The only one of Ben Affleck’s “fucking terrible” movies he’s willing to defend: “The others may be fair criticism”
Nobody needs to tell Ben Affleck that he’s made a lot of shitty movies, because he’s self-aware enough to not only confess to his cinematic sins but take them in his stride.
By his own admission, the actor and filmmaker has appeared in ten to 12 films he described as “fucking terrible” that he finds “so awful” he can’t bring himself to watch them. While he didn’t go into specifics, it’s not too difficult to root out some of the worst offenders.
Phantoms is definitely up there, with Affleck calling the sci-fi horror flick “utter garbage,” although he’ll forever cherish the memory of getting high with co-star Peter O’Toole, so there’s that. Surviving Christmas would also make the cut based solely on the fact that he’s too smart to think it’s anything other than a disaster.
Joss Whedon’s Justice League was such a dismal experience that Affleck expedited his exit as Batman after the extensive and soul-crushing reshoots made him fall completely out of love with the character, and Armageddon might sneak into the list despite the Oscar-winner calling his DVD commentary the greatest work of his career.
Daredevil can’t be forgotten when Affleck went on record saying he hates it with a burning passion, he also criticised John Woo’s Paycheck post-release, and then there’s Gigli. A film so wretched it almost derailed his entire mainstream career, the early 2000s weren’t exactly the greatest period of his professional life.
That’s seven, and if Charlize Theron despises Reindeer Games, then maybe Affleck does, too. The rest remain up for debate with Affleck refusing to name and shame them when it’d be doing a disservice to the cast and crew who worked so hard to make those pictures, regardless of how they turned out, but there’s one flop he’ll defend to the death.
On paper, an insipid dramedy that bombed at the box office, earned him a pair of Razzie nominations for ‘Worst Actor’ and one half of ‘Worst Screen Couple’ and was reviewed so poorly that its director felt compelled to say “maybe this time around I lose some of the critics” would make Affleck’s shit list.
And yet, he refuses to speak ill of Kevin Smith’s Jersey Girl. Part of it must be out of loyalty to his longtime friend, frequent collaborator, and an instrumental figure in getting Good Will Hunting over the finish line, but when it was posed to Affleck during a conversation with Time that some of his credits are “borderline unwatchable,” he took a stand.
“I don’t know what borderline means,” he pondered. “That means you watched but later said, ‘I can’t watch this?’ You like to think you know whether a movie is going to work, but in large measure, they are bets. Even when you think you’re a favourite, you can come up short. I like Jersey Girl. The others may be fair criticism.”
Affleck’s disdain for his back catalogue comfortably runs into the double digits, but he refuses to accept Jersey Girl as one of his many “fucking terrible” feautures, even though he’s in the minority.
