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 first voiceover performance in an animated film came in this 2004 DreamWorks Animation feature that weirdly shoehorns an organized crime story into an undersea children's comedy (complete with Italian-American stereotypes, according to groups that protested the film). Smith takes the lead as the voice of Oscar, a fish who becomes entangled with the shark mafia after he is mistakenly believed to be the killer of a crime lord's oldest son (voiced by The Sopranos' own Michael Imperioli). Other voices come from the likes of mob movie and TV veterans like Robert De Niro, Vincent Pastore, and even Martin Scorsese, and Shark Tale went on to gross $375 million and earn an animated feature Oscar nomination despite reviews that were mediocre at best.
“Story is everything and Shark's is rather thin and soupy, despite the winning improvisational skills of stars Will Smith and Jack Black.” —Claudia Puig, USA Today
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