20. Mark Wahlberg & Zooey Deschanel - The Happening (2008)
If acting is a language, Wahlberg and Deschanel’s pairing is like a modern-day Tower of Babel: her scatterbrained turn feels like it belongs in a rom-com while he’s so earnest ("You lied to me?") he could be auditioning for Sesame Street.
19. Katie Holmes & Christian Bale - Batman Begins (2005)
Holmes’ disappearance from the sequel suggests director Chris Nolan didn’t even trust her to get - spoiler! - blown up properly - probably because her supposedly smouldering scenes with Bale in the original have all the fizz of a firework going off underwater.
18. Jennifer Lopez & Ben Affleck - Gigli (2003)
Like rubber pants, Lopez is brazen but sexy, while Affleck is out-acted by his own hair. The scenes of lovemaking featuring various animal noises are thrillingly humiliating. (Is this how they, like, did it in real life?). Celebrity Glamour Fail.
17. Tom Hanks & Meg Ryan - You've Got Mail (1998)
There’s not so much chemistry here as synergy, with Hanks and Ryan’s bilious, smug-faced electronic courtship facilitated by an emotionally numbing parade of corporate sponsors - from Starbucks, Apple and Intel to then-looming giant AOL who gave the film its name.
16. Ashton Kutcher & Cameron Diaz - What Happens In Vegas (2008)
Brattish, big-mouthed and untalented – whatever the conclusion of the moronic love/hate circus on which Kutcher and Diaz take a ride in this simpering clunker, the inescapable truth is that they’re both deliciously detestable.
15. Anne Heche & Harrison Ford - Six Days, Seven Nights (1998)
Should’ve been: a zinging screwball action pairing in the vein of Hazzer's Indy adventures. Was: a slightly too-old man awkwardly scampering around with an actress who was half of the highest profile real-life lesbian relationship Hollywood has ever known.
14. Adam Sandler & Kevin James - I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry (2007)
The faux-gay marriage set-up seethes so violently with barely restrained homophobia that only a happy idiot could see the – actually pretty decent – Sandler and James double-act as anything other than forehead-slappingly offensive.
13. Madonna & Adriano Giannini - Swept Away (2002)
Madge is utterly hideous as a high society bitch stranded with an improbably rugged sailor, and even Guy Ritchie’s clownish directing can’t obscure the fact that any sane man would sooner skin and eat the squawking harpy than fall in love with her.
12. Ben Affleck & Kate Beckinsale - Pearl Harbor (2001)
The foamy, soap-opera melodramatics of Ben and Kate’s piffling romance (him all indignant wobbling chin, her all downcast eyes and sullen mourning) are cast into shadow by the film’s real love story - the one Affleck and fellow pilot Josh Hartnett. "Daaannnyyy!"
11. Will Ferrell & Nicole Kidman - Bewitched (2006)
All chemistry here is beyond broken, with Ferrell’s regular bawling-manchild act passing by Kidman’s mischievous wink-to-the-camera kook like ships in the night. They're both awful, just in different ways. Put 'em together - whole new flavour of awful.
