The Winnie The Pooh murder movie swept this year's Razzies, of course

Megan Fox, Sylvester Stallone, and Jon Voight also "won big" at the 42nd Razzies

By William Hughes  |  March 9, 2024 | 5:57pm
Aux News Unknown
The Winnie The Pooh murder movie swept this year's Razzies, of course
The trailer for Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood And Honey Screenshot: YouTube

As we note on basically every Saturday before the Oscars—when the awards are traditionally handed out—our beef with The Golden Raspberry Awards (a.k.a. The Razzies) isn’t that a comedic awards show for bad movies is a bad idea in and of itself. It’s that The Razzies—which have been running for 42 years now, irritatingly lending them a sort of odd respectability-by-inertia—so rarely surprise or delight us with their selections, instead culling their choices from a yearly crop of low-hanging fruit. Take, as an example, the 2024 version of the awards, handed out today, which “honored,” first and foremost, the “What if public domain characters Winnie The Pooh and Piglet murdered people?” gorefest Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood And Honey.

Rhys Frake-Waterfield’s low-budget exploitation of copyright expiration managed to sweep every category it was nominated for at this year’s awards, including Worst Picture, Worst Screen Couple (for Piglet and Pooh), Worst Prequel, Remake, Spin-Off Or Sequel, Worst Director (for Frake-Waterfield), and Worst Screenplay (same). And, again: This is not a full-throated defense of Blood And Honey, a film that is, by volume, about 95 percent marketing gimmick. But it’s also a profoundly lazy pick, just like giving Megan Fox twin awards for Worst Actress and Worst Supporting Actress (for Johnny & Clyde and Expend4bles, respectively), or kicking the very bulky dead horse that is Sylvester Stallone (also for Expend4bles).

As ever, The Razzies’ picks seem to be simply the worst movies its reported thousand-plus voting members have heard of, rather than a real reckoning with truly godawful cinema. Was Jon Voight really the Worst Actor of the year for his performance in low-budget action movie Mercy, or is it just easy to see Voight’s name on a list, think about how generally loathsome he is (or catch two minutes of his admittedly very bad accent in the trailer), and just check the box? We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Bad movies deserve better.

 
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