25 Misfires From Otherwise Great Film Directors

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – April 22, 2018

Last week, we looked at 30 filmmakers who made only one well-reviewed movie over their entire careers. Today, we examine the opposite group: directors who have nearly flawless careers, with only a single misfire (with a Metascore of 60 or lower) standing in the way of a perfect record of all-green scores.

Note that we only looked at directors who have made at least five films since 1980.

18 of 26 photo by Warner Bros./Village Roadshow Films

George Miller

The one misfire:
50 Happy Feet Two (2011)

Best known for directing and co-writing every film in the commercially and critically successful Mad Max series, Miller has also fared well when detouring into sentimental drama (Lorenzo's Oil) and children's entertainment (the Babe franchise and Happy Feet). His one misstep is a sequel to the latter film. Both Happy Feet films are computer-animated musicals about penguins, but the sequel (also a box office disappointment) is severely hampered by a messy, uninventive, and charmless script, according to critics.

Everything else:
67 Mad Max (1979)
76 The Road Warrior (1981)
80 Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
67 The Witches of Eastwick (1987)
80 Lorenzo's Oil (1992)
68 Babe: Pig in the City (1998)
77 Happy Feet (2006)
90 Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

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