Bottom Five Lead Performances by Superstar Actors
My first inclination was to take this in a tongue in cheek way and do something like the bottom five worst lead performances by an actor IN REAL LIFE. So the list would have looked something like “Harrison Ford as an airplane pilot,” “Hugh Grant as a monogamous husband,” “Ben Affleck as an enthusiastic participant in a Batman V. Superman press junket,” “Paul Reubens as a respectable movie theater attendee” and “Tom Cruise as a normal man in love with Katie Holmes on Oprah.” Alas, this is a film podcast devoted to wielding films as deadly weapons, so here are a few I felt cut by.
5.) Kevin Costner – Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves – 1991 – Kevin Reynolds
Never mind the cloying soundtrack hit by Bryan Adams “Everything I Do (I Do it for You),” the true audio crime in this 1991 blockbuster hit was Kevin Costner’s horrific attempt at an British accent which he gave up on about a quarter of the way through the film’s production. And rather than reshoot, THEY KEPT SCENES INTACT with the accent and in the final cut he switches into his lazy American drawl.
This was about the worst accent work I have seen this side of Dick Van Dyke’s terrible cockney accent in Mary Poppins for which that actor apologized for in 2017 at age 91. Costner owes the British an apology here. And actually he owes we New Englander’s a big “I’m sorry” too for his magnificently terrible Attempt at our accent in 13 Days. Nice job offending both sides of the Revolutionary War, pal.
You really want to know what I think happened here? When I was in my twenties, I acted in a short movie where I played – probably rather poorly – an Irish mafia boss. My accent was based on that of a buddy of mine from Galway, Ireland, in county Cork and as I was acting in the movie, I noticed more and more the other actors I was working with – who were all supposed to be American – started adopting my accent. It’s weirdly contagious. And once they started doing that, I found my own version of the accent suffering. This is what seems to be happening with Costner as Robin Hood. He’s likely catching his co-stars’ accents and then straight-up ruining them so much that they too are getting screwed up!
But back to Robin Hood, a movie about a robber from English folklore who is surrounded by an English band of Merry Men – well, sort of because Christian Slater’s Will Scarlett fairs almost as poorly as Costner’s Robin Hood – and who work to bring down the evil Sheriff of Nottingham played by the most English of English Actors, Alan Rickman.
Rickman, of is almost always the case in his performances, is wonderful to watch. And Morgan Freeman as a Moor named Azeem too is pretty fun to watch, even if he has a bit of that exotic mysticism white people love to throw in their movies. And yeah, his accent is a little rough, but hey, he’s Morgan Freeman. Costner though… he is woefully out of place with his faltering pronunciation and his wind-tunnel tested hairdo. And by the time he gets with Mary Elizabeth Mastriantonio’s Maid Marion – who does a fairly good job being British and charming – he just seems ready to give up on the whole endeavor, at times appearing as if he’s awaiting the end of his co-star’s lines so he can get his out of the way.
4.) George Clooney – From Dusk Til Dawn – 1996 – Robert Rodriguez
This whole damn movie is a shlockfest, so there’s little in the way of decent acting required. But there’s what you get from actors like Harvey Keitel and Fred Williamson and then there’s whatever the Hell is going on between Quentin Tarantino and George Clooney.
Quentin has the easier job – he’s the wormy little brother archetype. That said, he appears awkward in his skin and then further magnifies what appears to be a serious case of “what the fuck am I doing here” that gets in the way of almost every line reading by Clooney.
He’s supposed to be this real tough guy, this ice-in-his-veins criminal with a heart of gold, and that’s a balance that he somewhat manages when he’s not trying to downplay JUST how fucked up everything is that is happening around him.
Clooney seems woefully out of place in this thing. He tries for a more mannered, seething undertone of threatening violence, but instead he feels like he’s playing at hard guy and failing. Everyone else around him is pretty gleeful – take makeup effects legend Tom Savini as Sex Machine or Danny Trejo as Razor Charlie. These guys lap up the wackiness unleashed in the second half of the movie while Clooney seems to be treading water – at best – as vampires explode around him. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the scene where he kills his reanimated brother and he barely breaks a sweat or creases his forehead.
