Summary

• DiCaprio's first-ever movie, "Critters 3," received a 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 3.4/10. Critics panned the low-budget horror film, but it served as DiCaprio's film debut.
• DiCaprio's performance is rarely the issue in his "rotten" movies.
• DiCaprio's most recent "rotten" film, "Don't Look Up," received a 55% score on Rotten Tomatoes and an average rating of 6.3/10. While some critics appreciated the clever premise, many felt that the execution fell flat.

In Leonardo DiCaprio's vast film catalog, eleven of the movies he starred in have "rotten" critical scores on Rotten Tomatoes. DiCaprio is among the best actors in film history, and certainly one of the finest still working today. He’s starred in countless phenomenal movies and worked with powerhouse movie directors like Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg, and so many others. DiCaprio received his first Oscar nomination at just 19 years old for his role as Arnie Grape in What's Eating Gilbert Grape. After several nominations, he finally won his first Oscar in 2016 for The Revenant.

However, not every Leonardo DiCaprio movie has been a critical hit. The scores of his eleven "rotten" movies on Rotten Tomatoes range from 0%-58% on the Tomatometer, with average ratings between 3.4/10 to 6.3/10 at the time of writing. While DiCaprio's performances are rarely the issue in his negatively received films, they weren't enough to save these eleven movies from becoming "rotten." Whether they were underwhelming or just plain awful, most critics were not fond of these DiCaprio movies.

11 Critters 3

Josh

DiCaprio's first-ever movie has a 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes, the worst possible score on the Tomatometer, with an average rating of 3.4/10 generated from a mere seven critical reviews. DiCaprio made his film debut in Critters 3, the third installment in the low-budget horror franchise and the only direct-to-video release among his "rotten" movies. Critics seem to agree that Critters 3 is significantly worse than the already abysmal first and second Critters movies, and its only redeeming quality is that it served as DiCaprio's film debut.

10 The Basketball Diaries

Jim Carroll

Following his breakout role opposite Robert DeNiro in This Boy's Life and his first Oscar-nominated performance in What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Dicaprio's films' scores plummeted in 1995. DiCaprio plays real-life author and poet Jim Carroll in the biographical crime drama The Basketball Diaries, based on Carroll's 1978 memoir about his heroin addiction as a teenage basketball player and aspiring writer. Despite having a decent audience score of 76%, The Basketball Diaries only holds a 47% score on the Tomatometer, with an average critical rating of 5.3/10. DiCaprio's lead performance was praised by critics as one of the few highlights in an otherwise muddled attempt at a cautionary tale.

9 The Quick and the Dead

The Kid

DiCaprio played "The Kid" in The Quick and the Dead, a revisionist Western about a female gunfighter seeking revenge for her father's murder in the town of Redemption. Though it continued DiCaprio's 1995 "rotten" streak, The Quick and the Dead also holds the highest score on the Tomatometer out of all of DiCaprio's "rotten" movies with 58%, only 2% away from a "fresh" score. However, critics generally found that the plot was too thin, and the film was more focused on subverting and toying with Western archetypes than telling a compelling story.

8 Total Eclipse

Arthur Rimbaud

1995 was DiCaprio's worst year on Rotten Tomatoes with all three of his movies from that year holding rotten scores on the Tomatometer. Though it received fewer reviews, Total Eclipse ranks lowest by a wide margin, with a score of only 22% and an average rating of 4.5/10. This erotic historical drama is based on the real letters and poems of 19th-century French poets and lovers Arthur Rimbaud (DiCaprio) and Paul Verlaine (David Thewlis). Roger Ebert summed up critics' main issues with Total Eclipse best: "It lacks any sense of humor, and is under the delusion that its subjects are interesting because they are great poets."

