Madame Web is the worst film of the year.
At least that was the pick for that dubious honor by the Razzie Awards, the longest-running bad-movie alternative to the Oscars. Every year the members of the Razzies (which is literally anyone who wants to pay to be a member) votes on their picks for the worst films of the year. And this year the consensus choice for the dregs of cinema was the disastrous Spider-Man spinoff starring Dakoja Johnson as a clairvoyant EMT worker.
Johnson herself won the Razzies’ Worst Actress prize, and the film also won the Worst Screenplay award.
The other big Razzie winners of the year (we’re using that term loosely here, of course) included Jerry Seinfeld’s Unfrosted, which was given the awards for Worst Actor (for Seinfeld himself) and Worst Supporting Actress (for Amy Schumer), and the notorious Joker: Folie à Deux, which received the awards for Worst Sequel and for Worst Onscreen Couple for stars Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga.
With very few historical exceptions, the winners of the Razzies typically stay away from the ceremony and ignore the awards entirely. But one of this year’s winners decided to embrace his prize.
That’s Francis Ford Coppola, who won the Worst Director Razzie for his Megalopolis, a costly (but extremely ambitious) sci-fi flop that Coppola financed himself with millions of dollars from his personal fortune after decades of attempts to mount the film through more traditional financing.
“I am thrilled to accept the Razzie award” wrote Coppola on his Instagram account. “In this wreck of a world today, where ART is given scores as if it were professional wrestling, I chose to NOT follow the gutless rules laid down by an industry so terrified of risk that despite the enormous pool of young talent at its disposal, may not create pictures that will be relevant and alive 50 years from now. What an honor to stand alongside a great and courages filmmaker like Jacques Tati who impoverished himself completely to make one of cinema’s most beloved failures, PLAYTIME!”
“Let us remind ourselves,” Coppola added, “that box-office is only about money, and like war, stupidity, and politics has no true place in our future.”
READ MORE: The Worst Razzie Nominees in History
Playtime never won a Razzie (the awards weren’t even created until 1981) but nonetheless I admire Coppola’s defiant spirit, just like I admired that same spirit in Megalopolis, even if the movie itself was occasionally incomprehensible and often bizarre. In other words: An easy target for the Razzies but not one of the truly bad films of 2024. (Madame Web, on the other hand, was really and truly terrible.)
Here’s the full list of winners from this year’s Razzies:
Worst Picture
Borderlands
Joker: Folie a Deux
Madame Web – WINNER
Megalopolis
Reagan
Worst Actor
Jack Black, Dear Santa
Zachary Levi, Harold and the Purple Crayon
Joaquin Phoenix, Joker: Folie a Deux
Dennis Quaid, Reagan
Jerry Seinfeld, Unfrosted – WINNER
Dakota Johnson – LA Premiere – Madame Web – 2024 – Sony Pictures – Getty
Worst Actress
Cate Blanchett, Borderlands
Lady Gaga, Joker: Folie a Deux
Bryce Dallas Howard, Argylle
Dakota Johnson, Madame Web – WINNER
Jennifer Lopez, Atlas
Worst Supporting Actor
Jack Black, Borderlands
Kevin Hart, Borderlands
Shia LaBeouf, Megalopolis
Tahar Rahim, Madame Web
Jon Voight, Megalopolis, Reagan, Shadow Land & Strangers – WINNER
Worst Supporting Actress
Ariana DeBose, Argylle and Kraven the Hunter
Leslie Anne Down, Reagan
Emma Roberts, Madame Web
Amy Schumer, Unfrosted – WINNER
FKA twigs, The Crow
Worst Director
S.J. Clarkson, Madame Web
Francis Ford Coppola, Megalopolis – WINNER
Todd Phillips, Joker: Folie a Deux
Eli Roth, Borderlands
Jerry Seinfeld, Unfrosted
Worst Onscreen Combo
Any Two Obnoxious Characters (But Especially Jack Black), Borderlands
Any Two Unfunny “Comedic Actors,” Unfrosted
The Entire Cast of Megalopolis
Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, Joker: Folie a Deux – WINNER
Dennis Quaid and Penelope Ann Miller, Reagan
Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel
The Crow
Joker: Folie a Deux – WINNER
Kraven the Hunter
Mufasa: The Lion King
Rebel Moon: Part 2 — The Scargiver
Worst Screenplay
Joker: Folie a Deux
Kraven the Hunter
Madame Web – WINNER
Megalopolis
Reagan
Good Movies That Won Razzie Awards
The Razzies are supposed to be awards for the worst in cinema. So why did they give awards to these titles?!?
