The 12 Best Rick Moranis Movies, Ranked

It's great news that Rick Moranis will be returning to acting for a "Spaceballs" theatrical sequel. Even if the material turns out to be stale, Moranis won't be, as he's been semi-retired from acting since 2008 to spend more time rainsing his kids as a single dad. The "Ghostbusters" franchise may not have been able to bring him back, but those movies are getting pretty crowded, anyway, and the lure of the Schwartz is strong. We're mostly used to Moranis playing likable, relatable characters, but it's his most famous villain role of Dark Helmet that we have to thank for what may (and should) be a full-on Moranissance.

Considering how beloved the comedic actor is, readers might be surprised to know that his filmography is relatively short. Eliminate the occasional outright dud, and there are barely a dozen great movies left. Naturally, we're ranking them. Here is our countdown of the 12 best Rick Moranis movies.

Anyone who thought Johnny Depp was an odd choice to play Tonto in "The Lone Ranger" might roll their eyes even further at Joaquin Phoenix voicing a native Alaskan who gets transformed into a bear as karmic punishment in Disney's 2003 animated feature "Brother Bear," featuring songs by Phil Collins. (Hey, at least they got one authentic Yup'ik, University of Alaska professor Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley, to voice the narrator!) Film Twitter wasn't a thing back then, so rather than being called out as problematic from all the usual corners, "Brother Bear" has been largely forgotten.

It's not as bad as it sounds, though. With an art style and aspect ratio that shifts as lead character Kanai transforms, "Brother Bear" is more visually creative than typical 2D house style. Perhaps it's a bit too obvious that a cartoon set in a great white northern environment would cast Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas as a pair of moose, riffing on their "Great White North" McKenzie brothers from "SCTV," but it works, giving the movie a comic relief factor that's more low key that some of the more hyperactively desperate please for kiddie attention in some other cartoons. The duo even have genuine character arcs that feel earned. Perhaps "Brothers Moose" was the movie that should have been made.

Movies about unlikely coaches leading a team of misfit kids to victory used to be a dime a dozen after "The Bad News Bears" showed how to do it right, and "Little Giants" follows a similar path with a few differences. Moranis and Ed O'Neill play feuding brothers who end up coaching opposing pee-wee football teams, with both taking it way too seriously. 

Between predictable fart jokes, nerd stereotypes, tomboy tropes, and real NFL players doing some really bad acting, almost all of which is par for the course in '90s sports movies for the whole family, O'Neill and Moranis treat the material better than it has any right to be. As the "good" brother, Moranis pulls some surprisingly mean pranks, like having his brother arrested under suspicion of being a peeping tom and sex offender. As the "bad" one, meanwhile, O'Neill gets some contrasting tender moments with his character's niece on the opposing team. One might almost suggest the actors should have switched roles, except that O'Neill by that point was so well known as Al Bundy on "Married...With Children," and he was already stretching by playing a successful former football player.

Among the kids, Shawna Waldron as Moranis' daughter and Devon Sawa as her love interest show the most potential, and they would demonstrate it in subsequent projects.

You don't have to like the fact that a live-action movie of "The Flintstones" exists — star John Goodman didn't, particularly — but it's hard to say this isn't the best possible version of what happens when Hanna-Barbera's animation style and pun-based humor gets the all-star, mega-budget treatment. Producer Steven Spielberg hand-picked Goodman to play Fred, but it was Danny DeVito, an early choice for Barney Rubble, who suggested Moranis instead. It's an inspired choice, with the actor doing a decent Mel Blanc imitation while playing up Barney's basic decency (an aspect that sometimes gets lost in all those commercials of him stealing Fred's cereal).

Years before remaking animation in live-action became a regular thing, Eloy Lobato and William Sandell's production design created an immersive world created mostly with practical sets that made the absurd nu-caveman aesthetic momentarily convincing, while Henson's creature shop brought the exaggerated dinosaurs to life. The plot is minor, sitcom-like stuff, but none of the actors, from Kyle MacLachlan as the office villain to Elizabeth Taylor as Fred's mother-in-law, phones it in.

By the time Columbia finally managed to wrangle all the primary "Ghostbusters" cast back together for a sequel, "The Real Ghostbusters" toy line and cartoon had taken root with kids, so "Ghostbusters II" had to take that into account, including making gluttonous green ghost Slimer a good guy, and pairing Janine (Annie Potts) romantically with Louis (Moranis) instead of Egon (Harold Ramis). Dana (Sigourney Weaver) is now a mom, allowing for some baby based humor, and while the ghosts themselves often have more creative visual designs, the 'busters feel restrained by the more family friendly tone. Peter MacNicol mostly steals the show as Dana's overly accented coworker Janosz, who becomes obsessed with the possessed painting of evil Vigo the Carpathian.

