Good/Great Acting in Terrible Movies

[Mistral]

God help me, I hate to give kudos to a wooden actor but Keannu Reeves in the Replacements was actually believable. I wince at every other role he plays but in that one I actually like him. On a side note-although not the worst thing he's been in, Gene Hackman is, as always, excellent. But he usually is. If you want further examples for this topic, just scroll through about half of the movies he's been in.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Paul Giamatti in "Lady in the Water" and "Safe Men". Some my disagree but I think he is a great character actor.

I do agree about Daniel Day-Lewis, he elevates any film he is in.

I'll disagree. Not because I didn't like Paul Giamatti but because I thought Lady in the Water was a great movie.

Gotta agree about Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York. It was just your run-of-the-mill revenge movie before he appeared in it.

I don't think There Will Be Blood should count though. It's not a bad movie that was elevated by Daniel Day-Lewis being in it. Daniel Day-Lewis WAS that movie.

Have any of you ever seen London? It's this excruciatingly painful melodrama starring Chris Evans as a coke-addicted loser who won't stop whining because Jessica Biel dumped him for being a loser. The movie is only barely made tolerable by Jason Statham, who gives the performance of his life as Evans' troubled drug dealer with a respectable day job. Even before The Bank Job, this was the movie that proved that (1) Jason Statham can act and (2) not only that, he can do comedy really well too! (Granted, he still beats someone up. I think Statham has it in his contract that he has to beat up at least one person in every movie. It kinda makes me want to see him spice up some Masterpiece Theater now.)

Take Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, & Brian Cox out of the X-Men movies and you end up with... Fantastic Four basically.

Even though they really bend over backwards to retcon his non-suicide in the 1st movie, Kris Kristofferson is half the reason to see Blade II. (It's too bad he & Wesley Snipes were just phoning it in in Blade Trinity.)

Gene Hackman acts circles around Ray Romano's obnoxious performance in Welcome to Mooseport.

And while it's not an acting performance, there were many times where John Williams' score prevented the Star Wars prequels from appearing to be the pathetic farces that they actually were. He deserves a friggin' Congressional Medal of Honor for that Herculean effort.

 

[The Fatman]

Wesley Snipes in Demolition Man. May not be Oscar worthy, but his Simon Phoenix was the only reason that flick is watchable.

Alan Rickman in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. I could write an essay about how awfully written that movie is, and how such usually great actors as Morgan Freeman and Mary-Elizabeth Mastrantonio are little more than scene decorations. Rickman (who I've never seen less than amazing in any of his work) just chews up the scenery around all of them.

 

[Darth_Yoda]

I thought of this after watching The Lost World: Jurassic Park. The movie still stunk in my opinion but Julianne Moore did a relatively good job with here role, despite the crappy plot and writing.

I would say the same about Pete Postlethwaite in that movie too, but to be fair hes awesome in anything he does.

 

[Thespeckledkiwi]

Liam Neeson in the Phantom Menace...

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Liam Neeson in the Phantom Menace...

Really, any of the Irish or British actors in the Star Wars prequels-- Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Ian McDiarmid, Christopher Lee. Maybe it's that classical theatrical training that enables them to make crap sound believable. (The thing that both Lucas & Shakespeare have in common is that no one knows what either of them is talking about at first.)

Spider-Man would have been maudlin & overly angsty if not for Willem Dafoe providing some excellent scene-chewing villainy.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Alan Rickman in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. I could write an essay about how awfully written that movie is, and how such usually great actors as Morgan Freeman and Mary-Elizabeth Mastrantonio are little more than scene decorations. Rickman (who I've never seen less than amazing in any of his work) just chews up the scenery around all of them.

A recent review of the film summed things up perfectly, describing how the acting makes one wonder if the lead actors all think they're in a different movie: Costner thinks it's a sports movie, Mastrantonio believes she's in a period drama, Christian Slater is trapped in a soap opera, and of course Rickman is the sneering panto villain. [Oh no he isn't! - everyone] OH YES he is!

Speaking of which, I watched Face/Off the other day and came to the conclusion that it would have been a pretty silly and unengaging action thriller were it not for the performances of the two lead roles, especially Nicolas Cage who was fantastic in this film, and as a result the completely ridiculous premise is instantly sold to me, plot holes and all.

 

[Ben Sisko3]

I don't think There Will Be Blood should count though. It's not a bad movie that was elevated by Daniel Day-Lewis being in it. Daniel Day-Lewis WAS that movie.

Too bad he was playing John Huston.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

A recent review of the film summed things up perfectly, describing how the acting makes one wonder if the lead actors all think they're in a different movie

That's how I sometimes feel about Batman & Robin. George Clooney, Chris O'Donnell, & Michael Gough sell the hell out of the family part of the story. Arnold Schwarzenegger does a decent job with the quiet dramatic stuff (especially considering he's an Austrian bodybuilder for whom English is not his first language) but seems absolutely lost when he has to do the ice puns. Uma Thurman & John Glover seem to be the only ones who realize what movie they're actually in and camp their performances up accordingly.

 

[Delta Belle]

Max Von Sydow was good, and Sam J. Jones did the best he could with the script in Flash Gordon. Melody Anderson totally stunk.

 

[Mr. B]

[William H. Macy film of your choice]

 

[zephramc]

Patrick Stewart/Star Trek: Nemesis

 

[T'Baio]

Peter Cushing's been in a lot of crappy movies, but he always seemed to put genuine effort into even the worst material.

Like that Star Wars bullshit.

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

I have to agree there. Actors like Cushing and Guiness were slumming it when it came to Star Wars. I doubt that either of them rated it as the epitome of their careers. Star Wars is one of the first great event movies, a special effects bonanza, but an actor's movie, never. Only Harrison Ford got a career out of it.

Ooh! Just remembered, Peter Cushing in Biggles. Now that was a bad film.

 

[M'Sharak]

Christopher Lloyd in The Legend of the Lone Ranger. The movie was pretty uniformly "meh" until Lloyd's bad-guy Butch Cavendish appeared on screen and went right back to "meh" as soon as he wasn't there any more. Great acting? Whatever. He single-handedly made an otherwise dull and boring movie temporarily more interesting just by being there.

Jack Lemmon could do that, too.

 

[suarezguy]

Terrible films
Bill Murray in Charlie's Angels
Michael Caine in Miss Congeniality
Ciaran Hinds was pretty good in the very-bad second Lara Croft

Ones I was otherwise very disappointed in
Timothy Spall in The Last Samurai
Eddie Murphy in Shrek 2
Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain
Diane Kruger in Troy
Kevin Spacey and Parker Posey in Superman Returns

 

[JM1776]

I've yet to see Vincent Spano give a bad performance, and he's been in some freakin' clunkers.

 

[TGTheodore]

Gene Kelly in Xanadu. Horrendously bad movie but Kelly, as usual, was the consummate MGM trouper and tried his best.

Ironically, the director and/or director of photography framed Kelly's dancing feet almost entirely OUT of frame during "Whenever You're Away from Me" when he danced with Olivia Newton John.

Idiots.

--Ted

 

[Tom Hendricks]

For me, one of the best performances in a bad movie is Peter O' Toole's performance in High Spirits. While I personally like the movie, it has some serious flaws. However Peter O' Tooles acting in this was simply amazing.