Wearing out the welcome

[ian.64]

Found this on imdb's home page and can only nod my head at a few of these choices (I'm nearly tempted to say all of them, but a couple are new to me) that the author deems have been to the well a bit too often in terms of the same character they play (especially one ex-Olympic karate bod with the same husky 'I've got deadly fists, me' voice to denote toughness). See what you think:

http://chicago.metromix.com/movies/p...ontent?photo=1

[erwin]

Wearing out the welcome

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Adam Sandler never had a welcome from me .... it's always been a mystery to me how someone so bereft of charisma could make it in show biz.

I would have said that Eddy Murphy deserves to be there ... his tics just grate these days.

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[ian.64]

Wearing out the welcome

I would have said that Eddy Murphy deserves to be there ... his tics just grate these days.

I was watching a movie channel and listening to some music with the telly sound turned off - waiting for another film to begin - and caught the last 20 minutes or so of Norbit. Maybe it's me, but is it possible for a film to be so lousy that it seems worse when the sound's off?

[Stumpy Pepys]

Wearing out the welcome

Yeah, I once took a sleeper coach in Argentina, where I saw the remake of Bewitched with Will Ferrell and Nicole Kidman for the first time.

Even though my Spanish is a bit rudimentary, I could still tell it was bloody awful.

[ian.64]

Wearing out the welcome

I think I gave that one five minutes before I turned off in pure disinterest.

Back to thread matters: I nominate Leslie Nielsen. At first, his first Naked Gun movie carried on the sterling work of a man who played it straight and got huge laughs through doing so, using mountains of duff TV-Movie experience to go a completely diffent path to derive superb comedy.

Then the one-joke approach - a glorious one at the time - soon ran out of juice as he fell into the trap of thinking he was funny. Cue unfunny gurning and 'been there, done that' comedy pratfalls in movies that got less funnier as they went along. The words 'pack it in' seem appropriate.

[blameless]

Wearing out the welcome

Not much to fault on that list, although I must admit I've no idea who Dane Cook or Jim Sturgess are. I'd also add Hugh Grant, Ricky Gervais and Colin Farrell.

[Reed John]

Wearing out the welcome

That's a bit harsh on some of them. Eric Bana could still do good work. He was good in Munich.

Jack Black may turn out to be a good character actor and his main schtick is fine if used in a supporting position. I feel the same with Hugh Grant. He's only got one and a half characters in him but sometimes it's just the right character to plug in - like in About a Boy or Love Actually.

He's like that tool that mechanics use to compress piston rings to get the piston back in the cylinder. It's only got one application, but it works extremely well for that.

I still have hope that Mike Myers and Will Farrell will come up with something funny again. Love Guru looks really bad and I was shocked to hear that that basketball one Will Farrell did was bad.

But even if they don't, they can do other sorts of roles. Mike Myers was ok in 54, although the film sucked overall, and Farrell was good in that one where he hears his life being narrated by Emma Thompson.

Adam Sandler just seems to get worse and worse and he's not helped by his insistance on supporting his terminally unfunny friend Rob Schneider. That Zohan film looks like it could be the worst of the year. It's sad because Sandler did some good stuff on SNL and some of his earlier films like The Wedding Singer were ok.

[hobbes]

Wearing out the welcome

Happy Gilmore was a work of uncommon genius too.

[G-Man]

Wearing out the welcome

Steve Martin turned into sentimental crap or crap satire after he did the American version of Cyrano de Bergerac.

Al Pacino. Almost invariably a parody of himself since Scarface.

Jack Nicholson. A fucking cliché these days, mostly. Though he was fine in About Schmidt.

Robert de Niro when he appears in crap like that Meet The Fockers and Analyze This and That.

Sylvester Stallone, the precise moment Rocky II ended.

Chevy Chase, possibly after Fletch.

And bow I'll look at that link which started this thread.