For Moranis, the sequel at least advanced his character of Louis in many ways, and not just his love life. Having graduated from night law school, he gets to represent the rest of the team in court, and when the final battle happens, he even suits up in full uniform with a proton pack. Though the sequel wasn't initially greeted as positively as the original (and was crushed by "Batman" at the box office), Louis' raised profile led to the character taking a larger role in the cartoons and toy line. Now that we're three movies deeper into the "Ghostbusters" franchise, the second film has even gotten some retroactive reappraisal, as it's become even clearer that making a great "Ghostbusters" follow-up is no easy task.

One of the craziest facts about "My Blue Heaven" is that it's based on the same true story as Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas," albeit in a more comedic direction. Nora Ephron, who wrote "My Blue Heaven," was married to Nicholas Pileggi, author of "Wiseguy," the book that inspired Scorsese, and both did their research based on conversations with real-life criminal-turned informant Henry Hill. Perhaps needless to say, Steve Martin affecting an exaggerated Noo Yawk gangster accent in the role of Vinnie Antonelli is not exactly concerned with verisimilitude.

Moranis takes the straight-man role as federal agent Barney Coopersmith, assigned to watch over Vinnie in witness protection and ensure he ultimately testifies against former associates. Keeping his charge out of trouble proves impossible, but because this is a comedy that believes in the fundamental goodness of most people, Barney eventually shows Vinnie how to be a bit less id-driven, while Vinnie brings Barney out of his shell to give him more confidence and flamboyance. Most importantly, though, we learn that you should never tell an Italian-American that mac and cheese counts as a pasta dish. "My Blue Heaven" may be the most minor of the three Moranis-Martin collaborations on this list, but the duo certainly give the formulaic script their all.

"Streets of Fire" is hardly the most famous Moranis movie from 1984, but it's one that's steadily gaining in respect. A film well before its time, "Streets of Fire" was the film Walter Hill used his "48 Hrs." clout to make, filling it with all the things he thought were cool as a teenager, and setting it in an alternate reality that mixed elements of the '50s and the '80s. He wanted it to be his comic-book movie, but not finding an actual comic he liked enough to adapt, made one up in his head. Had the movie succeeded, Michael Pare's wandering hero Tom Cody might have seen more adventures. Initially, though, the film was mostly a footnote to Dan Hartman's hit soundtrack single "I Can Dream About You."

These days, more folks appreciate Willem Dafoe's wild turn as a widow's peak pompadoured biker named Raven, who fights with sledgehammers and kidnaps sexy rock star Ellen Aim (Diane Lane). Moranis' Billy Fish, standing out amongst the bikers and mercenaries by wearing the full nerd outfit of checked suit with a bow tie, somehow plays the unlikely boyfriend of Ellen, though she pretty quickly turns her eyes to Cody instead. Indeed, in Fish's most memorable moment, he gets punched in the face before Dafoe and Pare have their final fight.

Moranis' characters tend to be either super-good at their job or utterly hapless, but Wayne Szalinski is both. He's a brilliant inventor who can come up with radical size-changing technology, but he's not smart enough to keep his kids from accidentally using it on themselves. Nor can he control his slight temper, leading him to inadvertently sweep up the shrunken kids, forcing them to journey home across a dangerously enlarged backyard.

Elaborate, expensive special effects were the selling point for "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids," featuring a mix of practical giant sets, trick shots, puppetry, and forced perspective. It marked the directorial debut of Joe Johnston, who went on to direct "The Rocketeer" and "Captain America: The First Avenger," both of which similarly feature heroes enhanced by experimental technology. As the major not-shrunken character, Moranis gets less to do than many of the other characters, but it's crucial we believe him, and audiences sure did — the movie spawned a theatrical sequel, a direct-to-video sequel, a TV show (which replaced Moranis with Peter Scolari), and several theme park attractions. A legacy sequel, which would have seen Moranis return alongside Josh Gad as his son, was in the works prior to Covid lockdowns, and remains on hold for the moment.

You could call this one, "Honey, I Don't Want Any More Kids." Steve Martin is the star of the large ensemble cast comedy from Ron Howard, but in a subplot, Moranis once again plays a dad who's a scientist. This time, though, he's focused on his one precocious kid to the exclusion of all others — he's the nightmare Boomer parent who read all the books and has determined the perfect way to grow his daughter's cognitive development. What he didn't count on is the side effect of ignoring his wife's needs completely. Only when spouse Susan (Harley Jane Kozak) actually leaves him does he finally get it, and put in the effort to both win her back and open his mind to more children.

