The Golden Raspberry Awards have announced their winners for 2023, and for the first time in history, the Razzies have honored themselves.
The satirical awards show, which honors the worst of the worst in cinema, has been held just before the Oscars for more than four decades. Each Razzie Award is presented with a succinct quote from an unsavory review, and this year’s series – unlike the films from which they are derived – did not disappoint.
The 43rd Razzies kicked off Friday by handing the Worst Supporting Actor trophy to Tom Hanks for what IndieWire called his performance as a “wonderfully awful…Kentucky-fried golden member” in Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis.” (The Times described his role as music impresario Colonel Tom Parker as the worst of his career and a “rare misstep” for the beloved actor.)
Although “Elvis” was nominated for eight Oscars, including lead actor and best picture, at the 95th Academy Awards, he took no one home on Sunday night. Hanks, a two-time Oscar winner for “Philadelphia” and “Forrest Gump,” was also not among the 2023 Oscar nominees for supporting actor.
In the Worst Screen Combo category, Hanks – along with his “latex-laden face (and ridiculous accent)” – scored another strike. The Hollywood Reporter described the performance as “a creepy, beady-eyed rake peering out from under a mound of latex”. Blonde was also nominated in the Worst Screen Combo category along with writer/director Andrew Dominik & His Issues with Women as another problematic duo.
The Worst Remake/Rip-off/Sequel award went to Disney’s Pinocchio, which also starred Hanks as puppeteer Geppetto, for what the Hollywood Reporter called “just another widget in Disney’s remake-of-everything agenda.” Meanwhile, “Guillermo del Toros Pinocchio” won the Oscar for animated film on Sunday. The live-action adaptation from director Robert Zemeckis was released a month earlier on Disney+ but received no Oscar nominations.
Sony Pictures’ animated film Morbius also led the wins, winning two Golden Raspberry Awards. The titular star, Jared Leto, won the dubious honor of worst actor for what The Irish Times described as “taking a stupid role absurdly seriously”. And his co-star Adria Arjona was named worst supporting actress for her “barely lukewarm” performance in the same film, according to ABC’s Peter Travers.
According to A Trip to the Movies, Andrew Dominik’s Blonde biopic about Marilyn Monroe was “deplorable, misogynistic and exploitative”, earning him the Razzie for Worst Screenplay. It also won the top prize for Worst Picture, with the Atlanta Reporter calling it “a blatant exercise in exploitation and false narratives,” while reviewer Jorge Rivera Rubio called it “trauma pornography.”
Ana de Armas was nominated for an Oscar for Leading Actress for her role as Monroe in Blonde, but the award went to Michelle Yeoh for Everything Everywhere All at Once.
And for the first time in Razzie Awards history, earlier this year, the spoof awards show called itself one of the worst for its blunder. The Razzies received quite a bit of criticism for nominating 12-year-old Firestarter actor Ryan Kiera Armstrong for Worst Actress. The Razzies Committee issued a public apology and changed the rules, imposing age restrictions on the worst-performing nominees, before replacing Armstrong’s name on the ballot with his own.
“For nominating someone who should not have been considered, a mistake that has been put through the mixer and pulverized from one corner of the internet to the other and every media outlet in between, instead of the worst actress statue of this year to the Razzies.… Well, what can we say, we deserved this raid,” the band said in the video announcing the winner.
Also, freshman directors Colson Baker (Machine Gun Kelly) and Derek Ryan Smith (Mod Sun) were considered “the worst” for directing the stoner comedy Good Mourning, in which they both starred.
Source: LA Times