1.
Perhaps one of the most egregious examples is Soul Man, which features C. Thomas Howell as a white teenager who dons blackface in order to qualify for a Harvard scholarship meant for Black students. Through the process, he learns that racism exists and falls for the Black single mother who was actually supposed to get the scholarship…who inexplicably gives him another chance after she realizes he was white all along (because he stood up for her when someone said a racist joke in front of them). While yes, the film ultimately attempts to reinforce racism’s prevalence, it still feels wildly problematic.
First of all, the use of blackface is inherently problematic, given its history. The NAACP president at that time, Benjamin Hooks, called the film “a cheaply made, cynical viewpoint of Black involvement in American life.” Spike Lee pointed out that the film feels like an attack on affirmative action, even if Howell’s character eventually gives up the scholarship. And there are certainly problematic scenes, in particular when Howell’s character is at dinner and the white characters imagine him as several Black stereotypes.
2.
In a much more recent example, Jeremy Saville played a white man posing as a Black woman in order to get a job as a radio host in the film Loqueesha. His character uses a wildly offensive stereotypical voice for “Loqueesha,” which inexplicably brings him fame and fortune that he doesn’t even lose after the truth is revealed. He’s forgiven and actually rewarded with two shows (one as Loqueesha), leaving him with no lesson learned. The appropriation and mockery make this film genuinely irredeemable.
3.
In one film that could never be made today, The Toy is about a rich (white) businessman who allows his spoiled son to pick something from the toy section of his department store. What does he pick? The store’s janitor, Jack, who is Black. Jack is then paid to be the son’s “toy” for a week. The comparison to slavery is explicit from the start, with uncomfortable moments like when Jack is delivered in a wooden coffin-like box only reinforcing the idea. The film’s sexism, references to Hitler, and inclusion of the KKK are icky as well, and it’s shocking that the film was even made at all.
4.
Even by Adam Sandler’s standards, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan is shockingly ill-conceived. Sandler plays a prominent IDF soldier who decides to flee the army, where he is sick of killing Palestinian “terrorists,” to become a hairdresser in New York. He gets a job at a Palestinian woman’s salon and settles in a neighborhood of Palestinians and Israelis. Meanwhile, he’s targeted by Palestinians who want to kill him in a plot that some critics felt demonized Muslim and Palestinian people, with others feeling that the Israeli characters also fell into stereotypes. Overall, it felt extremely off-color to try to make such an overly simplistic comedy about Israel and Palestine.
5.
Let’s talk about I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, yet another film where people pretend to be part of a marginalized group for some perceived benefit and through it, learn that marginalized people are actually marginalized (and also Just Like Us and deserve rights!). The film, which features two best friends pretending to be gay to get one’s insurance benefits, oscillates between sexism, gay panic, and racism, casting Rob Schneider as a Chinese minister. It’s a tough watch today, to say the least.
6.
Boat Trip has a similar plot, with two friends being mistaken for gay on a gay cruise they’re booked on as punishment for being rude to a travel agent. Famed film critic Roger Ebert called the film “dim-witted, unfunny, too shallow to be offensive,” later adding the film was so beyond terrible, “not only does it offend gays, it offends everyone else.” This is yet another film rife with gay panic and stereotypes, along with the fetishizing of gay men, and it also throws in sexual assault played for laughs.
7.
Shallow Hal has got to be Jack Black’s worst movie. In the film, Jack plays a shallow man named Hal who falls for a woman described as “morbidly obese” after he is hypnotized to see people for their inner beauty. The whole film is plagued with fat jokes, which really bogs down its claimed message of it being what’s on the inside that matters. Gwyneth Paltrow also wears a fat suit for the role, which is just never good.
8.
Speaking of fat suits…I feel like there was an entire era of comedy in the 2000s where they just threw people in fat suits constantly for humor’s sake. Think Monica in Friends or Ryan Reynolds in Just Friends. But The Nutty Professor is one of the worst offenders, with Eddie Murphy wearing a fat suit not just for the main character, but also his whole family. The premise itself is also problematic, featuring a professor who tries an experimental weight loss treatment that causes him to become thin for periods of time. The film comes across as shallow, despite its moral, as it’s rife with fat jokes and stereotypes.
