The 1970s invented the Hollywood blockbuster, first with Jaws and then Star Wars. But the blockbuster came of age in the 1980s. During that heady decade, Hollywood figured out how to make big, glossy, and incredibly satisfying pictures, many of which launched franchises. Back to the Future, Indiana Jones, and Ghostbusters became part of the cultural framework, movies that have shaped an entire generation.
But not every popular movie of the ’80s has enjoyed such a legacy. The decade saw its share of stinkers, many of which still made millions in ticket sales. Here are 23 of the worst hits of the blockbuster decade, the movies that thrilled us in the 80s but embarrass us today.
1. Turner & Hooch (1989)
Pity Tom Hanks in the 80s. During the 90s, he became one of the most celebrated actors of his time. But during the ’80s, he was a comedian no one could figure out, a likable guy too often cast as grouches and jerks. Turner & Hooch continues this trend, pairing Hanks with a giant, slobbering dog called Hooch.
Director Roger Spottiswoode doesn’t make Hanks too mean to his canine sidekick, but he can’t balance the movie’s surprisingly bleak cop plot with the dog antics either.
2. Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman are two of the most respected screen actors of our generation. Few things demonstrate that enormous goodwill better than the fact that we still speak highly of both performers, even after starring in the painfully backward Driving Miss Daisy.
Freeman does what he can to make his stereotypical driver feel like an actual person instead of a stereotype, and deserves all the praise he earned. But at the end of the day, the movie trades on too many harmful tropes to be enjoyable.
3. Any Which Way You Can (1980)
Clint Eastwood is a generational talent, a powerful film presence in front of and behind the camera. But he also did two movies with an orangutan. And they were both hits. The sequel to Any Which Way But Loose, Any Which Way You Can brings Eastwood’s bare-knuckle boxer back with the orangutan Clyde for an adventure against the mafia and fascists, for some reason.
Neither silly nor exciting enough to be enjoyable, Any Which Way You Can leaves viewers scratching their heads in confusion.
4. Smokey and the Bandit II (1980)
Burt Reynolds, Jackie Gleason, and Jerry Reed had a really good time making Smokey and the Bandit and its 1980 sequel. While that fun is clearly on the screen, as are a few cool shots from stuntman-turned-director Hal Needham, most of the movie is dull unless you’re Reynolds and crew.
As a result, Smokey and the Bandit II feels like the equivalent of being stuck at home while your friends go out together.
5. Arthur (1981)
It’s hard to think of a more unlikely Hollywood star than Dudley Moore, a diminutive English comedian who had a run of hit films in the 1980s, including an Academy Award nomination for 1981’s Arthur. It’s even more of a surprise to those rewatching Arthur, a romantic comedy about a rich man who falls for a peasant girl.
The premise has a lot of heart, and Liza Minelli is luminous as poor woman Linda, but Moore’s screen presence is so grating that you might find yourself reaching for a Minelli movie instead.
6. On Golden Pond (1981)
Before Jaws and Star Wars launched the age of blockbusters, moviegoers flocked to watch thoughtful character dramas. To be sure, there’s a lot to love about a world in which movies about human beings make big bucks, but it’s important to remember that not all dramas are interesting. Case in point: the sappy On Golden Pond, a story of family reconciliation starring Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda, and Jane Fonda.
The movie’s great cast can’t overcome a stagnant script based on the play of the same name.
7. Porky’s (1981)
Raunchy comedies certainly have their place in pop culture, but the genre has a bad history of being exploitative and cruel. A less-than-stellar example is 1981’s Porky’s, a coming-of-age movie about teenage boys in the 1950s.
The main plot deals with the boys battling the owner of an adult nightclub, but that and other storylines in the movie rest on crass jokes about mistreating women and indulging the characters’ worst behavior.
8. The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980)
It’s easy to get the central joke of The Gods Must Be Crazy, written and directed by South African filmmaker Jamie Uys. After a littering pilot drops an empty Coke bottle from his passing airplane, it’s found by Namibian farmer Xi (Nǃxau ǂToma), who mistakes the rubbish as a gift from the gods and goes on a quest to return it.
