The Nineties are remembered as a golden age of big-screen comedy<\/a>. The highs were certainly glorious \u2013 from Doug Liman\u2019s deadpan Swingers (which made \u201cYou\u2019re so money!\u201d a catchphrase for 15 minutes in 1996<\/a>) to uproariously lowbrow Farrelly brothers<\/a> chortlefest There\u2019s Something About Mary \u2013 the Citizen Kane of movies about getting your junk caught in your zipper. But amid such chucklesome triumphs, the decade was strewn with laugh-free clunkers. <\/p>\n Here is a countdown of the anti-laughter zones that brought lasting shame on late 20th-century Hollywood. <\/p>\n 16. Picture Perfect (1997)<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Jennifer Aniston and Jay Mohr in \u2018Picture Perfect\u2019 (Moviestore\/Shutterstock)<\/p>\n The success of Friends had made Jennifer Aniston one of Hollywood\u2019s hottest properties. But it also convinced casting directors that she could only play variations of her self-obsessed and clumsy Friends character, Rachel. Alas, all of Aniston\u2019s comedic skills were worthless as she was marooned in Picture Perfect, a lustre-less romcom about a desperate-for-a-boyfriend singleton who convinces random acquaintance Nick (Jay Mohr) to pretend to be her partner \u2013 largely to make Kevin Bacon\u2019s bad boy Sam jealous. It later emerged that Aniston had blanked Mohr on set \u2013 she was supposedly miffed his part had not gone to her then-boyfriend Tate Donovan. On his podcast, Mohr said he had been so upset by Aniston\u2019s hostility that he went home to his parents one weekend and cried his eyes out. Audience members who laboured through this disaster will have had a similar response. Keep your eyes peeled for future Big Bang Theory mega-star Kaley Cuoco, playing a little girl at a wedding. <\/p>\n 15. Doctor Dolittle (1998)<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n A talking horse and Eddie Murphy in \u2018Doctor Dolittle\u2019 (THA\/Shutterstock)<\/p>\n The curse of Doctor Dolittle spans generations in Hollywood. The original 1967 adaptation of the Hugh Lofting novels about a man who natters with animals is regarded as a charmless folly with a runaway budget that soared three times over the original estimate. Meanwhile, the less said about Robert Downey Jr\u2019s 2020 take on the tale, the better \u2013 it took a global pandemic to erase memories of the CGI slop-fest. Amid such undistinguished company, it says something for Eddie Murphy\u2019s scatological Dr Dolittle that it is by far the worst of the bunch, featuring crude gags and a listless performance by Murphy. Dead behind the eyes, he is out-acted by his animal companions \u2013 including a guinea pig voiced by Chris Rock and a dog played by Ellen DeGeneres.<\/p>\n 14. Inspector Gadget (1999)<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Matthew Broderick and Joely Fisher in \u2018Inspector Gadget\u2019 (Getty)<\/p>\n Inspector Gadget is still fondly remembered in the UK as an Eighties cartoon with a catchy theme song. In the US, it was rebooted as a horrific action comedy starring a wildly miscast Matthew Broderick \u2013 no match for the great Don Adams, who voiced the cartoon \u2013 up against Rupert Everett\u2019s villainous Dr Claw, masked in the original but here with his mug on full display. To quote one review from the time, it was \u201ca downright dumb movie that, with its breathless pace, lack of character development and uninventive gags, might be torture for even the kids to sit through\u201d.<\/p>\n 13. The Pallbearer (1996)<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Gwyneth Paltrow and David Schwimmer in \u2018The Pallbearer\u2019 (Getty)<\/p>\n Friends-mania provided its cast with steady movie offers from the mid-1990s onwards. David Schwimmer decided to cash in his Ross Geller chips with the bizarre black comedy The Pallbearer. He plays a disillusioned Gen-Xer who agrees to help carry the coffin of a former high school classmate who died by suicide \u2013 even though he has no memory of the kid and may have never actually known him. Along the way, he sleeps with the dead man\u2019s mother (Barbara Hershey) and fixates on Gwyneth Paltrow, playing a pioneering version of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl that would become a tiresome feature of early 21st-century romcoms. It\u2019s a queasy combination of death, sex and unrequited love that first-time director (and future Batman whisperer) Matt Reeves lacks the experience to bring together.