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Starship Troopers' wooden cast only elevated its satire.
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00:00So, even the best writing and tightest direction can be undone by a bad performance or two,
00:06where a miscast actor or downright shambolic performance fatally distracts the audience
00:11from the story and indeed the characters. And so, with potentially hundreds of millions
00:16of dollars on the line, as well as their own artistic reputations, filmmakers tend to invest
00:20a lot of time and energy into ensuring that they've got the right actors for the job.
00:24But there are some rare occasions where an actor gives a bad performance that's actually
00:29to the movie's overall merit. But whatever the case, we're here to chat about them today.
00:32As I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 movies that actually benefited
00:36from bad acting.
00:3910. The Matrix
00:40Now, Keanu Reeves is an absolutely fascinating human being. He's so effortlessly likable,
00:46enough so that sheer charm alone has allowed him to shrug off a number of critically maligned
00:50performances over the years. And surely, the most consistent criticism levelled against
00:54Reeves is that he's a bit wooden, demonstrating a lack of emotional effect which in turn
00:59prevents the audience from fully connecting with his characters. But that flattened quality
01:04was totally perfect for the role of Neo in The Matrix, a character who is basically supposed
01:09to be a blank slate, more or less devoid of feeling, especially in the early going.
01:13Now, that isn't to say that Reeves is distractingly terrible in the film, but in an ensemble including
01:18Carrie-Anne Moss, Laurence Fishburne, and Hugo Weaving, he's certainly the weakest link.
01:23Yet, the Wachowskis were smart enough to appreciate that Reeves' malleable stoicism actually made
01:28him a superb fit for the rather reserved computer hacker who becomes the saviour of the human
01:33race.
01:349. Clerks
01:35Kevin Smith's Clerks is one of the most iconic and beloved independent films of the 1990s,
01:41a testament to how an inspired vision can compensate for a lack of budget or indeed quality actors.
01:47Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson star as slacker protagonist Dante and Randall, and given
01:52that neither of them had acted before, it wasn't terribly surprising that the amateur quality
01:56of their performances has been consistently noted by viewers ever since. In countless scenes,
02:01the pair are kind of robotically just speeding through their dialogue in a way that seems
02:05completely unnatural and unconvincing, and yet this lends a certain charm to the overall
02:10product.
02:11That stilted quality accentuates the film's generally thrown-together kitchen-sink feel,
02:16and while it might seem to initially undermine the realism, it also reminds the audience that
02:21we're effectively watching real people rather than movie stars.
02:25Kevin Smith's movies have rarely been about their acting prowess or technical filmmaking.
02:29He's a dialogue guy, and that's never been more abundantly clear than in this career-making
02:33debut. The pair certainly improved by the time the sequel came around, but their lack of acting
02:38experience was actually a weird and unexpected net positive for the original.
02:438. The Terminator
02:45James Cameron's 1984 sci-fi horror is the movie that put both the director and the star on the map,
02:51and in selecting Schwarzenegger to play the titular murderer cyborg, Cameron made arguably one of the
02:56shrewdest casting choices in cinema history. There's no mistaking the distracting awkwardness
03:02of Arnie's acting throughout this film, yet that robotic quality is ultimately quite perfect for the
03:07role of a killing machine that is impersonating a human. There's something totally off about the
03:13inexperienced Schwarzenegger's performances that only makes his infiltrator cyborg that much more
03:18unnerving to observe. Combined with some of the makeup department's most inspired choices,
03:23such as spraying his face with Vaseline to give an off-puttingly fake sheen and then later shaving
03:28his eyebrows, Schwarzenegger's clunky performance is molded in just the right way by Cameron,
03:33and the rest, of course, is history.
03:367. Old
03:37M. Night Shyamalan's Old was undeniably one of the most divisive films of last year,
03:42the filmmaker's latest Twilight Zone-esque genre romp that entertained as many as it indeed irritated.
03:48Even those who enjoyed the film would have surely had to have conceded that the performances of its
03:52central cast are, to be polite, eccentric. Talented actors with proven track records like
03:58Gail Garcia Bernal, Alex Wolfe, and Eliza Scanlon are bizarrely unconvincing throughout this film,
04:04in which they play strangers trapped on a beach which is rapidly aging them.
04:08Right from the film's very first scene, the performances feel distractingly tone-deaf,
04:12with the actors struggling to make sense of Shyamalan's characteristically obtuse and unnatural
04:17dialogue. While a charitable reading of the film would say that Shyamalan directed his actors to give
04:22intentionally stilted performances, in the same way that Jorgos Lanthimos does for his movies,
04:27it does seem far too inconsistent for that. One never gets the impression that the actors aren't
04:32trying to give earnest performances in the service of Shyamalan's off-kilter script, and yet the
04:37off-putting result of these efforts is a parade of weird acting that only accentuates the disturbing
04:43nature of the movie.
04:446. Wonder Woman
04:46While many protested Gal Gadot's initial casting as Wonder Woman on the grounds that her slender
04:51physique didn't quite fit with the more traditionally muscled conception of the character, others
04:55questioned whether the inexperienced Fast and Furious star had the acting chops to do the
05:00part justice. And in 2017's original Wonder Woman solo movie, Gadot was certainly lucky to be taking
05:06part in a well-written, solidly directed superhero flick while surrounded by a strong ensemble cast.
