10 Terrible Movies That Still Managed To Break The Box Office

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 9%

Tom Cruise is the bartender every woman wishes she was with, and every man wishes he was. At least, that was the gambit of Roger Donaldson's Cocktail, a film that sees Cruise's Brian Flanagan ditch business school to shake martinis and live out the hollow dream of tending bars around the world and eventually owning his own joint.

On the face of it, there is neither anything egregiously wrong with Cocktail, nor outstandingly wonderful. Yet, the film has the dual honour-dishonour of being both a cultural touchstone referenced by other media for decades to come, and an absolute disaster. As a film, it is flat, it's shallow and it can't hold a candle to other similar efforts from the late-'80s. Oh, and it was also disavowed by pretty much everyone involved in the years following.

But none of that matters, because it made the big bucks. Working with a surprisingly high $20 million budget - given this was the '80s, Cruise was not the star he is today, and the film is mostly shot in cheap and down-to-earth locations - it made a significant return, picking up a cool $171 million at the box office.