Here are the best and worst films from all five major movie studios, according to Rotten Tomatoes.
The major studios are Warner Bros., Paramount, Sony, Universal Studios and Disney. All have had huge successes — and misfires. That’s the movie business. But it can still be striking to consider the huge differences between the industry’s winners and losers.
Before we list the best and worst films from all five major studios, a quick note on our research method.
How We Chose the Best and Worst Movies From All 5 Major Studios, According to Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a very popular site that assigns a percentage to a film based on its critical reviews (the Tomatometer) and audience score (Popcornmeter.)
To choose the best movies, we simply went by Rotten Tomatoes’ recent list of the 300 Best Movies of All Time.
Choosing the worst movie was a little trickier, since most studios have more than one movie with a zero on Rotten Tomatoes. So to choose the worst, we went with the movies that have both a zero and the highest number of reviews. So a film with a zero based on 50 reviews is considered worse, under our method of interpreting Rotten Tomatoes, than a film with a zero based on only 20 reviews.
And now, onto our list.
The Best Movie From Paramount, According to Rotten Tomatoes: The Godfather (1972)
The Godfather is No. 1 on Rotten Tomatoes list of the 300 Best Movies of All Time. That means it’s not just the best Paramount movie on the list, but the best movie, period.
Paramount chief Robert Evans had a stunning run leading the studio from 1967 to 1974, overseeing films including Rosemary’s Baby, The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, Chinatown and Love Story.
While not everyone agrees that The Godfather is the best movie ever made — some would argue for The Godfather Part II, for example — almost all serious movie fans agree that The Godfather is at least in the conversation.
And The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola deserves immense credit for the film, as do actors including Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, James Cahn and Marlon Brando, whose name will come up again on this list.
The Worst Movie From Paramount, According to Rotten Tomatoes: A Thousand Words (2012)
First things first: Eddie Murphy made at least two stone cold classics with Paramount, Coming to America and Trading Places. The Beverly Hills Cop movies were massive successes as well.
That success may explain why the studio allowed A Thousand Words to happen. The film stars Murphy as a man who uses his gift of gab to become very successful, but then a weird curse involving a Bodhi Tree allows him to use just 1,000 words for the rest of his life.
Eddie Murphy is perhaps the funniest person alive when he’s talking. Can you see the potential problem with rendering him silent for much of a movie?
The film has a zero on Rotten Tomatoes and bombed at the box office. Murphy took four years off after its release.
The Best Movie From Warner Bros, According to Rotten Tomatoes: Casablanca (1942)
One of the most romantic, sweeping, and witty movies ever made, Casablanca is ranked No. 3 in Rotten Tomatoes’ list of the 300 Best Movies of All Time.
Starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman as the maybe the most famous would-be couple in the history of cinema, it’s a thrilling allegory about standing up to fascism at any cost.
Almost every time we make a list of classic movie recommendations, Casablanca is on it. Somehow, after eight decades, it’s a faster, funnier, more relevant-feeling film than almost anything made today.
The Worst Movie From Warner Bros, According to Rotten Tomatoes: Ballistic — Ecks vs. Sever (2002)
This clumsily named action film could have been amazing, based on its excellent cast: it pairs Antonio Banderas and the always great Lucy Liu (who would have a much more successful turn a year later in Kill Bill).
But something was off, and the film holds the dubious distinction of having the most critical reviews of any film with a zero on Rotten Tomatoes. It has 117 reviews, none of which are good.
That critical pile-on reflects a near-universal critical consensus that Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, was no Casablanca. We’re shocked, shocked.
The Best Movie From Sony, According to Rotten Tomatoes: On the Waterfront (1954)
The second Marlon Brando film on this list, along with The Godfather, Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront is a stunning display of Brando’s unmatched, naturalistic acting talents.
It’s the story of dockworker Terry Malloy, an ex-boxer who has to decide whether to stand up to a Hoboken mob boss.
The film is from Columbia Pictures, which Sony purchased in 1989. So we guess you don’t have to call this a Sony film if you don’t want to, since Sony’s puchase came 25 years after the film’s release. But we’d argue that On the Waterfront is one of the films that made Columbia the kind of film powerhouse that Sony would want to buy.
