The 15 worst American remakes of foreign films, ranked

Not even the likes of Tom Cruise, Robin Williams, or Nicolas Cage could salvage these Hollywood reboots of international hits

By Ian Spelling  |  November 1, 2023 | 12:00pm
Film Features Films
The 15 worst American remakes of foreign films, ranked
Clockwise from top left: The Wicker Man (Warner Bros.), Vanilla Sky (Paramont), Oldboy (FilmDistrict), The Toy (Columbia) Image: AVClub

In Hollywood, it often seems that the sincerest form of flattery is to remake a foreign film. Domestic versions of international hits are a long-running thing in a town where familiarity assumes success, and risk-averse studios often fear original ideas. Here’s the thing, though: those remakes are tough to get right. They’re not necessarily translatable in terms of story, theme, milieu, and tone, let alone language.

Consider that Americanized film about a big monster attacking a major city. Seemed like the idea would travel, until you saw it. Or the stateside take on a hilarious French comedy that elicited, well, crickets in Peoria (no offense, Peoria). Or a studio’s decision to adapt an intense, violent, and ultra-twisty South Korean story, only to turn it into a watered-down mess. All of this got us thinking about the worst American remakes of foreign films. Interestingly, we had to work overtime to whittle down a long list of contenders to come up with the final, dismal 15. Here goes…

15. Crackers (1984)
Crackers - Trailer

Louis Malle directed numerous French and American classics, but doesn’t rank among them. A remake of the 1958 Italian caper comedy, Big Deal On Madonna Street, Crackers centers on a quintet of small-time crooks (Donald Sutherland, Sean Penn, Wallace Shawn, Trinidad Silva, and Larry Riley) who try to rob a pawn shop owner (Jack Warden). It goes wrong, but sweetly so. Crackers means well, but it lurches along from lethargic, unfunny scene to lethargic, unfunny scene. Stick with the source material.

14. Oldboy (2013)
Oldboy 2013 Trailer HD | Josh Brolin | Elizabeth Olsen

South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook’s brilliant 2003 actioner Oldboy wowed audiences worldwide with its passionate, violent, stylishly told tale of vengeance sought by a man imprisoned in a hotel room for 15 years. Spike Lee took a whack at Americanizing it with his 2013 version, also called . The studio infamously chopped out 30-plus minutes and the movie bombed at the box office. Here’s the thing: It’s so-so to bad, but not awful. It boasts inventive cinematography, solid performances, good chemistry between leads Josh Brolin and Elizabeth Olsen, and a wild supporting turn from Samuel L. Jackson.

13. The Jackal (1997)
The Jackal Official Trailer #1 - Bruce Willis Movie (1997) HD

Fred Zinnemann directed 1973’s scintillating political thriller The Day Of The Jackal, a French-British joint production based on Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 novel about an attempt to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle. The 1997 action thriller completely reconfigures the story, with a gun-for-hire assassin, The Jackal (Bruce Willis), trying to kill the First Lady, and an FBI Deputy Director (Sidney Poitier) releasing an imprisoned IRA sniper (Richard Gere) to stop him. Dull and repetitive, the film wastes a stellar cast (including Diane Venora, J.K. Simmons, Tess Harper, Jack Black, and Mathilda May), but somehow The Jackal grossed just shy of $160 million worldwide.

12. Pure Luck (1991)
Pure Luck 1991 Trailer | Martin Short | Danny Glover

Synopsis review: sucks. It’s an unfunny comedy from 1991 about a guy (Martin Short) cursed with really, really, really bad luck. The original French version, La Chèvre, elicits far more laughs. But here’s the cool part: Francis Veber, who directed La Chèvre, helmed eight–eight!–other French films later transformed into American productions. These include Le grand blond avec une chaussure noire (The Man With One Red Shoe), L’emmerdeur (Buddy Buddy), La Cage Aux Folles (The Birdcage), Le Jouet (The Toy), Les Compères (Fathers’ Day), Les Fugitifs (Three Fugitives), Le Dîner De Cons (Dinner For Schmucks) and La Doublure (The Valet). Interestingly, most of the originals were terrific and most of the remakes stunk, with The Birdcage representing the one truly memorable adaptation.

11. Martyrs (2015)
Martyrs Official Trailer 1 (2016) - Troian Bellisario, Caitlin Carmichael Movie HD

Pascal Laugier’s 2008 French-Canadian horror flick Martyrs clicked with fans all over the world. And deservedly so. The story of a young woman who seeks vengeance and answers after being kidnapped and tortured (for years) for reasons unknown to her, only to be shocked by the revelations, delivered chills and thrills, and provoked thought (did she kill the right people?). The 2015 version of , directed by Kevin and Michael Goetz, relocates the action to the U.S. and, along the way, defangs the premise (by altering the revelations) and waters down the violence (if you’re going to go there… go there).

10. Blame It On Rio (1984)
Blame It on Rio Official Trailer #1 - Michael Caine Movie (1984) Movie HD

Stanley Donen directed several classic films, including On The Town, Singin’ In The Rain, Indiscreet, Charade, and Bedazzled, but near the end of his career, he cranked out several duds, including Lucky Lady, Saturn 3, and his final feature, 1984’s Blame It On Rio, an unfunny farce based on Un Moment D’Égarement, a very, very French film from 1977. Michael Caine stars in Blame It On Rio as an older guy (Caine was 51) who engages in an affair with his friend’s much younger daughter (Michelle Johnson, then 19). There’s more nudity than laughs, and it all feels very cringy, especially these days—particularly the attempted suicide using birth control pills.

