The Worst Tom Hanks Movie of All Time, According to Critics
The country's most beloved actor has still made some notoriously bad films.
There are few actors with a better track record than Tom Hanks. The Oscar-winning star of classics like Saving Private Ryan, Forrest Gump, and Big has an impressive filmography and an affable demeanor that has helped him become one of the country's most beloved celebrities. You could endlessly debate the best Hanks performance, with choices as eclectic as Philadelphia and Toy Story. But what about the disappointing entries on his résumé? We have a clear handle on the top picks, but it's time to look at the worst Tom Hanks movies ever made.
To do that, we turned to review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, which has a ranked list of every Tom Hanks film. We went through the lowest rated entries and came up with the worst reviewed movies the actor has ever made. (Note that Rotten Tomatoes ranks using an algorithm, which means the list is not based solely on the score, but on how many reviews there are and by which critics.) Read on to find out the worst movies starring one of the country's best actors.
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23
Cloud Atlas (2012)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 66 percent
"The problem isn't that this is one of the worst films I've ever seen in my life; the problem is that it's seven of the worst films I've ever seen in my life glued together haphazardly, their inexorable badness amplified by their awkward juxtaposition," Calum Marsh wrote for Slant Magazine.
22
Joe Versus the Volcano (1990)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 65 percent
"Joe's big adventure turns out to have all the show-stopping whammy of a Love Boat rerun," Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman wrote.
21
The Terminal (2004)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 61 percent
"When you're teaming Steven Spielberg with Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones, expectations are justifiably high," CNN's Paul Clinton wrote. "But why these three Oscar-winning artists decided to lend their exceptional talents to a movie with such a thin wisp of a plot—which goes absolutely nowhere—is beyond me."
20
Punchline (1988)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 60 percent
"But instead of taking the characters seriously, the movie makes the fatal mistake of taking stand-up seriously. And if you're gonna do that, you'd better have good material," wrote Roger Ebert.
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19
Volunteers (1985)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 58 percent
"Volunteers is a silly, thoroughly unmemorable comedy that would hardly be worth mentioning were it not for Tom Hanks' fantastically entertaining performance," David Nusair wrote for Reel Film Reviews.
18
The Polar Express (2004)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 56 percent
"As a spectacle, The Polar Express looks remarkable," The A.V. Club's Keith Phipps wrote. "As a film, however, it's the equivalent of an elaborately wrapped Christmas present containing a nice new pair of socks."
17
The Ladykillers (2004)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 54 percent
"As the head of the gang, though, Tom Hanks is primed to be better than the material allows him to be … It's good to see Hanks being silly again, and good to see him sloughing off the Jimmy Stewart niceness that's threatened to overwhelm him by playing nasty," Salon critic Charles Taylor wrote. "But this performance should really take off and it just lies in the movie, an amusing oddity."
16
Bachelor Party (1984)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 54 percent
"Even Tom Hanks had to start somewhere, and this lame comedy is one of his earliest works. That is its only attribute," Bob Bloom wrote for the Journal and Courier (via Rotten Tomatoes).
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15
Nothing in Common (1986)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 54 percent
"As you'd expect from Garry Marshall (whose TV credits include The Odd Couple, Mork and Mindy, and Happy Days), Nothing in Common has some funny moments, particularly between Hanks and Barry Corbin, as a bullying executive who hires Basner to make commercials. But a desire to make a big statement about What's Really Important in Life turns the movie to lead," Paul Attanasio wrote for The Washington Post.
14
The 'Burbs (1989)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 54 percent
"Tom Hanks stars in a weak comedy about the terrible goings-on in a suburban home," Gene Siskel wrote for the Chicago Tribune. "The script would like to be a horror film, a comedy, and a commentary on suburban living, but it doesn't hit any target."
13
Dragnet (1987)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 50 percent
"[Co-writer Dan] Aykroyd's script has more than its share of clever, witty ideas, but the film still feels the need to descend way too often to Police Academy-style heroes-dress-up-like-idiots sequences," Empire's Kim Newman wrote.
12
Turner & Hooch (1989)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 50 percent
"It is possible to spend almost all of Turner & Hooch saying, 'Yech!,' which is very much the point," Caryn James wrote for The New York Times. "The one level on which this mild children's comedy works is as an extended gross joke for eight-year-olds."
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11
The Money Pit (1986)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 50 percent
"But one gag does not a comedy make, and if they had spent the time on the characters that they spent on building the house, they might have really had something in The Money Pit," Roger Ebert wrote.
10
The Man With One Red Shoe (1985)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 47 percent
"Hanks, the young Jack Lemmon of the '80s, is squandered—late in the movie, he gets a rhythm going with [Jim] Belushi, but until then he's lost amid the clutter," The Washington Post's Paul Attanasio wrote.
9
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2012)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 44 percent
"A meaty whiff of phoney-baloney rises from this extremely contrived and incredibly preposterous movie, a mawkish, precious and bizarre fantasy of emotional pain," Peter Bradshaw wrote for The Guardian.
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8
Angels & Demons (2009)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 37 percent
"Angels & Demons proves every bit as swollen and portentous as The Da Vinci Code. It is, however, nine minutes shorter than that film, so there's something to be grateful for," The Independent's Anthony Quinn wrote.
7
Larry Crowne (2011)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 37 percent
"Hanks and co-star Julia Roberts are born stars—or at least extremely practiced ones—which serves them well here until it becomes apparent that the film has little going for it beyond their personal appeal," wrote Keith Phipps for The A.V. Club.
6
Pinocchio (2022)
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 29 percent
"A well-intentioned work that largely falls flat, it arrives today as just another widget in Disney's 'remake 'em all!' agenda, one whose pedigree offered the hope of something better," The Hollywood Reporter's John Defore wrote.
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5
The Da Vinci Code (2006)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 25 percent
"Hanks' Langdon has no quirks, no context, no history: He's a neutral container for information, a Grail-hunting bore," Dana Stevens wrote for Slate.
4
Inferno (2016)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 23 percent
"I left the theater feeling like the movie I'd just seen was frivolous and poorly plotted but sort of charming in its own way, and it moved along so fast I barely had time to register another plot hole before it soldiered on to the next picturesque location," Vox's Alissa Wilkinson wrote.
3
Ithaca (2016)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 22 percent
"The overall effect, while earnest, is disjointed, dreary and oddly structured. Seemingly pointless scenes drag. The characters feel like cardboard cutouts, and the story is so deliberately paced as to feel tedious," Claudia Puig wrote for The Wrap.
2
The Circle (2017)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 15 percent
"And that, ultimately, is the problem with The Circle. It fails to see that every story about technology is really a story about people—the people who made it, the people who use it, the people who need it or benefit from it or are hurt by it," Angie Han wrote for Mashable.
1
The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 15 percent
"What we have here, I think, is a movie that will be enjoyed most by those who haven't read the Tom Wolfe novel. In its glittering surfaces and snapshot performances, it provides a digest version of the Wolfe story, filled with obvious ironies and easy targets," Roger Ebert wrote. "Those who have read the book will be constantly distracted because they know so much more than the movie tells them about the characters."
