Film's One-Hit Wonders: 30 Directors With Only One Good Movie

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – April 15, 2018

Even the worst directors have one good film in them. Well, at least some of them do. In the gallery above, we've identified 30 filmmakers from the past four decades who have directed at least five features but have managed to receive positive reviews for just a single one of their films.

David Wain

A member of the beloved 1990s comedy troupe The State as well as its spin-off, Stella, Wain still occasionally appears on screen (such as in the Adult Swim series Childrens Hospital, which he also produced and directed), but increasingly focuses most of his efforts—like fellow State alum Michael Showalter—behind the camera as a director and writer. While many of his feature films have cult followings—no more so than Wet Hot American Summer, which generated two Netflix spin-offs—they have generally failed to impress critics.

The one good film:
61 Role Models (2008)

Everything else:
42 Wet Hot American Summer (2001)
50 The Ten (2007)
53 Wanderlust (2012)
60 They Came Together (2014)
55 A Futile and Stupid Gesture (2018)

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