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Wednesday, April 2, 2008
To heck with quality, where’s my money?
Those eternal ranklers … uh, I mean rankers of all things pop culture, Entertainment Weekly, came up with yet another list, this time of the most egregious “I only did it for the money” performances. I’ll be blunt: many of their choices are flat-out lazy and/or wrong.
Every list of theirs inspires disagreement to some degree, but I can’t recall another list of theirs that inspired so many “Oh, come ON” reactions. Such as:
Sean Connery in Never Say Never Again: Rubbish, as the Brits would say. The movie has its problems, but Connery’s reprise as 007 was NOT one of them. A better choice would be The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, in which he looked like he was bored out of his mind. Sad thing is, that looks like it’s going to go down as his last film.
Ben Affleck in Paycheck: They went for the obvious joke considering the movie’s title, but it’s still the wrong choice. For one thing, I can’t fault a guy for wanting to work with John Woo, even if the movie didn’t turn out so great. The correct choice should have stuck out like stale fruitcake. C’mon, guys, Surviving Christmas!
Laurence Olivier in Clash of the Titans: Now that’s just mean, man. That movie’s too much fun to single Sir Larry out. I’d go back a year and nominate his perf in The Jazz Singer remake. Why would anyone appear in THAT folly except for money?
Marlon Brando in Superman: You have GOT to be kidding me. Yeah, there was an insane amount of publicity about the fact that Brando got paid millions for about 15 minutes of screen time. It’s certainly not a great performance, but at least he seems to be trying - which is more than you can say for his performance in Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, which inspired the classic Roger Ebert line: “Brando’s phoned in performances before, but this was the first time I wanted to hang up.”
Robert De Niro, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle: EW isn’t the only outlet that goofs up by picking on this performance. I’ve seen several people rake De Niro over the coals for daring to do something not as dignified as Travis Bickle or Jake La Motta. They’re all wrong. You can talk all you want about whether the gag works, but it’s NOT a paycheck job. De Niro’s company produced the movie, and he’s a Rocky and Bullwinkle fan. I’m not going to slam him for trying to have a laugh.
However, I WILL fault him for appearing in that piece of junk known as Hide and Seek, in which he played a psycho who was after Dakota Fanning. Seriously - what was De Niro doing in a movie directed by the hack who made Swimfan?
Other choices left off the list:
Edward Norton, The Italian Job: The 2003 remake was a lot of fun, except for one thing: the usually reliable Norton moped through the movie, making it clear he did not want to be there, while everyone else around him was having a ball.
Bruce Willis: Armageddon: Hey, I can’t blame him for looking like he wanted to be anywhere but on a Michael Bay set. I had a headache too.
John Travotla: Everything he’s done since 2000, save for Ladder 49, A Love Song for Bobby Long and Hairspray.
What “Hey, they were paying me” performances would you add to the list?
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