But the movie doesn’t have many jokes beyond asking us to laugh at Xi for not understanding Western culture, making the film feel mean as well as dull.
9. The Four Seasons (1981)
Most people still know Alan Alda for his run as Hawkeye Pierce on MASH, but the actor also had a side career as a writer and director, starting with The Four Seasons. To its credit, The Four Seasons takes a mature, non-judgmental approach to dealing with a divorce and remarriage among a group of middle-class couples.
However, Alda struggles to visualize the tension, resulting in an inert and often self-satisfied film.
10. Staying Alive (1983)
By 1983, Sylvester Stallone had already established himself as a solid writer and director, having written the first Rocky and fully taken the reigns of Rocky II, III, and wrestling drama Paradise Alley. For his fourth film as director, Stallone stayed (mostly) behind the camera, keeping the focus on star John Travolta.
Stallone might know his way around the underdog story he pens for this sequel to the disco hit Saturday Night Fever, but Travolta doesn’t have the right energy to play Tony Manero as a hero who overcomes all the odds to become a star dancer.
11. Bachelor Party (1984)
Tom Hanks is America’s dad. But like most dads, Hanks had a rough and surprisingly ribald past. That’s certainly true of Hanks’ first hit, the raunchy comedy Bachelor Party. Despite the movie’s serviceable plot about a marriage almost sabotaged by well-meaning but not-thinking buds and a disapproving future father-in-law, Bachelor Party mostly fails because of its leads.
Tawny Kitaen is wooden as ever, and Hanks’ likable energy is poorly suited to his crass, wild-man lead, resulting in a confused movie that is neither as fun nor as earnest as it wants to be.
12. Police Academy (1984)
As the Marx Brothers and Bugs Bunny have proven time and again, mocking authority always gets laughs. So there should be some undeniable energy to Police Academy, which follows a group of slobs who train to become officers. But instead of focusing on the wackier characters, including Michael Winslow as a human sound-effects machine or trigger-happy Tackleberry (David Graf), Police Academy’s star is Steve Guttenberg as Mahoney, a bland jerk who only seems interested in harassing women.
Police Academy tries to push buttons instead of telling jokes, ultimately becoming an irritating watch.
13. Back to School (1986)
As long as talking pictures have existed, filmmakers have created comedies by putting funny people into otherwise straightforward scripts, hoping that the jokes write themselves. That approach has worked with some, but not with Rodney Dangerfield.
Dangerfield may be the master of a brilliant quip when doing stand-up, but as a movie lead, he’s awkward and overmatched. Back to School rarely allows Dangerfield to do his best work, forcing him to play a character instead of a guy who makes devastating observations.
14. Dragnet (1987)
There’s a nugget of brilliance to Dragnet, the adaptation of the influential 1950s television show, which puts the famously straight-laced Joe Friday into a comedy. As Friday, Dan Aykroyd commits to the bit, as does Tom Hanks as his sloppy, modern partner. But it turns out that the bit runs out of steam after 15 minutes, and not even some insane twists, including the reveal of a deadly cult, can pick things up again.
At least the rap over the closing credits, performed by Aykroyd and Hanks, does offer some unintentional laughs.
15. The Secret of My Success (1987)
In Back to the Future, Michael J. Fox played a guitar-rocking, time-traveling teen, establishing himself as one of the hottest young actors of his era.
And yet, for some reason, Fox decided to use that cache on the corporate success story The Secret of My Success. Fox is energetic as ever, and Supergirl’s Helen Slater makes for a compelling and surprisingly complicated love interest. But it’s hard to root for an arrogant jerk climbing the ladder to business success.
16. Oliver & Company (1988)
It’s no secret that Disney struggled throughout the 1980s before the animation renaissance started with The Little Mermaid. The Mouse House did score a hit with the pop-infused take on Dickens’ Oliver Twist, which sadly is among the worst Disney cartoons of all time.
The animation is as solid as ever, but no part of Oliver & Company seems to work, from its attempt to retell Oliver Twist with New York City dogs to its unappealing songs by Billy Joel, Bette Middler, and Huey Lewis.
