Pretty sure he was in “Enemy of the State” with Will Smith and “The Jackal” with Bruce Willis as well for more serious roles albeit supporting roles rather than lead roles.
Tanking now or not, Jack’s career has been pretty decent. Beyond the films and music, he’s married into a good family (The Hadens), has a beautiful wife and a couple of kids. Fame and fortune can disappear overnight, but I imagine he’s doing alright.
Careers doing voice over work can be pretty lucrative careers.
And quality does count. Black was perfectly cast in “Kung Fu Panda.” Some of the voice work in that movie really stood out - Black and Dustin Hoffman, especially. Some, like Angelina Jolie and Jackie Chan, could have been replaced by any one of a thousand cheaper actors. Someday, they’re going to realize that a few star names is enough for an animated feature and you don’t need to pay big bucks for the seventh biggest role.
To tank you have to start from a higher point. He’s sucked since the beginning.
I thought he was great fun in School of Rock.
What he really needs for a career revival is a role as the sidekick in a big-budget buddy-cop or spy caper movie. Something like Tom Arnold’s role in True Lies, or Eddie Murphy in 48 Hours. He’s a natural scene-stealer, but he needs to be taken in small doses.
He was in Neverending Story 3 back in 1994. I don’t think you can get any lower than that.
I need to dig up a cite, but wasn’t Black a last minute replacement for Owen Wilson in Tropic Thunder due to Wilson’s suicide attempt right before filming?
Looking at his IMDB page, he was indeed in those movies. I’m surprised to see he was also in “Demolition Man” and that he played a skinhead on an episode of “Life Goes On.”
I’m pretty sure that Matthew McConaughey replaced Owen Wilson. Didn’t it feel like his performance was basically him playing Owen Wilson playing Ben Stiller’s only friend?
Ah, thanks to Google I even found proof
Black was the only redeeming feature of Never Ending Story III. Well, unless you were planning on MST3King it.
He was also Sean Penn’s brother in Dead Man Walking, though I don’t recall him having any dialogue. And he was in a scene deleted from True Romance.
He’s been in a ton of stuff. I didn’t notice it mentioned here yet, but those of you who recall being aware of Tenacious D before they released their album aren’t mistaken. The D had a short-lived HBO(?) series before any of that happened. It was hilarious at the time, but less-so if you saw if after you had heard their album. The whole point of the show was that they were a struggling 2 piece act with delusions of grandeur. The songs were often set to Monkees-style music videos, and often tied into the plot of the episode.
The songs are so much funnier in context, though I won’t vouch for how it may have aged.
It was indeed HBO. It used to run right before Mr. Show.
With the exception of Kung Fu Panda, every movie in which I have ever seen Jack Black has made me want to shoot him in the face with a cannon.
He was on Howard Stern a couple years ago and they talked about Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, and how he finally got enough clout in Hollywood to write and release it and then it bombed terribly. Black admitted that this was personally devestating, and even after a couple years he was still hurting from it.
I suppose that movie tanking was the end of his writing career, and also used up much of his career equity.
Sometimes in my head I actually get them confused.
i like him about as much as i like jim carey pre-eternal sunshine and i don’t think he’s got the chops to pull off eternal sunshine like jimbo did.
i’ll put it this way, i’d rather watch any adam sandler movie ahead of any one of jack blacks. yes, that means 8 crazy nights over Shallow Hal. (note: tropic thunder is not a “jack black” movie.)
His voiceover work in Kung Fu Panda was real good. But sadly, his acting chops hit their high point here and have gone downhill since.
Spoilered - NSFW:
You need to lay off the Skadi site.