Year in Film Review Day 2: Adventures in Bad Casting

DAY 2: The Year in Bad Casting

MOST QUESTIONABLE CASTING DECISION

Blackhat – Thor plays a genius hacker. Maybe the Hemsworth household hotly debated Montaigne at the dinner table. Maybe Chris spent his lonely junior high years reverse engineering clocks into suitcases and taking them to school to show off. Maybe. Or maybe the Hemsworths do things like date Miley Cyrus. The point is, if the Hemsworths are smart, it doesn’t translate to film. Arnold had the good sense to play these roles for laughs, which is further evidence that Chris isn’t nearly as smart as The Governator, let alone smart enough to hack the world.

Josh Gad gets two starring roles in Pixels and The Wedding Ringer. Hollywood hasn’t had a good manic fat guy since Chris Farley died and Jonah Hill dieted (Yes, I am aware of Kevin James’ work.) We moralized what we eat – obesity is an epidemic, a moral choice, and The Church of Belushi is a House of Hollywood Sin. Still, the market for low brow comedy engages in a little heresy, but SNL's tiller is empty. Enter Josh Gad.

Hateful 8 – Dough-faced Channing Tatum makes a grizzled gunslinger cameo in Hateful 8.  Tarantino’s worst, this hateful half movie desperately needed a cameo to rescue its deflating payoff. Some scene-stealing gunslinger, someone you couldn’t believe they got, or dug up. It needed Clint Eastwood. It needed Mel Gibson. It needed Chuck Norris’s beard. It needed Lee Marvin’s reanimated corpse. It needed Samuel L. Jackson’s evil twin. Instead they got the ever-available Channing Tatum.

Truth – Topher Grace is the newly cynical noir news gumshoe who tells it like it is. I once had brunch in the same restaurant as Topher Grace, an event remarkable only because I swear he was made to wait in line behind us. When these non-entities stand on their filmic pulpit to lecture us, it only makes us question the message.

Woman in Gold - Box Office Fools’ Gold Ryan Reynolds plays an earnest, skilled lawyer. Look, Marvel is about to prove that it can even make Ryan Reynolds star in a hit. I can only assume that the bad guy in Deadpool is a mutated giant turnip that does, in fact, bleed. In its next act, Marvel will make a billion dollars on Molly Shannon playing Wonder Woman. So let’s celebrate the saner world of 2015, one in which the flickering light of Mr. Reynolds’ career led him to borrow Rick Perry’s trademark “I do remember which government agencies I would cut” glasses and prove all his critics right. 

WINNER: Josh Gad stars in two major Hollywood releases in one calendar year. Plato said that justice was a compromise between the best scenario – to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst scenario – to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation. Justice in Plato’s formulation is thus something we all tolerate as a lesser evil. In a year full of questions about Hollywood’s racial justice, (spoiler alert: this year was about Hollywood answering last year’s self-posed questions about gender) Josh Gad – Movie Star is the worst scenario. We demand retaliation. 

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN APPROPRIATE CASTING DECISION COMPLIMENTING QUESTIONABLE CASTING DECISION: Katie Holmes plays Ryan Reynolds’ similarly earnest wife in Woman in Gold, because Blake Lively was busy playing his wife in real life. Katie Holmes, however, may never be heard from again. Or possibly will star in a half-billion dollar Wonder Woman because even Marvel couldn’t make Molly Shannon a movie star.

KING OF QUEENS AWARD FOR LEAST LIKELY SCREEN COUPLE

Trainwreck – John Cena & Amy Schumer - As I said, this was the year for Hollywood to talk about feminism. Paying my respects, we’re doing equal-time beefcake. I’m not sure if it’s less believable that The Jorts dates Schumer, even for laughs, or that he ends up being much funnier than she is. This is the broader problem with Trainwreck – from Lebron’s on down, EVERYONE is funnier than Amy Schumer. Presumably she wrote the film that way, but it suggests she might find more success being Judd Apatow than being Will Farrell.

The Wedding Ringer – Josh Gad & Kaley Cuoco/Nicky Whelan. It must be fought. You see, The King of Queens Award is, in a sense, a form of retaliation against injustice. Why can’t obnoxious non-entities like Josh Gad get hot girls? If only women could see under the rough exterior and find out how truly shallow Josh is! I spoil nothing in telling you that Mr. Gad spends most of this movie engaged against all odds to one hottie. When the movie decides this is too obvious for anyone to ignore, it announces that, yes, she is too hot for him and the engagement is a sham. Not to fear! A different hottie, this one a stripper, arrives to rescue Josh with true love. The lesson is: when girls are shallow, it’s evil. When boys are shallow, it’s love.

HELEN MIRREN AWARD FOR LEAST BELIEVABLE FEMALE ACTION HERO

Jesse Eisenberg in American Ultra – More equal time beefcake! OK, so Mr. Eisenberg’s waifish presence is a joke...one of the few in this comedy. The whole cast is played against type, Topher Grace a fiendish CIA agent, Kristen Stewart as someone with a future in leading roles. This only serves to demonstrate the point – when a guy can’t play a physical role, it’s a joke. But when a woman does, it’s feminism.

Rooney Mara in Pan – is a kung fu Native American pixie.

Melissa McCarthy in Spy – She looks like she could throw down. But she’s so unathletic that, despite some extremely generous editing, it’s clear she can barely move without pain.

Mila Kunis in Jupiter Ascending – Frequently female action heroes replace muscles with moxy. Unfortunately, Ms. Kunis has the charisma of Principal Skinner.

Daisy Ridley in Star Wars VII – Sorry, I liked her. She’s plucky. She’s going to be the uber-magical space arch-witch. And thus far, she’s only had to contend with Darth Twilight. I don’t care. Darth Rousey didn’t get knocked out by this person. She got knocked out by this person.

WINNER: Rooney Mara.

If you want to see female action hero and star done right, it looks like Furiosa. 

NICHOLAS CAGE AWARD FOR MOST EGREGIOUS SELLOUT

Hugh Jackman – Pan – Jackman needs to do something worthwhile other than Wolverine. It’s been over 3 years since Les Mis and his only other non-X-Men major credit since is a mysterious side part in the execrable Chappie. This is the man’s “prime.”

Eddie Redmayne – Jupiter Ascending – Back when Eddie Redmayne wasn’t the latest object of the Academy’s British fetish, and the Wachowski siblings still had some lingering Matrix street cred, this movie got greenlit for several hundred million. Justly, Mr. Redmayne will go on to twenty years of period dramas and British casting all-calls, while the Wachowskis should finally leave us all alone.

Everyone involved in Aloha – The year’s surest cure for insomnia (I fell asleep 4 different times trying to get through it!) Basically, Cameron Crowe asked a bunch of actors if they wanted to make a few million dollars by spending some time in Hawaii. I can see Bill Murray and Emma Stone saying yes to that, but Bradley Cooper? OK, yes, anyone would say yes to that.

Tom Wilkinson – Unfinished Business – I swear Tom Wilkinson was drugged up throughout the entire film and is still unaware that he appeared in this MUST-NOT-SEE. He wanders about bewildered for the better part of an hour, saying things that frequently have very little to do with events around him. He may have wandered on set after a rough night and they just kept filming – there certainly wasn’t anything interesting happening in the script.

PREFONTAINE AWARD FOR MOST BIZARRE REPETITION OF ARCANE SUBJECT MATTER – Paul Giamatti plays the same evil music agent in both Love & Mercy and Straight Outta Compton. Hollywood, having decided to make a movie about every musician ever, took the next logical step and just had Giamatti play the same role in all of them. Saves money on background.