The Golden Raspberry Awards, better known as the Razzies, honored Hollywood’s worst work on Saturday, a day before tinseltown was set to celebrate its best creative achievements at the 96th annual Oscars.
The winners of the town’s least coveted prize included Megan Fox, who secured two victories, Worst Actress for Johnny & Clyde, and Worst Supporting Actress for Expend4bles, Sylvester Stallone, Worst Supporting Actor for Expend4bles, and Jon Voigt, Worst Actor for Mercy.
As the Razzies states on its website, the awards are intended as a badge of dishonor. However, “they have often inadvertently shed light on films so out-there, so uncompromising, so beyond the bounds of accepted ‘good’ taste that they demand attention.” The organization lists such movies as Showgirls, Barb Wire, and Xanadu as those that fit into this category.
“In a topsy-turvy way,” the ceremony description continues, “this program pays tribute to those divisive films that continue to fascinate and provoke debate, while calling into question the very line that separates high and low culture.”
A press release for the 2024 awards noted that the film industry has been trying to recover from a sense of “cinematic decline” caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and a sense of “universal agoraphobia.” Whether the Razzies will ameliorate those problems is certainly up for debate.
As The Hollywood Reporter noted, the ceremony is judged by “1,179 movie buffs, film critics and journalists from 49 U.S. states and two dozen foreign countries.”
This year’s event was emceed by a comedic duo known as “The Mean Gays,” composed of Jake Jonez and Aaron Goldenberg. The big winner of the night was Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, a poorly received slasher take on the children’s book. It took home five prizes: Worst Screenplay; Worst Director; Worst Screen Couple; Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off, or Sequel; and overall Worst Picture.
Just 3 percent of critics endorsed the movie, according to Rotten Tomatoes, while 50 percent of viewers said they enjoyed it.
In one positive gesture, the president of the SAG-AFTRA union, Fran Drescher, was bestowed the Razzie Redeemer Award, “for her brilliant shepherding of the actors’ guild through a prolonged 2023 strike, with a highly successful conclusion.”