9.
Norbit also featured Eddie Murphy in a fat suit — and drag. As critics pointed out after the film premiered, the movie was full of racist, anti-fat, and misogynistic stereotypes. One critic wrote, “It probably isn’t possible for a single movie to reverse all social progress made since the civil-rights era, but Norbit, the latest broadside from Eddie Murphy, does its best to turn back the clock,” while another wrote, “the plot relies on the idea that being fat also means you’re a horrible bitch.” To top it all off, Murphy also donned yellowface for the role of Mr. Wong. It also essentially plays an abusive relationship for laughs.
10.
Jack and Jill is just a terrible film, with Adam Sandler also donning a fat suit and drag. The whole gimmick of cisgender straight men playing both a cisgender straight male character and a woman in a film is just tired and offensive at this point. There’s really just no reason not to cast a woman in the other role, other than the problematic “comedy” of “oh look, there’s a famous male actor in a dress!” Beyond that, Sandler’s misogyny shows in the way his character is portrayed (not, as this review points out, a version of who Sandler himself might be as a woman, but instead an annoying shrew). Add in a speech impediment for humor’s sake and some racist comments, and you’ve really got the perfect problematic cocktail.
11.
Not enough people seem to know about Tiptoes, a comedy about a man who has not yet told his pregnant fiancé that most of his family has dwarfism. In fact, his twin brother has dwarfism. Naturally, this brother is played by Oscar-winner Gary Oldman, walking around on his knees. He also wore prosthetics, inexplicably had a hump, and used harnesses to make his arms shorter. Many scenes would use actual actors with dwarfism as doubles (instead of, y’know, just casting one of them) or use tricks such as Oldman sitting on a couch with fake legs.
Beyond the obvious problematic aspect of not casting an actual person with dwarfism in Oldman’s role, the film also used outdated terminology and othered dwarfism. It served to infantilize people with dwarfism and reinforce the idea that they’re “cute.” Costar Peter Dinklage (who plays Oldman’s character’s best friend and actually does have dwarfism) himself acknowledged that some felt casting Oldman was similar to blackface and that the “cuteness” trope was present; however, he blamed this on the editing, claiming the film initially aimed to combat that stereotype. All in all, it’s baffling that they got such a star-studded cast for this film.
12.
Little Man also features an actor without dwarfism playing a character with dwarfism. Marlon Wayans plays a jewel thief who pretends to be a baby to evade capture; not only does this reinforce the infantilization of people with dwarfism, but it also plays dwarfism for jokes. Many of the jokes center around Wayans’s character using his access to women through pretending to be a baby for sexual gain, which just has weird, creepy undertones of child sex abuse. And then there are also misogynistic and anti-gay humor, along with jokes about sexual assault and child abuse.
13.
Having a neurotypical actor play a neurodiverse character is never a good thing, and no one proved that more than Elisabeth Shue in Molly. The plot itself is bad enough, following a man who must suddenly take on care for his autistic sister after her caregiving facility closes. Frustrated in dealing with her, he has her get experimental surgery to “fix” her brain. This actually works…for a time. The film hits on a number of autistic stereotypes even beyond the “disabilities need to be fixed” trope. Shue’s character Molly acts like a child, peeing her pants, shouting “NO!” a lot, and getting naked randomly. She has super hearing, for some reason, in case you forgot the “autistic people=savants” trope. They threw in some incest vibes and the r-slur for good measure. The movie is really just a complete mess.
14.
The premise of The Lawnmower Man is similarly offensive. In the film, a scientist experiments on a man with an intellectual disability to make him smarter (and, in the process, more aggressive). Not only does this perpetuate the idea that people with disabilities need to be “fixed,” it also makes use of the r-slur. Jeff Fahey, who played the main character, also played him as a “cringe-worthy” caricature, according to this review, “with his over‑the‑top mannerisms and wooden delivery robbing the character of any shred of credibility or humanity.”