Ron Howard's not generally one to deliver unhappy endings, and he clearly understood that we root for Moranis characters to be redeemed when needed. The film's main point is that parenthood is like a rollercoaster, making you queasy and scared as often as it thrills but ultimately being worth the ride. Audiences and critics agreed, as the film was nominated for two Oscars (for Dianne Wiest as Best Supporting Actress, and Randy Newman's original song "I Love to See You Smile) and spawned two TV series, one in 1990 and one in 2010.

Decades before the actual "Star Wars" franchise gave us Kylo Ren, the arch-villain as frustrated fanboy in a voice-changing mask who collects Darth Vader memorabilia, Rick Moranis was doing something pretty similar in "Spaceballs," Mel Brooks' parody of sci-fi epics in general and mostly "Star Wars" in particular. The joke is that Moranis is an extremely unlikely arch-villain, so short in stature that he desperately hopes a black helmet and a fake James Earl Jones voice will compensate for the fact that he's literally surrounded by A**holes (the family name of most of his crew) — and he can only score with princesses vicariously when he plays with his official action figures.

Brooks himself pulled double duty as both President Skroob, the inept evil leader ,and Yogurt, the merchandise-happy master of "the Schwartz." Bill Pullman established himself as leading man as Luke Skywalker/Han Solo hybrid Lone Starr, while Joan Rivers voiced the C-3PO-like Dot Matrix, and John Candy became the affable half-dog Barf. Unlike a lot of more recent parody movies, however, "Spaceballs" still works because it isn't just a bunch of slightly photocopied scenes from the source material — the characters and the story also take on lives of their own, to the point that a mostly retired Moranis reprised his role for an episode of "The Goldbergs," and he will soon play him again in a full-on "Non-Prequel Non-Reboot Sequel Part Two but with Reboot Elements Franchise Expansion Film."

As Seymour, the hapless skid row plant store employee who raises a man-eating plant from outer space, Moranis proved so sympathetic that test audiences outright rejected the original ending in which he dies, as happened in the stage musical and the original Roger Corman film. The alternate, darker ending, in which flesh-loving vegetable Audrey II grows to kaiju size and takes over the world, was a lot more cinematic and expensive, but viewers wanted lovers Seymour and Audrey (Ellen Greene) to survive, and so they did, moving to a dream house in the suburbs, with only a mild sequel tease of future trouble from a new sapling. Not bad for a guy who fed the monster blood and corpses along the way (the Hays Production Code would never have allowed him to survive).

Yet "Suddenly Seymour" was standing tall, and nobody felt it was a cop-out, because Moranis' picked-on everyman charm and surprisingly decent singing voice struck a chord. Not enough of one to make the movie a big hit at the time, but it has never been forgotten since.

Moranis' first feature film, together with SCTV partner Dave Thomas, wasn't the first major feature film to be based on two characters from a comedy sketch, as it was beaten to the big screen by "The Blues Brothers" three years earlier. It remains, however, the only one to be based on "Hamlet" and set at a brewery. Co-directed by Moranis and Thomas, and written by the duo with "Miracle Mile" director Steve De Jarnatt, the film brought the uber-Canadian, beer-loving McKenzie brothers to an audience far beyond SCTV. It remains a basic cable staple to this day, eh?

With Max von Sydow as evil brewmeister Smith, who wants to use drugged beer to take over the world, and Mel Blanc as the voice of Father MacKenzie, "Strange Brew" didn't lack for star power, yet the McKenzie brothers, not yet household names, overshadowed everything and everyone else, making a comedy that did for beer guzzlers what Cheech and Chong comedies did for potheads.

A significant portion of Moranis' fanbase undoubtedly first encountered him as Louis Tully in "Ghostbusters," a movie in which he managed to stand out despite being surrounded by the likes of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Sigourney Weaver. As the nerdy neighbor of Dana Barrett (Weaver), he never quite manages to impress her...until he's possessed by the Keymaster, Vinz Clortho, a "Terror Dog" from another dimension. Once Dana is similarly possessed by Vinz's counterpart, Zuul, they get pretty intimate to bring about the coming of evil deity Gozer.

Moranis often plays nerds, but Louis is the most awesomely awkward of them all, at least initially. You feel for the guy, but would probably never want to hang out with him due to his motor-mouth and palpable desperation. He expertly transitions to playing the possessing spirit of Vinz first as a complete innocent, and then as a spokesman for evil. For many who grew up with "Ghostbusters," it was a trip to see Moranis in literally anything else thereafter, and realize he was a lot more socially adept than Louis in real life.