The worst biopics of all time

Bohemian Rhapsody

Whatever that Elton John one was.

I thought Colin Farrell in Alexander was really rather good!

Parnell 1937 with Clark Gable in the title role

Hoffa in 1992 didn't give me any sense of who the man was. Jack Nicholson starred but this was just an empty shell of a movie.

Star!

Star! gets a pass because of this, though.

^ If only Gotti had offered something similar!

I didn’t think Gotti was all that bad.

My favorite godawful biopic is "A Song To Remember", starring Cornell Wilde, a big slab of vigorously healthy beef, as the tubercular composer Frederich Chopin! With the tiny and bland Merle Oberon as tempestuous writer George Sand. Miscasting Hall of Fame material there!

The story of Sand and Chopin was actually done right in the 1990s, with "Impromptu", starring Judy Davis and Hugh Grant. It's a hilarious, romantic, and totally unique movie, I highly recommend it.

Both Cole Porter biopics - DeLovely and Night and Day are pretty bad

Diana, starring Naomi Watts. Very depressing.

The Mirror in England wrote that “Wesley Snipes in a blonde wig would be more convincing” in the role

Travolta lost with Hairspray and never recovered.

Mme Marion Cotillard shrieking her way to an Oscar in La Vie en Rose. I just found that whole film bad: deeply depressing and actually pretty boring.

I’m probably wrong though, because it was a big award-winner.

I didn't buy Decaprio as Howard Hughes for one minute in Aviator.

Nor did I buy him as J. Edgar Hoover

"Diana, starring Naomi Watts."

Oh yeah, the lifeless and awkward Kristen Stewart as Diana in "Spencer"! Gawd, she was terrible, just sort of stood in front of the camera and doesn't even try, like she always does.

And so was Natalie Portman in "Jackie", and equally terribly biopic of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. You can see Portman straining and straining to act, and still be lifeless and unconvincing, and like Stewart she's in every fucking frame of the movie! Same director for both films, BTW. His gay card ought to be confiscated.

The George Raft Story

Too Much, Too Soon

Both Harlows

Blonde is fantastic.

The Iron Lady, despite Meryl giving a superb characterization.

R2, I also unapologetically love Alexander.

Nina.

Great Balls of Fire. What a shit show. I wasn't crazy about the Johnny Cash biopic either, mostly because I thought Reese Witherspoon was wrong for the part. I also thought the Queen biopic could have been better although I did like Rami Malik.

40 something plastic Nicole Kidman playing Grace Kelly in her early 30s?

Being the Ricardos.

Too much historical license. Sorkin really filtered his perception of television production through his modern day experiences, not what it was like back then.

Characterisations were also completely off, especially for the writers, and I never once believed Nicole Kidman was Lucille Ball.

Being the Ricardos wasn't any more or less accurate than any other biopic. They all use creative license. I didn't buy Kidman as Lucy, though

R25 I realise dramatic license is inevitable, and necessary, but having read numerous books on the subject, I was very aware every time it played around with history and timelines. I just didn’t think Sorkin needed to go as far as he did with it - even the 2003 TV movie felt more authentic at times. But even more than that, it was the anachronistic depiction of the writers and television production in general that felt off.

Even Lucie Arnaz has wondered why he bothered hiring her if he just wanted to play so fast and loose with the facts.

I've read about Lucille Ball and I don't think it played with the facts any more than most biopics

“Judy”

I don’t dislike Renee Zellweger per se, but just couldn’t believe her as Judy. Maybe if Debbie Wileman had been known then and done the vocals, but then it wouldn’t have been Oscar bait for Renee.

Mommie Dearest, in a way

That dreadful Billie Holiday movie from a couple years ago.

Lady Sings The Blues was The Godfather in comparison

The Jackie Robinson Story.

The Babe, about Babe Ruth

Jeanne Eagels was pretty bad, too

Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball. Real bad idea. Even worse than her "Princess Grace of Monaco." Natalie Portman in Jackie. Atrocious movie, atrocious acting. Kristen Stewart in the Diana movie. I agree with whoever hated Naomi Watts' Diana. And lest we forget, Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix as Rose Anne and Johnny Cash. I actually thought Renee Zellweiger did a good job as Judy. Leo De Caprio as J. Edgar Hoover and as Howard Hughes were both atrocious. Terrible. Doris Day as Ruth Etting in Love Me or Leave Me. James Cagney stole that movie. R30 I like the recent biopic of Billie Holliday. I thought it was well done and the actress did her credit. Lady Sings the Blues was good too. I enjoyed it. Meryl Streep should never have done Iron Lady. Never. Meryl is a brilliant actress, and she will do herself credit, but that movie was a very bad idea. Nicholson wasn't a bad idea for Hoffa. The movie was a bad idea.

