One of the many ways our own Bollywood manages to stay above water despite being almost 50 years behind the rest of the world in terms of storytelling is by making sure they put stars in the posters. While Hollywood is slightly more diverse, nothing brings a crowd on Friday quite like a reliable face on the billboards.
That said, sometimes movies are so bad, even superstars couldn’t save them. And there have been tons of them over decades, a lot of them in our own backyard.
1. Shah Rukh Khan- Ra.One
The film was ambitious, wish the script knew anything about it. It was all over the place. SRK has always been a delight to watch but the rest of the film just couldn’t do him justice. The jokes didn’t land and the villain was a big joke. The science behind the sci-fi film was aimed to be self-explanatory but even that fell on its face.
2. Salman Khan- Race 3
Things almost always work out when you cast Salman Khan in a film. His fans alone make sure the film becomes a hit. Except, that particular formula didn’t pan out the way it was expected in Race 3. The film also had Anil Kapoor, Bobby Deol, Jaqueline Fernandes to name a few stars but in the end, it doesn’t matter how much room freshener you use, shit still stinks.
3. Al Pacino- The Godfather III
They pulled him back in but it just didn’t work out. The third movie was a mistake and even though it had its moments, compared to its predecessors, it just fell flat and since this was way before the 2010s, mediocrity dressed up in fancy costumes was just a bit on the nose for the audience.
4. Tom Hardy – Star Trek: The Next Generation
Hardy portrayed Shinzon, a clone of Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) raised by a subspecies of the Romulans. But while he was good at his job, he just wasn’t the right villain. Firstly, he looked nothing like Kirk, despite being his clone. Secondly, the film was utterly unworthy of being a Star Trek film.
6. Zero
The whole film just felt like a caricature that treated its audience as one would a herd of sheep unknown to the ways of the wolf. It’s got all the flashy things right, the music was cool as were the costumes. But even SRK playing a short version of SRK wasn’t enough to save the film. Not to mention, SRK, even the shorter version looked nothing like a vertically challenged person.
7. Tubelight
Like we said before, Salman Khan normally makes sure his films are superhit. That said, not even the loyal Bhai fans who flock to the cinemas more than once for the same film couldn’t have saved this clusterf**k of an attempt at making cinema.
8. Shahid Kapoor & Alia Bhatt- Shaandaar
This movie was full of crap that Alia Bhatt herself admitted to having made a mistake by signing the film. What was this movie about? Who knows? We tried contacting the 3 people who watched the movie and it turns out one of them was Vishal Bhardwaj trying to see a silver lining so that he could cast Shahid in a good movie later and redeem him. We couldn’t reach Pankaj Kapoor or Mira Rajput.
9. Ranbir Kapoor & Anushka Sharma- Bombay Velvet
Let’s be honest. None of us has seen the film. You had never probably heard of it before and I don’t get paid nearly enough to sit through movies in lists like these. The point being, the movie had everything, from star power to Karan Johar’s money to Anurag Kashyap’s indie sensibilities. And yet, nobody saw it, primarily because the good samaritans called reviewers told us not to.
10. Meryl Streep- The Woods
If Meryl Streep couldn’t save a movie then it was just never going to work. Make no mistake, she was amazing in the film but the movie, as a while just seriously sucked.
11. Michael Fassbender- X-Men: Apocalypse
The only reason Fassbender’s name is up there is that he was the only good thing about the movie. Sophie Turner was so bland, she made The Phoenix look like British food. The film also did a brilliant job of butchering one of the most potent villains in the comics, while making Oscar Isaac give the worst performance of his otherwise brilliant career.
12. Adam Driver – Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Kylo Ren was easily the most likeable part of the new movies. And that’s sad because he doesn’t get to do a lot. The plot was simply crap and made no sense whatever. And there was only so much brooding Driver could have done, even for a Skywalker.
13. Will Smith & Margot Robbie- Suicide Squad
Both Smith and Robbie played their respective characters like they were born for it. The rest of the cast was really good as well. Unfortunately, this was pre Snyder-Cut era, so Warner Bros wasn’t particularly interested in making good DC movies, even with acclaimed directors at the helm. Hence…
It’s highly recommended that you don’t watch any of these films. You know, life is short and all that!