[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase]
Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye.
[/QUOTE]
Hey, hey, HEY…I thought this one was brilliant - I own it on DVD :p. Great deconstruction.
- Tamerlane
Come to think of it, the Mickey Rooney abomination can’t be considered bad casting- no actor could have brought dignity to that role- more like “roles that should have never existed in the first place”.
Not a movie, but a series. I got really annoyed at Smallville when Jimmy Olson first strolled into view and I thought it was a re-used actor. Turns out, they cast the identical twin brother of a recurring character from earlier seasons. For a few minutes at least, much of the Smallville viewers were thinking, “Oh, so Jimmy Olson was the kid who had the ability to steal Clark’s powers!”
The entire cast of both the Dukes of Hazzard (2005) and the straight-to-video abomination this Spring. I thought Willie Nelson was a good choice until I saw the movie(s). The worst offender was M.C. Gainey as Rosco P. Coltrane.
[QUOTE=Tamerlane]
Hey, hey, HEY…I thought this one was brilliant - I own it on DVD :p. Great deconstruction.
- Tamerlane
[/QUOTE]
I think James Garner was a much worse Marlowe than Eliot Gould.
[QUOTE=Tamerlane]
Hey, hey, HEY…I thought [The Long Goodbye] was brilliant - I own it on DVD :p. Great deconstruction.
- Tamerlane
[/QUOTE]
I haven’t seen the movie in a while but was it the intent to have Gould’s Marlowe come across as bit of a schmuck? He seemed that way to me.
[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase]
There are whole categories of bad casting. You shouldn’t step into a role made famous by other people, or even do a bad spin-off from it. Ted Wass in Curse of The Pink Panther.
[/QUOTE]
(Underline added.)
That was a good example. Aside from the decision to continue the series after Peter Sellers died, deciding to replace him with a bland American Clouseau-clone like Wass was the worst decision Blake Edwards made. I thought at the time this movie came out that if they had to continue the series and had to have a bungling detective be the central character, it would’ve been funnier if they made him a law-and-order “Dirty Harry” parody (much like the title character of the “Sledge Hammer” TV show that came along a few years later).
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
I think Kirsten Dunst is pretty bad as Mary Jane Watson, but maybe the character is supposed to be a grating, fickle, self-absorbed ditz.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t know that this is what the movie was going for - I’ve yet to see any of the recent Spider-man movies. But there was a very, very long time in the comic when that’s exactly what she was. She existed to serve no other purpose than to keep building up Peter Parker only to slam him down again.
There is a large segment of the Japanese population that felt that the casting of Sakamoto Maaya as the voice of the lead character of The Vision of Escaflowne was a major mistake: Fifteen year olds shouldn’t be providing the voices of fifteen year old characters in anime.
(Personally, I’d always liked her voice, but that’s simply a judgement of vox humana, rather than her speaking ability - since my Japanese is rudimentary, at best.)
[QUOTE=OneCentStamp]
Keanu Reeves as Don John in Much Ado About Nothing.
[/QUOTE]
Funnily enough, this is one case where I thought Keanu Reeves worked okay.
Admittedly, the part was one where he didn’t really have to do anything except be wooden. 
Ann Margaret as the mother in Tommy.
William Bendix playing Babe Ruth in the Babe Ruth Story.
One of my favourite books is Stephen King’s “The Stand,” and I’ve watched the mini-series at least twice, and most of the cast (and casting) were very (even surprisingly?) good, except for Molly Ringwald and Laura San Giacomo (as Fran Goldsmith and Nadine Cross, respectively). Those two are just clunkers in the mini-series, Molly because Gary Sinise is head and shoulders a better actor than her, and Laura because she just wasn’t the right actress for that part.
[QUOTE=winterhawk11]
People probably won’t agree with me, but I think casting Gary Oldman as Sirius Black and David Thewlis as Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter movies were some pretty awful decisions. IMO, Oldman looks like an old pervert (especially with the pornstache) and Thewlis just looks creepy.
[/QUOTE]
You spend 12 years in Askaban or change into a wolf every 29.5 days and see how great YOU look.
