'90s Movies Critics Hated And Audiences Loved

Hollywood movies seemed more critic-proof in the 1990s. Audiences interested in a film might rush out to the opening weekend on the strength of a film's advertising before they had heard any word-of-mouth — before they realized that it might stink. These days, a lousy Rotten Tomatoes score can seriously affect a film's box office, especially with reviews hitting the web weeks, or even months, early. In the '90s, Siskel & Ebert might review a movie a week in advance, but print reviews typically ran the day the movie opened, and the Internet was still in diapers.

The '90s were also one of the last eras when movie stars could reliably open a film regardless of its genre or content — the opposite of the VFX-driven fantasy world-building and pre-existing IPs that are the largest draws today. A star like Tom Cruise could bring '90s dramas such as The Firm or A Few Good Men well past $100 million in receipts, while today Cruise is primarily in the Mission: Impossible business. Cruise, Will Smith, Mel Gibson, Bruce Willis, Julia Roberts, Robin Williams, Adam Sandler, and Jim Carrey — many of the stars that appear on our list here — often opened anything to big grosses, sight unseen. Hollywood's ability to draw audiences to films with marketing and star muscle regardless of quality may account for the gap in tastes between audiences and critics, and explain why the decade produced so many blockbusters that critics hated but moviegoers loved.

There were a few comic book movies made in the 1990s, but digital world-building wasn't yet affordable or convincing enough for studios to churn them out with today's regularity. One of the few exceptions to this was the Batman franchise. The 1989 Tim Burton original was a gargantuan success, though what Burton delivered with Batman Returns in 1992 was more like a "50 million dollar art film," according to Newsweek. Warner Brothers was not pleased and wanted to go with a lighter tone for the third film, something that would sell Happy Meals. But would audiences come out for something new after embracing Burton's vision?

The anxiety quickly dissipated as Batman Forever, like its predecessors, became the biggest movie of the year, even without a bona fide movie star — Val Kilmer took over for Michael Keaton under the cape and cowl (and nipples). But Warners did put big stars in the supporting parts. Jim Carrey, then at the peak of his meteoric rise, played the Riddler; Tommy Lee Jones, coming off his Oscar for The Fugitive, was Two-Face. Throw in a couple of other ascendant names in Nicole Kidman and Chris O'Donnell, as well as a soundtrack that generated mega-hits by Seal and U2, and audiences didn't seem to care that it would one day sit at 39% on the Tomatometer, with Time Out writing, "The second sequel to Tim Burton's 1989 blockbuster makes its predecessors appear models of subtlety and coherence."

Directed by soft-core fantasist Adrian Lyne, who had titillated audiences with Fatal Attraction and the infamous 9/12 Weeks, the 1993 drama Indecent Proposal became a surprise hit, crossing the $100 million mark without a big box office draw. Robert Redford was past his prime and Woody Harrelson was just then transitioning from television to the movies. Demi Moore was well known, especially after Ghost, but she could hardly open a picture on her own. None of this mattered as this inexpensive production became a global hit and improbably entered the cultural zeitgeist based on its premise: a rich stranger (Redford) offers a cash-strapped couple (Moore and Harrelson) one million dollars to sleep with the wife. Part of the appeal for moviegoers was considering the proposition in their own lives. The question of what would you do for a million dollars generated much cultural controversy and conversation.

Critics didn't find much to recommend about the movie beyond its intriguing premise, and it currently sits at 35% on the Tomatometer. In his review, titled "Hook, Lyne And Stinker," David Ansen of Newsweek wrote that director Lyne whips up "...scenes utterly devoid of passion. But not once in the whole silly exercise does he approximate a genuine emotion." There was feminist backlash against the film as well, with critics objecting to the commodification of Moore's character. To add insult to injury, the movie was nominated for seven year-end Razzie Awards. Few movies in the 1990s more widely divided film critics and audiences. 

The Bodyguard was a movie sold on the strength of its stars, Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston — Houston plays a pop star and Costner her protector — as well as its all-time best selling soundtrack. At 33% on the Tomatometer, critics didn't like much else about it. Peter Rainier of The Los Angeles Times summed up the prevailing view: "Just about everything that can go wrong with this film does, and yet it's compulsively watchable (So is a train wreck)."

But Kevin Costner was a top five box office draw in 1992, coming off the mega-hit Oscar champion Dances with Wolves (which he also directed) in 1990, as well as the crowd- (but not critic) pleaser, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves from 1991. His star would fall precipitously throughout the '90s with epic misfires such as Waterworld and The Postman, but in that moment, he was box office gold.

As for Houston, The Bodyguard may have been her cinematic debut, but she was hardly a showbiz neophyte. She was already a global pop star, with a number of multi-platinum albums and #1 hits under her spangled belt. It was her majestic voice that turned the elegant but simple Dolly Parton tune "I Will Always Love You" into one of the most cherished of all pop ballads, as well as one of the best-selling songs of all time. Together, she and Costner pushed the film past critical objections to more than $120 million at the domestic box office.

The premise seemed like it couldn't go wrong. Robin Williams, fresh off back-to-back Best Picture Oscar-nominated films in Dead Poets Society and Awakenings, was inspired casting as a grown-up Peter Pan who has to go back to Neverland so he can remember what's important in life (Michael Jackson had actually been up for the part at one time). Dustin Hoffman, as Captain Hook, was only a few years removed from his own smash hit Best Picture, Rain Man. And Julia Roberts, who had become one of the new darlings of cinema after the previous year's Pretty Woman, was Tinkerbell. Put them with one of Hollywood's most successful directors, and the result was... profoundly underwhelming, at least according to critics. What seemed like a can't-miss blockbuster became — along with 1941, Always and A.I. Artificial Intelligence — one of director Steven Spielberg's biggest misfires. Critics called it overstuffed, uneven, and forced, and today it has a Tomatometer score of 29%.

It made money — how could it not, with that cast and director? – although the grosses (just shy of $120 million) were a far cry from some of Spielberg's mega-hits from the 1970s and '80s. Still, audiences seemed to more or less like it, and the movie has maintained a following over the decades ("Light as a soufflé at first glance, Hook actually deals with some heavy themes," writes one admirer), even if Spielberg has confessed his own disappointment with the finished results.

Saturday Night Live wasn't the only television sketch show minting movie stars in the '90s. In Living Color ran from just 1990-'94, but many of its cast members crossed over to success on the big screen, including Damon Wayans, Jamie Foxx, and Jennifer Lopez. The biggest success however, was Jim Carrey, who found instant movie stardom on the heels of the show. Carrey had acted in movies for a decade before the 1994 triple whammy of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber blew him into the stratosphere. Unlike Adam Sandler, the rubber-faced comic actually found critical along with commercial success right out of the gate. Reviewers and audiences both enjoyed The Mask and the Farrelly brothers' Dumb and Dumber – Ace Ventura, not so much.

But if the first movie was a critically reviled success, then the sequel, When Nature Calls – which sends the pet detective to Africa — was an even more critically reviled and bigger popular success, becoming the fifth biggest hit of the year. Audiences could evidently not get enough of Carrey talking out of his butt. Critics, on the other hand, wondered why the sequel didn't try to improve on the first movie. Where the original manages 49% on the Tomatometer, the sequel scores a paltry 25%. Janet Maslin wrote that the film "has enough schoolboy gags and pratfalls to keep Ace's least demanding fans awake, but it doesn't have certain basics — like a screenplay."