17. Rain Man (1988)
Without a doubt, Rain Man is a beloved, award-winning film, with good reason. It’s impossible to deny the appeal of fast-talking Tom Cruise discovering what’s important when he reunites with his troubled brother, played by Dustin Hoffman. But while Rain Man won over audiences and critics in 1988, even winning four Academy Awards, it’s hard to justify Hoffman’s performance today.
Hoffman’s cloying approach intensifies the movie’s retrograde depiction of autism, making the film more insulting than heart-warming.
18. Crocodile Dundee II (1988)
While it’s hard to justify the movie’s box office dominance, Crocodile Dundee did succeed as a likable fish-out-of-water comedy, thanks largely to Paul Hogan’s easy charm. But Crocodile Dundee II makes the inexplicable decision to toss aside the goodwill of its predecessor and put hero Mick Dundee on a revenge mission against drug lords.
The film returns Mick Dundee to Australia, putting the hero back in his element and robbing him of what little comedic potential the character had, leaving behind only a tired action flick with an unconvincing lead.
19. Twins (1988)
Arnold Schwarzenegger is big and strong and Danny DeVito is not. But what if they were twins? That’s pretty much the only idea Twins has going for it, one that you’ll get just by looking at the movie poster. Schwarzenegger and DeVito do their best to breathe life into the hacky comedy, which simply cannot get over the fact that the two men do not look like.
Making matters worse is the convoluted plot involving mad scientists and evil industrialists, a story that relies on obvious jokes to hold together.
20. Look Who’s Talking (1989)
Audiences famously laughed when they saw Bruce Willis in the first trailer for Die Hard, failing to see how the funny guy from Moonlighting could be an action hero. Willis proved them all wrong with Die Hard, but his follow-up film only raised questions. In Look Who’s Talking, Willis voices Mikey, an infant who comments upon his mother Mollie’s romance with taxi driver James (Kirstie Alley and John Travolta). A hit that launched multiple sequels at the time, Look Who’s Talking has all the cleverness of a drunk uncle quipping about family home movies.
21. Ghostbusters II (1989)
Ghostbusters shouldn’t have been a hit. What was initially conceived as an epic paranormal thriller somehow became a winning, ramshackle comedy about three down-on-their-luck academics and a blue-collar guy starting a business. The gang’s luck runs out with the sequel Ghostbusters II, which amps up the set-pieces but fails to capture the scrappy energy of the original.
At best, Ghostbusters II reheats its predecessor’s best moments. At worst, it makes one wonder if bustin’ ever made them feel good in the first place.
22. The Karate Kid, Part II (1989)
Not everyone would call The Karate Kid a great movie, but it is an extremely satisfying film. A typical underdog sports story, anchored by Pat Morita’s winking performance as mentor Mr. Miyagi. The sequel forgets what made the first movie work and ups the stakes, returning Miyagi to his native Okinawa with Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) in tow.
The Karate Kid, Part II does flesh out Mr. Miyagi’s character and gives Daniel a new challenge to overcome, but it takes the spark out of the characters, overbearing them with weight the filmmakers aren’t prepared to explore.
23. Tango & Cash (1989)
To be clear, Tango & Cash is an incredibly enjoyable movie. But even its biggest fans don’t consider Tango & Cash a good movie, certainly not the type to make over $120 million at the box office. Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone are a lot of fun as the titular cops, and the filmmakers lean hard into every over-the-top 80s action trope.
But at no point does the movie make any sense, operating best as something you pop into the VCR for a lazy Saturday night, not a big-budget thriller taking up space in a movie theater.
24. Always (1989)
Stephen Spielberg has nothing to prove to anyone, especially not in the 1980s. The decade cemented Spielberg’s position as America’s great populist filmmaker, the period in which he made E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and Raiders of the Lost Ark. But Spielberg closed the 80s on a sour note, with the inert fantasy Always.
The story of a pilot (Richard Dreyfuss) returning from the dead to mentor a young man and give comfort to his loved ones presents too much schmaltz for the great director to avoid, making for one of Spielberg’s worst movies.