I just caught an episode of an American sitcom called “Just Shoot Me”, that I’ve never seen before.
It isn’t very good, in my opinion.
However, after watching only one 30 minute episode, it occurred to me that the script of the show is really rather funny and clever. What makes it unfunny to me is the acting, or the direction, or perhaps both.
Does anyone agree with me about this show, or does anyone have any other examples of shows that should be funny based on the script, but are let down in other ways?
I’ve seen a lot of movies like this, where the dialogue is great and perhaps even well performed, but the movie sucks ass.
Play it to the Bone is a movie with Antonio Banderas and Woody Harrelson as boxers on a roadtrip to a fight. This is not a good movie. Not whatsoever in any way. But the dialogue between the two men is so natural, both in writing and in performance, that I couldn’t help liking it even as I tried not to smash the DVD player into tiny bits for the real and tangible craptitude of the movie as a whole.
I can’t really think of anything right now, except for one minor thing. Something might pop up later though; I’ve read a lot of movie scripts.
There is a scene in The Last Samurai, which was a movie I really disliked, and I didn’t think too highly of the script either (which I read beforehand), except for one part which was so well written it gave me chills, and actually made me look forward to the movie. The scene I’m referring to is the much lauded ninja sequence, which I know lots of people really enjoyed and would probably disagree with me. I thought the way it played out in the script was much better staged, though there weren’t necessarily that many changes in the final version. Just enough to ruin it.
Maybe one of the rare examples where an action sequence worked better on the page.