The Worst Movie From Sony, According to Rotten Tomatoes: Superbabies — Baby Geniuses 2 (2004)
You can dispute whether Sony deserves the credit for On the Waterfront, but it can’t dispute its responsibility for Superbabies — Baby Geniuses 2, which was distributed by Sony Pictures Entertainment.
The film concerns the affairs of several baby geniuses (most of whom are technically toddlers, but OK) who battle an evil mastermind known as Kane, played by Oscar winner Jon Voight. Scott Baio also stars.
The film was also, sadly, the last by Bob Clark, whose amazing filmography also includes A Christmas Story and Black Christmas.
The Best Movie From Universal, According to Rotten Tomatoes: Schindler’s List (1993)
Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List is a stunning success by any measure: It earned $322 million worldwide on a $22 million budget, won seven Oscars including for Best Picture, and remains a valuable teaching tool.
What’s perhaps most remarkable is that Spielberg released it in the same year as his dinosaur thriller Jurassic Park, a movie as different as can be from Schindler’s List.
Schindler’s List is No. 10 on Rotten Tomatoes list of the 300 Best Movies of All Time. It’s both the highest rated Universal film, and the highest-rated Spielberg film.
The Worst Movie From Universal, According to Rotten Tomatoes: Problem Child (1990)
Problem Child has a zero on Rotten Tomatoes, but we’d like to say some nice things about it. OK?
First, it stars the beloved John Ritter. Second, it holds the distinction of having the highest box office gross of any film with a zero on Rotten Tomatoes. It was a hit, earning $72 million on an $11 million budget. That profit covered the cost of Schindler’s List, many times over.
Finally, it was the first film to be written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewksi, one of the best screenwriting teams ever, responsible for projects including Ed Wood, The People vs. Larry Flynt, Man on the Moon, andThe People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story.
So great things can come from movies that critics consider bad.
The Best Movie From Disney, According to Rotten Tomatoes: Toy Story (1995)
Toy Story, which was produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures, is a very special movie: an example of technical mastery merging with heart to tell a story for kids of all ages. It has endured across multiple generations, and spawned a franchise that includes the upcoming Toy Story 5.
It’s the top Disney production on Rotten Tomatoes list of the 300 Best Movies of All Time at No. 17 (and is closely followed by Toy Story 2 at No. 19.)
May we editorialize? We’re surprised no Disney movies cracked the Rotten Tomatoes top 10. The problem may not be with the movies, but with critics themselves, who tend not to take kids movies as seriously as they perhaps should.
The Worst Movie From Disney, According to Rotten Tomatoes: Pinocchio (2002)
Of course we aren’t talking about the beloved 1940 Pinocchio.
No, this is the live-action one starring Roberto Benigni as the boy-puppet, which was a box office failure that also earned a zero on Rotten Tomatoes.
Disney can make a convincing case for washing its hands of this film: It was distributed internationally by Miramax, which Disney owned at the time of the film’s release and which Disney sold in 2010.
Bonus: The Best Movie From 20th Century Studios, According to Rotten Tomatoes: All About Eve (1950)
Things get tricky here. Disney acquired 20th Century Studios, formerly Twentieth Century Fox, in 2019. So one could make the case that every 20th Century movie is also a Disney movie. Just as we would make the case that Columbia movies — even those made before the Sony purchase — are now, technically speaking. Sony movies.
If you agree with that, the top Disney movie on Rotten Tomatoes — by which we mean the top Twentieth Century Fox movie — is 1950’s masterful and still very funny All About Eve.
Joseph Mankiewicz’s showbiz satire, noted for both drama and bone-dry humor, is No. 12 on Rotten Tomatoes’ 300 Best Films of All Time. It has everything, including an early appearance by Marilyn Monroe.
Bonus: The Worst Movie From 20th Century Studios, According to Rotten Tomatoes: Folks! (1992)
Parents, right? That’s the premise of Folks!, which stars a demustachioed Tom Selleck as a yuppie who takes in his parents (Don Ameche and Anne Jackson).
This made sense on paper — Selleck was great as one of the Three Men and a Baby, so why not switch things up and sub in some senior citizens instead of a baby? Alas, the film earned a zero on Rotten Tomatoes.
It also demonstrates our theory that movies with exclamation points in their titles are generally to be avoided, unless they’re called Airplane!
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Main image: Casablana/Ballistic — Ecks vs. Sever. Both from Warner Bros.