Every Will Smith Movie, Ranked Worst to Best
Updated December 1, 2022 to add Emancipation.
First rising to fame in the 1980s as the non-DJ half of the hip hop duo DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, Will Smith moved into acting in 1990 as the star of the hit NBC sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (soon to be rebooted as a Peacock drama series). He would make his big-screen debut a few years later in a few indie movies before quickly moving to above-the-title stardom with 1995's Bad Boys. He has been a major presence in film ever since, with roles in over 30 films, a pair of Oscar nominations, and a cumulative box office gross of over $4 billion.
His newest film, King Richard, is headed to theaters and HBO Max on November 19th and is expected to be an Oscar contender in multiple categories. How does it compare to his past work? In the gallery on this page, we rank every one of Will Smith's films in order from worst to best by their Metascores, which represent the consensus opinions of top film critics. Note that we have excluded titles where Smith's role was limited to a brief cameo appearance (such as in Winter's Tale, Jersey Girl, and Anchorman 2).
Will Smith's worst film to date is this manipulative and sentimental 2016 drama (labeled a "knockoff Hallmark special" by critic Susan Wloszczyna) from director David Frankel (Marley & Me) and writer Allan Loeb (Things We Lost in the Fire). Smith plays an advertising executive caught in a spiral of grief and refusing to work after his young daughter dies from a rare illness. His coworkers then hitch a plot to—well, to convince him that he has lost his mind (and in the most convoluted way imaginable: by hiring a group of actors to embody the concepts of love, time, and death). The cast is filled with accomplished talent like Helen Mirren, Edward Norton, Kate Winslet, Naomie Harris, and Keira Knightley, but the material they have to work with sinks all of them.
“It’s dire. It’s emotionally manipulative without understanding how human emotions actually work. And it robs us of the Will Smith we love. ... Navel-gazing Will Smith is not what we want. It’s not the actor we embraced, nor is it the best possible version of the actor we love. It’s as if Tom Hanks suddenly decided that he should play a serial killer in a movie.” —Dave Schilling, The Guardian
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