There's nothing quite like the awkward silence that follows a joke that lands with a thud. When a comedy fails, there are no cool explosions or cheesy stunts to save it—just famous actors sweating through terrible scripts. The 1990s gave us plenty of these disasters, movies that used their R-ratings to seem edgy but forgot to write actual jokes. Here are six absolute zeros that will make you cringe instead of laugh.
6. 'Loose Cannons' (1990)
The premise of Loose Cannons sounds like it could be a chaotic blast: tough detective Ellis Fielding (Gene Hackman) investigates a murder tied to Nazi pornography, partnered with Grim (Dan Aykroyd), a detective with multiple personality disorder who can transform into anyone. Instead of entertaining chaos, the film becomes less coherent as it goes. It never decides what kind of comedy it wants to be—sometimes treating Grim's condition as slapstick, other times trying for genuine suspense, then shifting into bizarrely dark territory. Watching Hackman try to make an actual movie while Aykroyd seems to be in a completely different one is unintentionally more entertaining than anything the script intended.
5. 'Senseless' (1998)
Senseless lives up to its name. Marlon Wayans plays Darryl Witherspoon, a college student who volunteers for a medical experiment that enhances all five senses to absurd levels. He can hear conversations across campus, taste ingredients nobody else can identify, and experience pain unbearably. But the film never moves beyond this premise—almost every joke is Darryl experiencing a sensation intensely and screaming about it. Wayans throws himself into every scene with enormous energy, which makes the experience even stranger because he's working much harder than the movie deserves.
4. 'The Jerky Boys' (1995)
The Jerky Boys feels like a three-minute prank call stretched into a feature-length film. Johnny B. (Johnny Brennan) and Kamal (Kamal Ahmed) play exaggerated versions of themselves, dragged into a Mafia conspiracy through their prank phone calls. The film is a mess—scenes begin, jokes happen, characters yell, and continuity doesn't matter. The prank calls occasionally produce a laugh from sheer stupidity, but the surrounding film feels like disconnected sketches edited together by accident. It's like watching several unfinished movies stitched together.
3. 'The Real Blonde' (1997)
The Real Blonde follows struggling actor Joe (Matthew Modine) through relationships, auditions, and awkward encounters in New York City. It sounds like the kind of offbeat character comedy that could become a cult favorite, but the film never gives the audience a reason to care about anyone. Characters spend long stretches discussing superficial people and careers, yet the movie has no actual point of view about any of it. The experience becomes strangely empty—you spend nearly two hours watching characters search for meaning while the film itself has failed to find any.
2. 'Exit to Eden' (1994)
There are bad movies, and then there's Exit to Eden. Undercover officers Fred Lavery (Dan Aykroyd) and Sheila Kingston (Rosie O'Donnell) investigate a murder connected to a private island resort centered on BDSM fantasies. Watching it feels like three completely different films fighting each other for worst. One wants to be a crime comedy, another a romantic fantasy, and a third appears interested in satire. None of them win. Aykroyd and O'Donnell perform broad comedy routines while everyone else seems trapped in a different genre. It's a catastrophic failure that leaves you wondering how a film can go so wrong.
For more on why some movies just don't work, check out our list of 10 classic movies that are just okay. And if you're in the mood for something better, try adventure movies that broke all the rules or top vampire movies since 2010.
