The Worst Movies of 2023

2023 was a great year for movies; easily the best year for movies so far this decade. And even better, it was a good year for movie theaters. After a long, painful stretch where it looked like multiplexes were in serious trouble, I saw so several movies in 2023 in packed theaters. Even with a strike, Barbie, Oppenheimer, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Taylor Swift, and others kept auditoriums full all year long.

(I’ll never forget going to see a press screening at a New York City multuplex on a Monday night in late July — not usually the busiest time for theaters — and having to push my way through a sea of moviegoers, all outfitted in hot pink.)

Of course, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows at the movies in 2023. Despite an above-average year for cinema overall, we still had some out-out-and stinkers this year as well. That includes screwy sequels, bad biopics, awful action films, blockbuster blunders, and one of the worst and most shameless cash-ins on a respected and recognizable children’s brand I have ever seen in my entire life.

Below, I have ranked the 15 worst movies I personally saw in 2023. Plenty are big theatrical releases — a couple were contenders for the biggest budget movies of the year — but a couple bypassed theaters entirely for the vast and unreliable world of streaming, where the movies are often bad but the cost of viewing is low — unless you measure cost in the precious moments of your life you lose watching a crappy rom-com starring Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher.

Here now are my picks for the worst movies of 2023, ranked from almost watchable to borderline pestilential...