The first time I saw Christopher Walken on screen was as the villainous industrialist Max Shreck in Tim Burton’s “Batman Returns.” That performance stayed with me simply because Walken seemed to play quietly menacing as easily as Jack Nicholson plays unhinged. That is to say, villainy seemed to come all too easily to Walken, who throughout Burton’s nightmarish, expressionistic fairy tale discovered new facets of the hateful with each successive scene.
Yet, 32 years after the debut of “Batman Returns,” Walken’s filmography speaks clearly to the man’s reach. Walken is great at playing villains, but over the decades he has proven that he is capable of much more. From his role as Frank Abagnale Sr. in Steven Spielberg’s “Catch Me If You Can,” for which he was nominated for the 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 stinkers, at least according to Rotten Tomatoes, and the great Morgan Freeman has four zero percent on the site. Thankfully, despite his prolific output, Walken has so far managed to elude the dreaded 0% RT score, but he’s come close a couple of times.
Christopher Walken co-starred in a certified failure
DreamWorks Photos
Rotten Tomatoes isn’t just about churning out percentage scores. Sometimes, it’s about ranking movies and TV shows based on those percentage scores, as has been the case with the work of a number of actors and directors. Hollywood greats like Steven Spielberg and Denzel Washington have been subjected to such treatment, and Washington’s best film was the 1989 Civil War drama “Glory,” according to Rotten Tomatoes. But this also means that the site frequently highlights examples of these fine craftsmen’s less successful moments. In the case of Christopher Walken, his RT category It’s a reminder of how many great films he’s been a part of, and also a reminder of the not-so-great projects that have marked his career.
Thankfully, Walken’s RT rating isn’t as erratic as John Travolta’s, who despite being a part of classics like “Pulp Fiction” and “Saturday Night Fever,” currently has seven films with a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. So 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 friend become incredibly rich thanks to his crazy creation. Walken plays a drifter named J-Man who Tim trusts only to get caught up in a series of calamitous events that sees Tim accidentally kill Nick’s beloved horse, before J-Man blackmails him. If this sounds confusing and bad, that seems to be the opinion of critics, as “Envy” currently scores a measly 8% in popularity. Rotten tomatoes.
Critics really didn’t like Envy
DreamWorks Photos
Often, when you see extreme scores on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s because the site has only aggregated a handful of reviews for a given show or movie, making 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 like one of Christopher Walken’s best movies. There are a total of 117 reviews backing up that 8% score, and many of them come from so-called “top critics.”
Richard Roeper, for example, nicknamed “Envy”, “one of the worst comedies I have ever seen”, while the bbcStella Papamichael said the script was “so flaccid that not even an industrial crane could lift it.” Roger Ebert was a little more forgiving, writing in his book two stars. review that the film “is funny, yes, but not funny enough.” The consensus seems to be that for a black comedy, “Envy” is pretty light on the latter, with many critics noting 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, none of them are “major critics,” and all of them gave the movie 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, “Envy” is an unquestionable stain on Walken’s filmography. But it is not his worst project according to Rotten Tomatoes.
Christopher Walken’s Worst-Rated Movie on Rotten Tomatoes
Sony Photos
What could be worse than one of the worst comedies Richard Roeper has ever seen? 2003’s “Gigli,” of course. This unfortunate romantic comedy currently has a 6% rating on the Rotten tomatoeswhich makes it the lowest-rated Christopher Walken movie on the site. Now, is it fair to call this a Christopher Walken movie? Not exactly. The movie starred Ben Affleck as Larry Gigli, a member of the mob, who is accused of kidnapping the younger brother of a federal prosecutor. Jennifer Lopez plays Ricki, a woman who is asked to supervise Larry on his mission. Unsurprisingly, sparks fly between the pair, who eventually get together or something, I don’t know, you can watch this six percenter if you want.
Where does Walken fit into this? He plays Detective Stanley Jacobellis, who interrogates Larry about the brother’s disappearance and seems suspicious of the mobster. But the “Deer Hunter” star isn’t really in “Gigli” enough to call it a Christopher Walken movie. Still, he lent his name to the project, and so its rating on RT is forever tarnished by the “Gigli” branding.
Once again, this 6% rating isn’t the result of a lack of reviews either. There are 186 reviews for “Gigli” on Rotten Tomatoes, and almost all of them are bad. This time, Richard Roeper went further and declared “Gigli” is “one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen,” suggesting that both “Envy” and “Gigli” are truly awful, or that Roeper was really going through that in the early 2000s.
As for Walken, it’s hard to imagine him following his own Rotten Tomatoes rating with teary eyes and quivering lips when he finds the RT scores for “Envy” and “Gigli” before bursting into a puddle of inconsolable despair. But he did defend the much-maligned “Heaven’s Gate,” so maybe he feels the same way about those two stinkers.
