Oh, Keanu was just fine in Much Ado About Nothing. See? Not a single “Whoa!”
He really was bad in Dracula, though. But then, so was everybody. Hell, Anthony Hopkins was bad in Dracula.
For me Nicole Kidman has put out a few stinkers; who’d honestly take her seriously when discussing a brain injury in Days of Thunder, whilst in Far and Away and Eyes Wide Shut both her and Cruise were terribly miscast and couldn’t act well enough to support what were potentially very good movies.
She also annoyed me in The Peacemaker (as Dr. Kelly:rolleyes:, haha), although I liked her in The Interpreter so I don’t think this is an anti-Kidman thing.
Actually her mother was the original scream queen in Psycho. Or you could go back as far as Fay Wray in King Kong.
And as for Duvall, in all the “normal” scenes, she’s as bad as Andie MacDowell (BTW was that a whoosh MsWhatsit? - oh I see it was, but hey I said her first!). It’s like she just read the script 2 minutes before filming and is just saying lines. The scenes where she is almost good are the ones where Kubrick is literally screaming at her from behind the camera to get some sort of realistic reaction (she’s spoken of this, though not exactly in those terms). They did about a million takes of that staircase scene alone.
This may be unfair, but: SUPERMAN II largely gets away with filming all-American scenes in the UK – except for the little kids who inexplicably have striking British accents.
Or maybe she was just horrible?
No. There is no such thing as a performance that is universally considered to be bad. In all such cases, it’s just Internet groupthink at work. Dick Van Dyke’s English accent in Mary Poppins, for example, was actually quite good. It’s just Internet groupthink making everyone in the entire UK think that it sounds hilariously shitty.
Dick Van Dyke’s accent was good, but not authentic. If it had been authentic a sizeable fraction of the audience would have spent the whole movie going “What’d he say?”. I think he got what the director wanted.
He was great in The Merchant of Venice Beach
"Hath not a dude eyes? If you prick us, do we not get bummed? If we eat bad guacamole, do we not blow chunks? "
You know what, maybe she was. But don’t you think it’s pathetically trite at this point to harp on it?
Hey, but don’t mind me. Give that dead horse one more boot to the ribs!
You could lead by example and not have posted anything too you know Spoke: :rolleyes:
I honestly did come in here to mention Andie McDowell in Four Weddings. 
It’s one of my favourite romcoms but I always have to add ‘apart from Andie McDowell’ because otherwise people chime in and criticise her. She’s beautiful, and she was fine in Green Card, but in Four Weddings everyone else seems to be their character and she is very obviously acting. She’s bearable though, for me, at least.
The same is true with Keanu Reeves in MAAN. He genuinely was extraordinarily bad. He was brilliant in Bill and Ted, well cast for the Matrix and I haven’t even seen My Own Private Idaho, so it’s not like I hate the bloke; I love Shakespeare’s plays, watch pretty much every adaptation of them and again I have to recommend MAAN as a great Shakespeare film to watch, except for Keanu.
Don John is dark, cynical and witty. For an actor like Keanu Reeves, that’s never going to work. Apparently he loves Shakespeare and loves acting as a profession and that’s at least partly why he was cast, not just to have a Hollywood idol in the cast. However, in the same film he’d have made an excellent or at least decent Claudio - especially if they didn’t bother with the unnecessary English accent - and the actor who played Claudio could probably have been an excellent Don John.
But no! I haven’t actually thought about these things! I’m just being a h8tr!
How was it good? It was only when I was past childhood and heard people say he had a terrible Cockney accent that I even realised he was trying for one. He sounded exactly the same as he did in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It was a Disney movie with chimney sweeps acting as if their jobs were the best in the world - him being American was no big deal.
Is that from The Critic?
Now, the movie wasn’t great or even good but Mick Jagger was terrible in Freejack. Epic terrible. So terrible your risk for cancer goes up. You could actually see his eyes following the cue-cards.
Yeah exactly. If someone is horrible enough to get posts from people 20 years later, it’s pretty memorable as horrible. And notice how she hasn’t done anything since then except Groundhog Day, in which she was barely passable.
Why all the love for Andie MacDowell? Malcom McDowell did better in a 30 minute show as a vampire.
The worst, as in WORST EVER ?
Glen Ford, Pocketful of Miracles
He also produced and would not let Capra really direct.
More modern…
Mrs. [Kate Capshaw] Spielberg in I J Temple of Doom
All she does is wail, constantly.
Unwatchable, for me at least.
But that’s not a bad performance, that’s just an unlikeable character. It can be hard to tell the difference, but as has been said before, she was playing the character as written.
I can’t believe nobody nominated Tom Cruise for “Far And Away”. He could never do accents; Ritchie Cunningham goofed on this one.
The accent was lousy, but other than that it was a pretty good performance.
Joey Lauren Adams ruined Chasing Amy, IMO. Ugh…that horrid voice. Ben Affleck does okay in roles where his character is a douchebag such as Holden in Chasing Amy.
Oh man, I was beaten to the punch on Andie MacDowell by a dozen posts. I was going to mention Sex, Lies, and Videotape, though. And Groundhog Day is barely tolerable to watch during scenes where she’s present. I’ve never seen Four Weddings and a Funeral. I won’t be going out of my way to watch that one knowing that she’s in it.
His accent was excellent…oh you mean his cockney accent.
My favorite actress but Natalie Portman has done this twice.
V for Vendetta
Thor This was a movie with some first rate performances. Hers…not so much.
OTH in Closer andbGarden State she was the best thing about the movie.