence Stamp is a good choice for the boss, but the main couple is plays by Ashton Kutcher and Tara Reid. Reid is now best known for being in the “Sharknado” films, which shows where her acting career has gone.

“Grease” is, in truth, not a particularly good romantic comedy, but it has a couple of memorable songs and a pretty impressive cast. “Grease 2” has Michelle Pfeiffer and not much else. It’s just a worse version of the original without a single song that has stood the test of time. Even if you love “Grease,” you can skip “Grease 2.”

In “Shallow Hal,” Jack Black plays a man who is hypnotized to only see people’s “inner beauty.” This is handled in a lot of weird ways in the movie, but the hook of the film is that Hal falls for a woman who, as he sees her, is played by Gwyneth Paltrow. In reality, though, she’s overweight, which is a reservoir for weight jokes that are as obvious as possible.

Sure, “Mannequin” got an Oscar nomination, but it was for Best Original Song. Plus, that song is “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” by Starship, which isn’t even that good. The movie, though, is about Andrew McCarthy being in love with a mannequin that only comes to life for him. Yes, that mannequin is played by Kim Cattrall, but even so we can’t get past a premise this silly.

In some ways, Sandra Bullock and Ben Affleck are forces of nature. After all, they are both A-list actors with Oscars, and Affleck has always been tabloid fodder as well. This film, though, is a force for boredom. It’s so formulaic, as Affleck plays a serious, nervous fellow on his way to his wedding when he meets a free spirit played by Bullock. They end up traveling together, and you know where this goes.

“What Women Want” was actually a successful movie at the time. It didn’t even get a ton of bad reviews. All these years later, that all feels so puzzling. After all, this is a movie about a man who, after an accident involving electrocution, can hear women’s thoughts. There’s a lot of broad comedy and stereotyping here to begin with. A big problem these days, though, is that the man is played by Mel Gibson. Gibson in a romantic comedy? That’s not exactly good optics.

“Fever Pitch,” as a movie, is kind of mediocre. It’s Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon in a middling rom-com. However, what makes this movie stick out is that Fallon is playing a huge Red Sox fan, and they happened to be shooting the movie the year that the Red Sox actually won the World Series, ending a decades-long drought. This led to Barrymore and Fallon running on the field during the World Series celebration for the purpose of shooting the movie. That felt ridiculous, and that sours the film-viewing experience.

We could say many negative things about “Good Luck Chuck.” Really, there’s a long list of grievances here. However, there’s really only one thing we need to say. This movie stars Dane Cook at his most Dane Cook. That tells the whole story.

Everything about this Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler movie is trash. Butler plays a sexist jerk who says awful things and also messes with Heigl a whole bunch. Oh, but also the movie seems to kind of agree with him? The jokes are terrible, and the characters are unbearable. Everything here is a miss.

Tom Hardy and Chris Pine have made many a fine action movie, but a romantic comedy? It could have worked, but “This Means War” definitely did not. Hardy and Pine play CIA agents who both find out they are dating the same woman, played by Reese Witherspoon, so they try to take each other down. There’s some potential for over-the-top action, and there is, but not in a good way.

The entire hook of “40 Days and 40 Nights” is that Josh Harnett plays a young womanizer who gives up sex for Lent. Then everything goes terrible, at least for the filmgoer. This movie is not funny at all and is also rather gross. There is not a single fun thing about it.

We didn’t really know what “American Idol” was going to yield when it first began. After the first season, winner Kelly Clarkson and runner-up Justin Guarani were given a chance to star in a romantic comedy together. It turns out that two singers with no acting experience were not good choices for a movie. “American Idol” never tried to do this again.

There’s a lot that’s bad about “Ghosts Can’t Do It.” John Derek directed his then-wife Bo in what was a Razzie-winning film. Both Bo and John won Razzies, but do you know who won Worst Supporting Actor for “Ghosts Can’t Do It?” That would be Donald Trump. Yes, that Donald Trump. 

See, it’s “Romeo and Juliet,” but it’s gnomes. That’s it. Also, it’s not as good as almost any other version of “Romeo and Juliet” out there, and there are tons of them. If you want to see that story, you have so many options. Why watch a cheesy animated version about gnomes?

Well, when you start by casting Paris Hilton as the lead in your film you have a problem. Then, you do a story about a “hot” girl and a girl who is almost cartoonishly not put together in about the least delicate way possible. There was, shockingly, no grace in the storytelling of “The Hottie and the Nottie.” No acting talent, either.

Ahh, Christmas. Honestly, a great circumstance to set a romantic comedy in. Emilia Clarke plays an embittered woman who works as an elf at a Christmas store who meets a mysterious man played by Henry Golding. Fine so far, but then there's the twist. It turns out that Clarke is falling for (spoilers, we guess) the ghost of the man who died and donated his heart to Clarke. Yes, he literally gave her his heart.

We weren’t completely sure that “Gigli” counted as a romantic comedy, but a lot of spaces on the internet list it as such so we’re going with it. If you consider it a romantic comedy, it definitely belongs on this list. “Gigli” was a true cultural touchstone for awfulness in the 2000s. A lot of people were tired of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez as a couple, and here they were starring in a terrible movie together. People were happy to trash “Gigli,” though it certainly deserved it.