9. The Toy (1982)
The Toy (1982) Trailer

A super-spoiled boy whose dad gives him everything he wants … wants a man to own like he would a toy. Such is the premise of both Francis Veber’s 1976 film, Le Jouet, and 1982’s . The French version works far better, as Veber crafts it as a comedy-drama with social satire. On the other hand, the usually reliable Richard Donner wasted the dream casting of Richard Pryor and Jackie Gleason by turning the story into a tone-deaf, fairly racist, mostly laugh-free farce that doesn’t earn its would-be tearjerker moments. But we say mostly laugh-free for a reason. It’s admittedly hard not to laugh, even more than 40 years later, whenever the boy is referred to as Master Bates.

8. Mixed Nuts (1994)
Mixed Nuts - Movie Trailer 1994

Assume, in 1994, you didn’t know was a remake, but rather a new film from esteemed writer-director Nora Ephron that starred Steve Martin, Madeline Kahn, Rob Reiner, Jon Stewart, Parker Posey, Adam Sandler, Liev Schreiber, Garry Shandling, and Steven Wright. You’d probably be first in line, right? Only, the film utterly flounders; it’s way over-the-top, practically antic, and the jokes never land. As for the plot, it’s a slightly lighter take on the 1982 French comedy, Le Père Noël Est Une Ordure (Santa Claus Is a Stinker, itself based on a play), about a group of people involved (as staff or clients) with a suicide prevention hotline. A supreme waste of talent, this Christmas release served as a massive lump of coal.

7. And God Created Woman (1988)
And God Created Woman (1988) Trailer

Roger Vadim started and ended his career with And God Created Woman. That’s to say he made his directorial debut with 1956’s Et Dieu…Créa La Femme, with Brigitte Bardot as a sexy and sex-minded 18-year-old orphan who scandalizes Saint-Tropez. Decades later, he wrapped up his feature-directing career with an English-language remake, also titled And God Created Woman. The only things the two films share in common? The title and Vadim. It’s like a bad marketing ploy for a worse movie. Here, Rebecca De Mornay plays a gorgeous prisoner who pays a guy (Vincent Spano) to marry her, romances a slimy politician (Frank Langella), and forms a rock band. It’s an ungodly bad movie.

6. Diabolique (1996)
Diabolique - Trailer 1r

Throughout the 1990s, Sharon Stone bounced between really bad movies (Sliver, The Specialist, Sphere, and The Muse) and truly good ones (The Quick And The Dead, Casino, and The Mighty). ranked as the worst of the bad. Based on the 1955 French film Les Diaboliques (itself based on the 1952 French book Celle Qui N’Était Plus, or She Who Was No More), Diabolique is an overheated potboiler about two women (Stone and Isabelle Adjani) who join forces (or do they?) to kill the abusive figure (Chazz Palminteri) complicating both their lives. Cue the ham-fisted kills, double-crosses, and dialogue. The original film, however, is fantastic.

5. Father’s Day (1997)
Father’s Day - Trailer #1

Where to start with this one? Any movie with comedy greats Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, and (director) Ivan Reitman should be brilliant. , which cost a small fortune ($85 million!), stinks. It involves a woman (Nastassja Kinski) who tells two ex-boyfriends (Williams and Crystal) that they’re the father of her missing son. And so they bicker and bond as they search for the kid. They should have searched for laughs. Even Julia Louis-Dreyfus hits every note wrong. As for the remake end of the equation, it’s based on Les Compères, a 1993 film featuring the work of two guys who appear in this piece a few times: writer-director Francis Veber and Gerard Depardieu.

4. Vanilla Sky (2001)
Vanilla Sky (2001) Official Trailer # 1 - Tom Cruise HD

Abre Los Ojos/Open Your Eyes opened in 1997, and the Spanish psychological thriller (sprinkled with sci-fi) dazzled international audiences with its gripping, jarring plot about dreams and nightmares, life and death, and the afterlife. Among its stars? Penelope Cruz, who returned for writer-director Cameron Crowe’s meh 2001 remake, . Everything is pitched at an extreme; you can practically feel the whole cast hyperventilating, especially Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. There’s even a bad Paul McCartney song. Worth noting: Vanilla Sky opened a few months after the 9/11 attacks, and the Twin Towers are practically co-stars in the film, they’re on-screen so often and so prominently.

3. My Father The Hero (1994)
My Father the Hero (1994) ORIGINAL TRAILER

Gotta say, the French do like to push the envelope when it comes to movies about older guys and young women. In 1991, Mon Père, Ce Héros cast Gerard Depardieu as a single dad who vacations with his 14-year-old daughter, who wants to grow up now—right now—and thus spins vivid stories about their (imagined) exploits, all to attract a boy’s attention. Three years later, Touchstone Pictures (a division of Disney!) served up , with Depardieu playing the same role (but speaking English and waterskiing) and Katherine Heigl as the haughty, naughty, uber-spoiled, and gorgeous daughter. It’s all pretty unsettling and pervy.

2. The Wicker Man (2006)
The Wicker Man (2006) Official Trailer - Nicholas Cage, Ellen Burstyn Movie HD

Robin Hardy directed something of a stealth classic with his 1973 British horror film The Wicker Man, as it took a while for fans to find and embrace it. Decades later, in 2006, Warner Bros. handed Neil LaBute—then better known for his plays and films based on said plays—a whopping $40 million to remake with Nicolas Cage as his leading man. The LaBute-Cage version bears a scant resemblance to the original and just doesn’t work. Cage, playing a cop searching for a missing child, shoots way over the top, shouting much of his laughable dialogue.

 
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