<\/p>\n 12. Home Alone 3 (1997)<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Alex D Linz in \u2018Home Alone 3\u2019 (Moviestore\/Shutterstock)<\/p>\n By the late 1990s, Macaulay Culkin was too far into his awkward teenage years to reprise his iconic part of blood-thirsty cherub Kevin McAllister. And so the Home Alone baton was passed to eight-year-old Alex D Linz for a third movie that \u2013 for complicated and tedious reasons \u2013 finds North Korean cyberterrorists trying to break into the Chicago home of Linz\u2019s character (also named Alex) after he skips school to recover from chickenpox. Written by Home Alone creator John Hughes but directed by first-time director Raja Gosnell, the clunky and laugh-free comedy cried out for Culkin\u2019s charisma. In fact, Home Alone 3 is notable today primarily for a cameo by an 11-year-old Scarlett Johansson as Alex\u2019s older sister. <\/p>\n 11. Coneheads (1993)<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Jane Curtin, Michelle Burke and Dan Aykroyd in \u2018Coneheads\u2019 (Murray Close\/Paramount\/Kobal\/Shutterstock)<\/p>\n The Blues Brothers and Wayne\u2019s World were examples of characters originating on American sketch show Saturday Night Live and making the successful leap to the big screen. However, not all SNL sketches spread their wings beyond the mothership. One of the biggest flops was Coneheads, a $30m disaster adapted from a long-running SNL skit about pointy-headed aliens living in suburban America. Despite enthusiastic mugging from Dan Aykroyd as the Conehead dad, the film\u2019s aliens-in-America premise proved too flimsy to sustain an entire standalone movie. Still, Coneheads would have a surprising afterlife, with wife-and-husband writers Bonnie and Terry Turner and star Jane Curtin (who played Aykroyd\u2019s wife) reworking the formula into hit sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun \u2013 about a family of aliens marooned on Earth (minus the pointy heads).<\/p>\n 10. Flubber (1997)<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Robin Williams in \u2018Flubber\u2019 (Moviestore\/Shutterstock)<\/p>\n Not even top-class gurning from Robin Williams could save a moribund remake of 1961\u2019s The Absent-Minded Professor \u2013 renamed after the sentient green goo Williams\u2019s character cooks up in the lab and which goes on to wreak havoc in his neighbourhood. Williams goes all in here, but not even a comedy legend firing on every piston could redeem a script that appears to have had all the laughs extracted at gunpoint.<\/p>\n 9. Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995)<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Leslie Nielsen in \u2018Dracula: Dead and Loving It\u2019 (Castle Rock Entertainment\/Kobal\/Shutterstock)<\/p>\n A bloodless attempt by Mel Brooks to resurrect the anarchic zing of his 1974 classic Young Frankenstein and apply it to the story of Dracula, Dead and Loving It is undone by a toothless script and wooden acting by Leslie Nielsen as the iconic Count (Brooks played his sworn enemy, Van Helsing). Reviewers drove a stake through the film\u2019s heart, and Brooks did not take it well. In a confrontation with esteemed critic Roger Ebert, he didn\u2019t hold back. \u201cListen, you, I made 21 movies. I\u2019m very talented. I\u2019ll live in history. I have a body of work. You only have a body.\u201d However, such ranting was in vain, and 30 years on, Dead and Loving It is correctly regarded as one of the worst things Brooks has ever done.<\/p>\n 8. The Beverly Hillbillies (1993)<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Diedrich Bader, Erika Eleniak, Jim Varney, Cloris Leachman and Lily Tomlin in \u2018The Beverly Hillbillies\u2019 (Deana Newcomb\/20th Century Fox\/Kobal\/Shutterstock)<\/p>\n Big-screen remakes of beloved TV shows were one of the great obsessions of Nineties Hollywood. From The Flintstones to Lost in Space, the results were invariably disastrous \u2013 and none was more cack-handed than The Beverly Hillbillies, about a family of heavily stereotyped Arkansas yokels who become rich after oil is found on their farmland and move to California to live it up. The project was a huge disaster for director Penelope Spheeris, who had struck gold the previous year with Wayne\u2019s World (and whose background was in gritty punk documentaries). Three decades on, it\u2019s only worth watching for a cameo by Dolly Parton as herself.<\/p>\n 7. Beethoven (1992)<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Beethoven the Dog in \u2018Beethoven\u2019 (Universal\/Kobal\/Shutterstock)<\/p>\n John Hughes directed iconic 1980s teen movies The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles, but his creative powers were waning when he co-scripted the inane story of a hulking pooch who teaches valuable life lessons to its adoptive family. Mawkish, dull and lacking in laughs, Beethoven nonetheless features a nicely villainous turn by a young David Duchovny as an evil venture capitalist trying to swindle Beethoven\u2019s family, and an even younger Joseph Gordon-Levitt as an extra. Beethoven was a huge hit, spawning four direct sequels, three standalone reboots and an animated spin-off. Not that Hughes was exactly basking in the glory \u2013 having fallen out with Universal Pictures before the cameras even started rolling, he insisted on being credited as \u201cEdmond Dant\u00e8s\u201d \u2013 the hero of Alexandre Dumas\u2019s The Count of Monte Cristo. Meanwhile, a fun fact for trivia fans: the 12 \u201cBeethoven\u201d dogs used in the film were owned and trained by Eleanor Keaton, widow of silent movie great Buster Keaton.<\/p>\n 6. Look Who\u2019s Talking Now! (1993)<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n John Travolta in \u2018Look Who\u2019s Talking Now!