Taking the Golden Raspberry Awards, also known as the Razzies, too seriously is a foolish thing to do. Their purpose – to give awards to the worst films of the year – is one that treads a fine line between good humour and sneering. 

They have engendered headline-grabbing moments in their 41-year history, with respected actors and directors such as Halle Berry, Sandra Bullock and Paul Verhoeven turning up in person to collect their award, and have got it right more often than not; the dismal Cats “winning” spectacularly in 2020 with six awards was a recent highlight. 

But there have also been some severe absences of judgement. From Stanley Kubrick being nominated for Worst Director for The Shining to this year’s baffling decision to put forward Ben Affleck’s excellent performance in The Last Duel for Worst Supporting Actor, the Golden Raspberry Foundation should be publicly mocked for some of their worst calls, in the spirit of: “If you can dish it out, you should be able to take it.”  

This year’s most attention-seeking insult is the new category: “Worst Performance by Bruce Willis in a 2021 Movie”. Willis somehow managed to make eight films in 2021, none of which have made any great impact on public consciousness. With titles such as Out of Death, Survive the Game, American Siege and Cosmic Sin, they tend to be low-budget action films that feature Willis in relatively small roles that do not require him to do very much other than deliver some boilerplate lines of dialogue from single-set locations. 

It does not much matter whether his characters are heroic or villainous; he gives essentially the same performance in each of them. It is doubtful that, if he was asked to name any distinguishing characteristics of the pictures that he appears in, he would be able to do so. Instead, he turns up, does his scenes, takes his cheque and moves onto the next lucrative, unchallenging project.