R34 I agree with you completely.

Goodbye, Norma Jean with Misty Rowe

Rita Hayworth: The Love Goddess with Lynda Carter

The Audrey Hepburn Story with Jennifer Love Hewitt

Liz & Dick with Lindsay Lohan

R21, I didn't even know they actual went through with the "Nina" movie. It was a bad idea from the start. That actress looks absolutely nothing like Nina!

R30, I watched "Lady Sings the Blues" and expected to hate it but I actually really liked it. No, Diana is nothing like Billie, but she brings something different to the role. And she's captivating.

Bravo, R36.

Bessie with Queen Latifah wasn't great either.

Nice summation r34. Thanks.

Totally unnecessary

Diana brought her unique sound and enough star quality to make the movie work, r38.

When are they going to get around to Barbara Payton?

R40 I liked Latifah in Bessie. I enjoyed the movie.

[quote] And so was Natalie Portman in "Jackie", and equally terribly biopic of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. You can see Portman straining and straining to act, and still be lifeless and unconvincing,

There’s also the total physical incompatibility. Portman is virtually a dwarf, and JKO was above average in height.

Gawd, I forgot about Lindsay Lohan of all people playing Elizabeth Taylor. OMG. Who did that? Sacrilege! And Jennifer Love Hewitt as Audrey Hepburn? Really????? I'm glad I missed it.

Liz and Dick was godawful

I disagree with the linked article about Stardust, I enjoyed it. And, I enjoyed Kev Space in Beyond the Sea because he does actually sing and dance and does well with it even though no, he wasn't in his 20s. Bobby Darin didn't look like he was either at the time, everyone looked older back then. So I liked this one. Disagree about Great Balls of Fire! Thought it was great and it holds up. Entertaining. The US vs. Billie Holiday is a great film and Audra was nominated. I liked Blonde as well, and didn't mind the performance, I thought it was pretty good, Ana's real accent slips through a few times but overall it was good.

Of course Mommie Dearest isn't truthful but it's not "worst" because even though parts aren't true and parts are exaggerated, it went on to make Joan Crawford a star to generations of fans who wouldn't have otherwise known her, including me. I

G&L

R13 I LOATHED La vie en Rose...Cottilard was excellent, but the pacing, the non stop flashes to the past, the gratuitous low blows, the overall depressing mood that didn't let up once, and the neverending length of the film was so bad...so bad I even got into a heated argument with the friend I had seen it with that LOVED it....the film ended and I sort of rolled my eyes and said "Thank god it's over" to my friend only to find him in a puddle of tears. He was so offended I had hated that "masterpiece" there was a bad vibe between us the rest of the night. He was so pissy that a few weeks later we went to see "The lives of others", a great german film, and he kept rubbing in my face how much he hated (shitty taste, I still love that film). Now that I think about it, our friendship started fizzling right after this, he just seemed so immature to me.

So anyway, I am glad to see someone else that hated the film. It was so bad it essentially ended a friendship.

"Worst" as in "historically inaccurate to an unnecessarily high degree"; or "worst" as in "the picture was poor cinema"?

Queen of the Desert was fucking lousy

This shitfest wins the thread.

I think JUDY really wins this thread. Dreadful movie and our Renee is just all wrong in it. Judy was so unique, she's impossible to capture, I think.

How about biopics we like? I tell you what--Anthony Hopkins in NIXON is pretty mind-blowing. They tried all these prosthetics and Hopkins rejected them. Glad he did!

JUDY was harmless, r55. Hardly the worst.

This Kray twins movie was dreadful

R57, there have been two good movies about the Krays - "The Krays" 1990 is a good solid film, and "Legend" (2015) with Tom Hardy as both brothers is fantastic! Too bad someone had to add a shitshow to the mix.

"Portman [as Jackie Kennedy Onassis] is virtually a dwarf, and JKO was above average in height."

The same director made the equally awful "Spencer", with tiny little Kristen Stewart as Diana, Princess of Wales, who was 5'10" in real life and who towered over her husband if she ever wore heels. Whatever the fuck that director's name is, he doesn't give a rat's ass about either acting or accuracy, just fame.

