Gerard Butler’s Worst Movie According to Rotten Tomatoes Is Better Than Its 5% Score

In 2013, Gerard Butler joined a series of other high-profile stars to feature in an anthology comedy with 13 directors, 19 writers, and zero plot. This curious concoction of a film was called Movie 43, and it is currently rated on Rotten Tomatoes as the absolute worst of Gerard Butler’s films. Raunchy, aimless, and ridiculous, Movie 43 is an acquired taste that few audiences have seemed to acquire. Critics and audiences united in panning the film. And while it has many flaws, the execution alone deserves more than the 5% critical rating.

Movie 43 is a compilation of unrelated sketches and short films. Not remotely related, the sketches are tied under the guise that they are the inventions of a producer (Dennis Quaid), who desperately attempts to hook a studio executive into his pitch for a new movie featuring some of Hollywood’s biggest stars. A lighthearted and vulgar comedy that never seeks to reach beyond its own low bar, Movie 43 is a wildly silly endeavor that was never meant to be taken seriously. Movie 43 is a clip compilation of slapstick comedy and raunchy thrills made for the crowd of The Three Stooges and Shallow Hal.

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A Movie Crafted for Offense… And It Succeeds

Movie 43 is probably best suited for those primed for an easy laugh (stoners, adolescent boys, mindless viewers who are busy doing anything else). Created by the producer of It’s Pat and Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd, Movie 43 is silly, stupid, and depends entirely on base humor. The problem is that some of the gags aren’t funny, and there are an eye-opening number of scenes that elicit secondhand embarrassment. And, as questionable as this may seem, this is by design.

This is a film that is not made for all audiences. Poop jokes, dysfunctional families, superhero speed dating, and several testicle jokes; for the particular audience that likes this humor, this film provides it in abundance.

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The Critical Rating Is in the Toilet… Which is Fitting

Perhaps some allowance should be made that the film does not suffer from lofty ambitions. Judging by the Rotten Tomatoes score, critics would disagree. In the reviews, critics called the film horrific, unfunny, and “mind-numbingly awful.” As much as the film relies on toilet humor, this could not have been great news for the creators and stars. Along with Gerard Butler, this out-of-the-box film is the lowest-rated project for several of its stars, including Naomi Watts, Kate Winslet (tied with A Kid in King Arthur’s Court), Chris Pratt, Live Schreiber, and Hugh Jackman. The audience score for Movie 43 isn’t much better at 24%, which goes to show that even viewers were puzzled by the project.

For those willing to brave this underwhelming 90-minutes of cinema, make sure to watch the US version of this film. The storyline of Dennis Quaid as an overly eager producer is not much of a plot, yet it is a more cohesive form of madness over its international counterpart. The film’s international version features three teenagers searching the internet to find the most insane movie ever, titled “Movie 43.” In the search for this elusive film, the teens stumble on the sketches that comprise the movie as hard-to-find films. In this version, there is nothing to tie the sketches together (like the hopes of an increasingly desperate producer). They simply exist as random films on the dark web. This inanely foolish substitution adds nothing to the film and robs it of any attempt at consistency.

Overall, Movie 43 was created to serve a very specific audience. Its attempt to provide the ‘funny’ parts of several films while bypassing the boring go-between of a storyline did not serve its creators well. When Bialystock and Bloom tried to create the worst stage play ever, they ended up with a glorious hit that ruined them. When the creators of Movie 43 attempted to create an outrageously offensive film to satisfy their audience, they created a failure so epic that it remains the low bar for some of Hollywood’s biggest stars. Still, while the film is not great, it achieved its aim. And for the section of the audience that likes cringe and tasteless humor, Movie 43 provides it in spades.