Universal Pictures via Everett Collection
The Teen Choice Awards have been throwing surfboards at the most popular things in teen pop culture for over a decade, and last night’s ceremony continued the tradition with huge wins for films like The Fault in our Stars and Divergent. While the organization doesn’t always lend to the most surprising list of winners, but there have been cases where shockingly good (and shockingly bad) things have walked away with the night’s big prizes. Here is our list of the top five best and worst winners of the Teen Choice Awards.
The Best
Black Swan
Who knew teens loved Darren Aronofsky? The soul-crushing drama Black Swan earned the director the well-deserved Teen Choice Award for Choice Drama, something even the Academy Awards failed to do that year. You can’t surf an Oscar, so we’d say Mr. Aronofsky came out ahead.
Toy Story 3
The Teen Choice awards rightly heralded Pixar’s Toy Story 3 as the best animated film of 2010, presumably because it was impossible to vote for The Vampire Diaries in this category.
Jennifer Hudson for Dreamgirls
Actress and singer Jennifer Hudson was awarded the hallowed surfboard in 2007 for her theater-shaking performance in Dreamgirls. We’re sure the gigantic, sea-worthy trophy enjoys a place of distinction right next to Hudson’s Academy Award, which the actress won for the same performance.
The Sixth Sense
Back in 2000, when director M. Night Shyamalan was being heralded as the next Spielberg (boy have things changed), the filmmaker netted the Teen Choice Award for Choice Drama for his spooky thriller, The Sixth Sense.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
The second installment in the Hunger Games franchise winning the award for Choice sci-fi film has always been a foregone conclusion, given the film’s audience, but The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is actually a fantastic science fiction film in its own right, and the best one to be released in 2013. The film would have won the award regardless of its quality, but a broken clock is right twice a day, and this time, it was on the money.
The Worst
Taylor Lautner for Abduction
Residual heat from the Twilight series is the only explanation we can fathom for Taylor Lautner winning anything for Abduction. Despite the fact that hardly anyone actually bothered to see the film (it only managed to gross $28 million domestically) and it was universally panned by critics (currently sitting pretty at a 4 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), the actor walked away with the Choice Action Star flotation device in 2011. The film also won the award for Choice Action Film over Mission Impossible: Ghost Protoc0l, but let’s not even open up that can of worms.
Rihanna for Battleship
2012’s Battleship didn’t do Taylor Kitsch many favors, but it did net Rihanna an award for acting. The R&B mega-star took home the Choice Breakout Star award, even though her performance is almost exclusively made up of one line utterances and exclamations like “What happened?”, “Ahhhhhhh!”, and “You look like Colonel Sanders, actually.” The even bigger crime was that Noomi Rapace was passed over in the same category.
Adam DeVine for Pitch Perfect
Now there’s nothing particularly awful or even wrong with Adam DeVine’s smarmy performance in Pitch Perfect. In fact, we even sort of liked him in the movie. Unfortunately, DeVine earns a spot on this list for the sheer quality of talent he beat out for the Choice Villain award. Acting heavyweights Javier Bardem, Tom Hardy, and Ben Kingsley left the Teen Choice Awards empty handed in favor of DeVine.
Drake Bell for Superhero Movie
Thankfully, the string of awful spoof movies that ran rampant in the 2000s is finally over, but back in the craze’s heyday, Drake Bell won the Choice Breakout Star award for Superhero Movie. Anyone that has seen more than one frame of Superhero Movie knows why that’s a travesty.
Ashton Kutcher for Killers
Remember that film with Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl where Kutcher plays a secret assassin? No? Good.