[G-Man]

Wearing out the welcome

When the fuck was Martin Lawrence ever welcome? Or the wank-voiced Chris Tucker?

[Amor de Cosmos]

Wearing out the welcome

Jim Carrey seems to have lost the plot too, rather in the way that Robin Williams and Peter Sellers did before him.

[Heliotrope]

Wearing out the welcome

I'm not a big fan of Nicholson, but he was great in The Pledge.

[Guest]

Wearing out the welcome

Adam Sandler was astoundingly good in Punch-Drunk Love.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Wearing out the welcome

Adam sandler was unspeakably bad in the movie Big Daddy. A movie that could have killed Jon Stewart's career stone dead before it ever took off.

Jim Carrey is just an annoying gurning hyperactive gimp. manic 'humour' like that just doesn't impress me very much.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Wearing out the welcome

Carrey and Sandler should really stick to straight acting. The films I've seen where they have – The Truman Show, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Punch Drunk Love – I've all really enjoyed.

[Mitch]

Wearing out the welcome

I think Jim Carrey's brilliant-to-twat ratio is pretty good really.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Cable Guy are both top. And even in his rubber-faced fartsmith mode, Me, Myself & Irene and Liar Liar are really funny.

[Guest]

Wearing out the welcome

Jim Carrey is just an annoying gurning hyperactive gimp.

Unlike Sandler who only has one, Carrey has three or four films that show this is lazy received wisdom. The Truman Show, Eternal Sunshine, The Cable Guy, Man On The Moon: he's good in them all.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Wearing out the welcome

Hmm, I thought that the Cable guy was just another awful jim Carrey "I'm deranged, I'm the riddler" Vehicle. I've avoided the other movies just because he's in them.

[G-Man]

Wearing out the welcome

Jim Carrey was very funny in Dumb And Dumber, but to my mind never since. And I can't take him seriously in a straight role.

I have very mixed feelings about Steven Carell, another one who thinks that manic is hilarious. To his credit, he has mostly suppressed the urge to do that shtick. And I thought he was excellent as the depressed guy in Little Miss Sunshine.

[Disco Child Ballads]

Wearing out the welcome

The Cable Guy is a much underrated film. It's possibly the best thing that Ben Stiller has ever done.

[Incandenza]

Wearing out the welcome

Pan Tau wrote:

I have very mixed feelings about Steven Carell, another one who thinks that manic is hilarious. To his credit, he has mostly suppressed the urge to do that shtick. And I thought he was excellent as the depressed guy in Little Miss Sunshine.

Huh? Have you seen The 40-Year Old Virgin or the American version of The Office? Hardly "manic." And he has the somewhat deadpan Get Smart coming out.

[G-Man]

Wearing out the welcome

Yeah, that's why I said he has successfully suppressed these urges to do manic shtick. But by instinct he is he sort of comedian who thinks that pulling crazy faces, moving manically and free associating is funny. It is something he does in interviews more than in movies.

[ian.64]

Wearing out the welcome

Jim Carrey was very funny in Dumb And Dumber, but to my mind never since. And I can't take him seriously in a straight role.

I think that Carrey succeeds in those 'serious' roles that touch, ever-so-slightly, upon the lighter, quirkier (for want of a better word) aspect of his persona. The biggest example is The Truman Show, where he treads the fine line between the sympathetic and the comic beautifully.

The other end of the spectrum is the godawful The Number 23, where attempts to turn him into a tortured soul beset by demons (not to mention an imagination-based version of him as this grizzled, cool-as-fuck detective) are embarrassing.

[Guest]

Wearing out the welcome

Yeah, that's why I said he has successfully suppressed these urges to do manic shtick.

Not much to worry about then, surely, if he has these instincts but they don't manifest themselves in, er, any of his best-known performances.

[Guest]

Wearing out the welcome

The Horse wrote:

Adam Sandler was astoundingly good in Punch-Drunk Love.

This is the wrongest post ever written. How I hate that film.