The 10 worst Leonardo DiCaprio movies of all time
The man responsible for making such movies as Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, James Cameron’s Titanic and Christopher Nolan’s Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio, is no doubt one of the greatest actors of his generation. Known for countless classic movies, DiCaprio shares the podium of cinema’s greatest performers with the likes of Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson.
Entering the industry in the early 1990s, DiCaprio quickly became a young prodigy, working with De Niro in This Boy’s Life in 1993 and Marvin’s Room in 1996, being nominated for his first Academy Award at the age of just 19 for his role in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. By the turn of the new millennium, he was a bonafide Hollywood superstar and has enjoyed a career at the very top of the industry ever since.
Yet, just like most actors, DiCaprio’s career hasn’t been totally plain sailing, appearing in a number of critical failures and box office bombs that have largely been forgotten about by contemporary audiences. Alongside his famous collaborations with the likes of Steven Spielberg, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Quentin Tarantino, he’s also taken several missteps in his career.
Take a look at our list of Leonardo DiCaprio’s ten worst movies below, including films from the likes of Adam McKay, Woody Allen, Ridley Scott, Sam Mendes and more.
The 10 worst Leonardo DiCaprio movies:
10. Revolutionary Road (Sam Mendes, 2008)
The fourth film from theatre-turned-film director Sam Mendes isn’t a terrible movie, but it is one that totally fails to capture the essence of its source material and, as a result, gives Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet very little to work with.
Following the trials and tribulations of the Wheelers, a young couple living in 1950s suburbia, Revolutionary Road explores the gradual breakdown of a seemingly idyllic marriage with ultimately tragic consequences. Many of Mendes’ choices, from the costume to the production design, have too much of an obvious directorial touch to them, much like a heavily stylised play. Whilst opting for neutral and desaturated colours can work for some projects, remaining as authentic as possible, like in Mad Men, would have yielded much more engaging results. He also fails to depict the most interesting aspect of the book, that the Wheelers fancy themselves proto-hipsters, baulking at the narrow-mindedness of small-town America and assuming superiority. Instead, they’re presented as your typical 1950s couple, and the film is, at best, a little bit boring.
9. Body of Lies (Ridley Scott, 2007)
When Ridley Scott gets it right, boy, does he get it right. When he gets it wrong, however, you wonder how such a director could have given us Alien and Blade Runner. Body of Lies doesn’t quite fall into the Exodus: Gods and Kings tier of terrible movies, but it’s certainly more of a stain on the director’s filmography than it is a gold star.
Featuring Russel Crowe and DiCaprio as CIA agents trying to capture an elusive terrorist in the middle east, Body of Lies really is about as generic an espionage thriller as you can get. Gunfights, overhead drone shots, and Middle Eastern locals getting pushed aside in street chases all make an appearance in this utterly bland spy action film that wastes its promising two leads. There’s something so by the books about it that makes you half-wonder if there was even a director present for some of the films. Instead, it seems quite plausible that the cast and crew slept-walked through a lot of it, referring to a tried and tested formula based on every film of the same genre that came before it.
8. Celebrity (Woody Allen, 1998)
The career of Woody Allen had petered out towards the end of the 20th century, with the American filmmaker having seemingly used up all his energy creating countless classics throughout the 1970s and 1980s. One of his most forgettable movies is undoubtedly 1998’s Celebrity, a comedy-drama that follows the fortunes of a husband and wife that differ greatly following the pair’s divorce.
DiCaprio plays just a small role in the film, being overshadowed by the likes of Kenneth Branagh, Judy Davis, Greg Mottola and Winona Ryder, but we’re pretty sure that the Titanic star wishes to forget his part in the flick.
7. Don’t Look Up (Adam McKay, 2021)
Quite how Adam McKay’s limp social satire Don’t Look Up achieved an Oscar nomination for ‘Best Picture’ we’ll never know, with the film playing out like a high-school student’s interpretation of ‘why modern life sucks’. Lacking any kind of narrative weight, the film tells the story of a pair of scientists who are trying to convince the world of the danger of an incoming missile that will wipe out all of humanity.
Led by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, the movie is merely an excuse to get together the most famous people in the world whilst pretending like they’re doing something good with this ‘smart’ satire that hits as awkwardly as a boozy wink.
