The Worst Movies Based On True Events

“Dangerous Minds” is based on a 1992 book by LouAnne Johnson, “My Posse Don’t Do Homework.” A former Marine Corps officer and U.S. Navy journalist, Johnson’s book details her experiences teaching at-risk teens in Belmont, California. A mere 29% of critics gave the movie a positive review on Rotten Tomatoes.

“Machine Gun Preacher” tells the story of Sam Childers, a former gang biker and outlaw. Childers travels to East Africa where he eventually builds an orphanage in a Sudanese territory controlled by renegade militia where he tries to rescue kidnapped children. Critics have described the movie as overly peachy, overblown, and half-finished.

“A Walk in the Woods” is based on travel writer Bill Bryson’s memoir of the same name about his experience attempting to hike the more than 2,000-mile Appalachian Trail with an old friend. Most positive remarks about the movie have to do with having Hollywood legends, Robert Redford and Nick Nolte, in it.

“Goya’s Ghosts” is based on the story of a model of the Spanish painter Francisco Goya and the Inquisition, although many aspects may be historically inaccurate. Despite a strong cast featuring Javier Bardem and Natalie Portman, the film only managed to accumulate positive reviews from 30% of critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

Despite the best efforts of skilled scenery-chewers Johnny Depp and John Malkovich, the critics were largely unimpressed with this biographical portrait of John Wilmot, the decadent 17th-century English poet also known as the Earl of Rochester. The Toronto Star denounced it as a “bilious murk” and “a sad picture,” and to Movies.com it was a “Big dull drag of a movie.”