What Really Makes a Movie one of the “Worst Ever Made”?

I never asked myself that question more seriously than when I recently watched MIXED NUTS, a 90s Christmas comedy starring Steve Martin. The film popped up on Tubi many times over the years and I was always curious about it, wondering if it was some long forgotten gem. Spoiler alert: it certainly is not that.

And though I can think of films that are technically worse, I think MIXED NUTS must rank as one of the worst movies ever made. Watching it helped me finally boil down what that means to me. My new definition: to qualify for that awful category a film must have all the potential in the world (a talented director, a strong cast) and at least the semblance of a story that might work well on screen… and all that must be squandered in the most head-scratching, yawn-inducing, sometimes nauseating way. Such is the case with MIXED NUTS, a movie that not only has Martin at the peak of his career but an ensemble that includes Juliette Lewis, Liev Schreiber, Adam Sandler, Tom Hanks’s wife, and the great Madeline Kahn (never worse than she is here). It was all commanded by Nora Ephron, hot off SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE. And the story isn’t bad on paper. How could it be when the French made it firsts? P.S. American remakes of French comedies are almost always bad and never as good as the originals.

Whenever someone says that some low-budget indie movie is “one of the worst ever made”, that doesn’t make sense to me. Such films may sometimes be terrible, even unwatchable, but they were up against the odds. They lacked resources and a limited selection of talent that prevented them from before more than they could even with the best efforts from their creators. No. The worst movies ever made are the ones that had everything to make them great and screwed it up beyond belief.

This article will be posted next week on my website runningwildfilms.com and my Facebook page, Travis Mills Filmmaker. For now, it is only available on steemit