6. The Quick and the Dead (Sam Raimi, 1995)
Another dud starring DiCaprio and Crowe sees the two of them put on their cowboy hats for Sam Raimi’s The Quick and the Dead, which is an uninspiring attempt at a ‘revisionist’ western that follows Sharon Stone’s ‘The Lady’ take on the nefarious ruler of a town called Redemption. The only thing vaguely redemptive about the film is its female gunslinging lead, which offers at least a small novelty, but everything else about it feels vapid, and DiCaprio’s small turn as ‘The Kid’ feels like a waiter’s bit performed in a Saloon-themed bar in Leicester Square.
Whilst the film undoubtedly looks great, with beautiful cinematography and well-designed sets, the whole thing feels like a tired joke. Raimi, known for embracing the cliché and playing on established tropes, usually with success, exhausts all his creative options and turns in a film that makes you question what exactly it brings to the canon of a once highly regarded genre.
5. Don’s Plum (R. D. Robb, 2001)
R.D. Robb’s Don’s Plum is a peculiar movie with a small band of loyal fans, but we find it hard to get behind the empty comedy drama. Telling the story of a group of LA teenagers who meet every week to discuss their misery, Don’s Plum is a predictably bleak and eye-rolling watch, feeling like you’ve been forced to sit through a student film about over-inflated teenage problems.
Despite this, the film boasts an impressive cast, with DiCaprio unable to do much to elevate the film whilst rubbing shoulders with the likes of Tobey Maguire, Kevin Connolly and Scott Bloom.
4. Poison Ivy (Katt Shea, 1992)
This erotic, sordid 1990s thriller was nominated for the ‘Grand Jury’ at the Sundance Film Festival, but luckily the programmers had the good sense not to award it. So insistent is director Katt Shea on challenging the audience; she forgets to back her challenge up with anything substantial. Straddling a strange line between campy parody and earnest eroticism, Poison Ivy follows the chaos that ensues when Ivy, a poor orphan, manages to insert herself into a wealthy family and cause destruction from the inside out.
Neither smart enough to deliver on its social satire potential nor fun nor engaging enough to keep the audience’s attention until the end, Shea’s background in exploitation films ends up muddling her first attempt at a more mainstream movie. As for DiCaprio, the actor should count himself lucky that his screen time literally amounts to no more than five seconds.
3. The Man in the Iron Mask (Randall Wallace, 1998)
Ostensibly a Three Musketeers film, Randall Wallace’s 1990s version of the French legend is cliché, over the top, poorly paced and even less well acted. Jeremy Irons and John Malkovich act as if they’ve wandered into a 17th-century French theme park, sauntering about and idly playing with props and occasionally messing about with their thin swords.
DiCaprio, on the other hand, is actually given a fairly juicy double role: both as the lecherous, greedy and petulant King Louis and as The Man in the Iron Mask. Whilst he effectively just plays a stock goodie and a stock baddie, it nonetheless makes for engaging viewing, seeing him play against himself, and it was one of the first films that demonstrated his ability to command big-budget blockbuster material as well as the previous art-house fare he’d done so well in. And, truth be told, even the performances from his co-stars are amusing enough to get you to the finishing line.
2. Total Eclipse (Agnieszka Holland, 1995)
Some might call us harsh for including Agnieszka Holland’s Total Eclipse at number two on our list of the worst Leonardo DiCaprio movies, but we think the 1995 drama is pretty forgettable in almost every aspect. A biographical film about the young French poet Arthur Rimbaud and his mentor Paul Verlaine, who engage in a relationship whilst trying to lead an artistic lifestyle, Total Eclipse is a tedious bore.
To be fair to DiCaprio and his co-star David Thewlis, the actors do a decent job of trying to resurrect the script from the dead, giving decent performances in a film that is about as dry as an oat cracker.
1. Critters 3 (Kristine Peterson, 1991)
Number one on our list of the ten worst Leonardo DiCaprio movies feels like something of a cop-out in a way, but the fact is that Kristine Peterson’s 1991 horror movie Critters 3 simply is the actor’s worst movie. Whilst the film might be a comedy horror with sprinklings of science fiction, there’s no getting around the fact that it is an awful movie, telling the story of tiny furry aliens who attack an LA tower block with empty bellies.
We feel harsh as Critters 3 was DiCaprio’s feature film debut, you can’t blame him for the movie’s lack of quality, but we can blame screenwriter David J. Schow and Rupert Harvey Barry Opper, who penned the tragic story.
