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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 from
00:11the story and indeed the characters. And so, with potentially hundreds of millions of dollars on
00:16the line, as well as their own artistic reputations, filmmakers tend to invest a lot of time and energy
00:21into ensuring that they've got the right actors for the job. But there are some rare occasions
00:26where an actor gives a bad performance that's actually to the movie's overall merit. But
00:31whatever the case, we're here to chat about them today. As I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com,
00:34and these are 10 movies that actually benefited from bad acting.
00:3810. 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 leveled against Reeves
00:55is that he's a bit wooden, demonstrating a lack of emotional effect which in turn prevents the
00:59audience from fully connecting with his characters. But that flattened quality was totally perfect at
01:05the role of Neo in The Matrix, a character who is basically supposed to be a blank slate,
01:10more 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
01:27actually made him a superb fit for the rather reserved computer hacker who becomes the savior
01:32of the human race.
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,
01:51and given that neither of them had acted before, it wasn't terribly surprising that
01:55the amateur quality of their performances has been consistently noted by viewers ever
01:59since. In countless scenes, the pair are kind of robotically just speeding through their
02:04dialogue in a way that seems completely unnatural and unconvincing, and yet this lends a certain
02:09charm to the overall product.
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.
02:24Now, Kevin 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 suddenly 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.
02:428. The Terminator James Cameron's 1984 sci-fi horror is the movie
02:48that put both the director and the star on the map, and in selecting Schwarzenegger to play
02:53the titular murderous cyborg, Cameron made arguably one of the shrewdest casting choices
02:57in cinema history. There's no mistaking the distracting awkwardness of Arnie's acting
03:03throughout this film, yet that robotic quality is ultimately quite perfect for the role of a
03:08killing machine that is impersonating a human. There's something totally off about the inexperienced
03:14Schwarzenegger's performances that only makes his infiltrator cyborg that much more unnerving to
03:19observe. Combined with some of the makeup department's most inspired choices, such as
03:23spraying his face with Vaseline to give an off-puttingly fake sheen and then later shaving his eyebrows,
03:29Schwarzenegger's clunky performance is moulded in just the right way by Cameron, and the rest,
03:34of course, is history. 7. Old M. Night Shyamalan's Old was undeniably one of the most divisive films
03:41of last year. The filmmaker's latest Twilight Zone-esque genre romp that entertained as many
03:46as it indeed irritated. Even those who enjoyed the film would have surely had to have conceded
03:51that the performances of its central cast are, to be polite, eccentric. Talented actors with proven
03:57track records like Gail Garcia Bernal, Alex Wolfe and Eliza Scanlon are bizarrely unconvincing
04:03throughout this film, in 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,
04:37and yet the off-putting result of these efforts is a parade of weird acting that only accentuates
04:42the disturbing nature 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,
04:55others questioned 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.
05:12Much 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
05:32vibe that perfectly aligns with Diana's journey throughout the film, in effect disguising the
05:37fact that she's just not a very good actress.
05:395. Dazed and Confused
05:42Richard Linklater's legendary coming-of-age comedy Dazed and Confused is jam-packed with on-the-rise
05:47young 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.
05:55There's a laid-back naturalism to most of the performances on offer, and then there's
06:00Wiley Wiggins' toe-curling turn as awkward freshman Mitch Kramer. Wiggins was a non-actor who was
06:06discovered by Linklater during production, and without getting too mean to a 15-year-old
06:11unprofessional performer, it definitely shows. Wiggins' performance is often singled out for
06:15its cringeworthy affectations, namely the embarrassing sequence where he attempts to flirt
06:20with Sabrina and awkwardly touches his nose repeatedly in an attempt to seem, well, awkward.
06:25In recent years, the director blamed himself for letting Wiggins touch his nose so bloody
06:29much, and while it's basically infuriating to watch, it does feel strangely authentic
06:34for 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
06:45suited up to play 007 just once in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. It's a criminally underrated
06:52entry into the Bond canon, in part because many fans weren't particularly taken with
06:56Lazenby's off-key performance. Lazenby, an Australian model and non-actor, was an unquestionably
07:01strange choice to take up the mantle from the legendary Sean Connery, and his unassured
07:05performance could only ever seem massively inferior by comparison. But, accepted on its own terms,
07:12Lazenby's lack of acting experience is actually basically perfect for the sort of James Bond this
07:17movie gave us, which is a more vulnerable, externalised spy. This is in large part because
07:22Lazenby's line readings and facial expressions are totally unsubtle, rendering his 007 as an
07:28open book compared to the more suave, composed Man's Man, played by Connery. Given that On Her
07:33Majesty's Secret Service gave audiences the most emotionally exposed and available Bond up until
07:38this point, Lazenby's over-earnest, skittish performance actually ends up working pretty damn
07:43well. 3. The Godfather The role of Don Corleone's enforcer Luca Brasi in The Godfather
07:49was played by Lenny Montana, a non-actor and real-life mob enforcer cast in the part after
07:54the original actor died of a stroke. Now, Montana is clearly nervous during the iconic scene where he
07:59congratulates Vito on his daughter's wedding, a result of his lack of acting experience and anxiety
08:04over performing opposite an actor of Marlon Brando's stature. But, quite ingeniously, director
08:10Francis Ford Coppola decided to lean into Montana's mumbly performance, having him shoot an additional
08:15scene where he's seen practising his speech to Don Corleone. In the hands of a lesser filmmaker,
08:20his strained performance might have come off as amateur, and a bit of ill-advised stunt casting.
08:25But the director had the good sense to roll with it, instead emphasising his neurosis as a character
08:30trait of Brasi himself. All in all, it helps make him a more memorable and believable character,
08:35while underlining Don Corleone's standing in this world by having even a brutal mobster
08:40be very, very nervous around him.
08:422. 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
09:00industrial complex, with the use of hilariously unsubtle propaganda videos within the movie to
09:05hammer home that it is a mockery of a fascist, warmongering global government.
09:10Nevertheless, Starship Troopers is often criticised for the performances of its lead actors,
09:15especially Caspar Van Dien, Denise Richards, and Jake Busey, who many have suggested were cast
09:19more for their looks than their rather lacklustre acting abilities. But that's exactly the point.
09:24Verhoeven himself admitted that he cast the lead actors based on physical appearance over
09:29acting skill, in an attempt to approximate the style of Nazi propaganda films, where the main
09:34actors were typically impossibly attractive examples of the allegedly superior race. And so,
09:39it makes sense that a film about humanity exerting its own will over aliens is led by beautiful young
09:45people who are, ultimately, empty 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
10:02Razzie nominations, 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, yeah, f*** it,
10:12delivering a bonkers madcap performance that completely uncouples the film from any sense of
10:17reality or genuine suspense. And yet, the Wicker Man remake is also a terrible movie that would have
10:23quickly been forgotten were it not for Cage's campy trainwreck of a performance. Instead,
10:28his cartoonish work has effectively allowed the film to live on as a trashy disaster piece,
10:33and indeed, a long-standing internet meme. Years later, Cage admitted that the film was absurd,
10:39and claimed that his performance was intentionally over the top to that effect. Is it good acting?
10:44Not a chance, but to the same token, it's a performance that basically transcend traditional
10:49markers of quality acting, and thus, makes sure that we bloody well remembered it.
10:54And 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 RetroJWithAZero,
11:06or you can swing by Live and Let's Dice, where I do all of my streaming outside of work,
11:09and it'd be great to see you over there. And I'll speak to you soon. Bye.
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