Since the birth of cinema, there have been many great performances by actors whom we love and admire. Witnessing these performances is part of the reason we keep going to the movies. Great performances can elevate movies and remind audiences about their own humanity, and they also provide fond memories for moviegoers. Unfortunately, great performances are not the only unforgettable memories audiences get to take home. Being memorable is usually a good thing, but there are also bad performances by actors that somehow stick in our minds. Here are some scenes acted so badly we can't forget them.
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00:00A great performance can leave a permanent impression on moviegoers.
00:03Then again, bad acting can leave a similarly permanent impression, but for very different
00:08reasons.
00:09Over the years, we've seen plenty of awful acting, and these scenes represent some of
00:13the very worst.
00:14No, not the bees!
00:15Not the bees!
00:16Ahhhh!
00:17My eyes!
00:18My eyes!
00:19Ahhhh!
00:20Ahhhh!
00:21Here are some of our favorite poorly acted movie scenes.
00:28War of Law
00:30Of all the ridiculous scenes in the Sylvester Stallone-starring dystopian disaster Judge
00:34Dredd, none play out quite as badly as the long-awaited confrontation between Judge Dredd
00:40and his brother Rico at the end of the movie.
00:42What begins as a slow-burning war of words quickly escalates to the point where Stallone
00:47and Armand Asante forget how to pronounce basic English.
00:51Why did you judge me?
00:52You killed innocent people!
00:53The means to an end!
00:54You started a massacre!
00:55I caused a revolution!
00:56You betrayed the law!
00:57Law!
00:58Not like Stallone has a great grasp of English to begin with.
01:08What kind of places
01:10Pretty much any scene from Showgirls is bad enough to make this list, but the one that
01:14always sticks out as being the very worst happens to be toward the beginning of the
01:18movie, when Nomi meets her future roommate Molly for the first time.
01:22As we saw on Saved by the Bell, Elizabeth Berkley tends to crank each line up to 11.
01:27I'm so excited!
01:30I'm so scared!
01:34Berkley might have been channeling that very scary moment when performing in this scene,
01:38when she vigorously files her nails, violently stabs her beverage, and pours ketchup over
01:43french fries as if she's auditioning for a commercial about anger management.
01:47Eventually, Molly asks where Nomi's from, and that's when things get really dramatic.
01:52Where are you from?
01:56Back East.
01:57From where back East?
01:58Different places!
01:59It's a pretty extreme reaction, huh?
02:05But maybe it's not the line of questioning that's got her upset.
02:08Maybe she just doesn't have the right snacks.
02:11Doggy chow.
02:13I used to love doggy chow.
02:16I used to love doggy chow, too.
02:20Feeling burned
02:22Nicolas Cage's performance in The Wicker Man is so bad, people who haven't even seen the
02:26movie are able to quote infamous lines, like this one.
02:29Now why in the hell would you let them do a sick thing like that?
02:33Things get particularly loopy when Cage's character, a policeman who interrogates a
02:37group of neo-pagans after his daughter goes missing, discovers a burned doll he believes
02:42belonged to his daughter.
02:43That's when we get a glimpse into the Nicolas Cage school of interrogation.
02:47How'd it get burned?
02:49How'd it get burned?
02:51How'd it get burned?
02:52I don't know!
02:53Tell me!
02:54Anakin's beach blues
02:56Even after we got The Force Awakens, the ill-advised Star Wars prequels continue to linger painfully
03:02in fans' souls, like some kind of cosmic penance.
03:05Oh, but it is!
03:06It is demanded by the gods, it is!
03:09And few scenes are as hatefully remembered as Hayden Christensen's chat with Padme in
03:13Attack of the Clones about, that's right, sand.
03:16Because when you've got a movie with lightsabers and an army of clones marching around with
03:20laser guns, and galactic stability hangs in the balance, we need to stop and talk about
03:25how annoying it is when sand gets in your crack.
03:28I don't like sand.
03:31It's coarse, and rough, and irritating, and it gets everywhere.
03:36Over a decade later, people are still joking about it.
03:39Talk about a scene that has legs.
03:42Ooh, just realizing about that whole has legs thing.
03:49Really insensitive.
03:50Sorry about that.
03:52What's happening?
03:53What do you do when you try to calm down a crazy lady?
03:57You deny your accusations with the convictions and believability of a four-year-old boy.
04:01At least, that was Mark Wahlberg's plan during his confrontation with Betty Buckley in M.
04:05Night Shyamalan's The Happening.
04:06"...planning on stealing something?"
04:08No, ma'am, we're not.
04:11"...plan on murdering me in my sleep?"
04:14What?
04:15No!
04:16Even Wahlberg himself admitted the movie sucked during a press conference for The Fighter
04:20two years later.
04:21"'You can't blame me for wanting to play a science teacher, you know.
04:24I wasn't playing a cop or a crook,' Mark Wahlberg, doing a bad job of acting in a forgettable
04:29movie."
04:30What?
04:31No!
04:32Don't feed the trolls
04:33Picture this scenario.
04:35You realize you're about to be eaten alive by trolls.
04:37What do you do?
04:38What do you say?
04:40Maybe you take a cue from Arnold, the nerdy teenager in Troll 2, and do something like
04:44this?
04:45"'They're eating her!
04:46And then they're going to eat me!
04:50Oh my God!'
04:52Alas, it was too late to save Arnold."
04:58What?
04:59Sorry, Mark Wahlberg, there was nothing we could do.
05:03And of course, the room.
05:06Skip to any random scene in the room, Tommy Wiseau's writing, acting, and directing debut
05:11from 2003, and it's painfully bad, in the very best way.
05:15I did not hit her.
05:17I did not.
05:18Oh, hi Mark.
05:20This film is so poorly constructed that it's been dubbed the Citizen Kane of bad movies,
05:24making it hard to narrow it down to just one laughable scene.
05:27Chicken, Peter, you just a little chicken.
05:30Chip, chip, chip, chip, chip, chip, chip.
05:33But the most popular, best of the worst moment, came when Wiseau's cuckolded Johnny confronts
05:39his thought-to-be cheating fiance Lisa in this now iconic exchange.
05:43You are lying, I never hit you.
05:46You are tearing me apart, Lisa!
05:49Believe it or not, according to Wiseau's co-star and friend Greg Sestero, the moment was inspired
05:54by James Dean, who uttered a virtually identical line in Rebel Without a Cause.
05:59You're tearing me apart!
06:02You're tearing me apart, Lisa!
06:05Who performed better?
06:06We think it's time for Tommy to celebrate.
06:08Do you want me to order a pizza?
06:10Whatever, I don't care.
06:12I already ordered a pizza.
06:15You think about everything.