Moviefone's Top 25 Worst TV Shows Turned Into Movies

[JamesG]

It seems that any TV show you ever loved eventually gets recycled into a big-budget, big-screen version ... and that's not always a good thing.

These TV-to-movies misfire so often, we've come up with a list of the the worst offenders -- here's our countdown of the 25 worst movies based on TV shows. -- By Liane Bonin




25. Josie and the Pussycats (2001)

In the 1970 animated series, Josie and co. are pop stars who just happen to solve mysteries on the side. Not exactly rich dramatic fodder, but the movie tried to go deeper: The music industry is bad and marketing is brainwashing. But it wasn't enough to save a really bad remake idea. And did we mention Tara Reid? (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 53%)




24. Sgt. Bilko (1996)

On The Phil Silvers Show, Sgt. Ernie Bilko is a con man who's always working an angle at a Kansas army camp. A hit in 1955, by the time the movie rolled around with Steve Martin in Silvers' shoes, audiences weren't feeling much nostalgia for cutesy military humor or a black-and-white TV show they'd never seen. (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 32%)




23. Dennis the Menace (1993)

Even Walter Matthau as grumbly neighbor Mr. Wilson couldn't help this stinker. Hoping to spice up the conflict between mischievous Dennis and Mr. Wilson, writer John Hughes decided to throw in a real menace with town robber Switchblade Sam. Like we needed to see Home Alone with a slightly different blonde kid. (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 25%)




22. The Saint (1997)

Before there was Bond, there was the Saint, an equally dashing thief with a mysterious past. So what does Bond have that The Saint doesn't? Plenty, it turns out. A yawn-worthy plot, dull action scenes and a curious performance by Val Kilmer made audiences pine for the 1962 original series starring Roger Moore. (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 30%)




21. The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas (1994)

Sure, everyone loves Fred and Wilma and their modern stone age family, but after an episode or two, we all realized it was a pale imitation of The Honeymooners. Unfortunately, the live-action movie sequel was not even a pale imitation of the 'toon -- even John Goodman, Roseanne's perfect shlubby hubby, passed on Vegas. (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 18%)




20. Speed Racer (2008)

Take some retro Japanese anime, add the Wachowski bros. (The Matrix) and you get ... an overblown, high-budget mess. It probably sounded good on paper, but the movie is almost too true to the original, which lacked character, plot and logic. At more than two hours, this bubblegum-colored F/X explosion is just painful. (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 36%)




19. Mr. Magoo (1997)

Maybe it was fun to laugh at the legally blind in 1960, but the adventures of this nearsighted millionaire got old fast for most people over the age of 8. Leslie Nielsen tried to bring his bumbling Airplane persona to the movie version, but sadly, it still wasn't funny. (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 4%)




18. McHale's Navy (1997)

Of course, WWII is always funny, so who couldn't yuk it up over a bunch of misfits floating around the South Pacific with a Japanese house boy? Sadly, while the series had talents like Ernest Borgnine, Tim Conway and Gavin McLeod to lighten the mood, the movie version had ... Tom Arnold. (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 4%)




17. Fat Albert (2004)

Aside from some brilliant casting (SNL star Kenan Thompson was made to play Fat Albert), this movie is like school on Saturday: no class. Fans who loved the funky '70s original will find the movie version -- in which Albert and his animated pals jump out of a TV to help a lonely girl -- bland at best, dumb kid stuff at worst. (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 21%)




16. Bewitched (2005)

There was a straightforward charm to the 1964 original about a nose-wriggling magical housewife. But writer-director Nora Ephron tried to go meta with a film-inside-a-film structure, casting Nicole Kidman as a witch playing a witch and Will Ferrell as her egotistical co-star. The ensuing flop didn't put audiences under its spell. (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 25%)




15. The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (2000)

The animated Rocky and Bullwinkle became a classic because, like the Warner Bros. cartoons with Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote, it operated on many levels. The movie operates on one -- the one that includes fart jokes. Stars Robert De Niro and Renee Russo aren't on screen long enough to salvage the lowbrow mishmash. (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 43%)




14. Masters of the Universe (1987)

First came the dolls, then came the 1983 He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon, which was about as good as any TV show based on an action figure could be. The movie pulled out all the stops on the road to Cheeseville, with Dolph Lundgren (Rocky IV) as He-Man and a woefully overqualified Frank Langella as Skeletor. (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 13%)




13. The Dukes of Hazzard (2005)

If you saw one episode on the 1979 series, you'd seen them all. Good ol' boys Luke (Tom Wopat) and Bo (John Schneider) join forces with their super sexy cousin Daisy (Barbara Bach) to outrun the bumptious sheriff, Boss Hogg. The movie, of course, made big changes. Jessica Simpson wore the Daisy Dukes. (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 14%)




12. The Honeymooners (2005)

Alas, Cedric the Entertainer is no Jackie Gleason, but as New York bus driver Ralph Kramden the comedian was set to the task of walking in some very big footsteps armed only with a scatterbrained script about get-rich-schemes and a nefarious land developer, played by Eric Stoltz. To the moon? Not even close. (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 14%)




