Christopher Walken’s Two Worst Movies According To Rotten Tomatoes

The first time I saw Christopher Walken on-screen was as villainous industrialist Max Shreck in Tim Burton’s “Batman Returns.” That performance stayed with me simply because Walken seemed to play quietly menacing with as much ease as Jack Nicholson plays unhinged. That is to say that villainy seemed to come a little too easily to Walken, who throughout Burton’s nightmare expressionist fairytale discovered new facets of odiousness with each successive scene.

32 years after “Batman Returns” debuted, however, Walken’s filmography clearly speaks to the man’s range. Walken is great at playing villains, but he’s proven over the decades that he’s capable of so much more. From his role as Frank Abagnale Sr. in Steven Spielberg’s “Catch Me If You Can” — for which he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar — to his portrayal of Corporal Nikanor Chevotarevich in Michael Cimino’s “The Deer Hunter” — for which he actually won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar — Walken has more than proven his versatility and talent.

But no screen legend is without a blemish on their record. Sean Connery, for example, has a couple of outright stinkers, at least according to Rotten Tomatoes, and the great Morgan Freeman has a full four zero-percenters on the site. Thankfully, despite his prolific output, Walken has thus far managed to sidestep the dreaded 0% RT score, but he’s come close a couple times.

Rotten Tomatoes isn’t just about churning out percentage scores. Sometimes, it’s about ranking movies and TV shows by those percentage scores, as has been the case with the work of various actors and directors. Hollywood greats such as Steven Spielberg and Denzel Washington have been subjected to such treatment, with Washington’s best film being 1989 Civil War drama, “Glory,” according to Rotten Tomatoes. But this also means the site frequently highlights examples of these fine artisans’ less successful moments. In Christopher Walken’s case, his RT ranking is a reminder of how many great movies he’s been a part of, and also a reminder of the not so great projects that have punctuated his career.

Thankfully, Walken’s RT ranking is not quite as amusingly erratic as John Travolta, who despite being part of such classics as “Pulp Fiction” and “Saturday Night Fever,” currently has a full seven 0%-rated films on Rotten Tomatoes. Thus far, Walken has avoided such abject scores with the projects he’s taken on, but 2004’s “Envy” wasn’t far off.

This buddy comedy from director Barry Levinson starred Ben Stiller and Jack Black as best friends Tim Dingman and Nick Vanderpark. After Nick invents “Vapoorize,” a spray that vaporizes dog poop, Tim refuses to invest, only to witness his pal become incredibly wealthy off the back of his wacky creation. Walken plays a drifter named J-Man in whom Tim confides only to get caught up in a series of calamitous events that sees Tim accidentally kill Nick’s beloved horse, before he’s blackmailed by J-Man. If that sounds confusing and bad, that certainly seems to be the view of critics, as “Envy” currently bears a wretched 8% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Often when you see extreme Rotten Tomatoes scores, it’s because the site has only aggregated a handful of reviews for a given show or movie, which makes it more likely that a clear consensus will emerge among such a small sample. But in the case of “Envy,” this certainly doesn’t seem to be one of Christopher Walken’s best movies. There are a full 117 reviews backing up that 8% score, and plenty of them are from the so-called “top critics.”

Richard Roeper, for instance, dubbed “Envy,” “one of the worst comedies I’ve ever seen,” while the BBC‘s Stella Papamichael claimed the script was “so flabby even an industrial crane couldn’t lift it.” For his part, Roger Ebert was a tad more forgiving, writing in his two-star review that the movie “is funny, yes, but not really funny enough.” The consensus seems to be that for a black comedy, “Envy” is pretty light on the latter, with many critics pointing out that the laughs themselves are few and far between.

But if you know how Rotten Tomatoes works, 8% means that 8% of the 117 critics included in the score actually liked “Envy.” Unfortunately, not one of them is a “top critic,” all of whom gave the film a negative review. The positive takes came from sources with names like “Film Blather” and “Fat Guys at The Movies” so take from that what you will.

For now, then “Envy” is an unquestionable blemish on Walken’s filmography. But it isn’t his worst project according to Rotten Tomatoes.

What could be worse than one of the worst comedies Richard Roeper has ever seen? 2003’s “Gigli,” of course. This ill-fated romantic comedy currently has a 6% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, making it Christopher Walken’s lowest-rated film on the site. Now, is it fair to call this a Christopher Walken film? Not really. The movie starred Ben Affleck as mob member Larry Gigli who’s charged with kidnapping the younger brother of a federal prosecutor. Jennifer Lopez plays Ricki, a woman who is told to oversee Larry on his mission. As you might expect, sparks fly between the pair, who eventually get together or something, I don’t know, you can watch this six percenter if you like.

Where does Walken fit into this? He plays Detective Stanley Jacobellis, who questions Larry about the brother’s disappearance and seems suspicious of the mobster. But the “Deer Hunter” star really isn’t in “Gigli” enough for this to be called a Christopher Walken movie. Still, he did lend his name to the project, and for that his RT ranking is forever marred by the mark of “Gigli.”

Once again, this 6% rating isn’t the result of a lack of reviews, either. There’s 186 critiques of “Gigli” on Rotten Tomatoes, and almost all of them are bad. This time, Richard Roeper went one further and declared “Gigli” to be “one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen,” suggesting that either both “Envy” and “Gigli” really are awful, or Roeper was really going through it in the early-2000s.

As far as Walken is concerned, it’s hard to imagine him pursuing his own Rotten Tomatoes ranking through teary eyes, lip quivering as he encounters the RT scores for “Envy” and “Gigli” before breaking down into a pool of inconsolable despair. But he did defend the much maligned “Heaven’s Gate” so maybe he feels similarly about these two stinkers.