I just saw Inkheart, which IMHO was made from a fairly tepid YA fantasy, but they had the genius to cast Brendan Frasier- same with the most recent Journey to the Center of the Earth.
Even so, Brendan couldn’t save Dudley Do-right.:eek:
choie, I agree with Zorro, tGB, but there’s also the fact that the film works on several levels- action, parody, etc.
As to Casino Royale, the first one, I rather like the David Neiven scenes, but once Allen gets in there, the film goes horribly wrong.
I was gonna say Short Cuts but even
Julianne Moore
Matthew Modine
Anne Archer
Fred Ward
Jennifer Jason Leigh
Chris Penn
Robert Downey Jr.
Madeleine Stowe
Tim Robbins
Lily Tomlin
Tom Waits
Frances McDormand
Peter Gallagher
Lori Singer
Jack Lemmon
Lyle Lovett
Buck Henry
and
Huey Lewis
Could not save it,so nevermind.
If there’s room for “single performance redeems a movie” in this thread, then I nominate Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blond. Without her, it’s a C-minus programmer at best. Witherspoon, however, gives an A, maybe A-minus, performance, and the movie is worth watching just for her.
I’ve heard similar things about Anna Faris in House Bunny.
Sneakers was probably a below average film but was a lot of fun watching becasue of it’s great cast:
Robert Redford
Sydney Poitier
River Phoenix
Ben Kingsley
James Earl Jones
And no transcript can possibly do justice to Dame Maggie’s delivery of “that’s tacky”. She utterly slays me with those two words every time. Comic artistry at its very finest.
You’ve got Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Danny DeVito, Martin Short, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michael J. Fox, Natalie Portman, Pam Grier, and more, all in a cheesy movie. As one reviewer says: “It’s ‘Independence Day’ meets ‘Pee Wee’s Big Adventure’ with Tim Burton again at the helm.”
Not a movie…but the original Adam’s Family ‘sitcom’ was completely sucky…except the actors which made it a fun show to watch.
Oh, but they don’t rescue it. It remains not merely a cheesy movie, but a profoundly awful one.
Yeah, but they weren’t trying to be Oscar material. It’s a cheesy fun movie.
Frankenstein Unbound, a B sci-fi movie with superb performances by John Hurt and Raul Julia, who gave the movie infinitely more class and credibility than it deserved.
It’s OK for people to have different opinions about movies, gary.
<deep breath>
It’s OK for people to have different opinions about movies, gary.
<deep breath>
It’s OK for people to have different opinions about movies, gary…
AHEM!
You forgot Mary McDonnell
Who also helped save Independence Day, IMHO. Cheesy, silly, horrible script, played well enough by her and:
Wil Smith
Jeff Goldblum
Bill Pullman
Robert Loggia
Randy Quaid
Brent Spiner
and of course, my boyfriend, Adam Baldwin
that it was a fun ride if you just turned your brain off and went with it.
Troy. Hardly a miscast. It wasn’t good enough to recommend to friends, although I enjoyed seeing it, but I hesitate to think how much it would have sucked if it have the cast it did.
Ah, thought of another one…Along Came Polly. I guess it’s more of a case of a great supporting cast, though. Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston are pretty meh in it, but I’ll still watch it because I get such a giggle out of the performances of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bryan Brown, Alec Baldwin, Debra Messing, Michelle Lee, and Hank “Are you for scooobah?” Azaria.
Imagine the 1980 “Flash Gordon” without Max von Sydow, Topol, Brian Blessed and Timothy Dalton. It goes instantly from “fun camp” to “utterly unwatchable.” No amount of Brian May rocking out could have saved it without the cast hamming it up shamelessly.
To me, that’s the hallmark of what the OP is asking. “The Princess Bride” would probably still be pretty good with other actors (save Andre the Giant; lots of actors out there can do “Bland Hero/Heroine,” “Crotchety Old Jew” or “Spanish Swordsman,” but Andre is Fezzik). The cast is very good, but they don’t make or break the movie. But in the case of “Flash Gordon,” I think the whole thing would fall apart without von Sydow’s Ming and Blessed’s Vultan.
And you forgot Dan Akroyd.
“I want a Winnebago.”
“That’s the same kind of camera NASA used when they faked the moon landings.”
Another agreement on “Murder By Death”.
“I am not a Frenchy! I am a Belgy!”
“Theory has only one problem. Is stupid! Is most stupid thing I ever hear!”
I came in to say “Bubba Ho-Tep”, a thoroughly cheap Q-grade mummy film which looks like it had a budget of about $12.97. It is saved by Bruce Campbell as Elvis and Ossie Davis as John F. Kennedy.
I think it would have been an average film (the script really is quite good) but yes, the fantastic cast makes this film one of my faves. The end scene alone is worth the price of admission. “All right…Tahiti!”
Yes. With Madeline Kahn, it’s a comic masterpiece. Without her, it woulda been a vaguely interesting piece of cinefile homework.
I’m gonna say Midnight Run. I think if you read the script without having seen the movie, it would seem like a pretty run-of-the mill buddy picture. De Niro and Grodin elevate it to the sublime (with the help of a terrific supporting cast).
I just bought and watched the blu-ray disk of Bullet. Beautiful transfer. Incredible chase scene. (worth the price of the disc)
A plot that makes no sense.
If it had not been for McQueen and cast, it would have sank like a stone. Instead it is iconic.