11. Beverly Hillbillies (1993)

When the series hit big in 1962, its dumb-outsiders-in-the-big-city jokes were already stale and horribly hokey. By the time the movie came out in a more PC era, they were just plain offensive. Even high-octane comedians like Cloris Leachman and Lily Tomlin couldn't save this mess o' sour grits. (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 26%)




10. I Spy (2002)

Bill Cosby and Robert Culp were cooler than cool as sly, sophisticated secret agents in the 1965 series, but in the remake Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson bumble and goof around, bypassing the spy thriller fun for dumb jokes and cheap laughs. Worst of all, Cosby goes two for two in the subpar remake stakes. (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 15%)




9. My Favorite Martian (1999)

Before there was Third Rock From the Sun, there was My Favorite Martian, a fish-out-of-water story about a Martian who finds himself stuck on earth and living with a newspaper reporter. Jeff Daniels and Christopher Lloyd (Taxi) made the best of a storyline that wasn't fresh when audiences first saw it in 1963. (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 13%)




8. Thunderbirds (2004)

Hey, it was sci-fi with MARIONETTES! If you could get past strings in every shot, jerky head movements and out-of-synch voiceovers, Thunderbirds was good, campy fun. Sadly, when director Jonathan Frakes made the live-action movie version he turned a surreal camp classic into standard, ho-hum action fare. (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 19%)




7. Car 54, Where Are You? (1994)

While the 1961 series about two bumbling cops was more sweet than street, the big-screen incarnation is definitely sour. Full of lame jokes looking for a plot, gay stereotypes and bizarre song-and-dance sequences, this wreck's big accomplishment was winning Rosie O'Donnell a Razzie award. (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 0%)




6. Lost in Space (1998)

Sci-fi TV shows rarely age well, and Lost in Space was kiddy stuff from the get-go -- instead of Lassie, this was largely a story of a boy and his robot. The movie version was definitely grown-up, with high caliber stars like William Hurt, Gary Oldman and Mimi Rogers, but what was the point in that? (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 25%)




5. The Mod Squad (1999)

Clare Danes, Giovanni Ribisi and Omar Epps seemed perfect to play a trio of delinquents recruited by the police to go undercover, as in the groundbreaking 1968 series. Too bad the flimsy, predictable script and joyless, sulking characters made solving crime look too easy and being young and attractive painfully boring (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 4%)




4. Scooby-Doo (2002)

Did we really need a movie version? Even as a cartoon, this premise didn't have enough fuel to be much more than a Scooby snack. While Matthew Lillard is almost spookily accurate as Shaggy, this stinker isn't much more than in-jokes and '70s nostalgia. (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 28%




3. The Avengers (1998)

This should have been a homerun. Uma Thurman in a catsuit? Ralph Fiennes battling Sean Connery? Fans of the '61 Brit series blame the studio for this big screen flop (the original 2-1/2 hour version was sliced to 89 minutes after poor audience testing). They could be right: The movie looks great, but its sunk by giant plot holes. (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 15%)




2. Inspector Gadget (1999)

In the 1983 animated series based on the book, a bionic but dimwitted police inspector bumbled through cases while his niece and dog did the real crime-solving. As played by Matthew Broderick, Gadget was not quite as dumb, but the rest of the movie -- which had little in common with the TV show beyond the title -- was dumber. (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 22%)




1. Wild Wild West (1999)

Will Smith, Kevin Kline and Men in Black director Barry Sonnenfeld should have given us a sparkling update of the classic Old West-meets-spy thriller TV show. Instead, we got dumb jokes, uncomfortable racial humor and ridiculous gadgets that kept audiences away in droves. Watch the '65 series instead. (Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 21%)

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[Marvo301]

I'm ashamed to admit how many of these awful movies I've actually seen!!

[JamesG]

Originally Posted by Marvo301

I'm ashamed to admit how many of these awful movies I've actually seen!!

LOL, I have seen most of these too.

However, the only movie on the list that I actually enjoyed was Val Kilmer's The Saint.

[Liza]

They made a movie out of the Honeymooners???? Wow, I totally missed that. And it doesn't sound like I missed that much.

I think The Addams Family was the only movie adaptation of a tv show that actually worked.

[JamesG]

Originally Posted by Liza

They made a movie out of the Honeymooners???? Wow, I totally missed that. And it doesn't sound like I missed that much.

Yes and I REFUSE to look at it. You'd have to go Clockwork Orange on me to make me watch that.

[icecream]

I liked The Beverly Hillbillies movie, nothing wrong with it

[Marvo301]

Originally Posted by catsrule

I liked The Beverly Hillbillies movie, nothing wrong with it

Unless of course you compare it to the original source material and then you realize almost everything is wrong with it!

[Retro4Life]

Yeah, I've seen a lot of these and they were all pretty bad.

I can't help but wonder if the new "Land of the Lost" didn't dodge a bullet here...