Well, TNG tried too hard early on with the former romance angle between Riker and Troi, with the Blind Man teaching an android how to paint (Data & Geordi), the convoluted relationship of Picard, Beverly, and Wesley (Picard wasn’t child friendly), and some othe things from the first half of the series that I’m probably overlooking.
By series end, tho, Picard’s relationship chemistry with everybody was convincing. Q, Beverly, Wesley, Riker, Worf, all had good and memorable moments with the fabulous Jean-Luc.
DS-9 wasn’t my bag, so I can’t comment a lot about it, but Bashir seemed to have believable chemistry with the Tailor/Spy Guy and with O’Brian.
As for Voyager, again, they just tried too hard. However, I did like the chemistry between Neelix and Tuvok. Agonizing at times, but very much Skipper and Gilligan in feeling.
ENT actually did well. Trip (Tucker) and Captain Archer always seemed to battle the balance of being friends vs the command structure.
I wonder if that could be in part due to the types of characters he often (as in, what NCB has seen him in) plays, a self absorbed ass head and borderline psychopath.
One of the more awkward pairings that only just occurred to me is Judy Holliday and William Holden in Born Yesterday. He’s a bit of a cool intellectual, and she’s an annoying as hell squeaky bimbo. They just don’t click. at. all. Even though Broderick Crawford played a brutal sonofabitch, there was a lot more fire and understanding between him and Judy. They played that gin rummy scene together just masterfully.
Hmmmm, I could not * agree * more. But, as always, it’s a matter of opinion. Just to elaborate without just dismissing another’s opinion, she had / has a very , um, commanding presence (plus, she’s just physically,I dunno, statuesque?). Leo still had a very youngish look to him then. Not to say that he didn’t perform well in that role, just that I don’t think they were a good match at all. My mom said she seemed more like his aunt.
A May December twosome that I thought had chemistry were Holling (John Cullum) and Shelley (Cynthia Geary) on Northern Exposure. The actors and the characters had a 40 year age difference, but it worked. After a few episodes you even overlooked the fact that she was “a chick in a trailer from Saskatoon” and he was a Huguenot from Quebec (who- in one of my favorite revelations- was a descendant of a French aristocrat so hated his death was still celebrated as a holiday in parts of France) and yet both had an American Southern accents (Cullum’s from Tennessee and Geary’s from Louisiana).
How about Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation for worst chemistry? The movie was terrible in general–well-executed in many ways, but completely directionless, to the point of nearly lulling me to sleep–but the chemistry between Murray and Johansson was exceptionally bad. First off, it was never clear what they were to each other, exactly; them being platonic friends made a little bit of sense, but Murray looked out of place in all of her haunts, more so than was intended. And there was just no way I could believe that they had a romantic interest in each other. It was obvious that Coppola was trying to paint Murray’s character as numbed by the family life and Johansson’s as desperate for affection while being rejected by her beau, but it wasn’t believable.
Goose’s wife was a young, unheralded Meg Ryan, who in spite of her fame as THE chick flick actress of the decade, rarely has good chemistry with men on screen.
Oh god, I agree. I hated that movie. They go to Japan! FUCKING JAPAN! I would kill to go to Japan! And he’s too fucking jaded to even step out of his goddamn hotel room and I don’t even remember what the fuck her problem was. And the chemistry? What chemistry?! And the sheer arrogance and ignorance of filming a movie in a foreign country and making it all about their angsty whiny self-indulgent bullshit! pant pant pant
That movie still pisses me off and I can’t believe I wasted my time watching it. I’ll calm down now.
As for brokeback, there was something about those two…not chemistry, necessarily, but I think they did a fairly good job at two people who really weren’t all too similar but had some sort of deep passion for each other.
Hee. very true. Anybody have a link to the youtube video that summarizes the Top Gun homosexuality really well?
ETA:
On the contrary! I liked Lucy a lot and I liked Mr Tumnus a lot but together, there was something undeniably skeevy about him. They made him more “child molester” then “kindly older guy” and I really didn’t like the part where he drugged her and put her to sleep…and I am by no means a fearmonger about child molesters. The whole thing was decidedly creepy.
I agree with Gomez & Morticia Addams.
Huh. I totally disagree about Bill Murray and Scarlett Johanson in Lost in Translation - I thought they had fantastic chemistry and totally bought their relationship.
(OT - I never understand why, when the subject of this movie comes up, someone will always complain about how they can’t understand why EVERYONE loved this movie, because I feel like the one person who actually did love it. Everyone else hated it, apparently.)
I guess I just don’t agree. But look at (for instance) the scene where they’re dancing in the steerage lounge, or the scene where he’s sketching her, and is super-awkward because she’s naked. Go fig.
