To get a zero percent rating is not unheard of on Rotten Tomatoes, but it is pretty rare. Often reserved for lower budget fodder lacking in production value, star power, or anyone having much idea of what they’re doing, the rating acts as a warning to not engage. But sometimes, this deathly low rating befallsmoviesthat seem too experienced to crumble so badly, and one such movie is The Layover.
Added toAmazon Primetoday, The Layover not only stars household names Alexandra Daddario and Kate Upton as odd couple roommates fighting over the same guy in a cutesy premise, it was also written byIt’s Always Sunny in Philadelphiastar David Hornsby (you may know him best as Rickety Cricket) and was directed by William H. Macy. Yes, that William H. Macy - four-time SAG award winning, Oscar-nominated William H. Macy.
For such stars serve up a zero-rated movie (meaning no critic thought it was even okay out of the 18 reviews on the site) is the sort of thing you need to see to believe. The audience score is not much kinder at 22 percent. And with Amazon Prime, now you may.
Worse Than “Watching A Lonely Suitcase Circle A Baggage Claim Conveyor Belt”
Aone star review for ReelViewscalls it “an unpleasant, unwatchable example of why people no longer love romantic comedies,” while the LA Times compares it unfavourably to watching a suitcase on an airport conveyor belt. Cutting to the core of the issue,Slant claims"the film was clearly conceived and written by men who have no interest in approaching female friendships with any degree of complexity, curiosity, or respect".
It’s perhaps no surprise that some viewers found it off-putting. As well as the overdone premise of two friends wanting the same man, the movie has a vulgarity that might have felt at home in the early ’00s but feels misplaced and forced in 2017, the year it released. A running joke in the movie is that Kate Upton’s character has rancidly foul breath from burping all of the time, while Alexandra Daddario’s character is locked in a public bathroom and ends up writhing around on a floor coated with human effluence. Not exactly romantic, and also not very comedic.
Upton mostly stepped away from acting after The Layover, only appearing in 2024’s Sweet Dreams since then. Daddario however has broken out into larger roles, leading season one of The White Lotus and appearing as one of the central trio in Mayfair Witches. Macy on the other hand has only since directed Krystal, which released just a few months after The Layover and enjoys a marginally better 10 percent critic score. Hornsby has not written a movie since, though he continues to write for both IASIP and Mythic Quest.