05:11Much like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gadot isn't actually an acting natural, and it's clear watching her
05:17performance as Diana in Wonder Woman that she's massively out of her depth. Her line readings just
05:21feel stiff and odd, and yet that ultimately is quite perfect for an alien having to learn to live
05:27amongst humanity for the first time. There's a quirky charm to her misplaced fish-out-of-water vibe
05:33that perfectly aligns with Diana's journey throughout the film, in effect disguising the fact that she's
05:37just not a very good actress. 5. Dazed and Confused
05:42Richard Linklater's legendary coming-of-age comedy Dazed and Confused is jam-packed with
05:47on-the-rise young actors who then went on to become stars in their own right, such as Ben Affleck,
05:52Mila Yonovich, Matthew McConaughey, Joey Lauren Adams, and Renee Zellweger. There's a laid-back
05:56naturalism to most of the performances on offer, and then there's Wiley Wiggins' toe-curling turn as
06:03awkward freshman Mitch Kramer. Wiggins was a non-actor who was discovered by Linklater during
06:08production, and without getting too mean to a 15-year-old unprofessional performer, it definitely
06:13shows. Wiggins' performance is often singled out for its cringeworthy affectations, namely the
06:18embarrassing sequence where he attempts to flirt with Sabrina and awkwardly touches his nose
06:22repeatedly in an attempt to seem, well, awkward. In recent years, the director blamed himself for
06:28letting Wiggins touch his nose so bloody much, and while it's basically infuriating to watch,
06:32it does feel strangely authentic for a goofy, nervy weirdo like Mitch.
06:374. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
06:39When ranking the James Bond actors, the almost de facto last place is George Lazenby, who suited
06:46up to play 007 just once in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. It's a criminally underrated entry into the
06:52Bond canon, in part because many fans weren't particularly taken with Lazenby's off-key performance.
06:57Lazenby, an Australian model and non-actor, was an unquestionably strange
07:02choice to take up the mantle from the legendary Sean Connery, and his unassured performance could
07:06only ever seem massively inferior by comparison. But, accepted on its own terms, Lazenby's lack
07:13of acting experience is actually basically perfect for the sort of James Bond this movie gave us,
07:18which is a more vulnerable, externalised spy. This is in large part because Lazenby's line readings
07:24and facial expressions are totally unsubtle, rendering his 007 as an open book compared to
07:29the more suave-composed Man's Man played by Connery. Given that On Her Majesty's Secret Service gave
07:35audiences the most emotionally exposed and available Bond up until this point, Lazenby's over-earnest,
07:41skittish performance actually ends up working pretty damn well.
07:433. The Godfather
07:45The role of Don Corleone's enforcer Luca Brasi in The Godfather was played by Lenny Montana,
07:51a non-actor and real-life mob enforcer cast in the part after the original actor died of a stroke.
07:56Montana is clearly nervous during the iconic scene where he congratulates Vito on his daughter's
08:01wedding, a result of his lack of acting experience and anxiety over performing opposite an actor of
08:06Marlon Brando's stature. But, quite ingeniously, director Francis Ford Coppola decided to lean into
08:12Montana's mumbly performance, having him shoot an additional scene where he's seen practicing his
08:16speech to Don Corleone. In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, his strained performance might have
08:22come off as amateur, and a bit of ill-advised stunt casting. But the director had the good sense
08:27to roll with it, instead emphasizing his neurosis as a character trait of Brasi himself. All in all,
08:33it helps make him a more memorable and believable character, while underlining Don Corleone's
08:37standing in this world by having even a brutal mobster be very, very nervous around him.
08:432. Starship Troopers
08:44Now, you can get away with a lot of undisciplined acting in satire, and Paul Verhoeven proves that
08:49beyond any doubt in his terrific sci-fi war film Starship Troopers. Now, Verhoeven's film is lauded
08:55today for its political satire with regard to American foreign policy and the monstrous military-industrial
09:01complex, with the use of hilariously unsubtle propaganda videos within the movie to hammer home
09:06that it is a mockery of a fascist, warmongering global government. Nevertheless, Starship Troopers
09:12is often criticized for the performances of its lead actors, especially Caspar Van Dien,
09:16Denise Richards, and Jake Busey, who many have suggested were cast more for their looks than
09:20their rather lackluster acting abilities. But that's exactly the point. Verhoeven himself
09:25admitted that he cast the lead actors based on physical appearance over acting skill, in an attempt
09:30to approximate the style of Nazi propaganda films, where the main actors were typically impossibly
09:35attractive examples of the allegedly superior race. And so, it makes sense that a film about
09:41humanity exerting its own will over aliens is led by beautiful young people who are, ultimately,
09:47empty vessels where acting is concerned.
09:491. The Wicker Man
09:51The 2006 remake of the classic horror film The Wicker Man is one of the strangest pieces of cinema
09:56you'll ever see. Panned by critics and audiences upon release, it additionally received five Razzie
10:02nominations, including a worst actor nod for Nicolas Cage. Cage's performance is definitely
10:07something, for sure. It's as though he took one look at the script and just said,
10:11yeah, f*** it, delivering a bonkers madcap performance that completely uncouples the film
10:16from any sense of reality or genuine suspense. And yet, the Wicker Man remake is also a terrible
10:22movie that would have quickly been forgotten were it not for Cage's campy trainwreck of a performance.
10:27Instead, his cartoonish work has effectively allowed the film to live on as a trashy disaster
10:32piece and, indeed, a long-standing internet meme. Years later, Cage admitted that the film was
10:38absurd and claimed that his performance was intentionally over the top to that effect.
10:43Is it good acting? Not a chance, but to the same token, it's a performance that basically
10:48transcend traditional markers of quality acting and thus makes sure that we bloody well remembered it.
10:53And there we go, my friends. Those were 10 movies that actually benefited from bad acting. I hope
10:58that you enjoyed that and please let me know what you thought about it down in the comments section
11:01below. As always, I've been Jules. You can go follow me over on Twitter at RetroJ with a zero,
11:06or you can swing by Live and Let's Dice, where I do all of my streaming outside of work,
11:10and it'd be great to see you over there. And I'll speak to you soon. Bye.
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