I blame Denise Richards for ruining *The World is not Enough * for not only myself, but my husband and brother in law.
We were all thoroughly enjoying the video on the Bond’s latest adventure and in walks like a hooker, named Dr. Christmas Jones. No less, a nuclear physicist. With silicone breast implants too. I mean, *what are the odds? *
I know that Bond Girls are typically eye candy in short shorts and braless t’s, but there have been glimmers of these women posessing at least some acting talents.
Why couldn’t she (and those caterpillars for eyebrows) have just died?
(Other than her dismal refusal to die, the movie we all agreed was one of the better Bonds in years.)
The OP didn’t go where I thought that is was heading, based on the subject line.
I, too, thought it one of the better 007s in years.
There being two beautiful babes, (one “good guy” and one “bad guy”), seemed a bit over the top, even for a Bond flick.
But I liked it.
Now you wanna talk about an actor ruining a film? How about Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible? He just can’t pull off a serious and anger filled scene. (e.g. “You’ve never seen me very upset.”)
Kevin Spacey, (Chris Sabian in “The Negotiator”) would have been much better in that role.
SouthernStyle
I could not agree more. Denise Richards was horrible in The World Was Not Enough and this is coming from a die-hard Bond fan. (Note the 007 at the end of my user name) Personally, (and I know there are those who will disagree with me, but save it for GD, ok people?) I think Brosnan is the best Bond since Connery. But come on Denise Richards looked fresh out of high school, and this is supposed to be a nuclear physicist? BTW, it wasn’t just her caterpillian eyebrows that bugged me, what about those fish lips that semed to engulf the bottom half of her face? I swear it looked like she could swallow her own head with those lips!
And before I get jumped, I said since Connery, not better than Connery.
And on the subject of actors ruining movies, does anyone else think Chris O’Donnell sucks, or is it only me? He was ok in scent of a woman, a film I believe was saved by Al Pacino’s performance. But everything else he’s done was terrible. He’s bland. He’s dull. He’s boring. What the hell was he doing playing Robin in Batman Forever? Batman and Robin I thought sucked all the way around, but giving so many lines to Chris O’Donnell didn’t help anything either.
The actress who played Nola Darling in She’s Gotta Have It. I think her name was Tracy Camilla, though I could be wrong. I know it was Spike Lee’s break out film and I realize it was an independant done-on-the-cheap film. But to have Nola, the central character, played by such a wooden actress was criminal.
BratMan, you and I/me/whatever should write vigorous letters of complaint to the producers and casting of T.W.I.N.E.
Another movie that was tolerable, but made much worse was *The Peacemaker *. Primarily Nicole Kidman as, what are the odds another nuclear physicist. Yeah, she’s the head of the Nuclear Bomb stuff for the Goverment and she’s 1) Under 50. 2) Very pretty and skinny. Oh,look! There goes a winged monkey flying out of my butt.
Gimme a break. Her acting skills were dreadful to say the least.At least her boobs are not enormous.
I really haven’t liked her in any film she’s done yet. Just because she’s Mrs. Tom Cruise or just spectacularly pretty is no excuse for her getting another big acting job on screen.
Hmmm – I think Tom Cruise is a terrific actor; as good as anybody out there. But maybe MI:2 was not his best – I haven’t seen it yet.
“Gladiator,” which I did see this weekend, suffered from the casting of the pivotal part of Lucilla with Connie Nielsen. She wasn’t terrible, just dull; and her character’s motivations are supposed to be rather central to (what there is of) the plot. I kept thinking of the possibilities if they had cast, say, someone like Kate Winslet in that part. Otherwise, it was an okay movie; it had too many fun-with-CGI moments, and Russell Crowe, though decidedly easy on the eyes, could perhaps have been more intelligible. (And yes, I know he’s great; I saw “L.A. Confidential.” But in “Gladiator” he mumbles.)
I think this movie generally got 3 stars outta 4, and I think how just about any other actor would have been better than Keanu and this could’ve been a classic.