7 The Man in the Iron Mask

King Louis XIV & Philippe Bourbon

DiCaprio managed to get out of his '95 slump with a two-year fresh streak from 1996-1997, which included gems like Baz Luhrmann's take on Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (1996) in which he played the titular Romeo, and career highlights like James Cameron's Titanic (1997) featuring one of DiCaprio's most iconic roles, Jack Dawson. However, things started to go downhill again in 1998 with his first "rotten" film of the year, The Man in the Iron Mask. Loosely based on the work of Alexandre Dumas, The Man in the Iron Mask follows the adventures of the four Musketeers during King Louis XIV's reign.

DiCaprio stars in a dual role as both the titular "man in the iron mask," Philippe Bourbon, and the film's villain, King Louis XIV. The Man in the Iron Mask has a score of 32% on the Tomatometer with an average rating of 5.5/10 from 41 reviews. Critics dubbed it "cheesy," unfocused, and ultimately incomparable to Dumas' original texts.

6 Celebrity

Brandon Darrow

DiCaprio's only other movie from 1998, Woody Allen's Celebrity about a recent divorcee who immerses himself in the world of celebrity, also scored "rotten," making 1998 another rough year for DiCaprio. Celebrity holds a score of 42% on the Tomatometer and an average rating of 5.5/10 from 43 reviews. It is DiCaprio's only "rotten" movie that holds an identical critical and audience score. Critics were generous with their reviews, acknowledging the entertainment value and technical feats of Celebrity, but were ultimately underwhelmed and unimpressed by the story and attempted insights into celebrity culture.

5 The Beach

Richard

DiCaprio didn't star in any movies released in 1999, only to return with a dud like Danny Boyle's The Beach in the new millennium. Besides Critters 3, The Beach holds DiCaprio's lowest Rotten Tomatoes score of any film he's starred in, with a pitiful 21% on the Tomatometer. Based on Alex Garland's 1996 novel of the same name, The Beach follows Richard (DiCaprio), an American traveling through Thailand in search of a mysterious beach rumored to be a solitary island paradise. Critics emphasized the beautiful visuals and cinematography but otherwise found The Beach to be at once bland, murky, and self-important.

4 Body of Lies

Roger Ferris

DiCaprio was on a roll for a while in the early 2000s, starring in hits like Spielberg's Catch Me if You Can (2002) and Scorsese's Gangs of New York (2002), The Aviator (2004), and The Departed (2006), until Body of Lies broke his seven-year fresh streak in 2008. DiCaprio plays Roger Ferris alongside Russel Crowe in the espionage thriller Body of Lies, which holds a 55% score on the Tomatometer and an average rating of 5.0/10. Body of Lies was deemed a conventional spy action thriller by critics, most of whom conceded that two talents like DiCaprio and Crowe were wasted on such a forgettable film.

3 J. Edgar

J. Edgar Hoover

After being absent from the big screen in 2009, DiCaprio had a solid run in 2010, starring in Scorsese's Shutter Island and Nolan's Inception, until 2011 came and humbled him a little. A frequent star of biopics, DiCaprio has played many real-life people onscreen, including the eponymous FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover in Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar in 2011. The film holds a 43% score on the Tomatometer with a 5.7/10 average rating from a total of 248 reviews. Critics once again praised DiCaprio's stellar performance in an otherwise disappointing film, noting the confusing narrative and far too complimentary depiction of Hoover as particularly weak points.

2 The Great Gatsby

Jay Gatsby

DiCaprio started alternating between "fresh" and "rotten" years in the 2010s, with the "certified fresh" Django Unchained in 2012 followed by 2013's "rotten" The Great Gatsby. DiCaprio plays the eponymous Jay Gatsby in Baz Luhrmann's 2013 film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous novel. The Great Gatsby's score of 48% on the Tomatometer and average rating of 5.9/10 was aggregated from 305 reviews. Critics applauded Luhrmann for his ambition and "dazzling" visual splendor but ultimately found that all the glitz and glam of The Great Gatsby overshadowed the themes and core story at the heart of the source material.