Here's another low budget stinker: The Legend of Wyatt Earp

Val Kilmer's whole performance consists of sitting in a chair and mumbling, but he still manages to give the best performance in the film! DL fave Matt Dallas plays Bat Masterson, and he's not even the most miscast cast member

R59, I'm genuinely wondering if there are any other "beautiful" A-list actresses as uncharismatic and mediocre looking as Kristen Stewart.

R54 I'd forgotten about that shitshow. Good one!

Abraham Lincoln, with Walter Huston, directed by D.W. Griffith (1931).

Height issues can be camouflaged if the producer and director care enough, e.g., [italic]Into the Storm[/italic], which covers Winston Churchill from the time he becomes prime minister to just after the Labour victory right before the war ended. Brendan Gleeson, who is 6'2", played Churchill, who was 5'9". They cast 6'1" Janet McTeer as Clementine, so at least when they were in a scene together, he did not tower over his wife. His hair was more distracting than the height issue.

Churchill was 5'9"......maybe in his elevator shoes

I like the crime-melodrama title sequence from Lady Sings the Blues scored by Michel Legrand

Anything that stars Don Ameche.

Honorable mention goes to James Mason as Rommel in The Desert Fox.

R67 What was the problem with Mason? Considered a good biography by most.

I Wanna Dance with Somebody was awful. So was that Princess Diana movie with Kristen Stewart (I absolutely HATED it!!!). Recent examples but they're fresh in my brain.

Nixon with Anthony Hopkins. Such an over long meandering film

R68 The Desert Fox is a strange film for me. It’s as simple as I couldn’t separate the actor from the material. The cast, subject matter, and the use of newsreel footage is kind of baffling. Also, I tend to consider my friends obsessed with WWII as complete freaks. What Hollywood really needed was a film about Carrie Nation played by Charles Laughton, directed by DeMille.

JOHN TRAVOLTA IS A SHITTY ACTOR!

There. I said it. How does this loser keep getting parts, and fucking them up so badly?

He was awful as Robert Shapiro.

He was awful in Hairspray.

He was awful in Phenomenon, and The General's Daughter, and Wild Hogs, and Swordfish, and Look Who's Talking Too, and Michael, and Mad City, and Lucky Numbers, and Battlefield Earth, and as John Gotti.

Agree R72. OP's picture made me cackle out loud. He is just gross.

IMO the best Winston Churchill was Albert Finney's singular performance in The Gathering Storm, and HBO original with Linus Roache and Jim Broadbent. Vanessa Redgrave was superb as Clementine. Winston always seemed shorter because he was fat.

Winston WAS short. Only 5'6"

That Madonna biopic yet to be released. I don't have to see it to know that it will put all other bad biopics to shame. The fact that Madonna is involved is the tip-off.

Viva Zapata!

Marlon Brando has his eyes taped up to look...Mexican. Unfortunately he still looks like Marlon Brando with taped eyes but perhaps he was practicing his yellowface for 'Teahouse of the August Moon'. Not only does the movie star Brando with taped up eyes, it is full of historical inaccuracies so numerous it should have a question mark after the title instead of an exclamation point. This is one example of the inanity but makes the movie sound fun. It isn't.

"Zapata has the hots for local babe Josefa. She rejects him for being too poor. He threatens to carry her off anyway. She threatens to stab him with the massive pin from her mantilla. As far as the film is concerned, this passes for Latin passion. On their wedding night, the new Mrs Zapata tries to have sex with her husband, but he's too grumpy. "I can't read!" he growls. "Teach me! Teach me now!" Zapata was not illiterate, though the film repeatedly insists he was. Moreover, valuable a skill though reading is, the historian fails to see how it would have been an urgent necessity on this occasion.

[quote]Hoffa in 1992 didn't give me any sense of who the man was. Jack Nicholson starred but this was just an empty shell of a movie.

I remember my grandfather hated the tagline: "He did what he had to do."

R77 What about that movie where John Wayne played Genghis Khan?

[quote][R77] What about that movie where John Wayne played Genghis Khan?

Speaking of Oppenheimer...

R79 That's not as egregious as playing loose with the facts and casting given that Zapata died a mere 30 years before the movie and the facts were readily available. Some critics have theorized that the confused and contradictory depiction of Zapata is due to the director, Elia Kazan, who was about to testify before the HUAC and rat out his friends. He was trying to make Zapata a pro-American, democracy loving patriot when Zapata was completely focused on local land reform and didn't give a shit about America or its problems.