[QUOTE=featherlou]
One of my favourite books is Stephen King’s “The Stand,” and I’ve watched the mini-series at least twice, and most of the cast (and casting) were very (even surprisingly?) good, except for Molly Ringwald and Laura San Giacomo (as Fran Goldsmith and Nadine Cross, respectively). Those two are just clunkers in the mini-series, Molly because Gary Sinise is head and shoulders a better actor than her, and Laura because she just wasn’t the right actress for that part.
[/QUOTE]
I didn’t think that Ringwald was that terrible but SanGiacomo was awful casting. Corin Nemec was also completely miscast. Jamie Sheridan did not fit the description in the book but when I saw him in the role I thought he did a great job.
Tara Reid as some kind of scientist in “Alone In The Dark”.
Say it out loud without laughing, I double-dare you.
Which of course brings to mind Denise Richards as a nuclear weapons expert in a recent Bond flick.
28-year old (and looking considerably older) Steve McQueen as a high school student in “The Blob”.
[QUOTE=Valgard]
Tara Reid as some kind of scientist in “Alone In The Dark”.
Say it out loud without laughing, I double-dare you.
Which of course brings to mind Denise Richards as a nuclear weapons expert in a recent Bond flick.
[/QUOTE]
The trend started with Daryl Hannah as an astrophysicist in Roxanne. What the hell was Steve Martin thinking?
Since so many people have mentioned the absurdity of casting a Caucasian in the role of an Asian (John Wayne, Marlon Brando, Mickey Rooney), just let me add Katherine Hepburn’s role as a Chinese woman in Dragon Seed. I had to turn the movie off, she looked so weird.
Ali McGraw in The Winds of War.
I know you young 'uns have never even heard of it, much less seen it. TWOW was a miniseries back in the days when TV miniseries could run 8 or 10 hours. Ali McGraw’s character (Natalie Jastrow) wound up in a Nazi concentration camp, and she brought the same dramtic level to the role she had used in Love Story (before she came down with a terminal case of old movie disease.)
It was absolutely the worst piece of casting I’ve ever seen. When the sequel was made, McGraw was replaced by a young Jane Seymour – who turned in a performance about 10,000 times better.
[QUOTE=Valgard]
28-year old (and looking considerably older) Steve McQueen as a high school student in “The Blob”.
[/QUOTE]
Speaking of looking too old, how about William Holden in Picnic? He looked 40, but I think he was supposed to be in his early 20’s.
[QUOTE=winterhawk11]
People probably won’t agree with me, but I think casting Gary Oldman as Sirius Black and David Thewlis as Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter movies were some pretty awful decisions. IMO, Oldman looks like an old pervert (especially with the pornstache) and Thewlis just looks creepy. What is it with creepy mustaches, anyway? Considering that both of these guys were supposed to be attractive (albeit quite weathered and frayed after all they’d been through) I just don’t see it.
[/QUOTE]
The bonus of casting Oldman is that:
it reinforces the notion that Sirius Black is a bad guy. Oldman has made his name playing dirtbags, so the revelation that Black is a good guy who was framed is doubly effective.
Marlon Brando in Guys and Dolls. I mean honestly. And no way did he need to do that, he was at the peak of his bankability at the time. Was he trying to stretch himself?
Burt Reynolds in At Long Last Love. Burt Reynolds doing Cole Porter? Beyond awful.
Andie McDowell in Everything She’s Ever Done Since Sex, Lies and Videotape. Especial thanks for almost destroying Four Weddings and a Funeral and Green Card, if I had a billion dollars I would remake both films exactly identically to their original except substitute Julia Roberts for the wooden Dowell.
Martin Sheen as Robert E. Lee. Robert Duvall basically blew him away in the quasi-sequel.
[QUOTE=Big Bad Voodoo Lou]
Hell, fucking Sting could have done a better job!
[/QUOTE]
I do believe he was based a bit on Sting. But Stings to old for the part now. Constantine is weathered (well look at all he’s been through) but not that old.
But he’s certainly blond and certainly AN ENGLISHMAN!!!
And if they didn’t want to do it like the comic book they should have just wrote their own comic book and filmed that :mad: .