Ugh… and that fucking neck tattoo. It gives me the same level of cringe I felt when Dabney Coleman was forced to wear bondage gear in 9-to-5.
Blame it on the intentionally weird tone set by the complete right angle the movie’s plot takes, but Clooney’s inability to get comfortable in his character’s shoes robs an otherwise very wild movie of its fun spirit.
3.) Brad Pitt – Interview with a Vampire – 1994 – Neil Jordan
I find this thing nigh unwatchable despite so many retries over the years. And it’s largely Brad Pitt’s fault. I have to admit – I am not a fan of his. Interestingly, I am also not a fan of his ex-wife Angelina Jolie either, yet he is a superstar and his portrayal in this flick is often cited as one of its better attributes, something which startles the Hell out of me because he doesn’t seem to be buying this character’s personality or motivations from scene 1.
Contrast him against Tom Cruise who was famously maligned by author Anne Rice, who recently passed, so let’s poor a bit of Absinthe out for her while we’re at it in respect. I think Cruise was treated unfairly by Rice – she later retracted her statements about him, which made me wonder if the Scientologists came knocking at her door and made an offer she couldn’t refuse. But Cruise is good – he totally embodies Lestat with every bit of eerie excess, loneliness, seductiveness and androgyny that is required. He acts BIG in this thing, which fits for Lestat, a rather larger than life character.
Pitt is, I guess, wounded as Louis, but as in Jordan’s film The Crying Game – which is a film I hate perhaps more than just about any other I have seen – the vulnerability required for an actor comes off way more pitiful than one can rally behind. You want to root for Louis – or at least you want to be able to tolerate him. But Pitt was in his flat, pretty-boy phase here and he largely just holds an expression of bewilderment mixed with fear that plays at other things like melancholy or whatever. But it’s a garbage portrayal, sulky and lame.
And even when we get a “Brad Pitt eating moment” in this one it sucks – literally. Here the actor who uses eating as a crutch while acting feats on a rat, which ranks among my very least favorite scenes in any movie.
2.) Arnold Schwarzenegger – Eraser – 1996 – Chuck Russell
While not an unwatchable movie, Eraser is a bad film that marked the beginning of a clear, steep decline in Arnold’s output. In the 10 or so years leading up to Eraser you had offerings like Total Recall, True Lies, Predator, The Running Man, T2 and three pretty winning comedies by Ivan Reitman: Twins, Kindergarten Cop and Junior. And while there were a few clunkers in there, which I guess includes Last Action Hero, a movie I liked, largely everything after Eraser is pretty rough. Just look at his next five movies:
- Jingle All the Way
- Batman and Robin
- End of Days
- The 6th Day
- Collateral Damage
I’m not as down on End of Days as most, but that stack of underwhelming output would force anyone into a career in politics.
Now, Eraser isn’t the worst movie Arnold has ever done, but it’s the one where is upward ascent as an actor and as an English language speaker seems to have abruptly stopped. My most vivid recollection of watching this movie in the cinema was just how terrible his acting was and how his accent seemed to have returned to it’s Conan strength.
This convinced me that there was a special skill Ivan Reitman possessed that got better performances out of Arnold that no other director seemed to have.
This movie had a super messy production history due to clashes between director Chuck Russell (Nightmare 3, The Mask) and producer Arnold Kopelson (The Fugitive, Platoon), so maybe that was part of the problem for Arnold.
Maybe it was that the production was leaning too heavily on digital effects for anyone to deliver a good performance. CG rail guns that send people jerking through the air 50 yards, a scene where Arnold plays chicken with a plane while parachuting, and most memorably a fight with digital crocodiles (“You’re luggage.”) all may have played a part in the overall confusion that led to a painfully poor leading performance. Maybe too much green screen reverts people to their native tongue?
1.) Leonardo DiCaprio – The Aviator – 2004 – Martin Scorsese
I am not a fan of Scorsese. By and large, I find he tries to use cinematic trickery, camera moves and needle drops to cover over his repeated themes of macho violence, the corrupting influence of power, and rre evil that men do. He’s got some interesting work – After Hours is a stunningly weird, dreamscape of a comedy and The Last Temptation of Christ is an artful departure into some rather well-handier taboo subject matter. But usually I find his stuff underwhelming, and none of his work underwhelms more than all of his team-ups with Leonardo DiCaprio who just doesn’t seem to have the discipline or restraint to go deep for this director.