\u2019 (Tri-Star\/Kobal\/Shutterstock)<\/p>\n When people talk about John Travolta\u2019s career as having been in a dark place before Quentin Tarantino overruled studio objections and insisted he be cast in Pulp Fiction, they are referring to films such as Look Who\u2019s Talking Now! Travolta and Kirstie Alley return for a threadbare third entry in a bafflingly successful series (combined box office earnings of over $200m). But instead of Bruce Willis ginning up laughs as the internal voice of a baby \u2013 the infantile formula that made the first two films bearable \u2013 this time we have to deal with a duo of dogs adopted by the family. Their thoughts are given voice by Danny DeVito and Diane Keaton, who must have wondered how she\u2019d gone from The Godfather and Annie Hall to pooch purgatory. <\/p>\n 5. Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (1999)<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Rob Schneider in \u2018Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo\u2019 (Getty)<\/p>\n The Nineties sex comedy reaches a grim nadir with this tale of a financially challenged fish tank cleaner who becomes a male prostitute. Jokes about overweight and disabled \u201cclients\u201d of Rob Schneider\u2019s character \u2013 including a woman with Tourette syndrome played by a young Amy Poehler \u2013were tasteless even by Nineties standards, while later attempts in the film to add a feel-good factor by having us see Deuce as a hero butterfly misfire. <\/p>\n 4. Mr Nanny (1993)<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Hulk Hogan and Madeline Zima in \u2018Mr Nanny\u2019 (New Line\/Kobal\/Shutterstock)<\/p>\n With Kindergarten Cop and Junior, Arnold Schwarzenegger pioneered a new genre of cinema in which a musclebound lunk is chucked into a slapstick comedy and left to sink or swim. The actor was also blessed with enough droll charisma to stay afloat and extract genuine laughs from the action-hero-out-of-water premise. But WWE star Hulk Hogan had none of Schwarzenegger\u2019s deadpan charm on the big screen. The point was painfully proved in Mr Nanny, where there was no sense he was in on the joke while playing a former wrestler looking after three out-of-control kids.<\/p>\n You have to credit Hogan for subverting his tough-guy reputation. In one memorable scene, he tries to bond with the kids by donning a pink ballerina tutu and mugging for all he is worth. However, cinemagoers didn\u2019t see the funny side \u2013 Mr Nanny was a body-slamming flop, bringing in a pitiful $4.3m on a $10m budget. <\/p>\n 3. Wild Wild West (1999)<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Kevin Kline and Will Smith in \u2018Wild Wild West\u2019 (Moviestore\/Shutterstock)<\/p>\n One of Will Smith\u2019s biggest disasters this side of the Oscars slap was his attempt to revive the old 1960s sci-fi western Wild Wild West, which proved an expensive mistake. It wasn\u2019t all Smith\u2019s fault \u2013 Kenneth Branagh puts in one of his worst turns as a scenery-chewing former Confederate evil genius. Meanwhile, Kevin Kline visibly sleepwalks through the inert script as the reluctant accomplice of Smith\u2019s character. Likewise snoozing at the wheel is director Barry Sonnenfeld, who slaps on the CGI with a steampunk trowel while neglecting plot or dialogue. <\/p>\n 2. Ghost Dad (1990)<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Bill Cosby in \u2018Ghost Dad\u2019 (Universal\/Kobal\/Shutterstock)<\/p>\n Bill Cosby\u2019s fall from grace was still decades away when Hollywood legend Sidney Poitier cast him in his ghoulish comedy about a dead dad who haunts his grieving kids \u2013 with supposedly heart-warming results (his spirit is finally reunited with his corpse, and he comes back to life). As the star of The Cosby Show, Cosby had a special place in the heart of American audiences \u2013 but he squandered that high standing with this thumpingly unfunny film.<\/p>\n 1. Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992)<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Sylvester Stallone and Estelle Getty in \u2018Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot\u2019 (Universal\/Northern Lights\/Kobal\/Shutterstock)<\/p>\n Hollywood folklore has it that Schwarzenegger knowingly made an idiot out of his action rival Stallone by pretending to be all in on this dreadful script about a police detective and his bossy elderly mother. Catching wind of Schwarzenegger\u2019s enthusiasm, Sly is said to have vowed to secure the rights \u2013 which he duly did, leading to a titter-deficient turkey that counted as his biggest fumble since he played football against the Nazis in Escape to Victory. Estelle Getty, who portrayed the mother of Stallone\u2019s character, was famous for the sitcom The Golden Girls \u2013 though her comedic talents met their match in the dreadful script. Years later, Stallone would single out Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot as one of his biggest regrets. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146214,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,3943,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-146213","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114601250709192355","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Jennifer](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/shutterstock_editorial_1616176a.jpeg\")
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