15.
In another disability-related example, Music was just a disaster, start to finish. First of all, director Sia cast neurotypical dancer Maddie Ziegler as the nonverbal autistic main character in the film. The movie was panned and called ableist, with reviews noting Ziegler’s performance was like a caricature of an autistic person. It also faced criticism for its portrayal of the use of restraint on autistic people, which is not recommended and can be dangerous and even fatal.
16.
The Gods Must Be Crazy reinforces racist stereotypes and completely ignores the reality of Indigenous people in Africa. Made by white South Africans during Apartheid (with funding from the Apartheid government), the film patronizingly frames the San people as uncivilized and ignorant, more akin to pre-stone age troglodytes than modern people. In the movie, they’re completely unexposed to the outside world, and the events of the film are set off by a Coca-Cola glass falling from a plane, causing them to think the gods sent it. In reality, the San people had been exposed to the outside world through white missionaries and farmers, along with the South African Defence Force; their land had been taken and they had been subjugated and faced violence and oppression.
The film was essentially propaganda that painted a picture of people who could not govern themselves; subplots painting freedom fighters as bumbling and incompetent added to this, as did the presentation of the lead actor Nǃxau ǂToma as a “noble savage” who didn’t even understand money or work, and had never seen beds and toilets. In actuality, he was a school cook. “They told me to imitate what a bushman does,” he later revealed. “To pretend to be a real bushman, just like it was in the old days. Like wearing a loincloth.”
17.
Many of the older Bond films are beloved today, despite some dated aspects, but one in particular is tough to watch back. In You Only Live Twice, Sean Connery’s Bond, a white man, masquerades as a Japanese man. The film is full of problematic stereotypes and comments, like when Bond replies that he’d like to retire in Japan after being told, “In Japan, men come first, women come second.”
18.
The Party also features an actor playing outside their race. Peter Sellers, who is white, plays an Indian man named Hrundi. To do this, he dons brown makeup and puts on an accent that presents a caricature of Indian people. He also comes across as clueless to the point of being childlike. The film was actually banned in India for a period due to brownface, which has its roots in justifying British colonialism in India.
19.
Carry On Up the Khyber similarly casts white British actors in brownface — actually, most of the Indian characters are white actors. Indian people are portrayed as comical stereotypes, there are ignorant and controversial race and culture-related jokes, and also drag played for laughs, with some sexism thrown in for good measure. At least it also mocks the British and imperialism films, but its own racist issues undercut that.
20.
The premise of Me, Myself & Irene alone is offensive: basically, Jim Carrey discovers his evil alter ego in a stereotypical depiction of dissociative identity disorder that reinforces that people with DID are aggressive or violent. The National Alliance on Mental Illness took issue with the film, especially due to its conflation of schizophrenia and DID, stating it “perpetuates a myth that schizophrenia—a severe, biologically-based brain disorder—is a split personality.” Some mental health groups even protested the film, saying it made a joke out of mental illness.
As this review points out, “Charlie’s illness is blamed on his personal weakness, and he is ‘cured’ not by medication or therapy, but by his own will power and the love of a good woman,” which is yet another problematic message about mental illness. The film also makes a joke of people with dwarfism and albinism, and of Black people, so it’s really just hitting a bunch of boxes there. Unsurprisingly, the film was directed by the Farrelly brothers, who also made Shallow Hal.
21.
Another film filled with problematic humor about a bunch of different marginalized groups? Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, which is a slog of a film that stars Rob Schneider as a fish tank cleaner who tries to make it as a gigolo. (Let’s stop letting Rob Schneider and Adam Sandler make stuff, mkay?) His first clients are a number of “undesirable” women, and we’re meant to laugh at the character’s misfortune of being paired with: a wildly tall woman with large feet, a woman it’s clear we’re meant to see as overweight, and women with various conditions and disabilities like blindness, amputations, and Tourette syndrome.
He also deals with a Black pimp who is little more than a stereotype, and there’s a joke where a character almost seems about to reveal that she’s transgender, which is played for laughs. Though like others on this list, some do believe it’s a progressive version of disability in sex work, so…make of that what you will.
