Inspired by recent posts re: Russell Crowe, here are some of my most hated actors and films of all time. 

1. Tom Cruise: I take considerable pride in the fact that I have had a Tom Cruise boycott going since 1988, following the dual travesties that were Rain Man and Cocktail, long before the rest of the world began to recognize that he is, in fact, creepy and gross.  Although the boycott may have unconsciously begun before that, as I am probably the only person of my generation who has never seen Top Gun.  I confess to an adolescent fondness for Risky Business, but then again my adolescent taste in boyz was notoriously atrocious, and upon rewatching I later concluded that he is equally creepy and gross there.  The thing about those two films was that he played, as he does in all his films, essentially the same character, Tom Cruise.  In Rain Man, he was supposed to be an unsympathetic jerk who eventually reveals some redeeming qualities.  In Cocktail he was actually supposed to be attractive and likable, but he was in fact, as always, merely creepy and gross.  I confess to having broken the boycott 3 times in the past 19 years: Mission Impossible, Vanilla Sky, and Minority Report.  And each time I regretted it.  The boycott is back on.
2. Forest Gump: The most overrated movie of all time.  I found this movie so excruciating that I would have walked out of it, except that my best friend was so into that she actually wept through a number of scenes.  This made me seriously question our friendship, and her sanity, but ultimately after reflecting upon her preponderance of wonderful qualities I decided to chalk this up to “there’s no accounting for taste.”  But the widespread popular adulation–including a freaking Best Picture nomination!–of this film boggled me.  I think the thing that particularly bothered me was the general conflation of Southernness and mental slowness.  That, and the faux emotional drama that was really nothing more than the most shallow and manipulative version of “heartwarming.”  And the totally empty and unsatirical historical pastiche.  Ugh.  Ugh.  Ugh.  This came very close to adding Tom Hanks to the boycott list, and actually I’ve avoided most things he’s done since then, although I can still appreciate his earlier work, such as Big and the brilliant though totally underrated Joe Versus the Volcano.

I’d write more, but I’m starting to feel nauseous.  I will have to blog about Joe v Volcano sometime, though.