Eric André Ranked

 Welcome to "Ranked", a weekly series where I rank a franchise or filmography from worst to best and hand out assorted related superlatives. This week, I'm profiling the work of Eric André-whose latest project "Street Fighter" releases in theaters today.

Eric André's Filmography Ranked:

12.The Lion King (D+)

11.Balls Up (C-)

10.I Love Boosters (C-)

9.The Internship (B-)

8.Happy Gilmore 2 (B-)

7.Little Brother (B)

6.Jackass 4.5 (B+)

5.Rough Night (B+)

4.The Mitchells vs. the Machines (B+)

3.Bad Trip (A)

2.Jackass Forever (A)

1.Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (A)

Top Dog: Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016)

The brutal commercial failure of Popstar nine years after Hot Rod faceplanted at the box office has effectively killed any chance of The Lonely Island getting the opportunity to make another movie. If Popstar does prove to be the last time the comedy trio get to make a movie together, at least they went out with a bang. Parodying the record label PR-driven music documentaries of the early-to-mid 2010's provided them with the perfect vehicle for their goofy absurdist sense of humor and it leads to some of the funniest songs/situational comedy they've ever written. Special shoutout to them for recognizing that Tim Meadows is one of the funniest people alive and handing him a role that allows him to show that off in literally every scene he's in. 

Bottom Feeder: The Lion King (2019)

Of all the Disney "live action" remakes that I've seen, this is the most soulless and useless. This film feeling like it's about 20 minutes long despite being nearly a half hour longer than the original is a magic trick so grand that it would blow Criss Angel's mind. Guess that's just the power of recreating all of the major scenes from the animated version via CGI without injecting any of the emotion or colorful visuals that made them so special in the first place. 

Most Underrated: Bad Trip (2021)

Handing André a real budget to do his chaotic hidden camera pranks and weaving in a simple but effective road trip narrative to tie them all together leads to easily one of the funniest movies released this decade. It sucks that Bad Trip ended up being a COVID streaming casualty (the pre-Amazon acquistion MGM regime sold it off to Netflix in May 2020) because this would've ripped even harder in a theater full of degenerate André fans.

Most Overrated: I Love Boosters (2026)

This isn't the fairest inclusion as the reception hasn't been particularly rapturous and it didn't even hit $10 million during its box office run this spring/summer. However, I Love Boosters has just enough cache in cinephile circles to push into this spot. I've been very vocal about my disdain for Boots Riley's debut Sorry to Bother You and while this is certainly an improvement over that obnoxious trainwreck, it's still an unfocused and mostly unfunny satire that can't parlay its good politics into a good movie.