22.
There’s nothing wrong with drag, but films that feature men dressing up as women for some perceived gain can easily get into dicey territory, such as with Sorority Boys. In the film, three fraternity brothers dress up as women to try to clear their names after being falsely accused of robbery and kicked out of their frat house. They’re taken in by a sorority of “ugly” girls, and learn “women are people!” after experiencing some of the difficulties of being a woman, including being date-raped.
The whole thing is pretty unfunny, crude, and full of misogynistic humor, made worse by the “heroes” of our story, who go beyond being selfish or misinformed. One of them actively records women without their consent and posts them online. Sure, there’s some muddled messaging about treating “ugly” women well, but there’s so little sincerity in this film that even that feels like a parody of a real message. Reviewers essentially called it an unfunny, crude version of Some Like It Hot and Bosom Buddies, and I agree.
23.
I don’t know why anyone would think it’s acceptable to exploit a real-life tragedy by making a horror film out of it that takes vast creative license, especially when people affected by the tragedy are still alive. But that’s what happened with The Haunting of Sharon Tate. Tate, of course, along with her unborn child and four friends, was horrifically murdered by followers of Charles Manson back in the late ’60s. The film pretends Tate had premonitions about being murdered leading up to her death, inserting more creepy occurrences and ultimately ending with the murders. Tate’s sister called the film, which featured Hilary Duff (as Tate) having visions of her upcoming murder, “extremely exploitative and socially irresponsible,” and reviews agreed.
24.
Revenge of the Nerds, on the surface, sounds like an okay premise. In the film, a bunch of nerdy guys start their own fraternity and bring down the popular guys, who have been treating them horribly. Except…the film is full of sex-related crimes. They spy on women changing, take photos, and later distribute them around campus. Modern viewers have pointed out that the nerds feel like a precursor to incels or men who get revenge on women for not finding them attractive.
One of the worst scenes is when one of the nerds essentially rapes one of the women by tricking her into thinking he’s her boyfriend. She’s thrilled after as the sex was better than with her boyfriend, which is a terrible message that downplays rape. The film is also full of stereotyped characters, including a gay character who acts effeminate and an Asian character named Takashi, who they at one point decide to dress up as a Native American for their talent show.
Also, the nerds’ fraternity is accredited with a national Black fraternity because it’s the only one that’ll take them, and in the end, they use the national frat’s Black members as essentially hired guards (reinforcing the “Black men are tough and scary” idea) before making a speech about discrimination that appears to frame what the nerds have gone through as something akin to racism.
25.
Junior, which is about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character, a scientist, becoming pregnant, is reliant on the idea of male pregnancy as preposterous, ignoring the fact that some trans men do experience pregnancy. Of course, this was the ’90s, and this message was probably unintentional — still, it comes off as misogynistic in its caricature of pregnancy and the way it plays a man “acting like a woman” for laughs, along with a section where Schwarzenegger has to dress as a woman.
Modern critics have spoken to viewing the film through a queer lens in interesting ways, but it ultimately seems that the film falls short of what could have been an ahead-of-its-time message in favor of a superficial comedy that blurs gender lines only as a cheap joke.
26.
In one example that’s a bit more beloved by some, Steve Martin famously played an adopted white son of a Black family in The Jerk. His character believes he is the couple’s biological son, and at one point, he shouts to a white man, “Sir, you are talking to a n****!” While the film was a critical and commercial success, and some may still enjoy it today, it seems unlikely the comedy would quite hold up in modern times.
27.
And finally, Freddy Got Fingered is just an offensive, unfunny mess. The film features the masturbation of multiple animals onscreen; sexualized violence and suicide threats played for laughs; jokes about child molestation, sodomy, and incest; and mocking those with disabilities. Critic Roger Ebert wrote of the film, “This movie doesn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels.” It’s obscene, vile, and disgusting.
What movies can you not believe were even made, or do you think should never be re-screened? Let us know in the comments!
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