I read somewhere that DeNiro has gotten to the point in his career where he just takes on roles that he thinks would be interesting as an actor to play.
Is anything associated with Jim Davis & Garfield NOT “just doin’ it for the cash”?
I agree. I have an odd sort of begrudging respect for it, and it occasionally made me laugh, but it really was very weird.
Ben Kingsley in The Love Guru was worse.
There were a couple of scenes in a set on the bridge of his flagship. I think Monro and Hasselhoff were on the set with him, but for all I know, they might have been bluescreened.
Are you kidding? Peck was awesome in that role.
Olivier: Did you kill Wheelock?
Peck: No, he’s in the kitchen mixing us some cocktails.
Woman: Get a doctor!
Peck: I am a doctor, idiot.
Woman: Don’t you come near him!
Peck: Shut up, you ugly bitch.
This is currently running on E-Retro! It is a terrible movie, but an excellent choice for this thread. Nothing like two of the biggest Hollywood tough guys singing in a musical western.
This may be true. I don’t know, though.
DeNiro always seemed to me like he thought he was funny, and wanted to play comedy roles. But he’s not very funny (to me, anyway). He was a great actor, who played some of the most iconic roles in film history. And then, he tried to go funny.
I did think he was pretty good in Midnight Run, but that is the only movie I can think of where he actually made me laugh. Everything else, like “Analyze This” or “Meet The Parents”, he always seems to try too hard.
I love the nod to Al Pacino. I didn’t see the movie where he apparently won “worst supporting actor” though. Hell, I didn’t even know he was in a movie with Adam Sandler. That is quite embarrassing.
Did Pacino really need the money that badly? I mean, a buck is a buck, but c’mon… The guy has to be set for 50 lifetimes. Was he Madoff’d or something?
Donald Sutherland in Gas. Definitely a paycheck role. He quite obviously NEVER appears on screen with another performer.
I can’t fault Orson Welles for his role in the Transformers movie or Raul Julia in Street Fighter. I can still enjoy the former today, and the latter was at least significantly less bad thanks to Raul Julia’s performance.
My nomination would be:
Everyone in Movie 43 - Movie 43
I can’t imagine what sort of blackmail material its perpetrator had on these people, but it was apparently worse than telling the world they were partially responsible for this atrocity.
For him, it was Tuesday.
ASCAP gives this award away like candy. If my count is correct, 28 films won the award for Top Box Office Films in the same year as Jack and Jill: http://www.imdb.com/event/ev0000044/2012
Some of the other winners include:
[ul]
[li]Cars 2[/li][li]Hugo[/li][li]Justin Bieber: Never Say Never[/li][li]The Muppets[/li][li]Thor[/li][/ul]
:eek:
Wait a minute! What? Is this for real? I’m off to check google.
Edit: Jesus! It killed him!
Bob Hoskins in Mario Brothers.
I’m gonna give Hoskins a pass for Mario Brothers. I think it was a movie that swung for the fences and missed by a mile. The Mario Brothers movie producers tried damn hard to put the pace and zaniness into movie form, but didn’t succeed. I’m always willing to give cred to a failure that at least tried.
Sylvester Stallone, “Stud,” The Party at Kitty and Stud’s (aka Italian Stallion)(1970).
Other contender: William T. Orr, in the military training film Three Cadets (1943), as “that guy with the clap.” (As he was recognized in public, on at least one occasion.)
Not the best movie, but they have nothing to be ashamed of. They elevated that movie to watchable. Also, I’d never heard of Russell Crowe prior to that movie, but I actively looked for his performances after that.
“The King of Comedy” was far better than it had a right to be. However, there’s no excuse for “Mad Dog and Glory”. So you’ve got a film with an ordinary schlub who accidentally saves the life of a gangster, starring Bill Murray and Robert De Niro…and the gangster is played by Bill Murray and the schlub by De Niro. Because that totally makes sense.
Early role, so it doesn’t count. A better choice is his attempt at a zany farce “Oscar”. It’s a remake of a 1960s French film and has all the traditional hallmarks of a competent French farce…except that Stallone really doesn’t have the comedy chops to pull off farce, and the rest of the cast wasn’t spectacular either.
And Barbra Streisand in the same. She has genuine comedic talents that were totally wasted in this flick. Between her and DeNiro - an unlikely pairing at best - I have to ask “Are they really that desperate for money these days?”
I worked training his people on an animation program, and yeah - Jim Davis is the most mercenary person to ever be involved in comics.
I’m confident that Davis took his two characters from a National Lampoon strip called “Famous Comic Artists School” by Bruce Cochran back in the 1970s. It was meta-humor about what you need to be a comic artist, and one strip was about characters. “Every comic artist needs characters. Here are three you can use for free…” And they were* Dipshit Dog*, Cocksucker Cat and Badass Bunny. And the first two very obviously became Odie and Garfield.
The thing that is so awful and offensive about Garfield, beyond being invented solely for marketing purposes, is the man has no understanding of cats. I’m pretty sure he’s never had a pet cat. B. Kliban understood cats, as did Gilbert Shelton with the Fat Freddy’s Cat side strips from his Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comics.
Or maybe this.
I also thought Virtuosity wasn’t that bad.
Here’s more by The Perfect Master on John Wayne, The Conqueror and its tragic aftermath: Did John Wayne die of cancer caused by a radioactive movie set? - The Straight Dope
And for another embarrassing role, how about the late Christopher Lee as a supervillain singing about… booze?: Flick Attack - The Return of Captain Invincible "Name Your Poison" - YouTube