[italic]The Joe Louis Story.

OMG, you have to actually watch this film to really appreciate how truly bad this movie is. I haven't watched it in almost 40 years, and I STILL remember it, and how my sister and I would hate-watch it repeatedly back when cable first started and the cable companies were all local.

We still regularly do Coley Wallace-speak, especially our 2nd- favorite line reading of all time: "I wont [how he pronounced ""want"] to git a-HEAD."

HI-LARIOUS.

Sorry 'bout the italics screw-up!

"Juarez" (1939).

It does feature an unforgettable performance by Bette Davis as the doomed Empress Carlotta, going insane and running shrieking into the night at the Tuileries after begging Napoleon III (Claude Rains) to help her husband and he refuses. (This actually did happen in real life--one of the most extremely dramatic confrontations in 1ith century history.)

But the film is pretty offensive to the Mexican people in its dismal portrait of their great liberator, Juarez. Paul Muni plays him so stoically he seems like a zombie, and at the film's end, he comes to the grave of the Emperor Maximilian and (unemotionally) begs Maximilian's spirit's forgiveness for having him executed!

I love Bette.

Barbie

There are several excellent bios in book form out there, r86.

R84 That ending was added after a preview. There’s no evidence it ever happened, but the audience was failing to side with Juarez. Also in the 1950s when it was re-released, the film was cut for various political reasons and no longer made sense...well you can read about it on Wikipedia. I’m not sure what version is available today but it might be the cut version.

I think Viva Villa! (1934) starring Wallace Beery wasn’t very accurate about Pancho Villa, either, but it’s an enjoyable, powerful movie.

Yes, R29, but

Ahem!

W by Oliver Stone. Dreadful. He could have really done something there but no.

I wouldn’t call it the worst of all time, but Good Night And Good Luck was very overrated.

R92 I fell asleep in the cinema during it

Barbie

Interesting that they mention J Edgar, since Clint also really fucked up what could have been an amazing true crime film - Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

The Kennedy people hated “Thirteen Days” because it vastly inflated the role of Kenny O’Donnell during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I hated it because Kevin Costner CANNOT do an accent. Not an English accent (Robin Hood), or a New Orleans Yat accent (Jim Garrison), or a Boston accent (Ken O’Donnell).

R91 Seriously, who the fuck thinks is a good idea to make a biopic about a US President while the man is still in office?

Barry comes to mind, R91.

R91 Agreed. W sucks ass. His film Nixon, however, was excellent. W was an obvious soft soap and lame attempt to make George W Bush seem like a regular guy and that his eight years in the White House was like a normal presidency, neither of which were true.

SONG OF NORWAY, about the life of Edvard Grieg, with DL fave Florence Henderson as his wife.

R100 wins!

I agree about The Aviator, Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes? And I was not impressed with the homely old English lady trying to mimic young, beautiful Katharine Hepburn. But mainly, Scorcese was all about style over substance.

The cheap quickly made Electronvison Harlow made in 1965 to open ahead of Paramount's Harlow starring Carroll Baker

R103 Originally to have starred Judy Garland as the mother. She was well out of that one.

The Babe Ruth Story starring William Bendix.

The Eddie Cantor Story, starring Keefe Brasselle.

The Benny Goodman Story, starring Steve Allen.

The Gene Krupa Story, starring Sal Mineo.

Freud, starring Montgomery Clift (not actually bad, but weird.)

Personally, I've always found "Ali" (2001) highly underwhelming, considering the fact the film focuses on one of America's most iconic athletes.

I thought I was the only person left alive who knew about Electronovision.

True r106. I found Will’s performance as Ali to be more of a bad impersonation than a great performance.

The Richard Burton Broadway Hamlet was shot in Electronovision, as well as Stop The World - I Want o Get Off. Acc to Wikipedia Give ‘Em Hell, Harry w/ James Whitmore as Harry Truman, was also shot in an improved version of the process. And a Richard Pryor standup film.

Electronovision was essentially Kinescope.

Gary Sinise playing Gov. George Wallace the Segregationist from Alabama and Angelina Jolie ashis wife. Awful.

By far my least favorite was "Dorito Queen: The Ballad of Ms. Jackson (if You're Nasty)". So much terrible lighting, you couldn't even see the thousands of chips she was swallowing whole.