“Devil’s Advocate” has:
Al Pacino as the Devil
the whole Good vs. Evil thing
crime, punishment, human nature
full-frontal nudity (Charlize Theron)
more full-frontal nudity (Connie Nielsen)
special effects (full-frontal nudity artwork-sculpture)
With all that, the problem is of course Keanu. He’s supposed to be a lawyer from the South, but his accent usually slips back to West Coast surfer-dude every other line. This guy just sucks as a actor.
Second choice for this category: Keanu in “The Matrix.”
The Man in the Iron Mask (1998 version) could have been an excellent movie except for the unfortunate decision to cast Leonardo diCrappio. Jeremy Irons, John Malkovitch and Gerard Depardieu are excellent actors, but they couldn’t salvage the movie from diCaprio’s wooden performance.
The first thing that popped into my head was the deplorable Mr. Reeves in Kenneth Branaugh’s Much Ado About Nothing.
Was there any movie that he was actually good in aside from Bill & Ted movies? With each successive movie the poor bastard makes, it seems as if his participation in those earlier “moron” movies were not so much about acting, but just good typecasting.
The moment I read the subject of this thread, Denise Richards in The World is Not Enough came to mind.
But to add a few…
Jar Jar Binks in The Phantom Meance. Infact, that whole Gunken race I could’ve done without.
Chow Yun Fat in Anna and the King. While watching this, I just kept thinking, “okay, so when he is gonna start shooting the place up?” He was so wrongly cast for that film.
John Travolta in Battlefield Earth. He just can’t play a bad guy.
I instantly thought of him in Much Ado… as well. The only movie that he’s decent in besides Bill&Ted is parenthood. I love when he crashes his drag car, then asks “Did I win?” I also like Point Break, partly because he makes Swazye look like Spacey, and it’s just a fun movie.
I second just about everything already said (Keanu in Much Ado, Chris O’Donnell in general, etc.), but to these I have to add my own personal fingernails-on-chalkboard performer:
Andie McDowell, in just about everything she’s done.
Green Card? She couldn’t carry a line if it were superglued to her hand.
Greystoke? Dubbed by Glenn Close, and still bad.
The Player? She wasn’t even able to play herself in a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo.
Sorry, I’m ranting. But I don’t know how on earth she keeps getting acting jobs. Modeling and commercials? Fine. But anything where she has to walk and talk at the same time? Hopeless.
Okay, this is going back awhile, but I have never gotten over the casting of Kevin Costner in Robin Hood. I am not the world’s biggest Costner fan anyway, but in that film he was totally miscast.
Now Timothy Dalton, on the other hand would have made an outstanding Robin Hood. Did you ever see the wonderfully campy “Flash Gordon” movie? He had a part in that film that showed what a good choice he would have been for the leader of the Merry Men of Sherwood Forest. He was Baron Something-or-other.
Now you all know my deep, dark secret-I LOVE campy movies, the cheesier and more over the top the better.
I know this isn’t GD, but I have to argue one small point. Look at the Matrix, and what it’s about, and remember the role of Neo (the Reeves character). Is there anybody else out there who is right for that part? I don’t think it’s a role that “any” actor could pull off convincingly. Keanu was right for the job.
I was going to say Travolta in “Face Off”, but the OP said good movies. But Travolta in just about anything lately. I really hate that squeal of a laugh he seems stuck with.
I have an actor who ruined an otherwise mediocre movie, Tom Cruise. The 100lb man with the body of a ballerina in an ACTION movie…give me a break. Every time I saw him hit someone I had to laugh, as a Tom Cruise punch is weaker than a Nicole Kidman punch. And the love story in it, JEEZ, lay off, it is an ACTION movie; if I want to see love I’ll rent A Julia Roberts movie.
BOYCOTT MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2 (THE WORST MOVIE OF ALL TIME...YES THAT'S RIGHT, WORSE THAN TITANIC)
I’m afraid I’d have to say “Sean Connery or Michael Caine in anything they have made in the past fifteen years” except none of them were good movies. I long for the days of “The Man Who Would Be King.”