It's hard to overemphasize the importance and value of quality kid-friendly entertainment. Striking artistry and positive morals are more important than ever in formative years, and the best of these films bring people across generations—and perhaps most importantly, families—together.
From timeless classic Disney animation like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to the modern golden age of Pixar, to live-action masterpieces like The Wizard of Oz and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, such movies are worth their weight in gold. There are also truly awful kids' movies out there to be sure, and if anything they seem more cynical and less forgivable than bad movies aimed at grown-ups. It's arguably a responsibility of filmmakers with resources to expand children's imaginations and dreams, not numb them. According to critics on the Tomatometer, these are the absolute worst family and kids' movies ever made. Yes, Mac and Me is on here.
11 'Mac and Me' (1988)
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 7%
One of the most infamous stinkers ever certainly lives up to its reputation. Half a decade after E.T. became the highest-grossing movie of all time, Coca-Cola and McDonald's ripped off its plot, poster and marketing for a feature-length advertisement for their products. Mac and Me absolutely has so-bad-it's-good value, most famous to general audiences thanks to a long-running Paul Rudd gag on late night. The gag has run for years and years; it's still funny.
There's no way of sugar-coating that Mac and Me is wretched, as bad as E.T. was good. There's the frightening visual effects, the shameless commerce that is the story rather than incorporated into it. Cops shoot a disabled boy to death near the end. It's unreal. Netflix's meh reboot of MST3K did a meh riff a few years back, but honestly the stupefying Mac and Me is best experienced firsthand. Maybe it's a cautionary tale, maybe it's a historical artifact. It is garbage. How did this score a 7?!
10 'The Emoji Movie' (2017)
A must for any roundup of the worst animated motion pictures ever made, The Emoji Movie stars T.J. Miller as Gene, a resident of Textopolis who simply doesn't fit in with the hustle and bustle within the world of a smartphone.
Perhaps the worst thing about The Emoji Movie is that it portents to have positive messages that ring utterly hollow and telegraphed. It's all pure cynicism. Somehow, this misery machine made over $217 million at the worldwide box-office. That's just about $10 million less than the worldwide haul of Paddington 2.
9 'Zoom' (2006)
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 4%
The enormous comic talents of Tim Allen and Courteney Cox are wasted in a family comedy about a superhero academy that critics absolutely reviled. It's barely even discussed these days, exclusively in so-bad-it's-good context, it would seem.
The talented Kate Mara also appears in this unfortunate pre-superhero movie boom disaster that's laced with cringe special efffects that have become memes in the modern era.
8 'Happily N'Ever After' (2006)
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 5%
In one of his last roles before his death in 2008, comic genius George Carlin lent his voice talents (alongside Sarah Michelle Gellar, Andy Dick, Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sigourney Weaver) to a corner-cutting production that twists classic fairy tales, ostensibly based on a German kids' show, though it's really just attempting to hock the magic of Shrek to no success.
If the topic is great family films, let's not forget how fresh, admired and influential the original Shrek film and its immediate sequel were. Happily N'Ever After has none of the wit, none of the tenderness; the animation looks like Microsoft Paint, too.
7 'Getting Even With Dad' (1994)
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 3%
A film of weird alchemy that worked extraordinarily well, John Hughes and Chris Columbus' risky Home Alone was a box-office leviathan, and it made talented young star Macaulay Culkin a household name that all of Hollywood wanted a piece of.
Unfortunately, the young star's gifts were largely squandered on trash (have you seen The Good Son?) throughout the early 90s, perhaps nowhere more than here, where he plays a con man (Ted Danson)'s estranged son, determined to teach pops a lesson about the joys of father-son bonding, through blackmail. Not a moment rings true.
6 'Baby Geniuses' (1999)
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 2%
1999 was an incredible year for film. Pretty much across the board, critics agreed Baby Geniuses was the worst film of that year. Kathleen Turner plays an evil businesswoman who schemes to make millions from deciphering baby talk.
What's really upsetting is that Baby Geniuses and its sequel were directed by Bob Clark, the director of classics Black Christmas and A Christmas Story. What the hell.
5 'Daddy Day Camp' (2007)
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 1%
Daddy Day Care was a critically unloved but financially successful comedy starring Eddie Murphy as a father who spearheads a day care after he's laid off. The feature directorial debut of Fred Savage, the sequel stars Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr., without Murphy. Free of laughs though laden with wall-to-wall bathroom jokes, this is a reminder that there is only one Eddie Murphy. As if audiences needed one.
Daddy Day Camp was demolished by critics, and grossed a little over a tenth of its predecessor's haul in theaters. There is a third film, all but virtually unseen Grand-Daddy Daycare, starring Danny Trejo from 2019. The mystifying powers of brand recognition.
4 'Problem Child' (1990)
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 0%
John Ritter stars in Dennis Dugan's comedy about an adopted kid who turns out to be one bad seed, indeed. Problem Child is a mean-spirited comedy with some downright offensive observations of adoption.
Problem Child is cynical, maybe even cruel. Still, its success gave way to multiple sequels: a theatrical sequel in 1991, and a network TV movie in 1995. Both were critically reviled, just not quite as much as the original.
3 'The Nutcracker in 3D' (2009)
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 0%
Here's the answer to that ages-old question: What in the hell do you get when you take the most iconic ballet, take out some of the music and dancing, and replace that with gritty war violence, Nathan Lane as Albert Einstein, awkward pop lyrics, some bad acting, anthropomorphic rat Nazis and their robot dog henchmen?
Roger Ebert said: "From what dark night of the soul emerged the wretched idea for The Nutcracker in 3D?" ... It's would be hard nigh impossible to sum it up better than that.
2 'Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2' (2004)
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 0%
Superbabies takes all that was dreadful about the original and turns it up to 11. The effects are even more off-putting. The gross-out gags are even grosser and less funny.
Baby Geniuses 2 also replays the original's sin of taking a great actor and serving them with a disastrous script; only this time it's Jon Voight instead of Kathleen Turner. The Oscar-winning Voight plays a madman with intent of controlling brainwaves. It's sad.
1 'Pinocchio' (2002)
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 0%
There is nothing cute about a middle-aged man playing a little boy, toy or not. There never will be. Roberto Benigni's follow-up to Life is Beautiful definitely didn't win Oscars like that film; it earned only critical ire.
An insult to the beloved 1940 animated film, this is as unsettling as most hardcore horror films. This is, maybe, even worse than the Disney live-action remake. It's a tough call. They're playing together on a double bill somewhere in the underworld. Here is a notorious bomb that lives up to every word of the negative hype.