In Titanic, DiCaprio is pure charisma and charm. In something like Catch Me if You Can, he turns that charm into sneaky, playful troublemaking. He’s good as a class clown, a rebel and he can summon vulnerability quite well, as he did in Once Upon a Time in America.
With Scorsese, though, he seems far too mannered in his acting, too precise and careful. Nothing seems real, especially when playing outsized “real life” characters like those in Wolf of Wall Street or in this patience tester, The Aviator.
I know this movie is well-received. I get that people like the tales of mentally-troubled success stories and eccentric leading men. Hell, I loved Depp in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or the TV show House with the fantastic Hugh Laurie, or even something like Tom Cruise’s Jerry Maguire. But DiCaprio struggles mightily with bringing Howard Hughes to life as anything more than a live-action cartoon character. His movements, his accent, even the way he resides his voice to demonstrate frustration or anger seems like just that – a demonstration.
There’s a big difference between ACTING and acting, and too many people – critics and audiences alike – applaud very obvious performances as effective, solid acting. Yes, sometimes going big helps, like just about anything Nicholson does or Pacino when he has the right part (think The Devil’s Advocate.) but if you go big without an emotional component coupled to the performance, it becomes bluster and, honestly, it’s hard to watch.
I find The Aviator an interesting failure because the entire thing collapses at the feet of DiCaprio who seems to have earned the full trust of Scorsese even as he’s clearly in over his depth and simply doesn’t look the part! Hughes had a youthful face, but there was a kind of baked-in cynicism and intelligence mixed with his charm; more an aw-shucks George Clooney than the innocent-eyed and perpetually analytical lightness of DiCaprio.
Staff Pick – Encanto, or more specifically, Far from the Tree, the short preceding Encanto.
While I liked Encanto, Disney’s latest Pixar-less offering that makes great hay with the Pixar formula of excellent animation, terrific characters and a heartwarming, well-done story, my staff pick isn’t for that film alone. Before you get into the rather epic, and very musical, story of the magical Madrigal family in Encanto, you get an intimate animated short from filmmaker Natalie Nourigat about a parent and child raccoon family and the challenging dynamic between them when it comes to the parent’s need to keep a cub safe. This is strong stuff, well rendered in what appears to be hand-drawn style that harkens back to the early days of Disney, and full of big emotions for parents and their children. I really felt this seven-minute short swung for some very high fences and succeeded by pulling HARD at some pretty vulnerable heartstrings. If you’ve ever had to protect a child from the dangers of the world – and their own curiosity – but didn’t do it perfectly? Well, Far From the Tree has a lesson for you without being preachy or condescending. I couldn’t recommend this short more, and I’m excited to have learned that Norigant is the current head of story at Disney Animation. If this short, and indeed Encanto itself, is any indicator, Disney may be rolling into a new storytelling heyday to rival their late-80’s, early-90’s run.
Encanto itself is a lush, wild ride of a story that centers on the dynamics of a magically-touched family from directors Jared Bush and Byron Howard and co-director and writer Charise Castro Smith. Add music by Lin Manuel Miranda into this mix and that’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen, but the story – which struggles a bit to give enough service to more characters than a latter-day Marvel movie – manages to be surprisingly cohesive and very, very satisfying at its conclusion. As with most animated films nowadays, the animation is spectacular – my goodness what they can do with water now! – and the script is worthy of the huge talent involved.
And how about Lin Manuel Miranda, huh? I cannot get over how many things he’s worked on the past few years. Moana, Vivo, In the Heights and now Encanto? His output is outrageous and frequently pretty catchy.
Seriously, I need to start pulling out animated movies from my “favorites list” because they’re just confusing the Hell out of me. More and more, I’m seeing movies like Big Hero Six, Coco and 2020’s incredibly good Onward and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with them because they’re so often SO. MUCH. BETTER. than just about anything else I watch. But is it really fair to stack movies with real actors and live settings against those that are entirely generated within computer environs? I feel like they get the luxury of better screenplays because they require so many resources to create, but maybe that’s just the satisfied parent in me talking after taking his kids to yet another well done animated film.