Tom Hanks' Best And Worst Movies

Is there anything more comforting than sitting down to watch a movie and seeing that wonderful warm hug of an actor, Tom Hanks, emerge on the screen? Over more than 40 years working in Hollywood, Hanks has made us laugh, made us cry, and made us fall in love all over again, bringing us performances that span romantic comedies, epic Oscar-winning dramas, and some of the funniest comedies on the silver screen.

In other words, Tom Hanks (or America's Dad, if you prefer) has had a wide-ranging career full of films that have completely won over audiences. But believe it or not, he's also made movies that have completely alienated viewers. For every masterwork, there's a flop hiding in the shadows, and we're here to highlight the highest highs and the lowest lows throughout the booming filmography of one of America's most well-known and well-loved performers. So strap in as we journey through the best and worst films of Tom Hanks!

No, this isn't a cinematic adaptation of the hit Netflix reality show (though that sounds pretty fantastic when you think about it). This is Dave Eggers' ever-fearful "watch out for the dangers of technology" novel brought to life in 2017's The Circle. The film stars Emma Watson and Tom Hanks, and its reputation sadly precedes it as easily one of the worst entries in the Hanksography. Not even a supporting cast featuring John Boyega, Karen Gillan, and Patton Oswalt is enough to make sitting through this bore of a feature worth it.

Hanks, who'd previously visited the Eggers well in the similarly disliked A Hologram for the King, leaves little-to-no impression as CEO Eamon Bailey, practically sleepwalking through a film concerned with the dangers of a surveillance-heavy technical world. Stuck between the leanings of a typical YA fantasy film and a "Serious Drama about Big Themes," The Circle ultimately leads to nowhere but a dead end for Hanks and everyone else involved.

In his quest to work with as many great film directors as possible, it makes absolute sense that Tom Hanks wanted to team up with acclaimed filmmaker Brian De Palma on a new film. But 1990's The Bonfire of the Vanities, an adaptation of the book of the same name by Tom Wolfe, ended up as a disaster for all involved, including fellow stars Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffith, Morgan Freeman, and Kim Cattrall. In fact, it's one of the most infamous flops of the early '90s.

The film — telling the story of a Wall Street hotshot (Tom Hanks) whose deadly crime sparks a courtroom case of epic proportions in 1980s New York — takes all the dimension, weight, and subtlety out of Wolfe's original book and flattens it into a completely narrow, inept, and offensive piece of stylistically inert filmmaking. As a result, the movie absolutely tanked at the box office, earning $15.6 million against its budget of $47 million. When it comes to book-to-screen adaptations, you're best to stick with the Bonfire on the page.

It's might be tough to remember how much of an absolute phenomenon Dan Brown's series of Da Vinci Code novels were, but — maybe for the best — it's even harder to remember the absolutely ghastly cinematic adaptations of those books, all directed by Ron Howard and all starring Tom Hanks in an atrocious "who approved this?" hairstyle. And on top of that, they all hit different levels of mediocre to unwatchable.

By the time the third and inexplicably worst entry, 2016's Inferno, was released — seven years after its predecessor, no less — the biggest mystery to solve was why these movies kept getting made. Maybe Dan Brown's interlocking mysteries are enjoyable on the page, but the film adaptations, especially Inferno, suck all the joy, intrigue, and fun out of the proceedings, leading to a trilogy of ineptitude that will forever linger amongst the many jewels of Tom Hanks' otherwise sterling career.

Tom Hanks' directorial career, unfortunately, has yet to meet the heights of his acting career, and that's more than evident in this completely forgettable entry in his filmography, 2011's Larry Crowne. At least with Hanks' directorial debut, That Thing You Do!, audiences were able to coast on that film's impeccable soundtrack and especially catchy title number penned by the late, great Adam Schlesinger. No such luck can be found in the dismally droll world of Larry Crowne, about a middle-aged man returning to community college to gain the education he never had.

Everything on display here, from Hanks' performance and his workman-for-hire style of directing to the complete weightlessness of the script co-written by himself and Nia Vardalos, amounts to a film that isn't bad, per se. But it leaves no sort of memorable dent in the career of everyone's favorite everyman. One hopes that any future directorial efforts from Hanks leave more of an impression than this one.

Often considered the worst film from legendary directors Joel and Ethan Coen, The Ladykillers (the only true remake in the Coens' filmography) tries to echo the pathos and thematic nuances of so much of the rest of their work. But unfortunately, it succumbs to its own attempts at oddball humor and slapstick, which is especially depressing when handled by the notably impressive cast of Hanks, Marlon Wayans, J.K. Simmons, and Irma P. Hall.

It's one of Hanks' most oddball performances, and there's certainly no lack of effort on his part to make the illustriously named Goldthwaite Higginson Dorr a unique and eccentric character within his personal roster. But the film just isn't able to tie together its lofty thematic goals and its less-than-humorous approach to comedy (not to mention the not-so-great stereotyping of Black Southerners baked into the premise of the film). For both the Coens and for Tom Hanks, The Ladykillers was, regrettably, a film that was dead on arrival.