I’ll start off with just one…
Michael Moriarty in Pale Rider. I think he is the winner of this category hands down, and I’ll be interested to see who else comes up in this thread.
His voice is high pitched, he has no distinguishing rugged features, and he just looks and sounds wimpy. Every time I see Pale Rider, I want to go to La Hood California just to kick his ass.
I know his character is supposed to be a milksop, but I don’t think anyone could have played it better. In fact, I can’t see Moriarty in anything now without thinking WIMP! He just oozes a “loser” quality, and his nasally voice pulls it all together. I think he was in the Law & Order series, and he just couldn’t pull it off.
I think it also has something to do with his speech delivery/acting style… Both the characters in the movie and the speed of the movie itself seem to move faster than Moriarty. I don’t think in Pale Rider, he is doing anything special… that is his natural pace. He speaks slower and moves slower, like the rest of the picture is in some sort of time warp around him. His voice is so annoyingly flat and toneless… The poor bastard could probably put himself to sleep by reading out loud.
the_diego: I recently caught “Topkapi” on tv, and, well, his character surely was one of the wimpiest of wimps. Heck, he even made Blackbeard wimpy!
(Have you ever heard the version of Zoltan Kodaly’s opera “Hary Janos” where Ustinov does the narration and comic dialogue? Brilliant. He even makes Napoleon Bonaparte into a wimp!)
Rob Schneider, in Judge Dredd, was annoyingly wimpy. Almost as irritating as Jar Jar Binks. That specific whiny kind of role is hellishly annoying. Eddie Murphy, as the Donkey, in Shrek, was also a real pain in the keister. He was also a wimp in The Haunted Mansion.
Dirk Diggler’s dad in Boogie Nights. He just sits there while his wife screams cruel things at Dirk. He seems to be moved in some way, but just sits there impotently. Which was probably the point.
You mentioned Pale Rider, but the entire town of **High Plains Drifter **was worse. The bit where the outlaws come to town and 20-some armed men run like a scene from Monty Python is truly pathetic.
Ransom Stoddard in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance deserves a mention, as well as Marshall Link Appleyard in the same flick. Also one of the best movies ever made. I do like the choices people made in this thread.
