Great lead performances in terrible movies

Jessica Lange - Frances
Marion Cotillard - La Vie En Rose
Robert Downey, Jr - Chaplin

meryl streep - julie and julia

Jeff Bridges - Crazy Heart

i have some examples for the opposite

The easiest and most broad answer to this (especially given the responses so far) is 'pretty much any biopic'. Biopics are almost uniformly horrible and unnecessary, but the lead actor/actress often does a pretty good job of obsessively capturing the subject in question. Jim Carrey in Man On The Moon instantly comes to mind.

ben stiller - greenberg

Debra Winger - The Sheltering Sky

Philip Seymour Hoffman - Flawless

Michael Moriarty in A Return To Salem's Lot.

The easiest and most broad answer to this (especially given the responses so far) is 'pretty much any biopic'. Biopics are almost uniformly horrible and unnecessary, but the lead actor/actress often does a pretty good job of obsessively capturing the subject in question. Jim Carrey in Man On The Moon instantly comes to mind.

what about milk? I thought that was a pretty great movie.

daniel day-lewis - gangs of new york

Val Kilmer in Real Genius

Good biopics I can think of off the top of my head are Ed Wood and 24 Hour Party People. I liked Milk as well. But those films purported to be about their subject but were all about more than that. The slavish 'follow a famous person's life from when he's a kid to when he achieves his goals/dies' Hollywood formula often results in boring pointless films, yeah.

Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor is pretty much the ultimate answer for me.

if a biopic is good you usually forget it's a biopic - e.g. raging bull or andrei rublev.

Ed Norton - American History X

wtf at real genius being a terrible movie

"Good biopics" is a future thread idea – unless it exists.

jim carrey - ace ventura pet detective

Jim Carrey has never been good in anything, except for Eternal Sunshine (and it's a small miracle he's as good as he is in that)

Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Faye Dunaway - Mommie Dearest

wow -- most of these ARE biopics

we have diff definitions of great performances AND terrible movies

(Had dinner w/ a H'wood friend last night who said that last one ruined Dunaway's career)
xp

I've read it too and, judging by her decisions post-MD, it sounds possible.

Julie and Julia isn't a terrible movie -- certainly the only Ephron movie I'd watch again.

Frances was the first one I thought of.

really if the LEAD performance is great, it's very hard for a film to be terrible.

thought that was common knowledge re: Faye Dunaway...?

she was great in Barfly tho

Orson Welles in Transformers (1986)
Scarlett Johansson's ass in Iron Man 2

I don't see why anyone would give a shit about defaming Joan Crawford in 1981, though.

Mommie Dearest is the opposite of terrible.

I'm going to see Greenberg tonight--I hope Jordan S. is half-right, half-wrong...I'm having a hard time coming up with something. A great lead performance probably automatically elevates an otherwise terrible film to worth-seeing for me--i.e., it's no longer terrible by definition. But maybe I'm overlooking something.

dunno if it was a *great* performance but I thought that joseph gordon-levitt kinda rose above the pretty fucking awful 500 Days of Summer.

really if the LEAD performance is great, it's very hard for a film to be terrible.

although i answered the thread q. i broadly agree with this. Great acting can rescue just about any film.

the big red dragon pterodactyl thing in Avatar
Dustin Hoffman in Sphere
Samuel L Jackson in Deep Blue Sea
Nic Cage in The Wicker Man

really if the LEAD performance is great, it's very hard for a film to be terrible.

Yeah, I don't agree with that. My example stands: I think Jim Carrey was really strong in Man On The Moon and really disappeared into the role, but the movie was little more than an unnecessary series of Kaufman performances which everyone had already seen (including, sorry to stray off-topic, the still-baffling decision to recreate scenes from Taxi utilizing the actual, aged cast of Taxi 20 years after the fact), and it was abysmal as a movie.

Danny DeVito as Mini-Me in Austin Powers 3

Ben Affleck in Armeggedon

(the prequel to Armageddon)(the sequel to Megiddo [the sequel to Omega Code)

I don't agree with it either. Frances is a compendium of baffling, poorly edited scenes, and Lange's work isn't quite enough to render it aesthetically pleasing.

Capr van Dien in Shark Attack

this old pissed-off guy from shark attack 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfSg85fbJko

And of course, Brando in Island of Dr. Moreau

this is the REAL canon

I'm going to see Greenberg tonight--I hope Jordan S. is half-right, half-wrong...

i really liked greenberg, but i like a lot of things people hate.

me too :-/

you guys are kind of stretching the definition of "lead performance" imo. The list of great cameos/ bit performances in terrible movies is much longer.

Robert Downey Jr. - Two girls and a guy

Robert Downey Jr. in...just about everything

Two Girls and a Guy is a good movie, maybe one of RDJ's two or three best.

Robert Mitchum was the King of this sort of thing back in the day. and before his comeback in The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke had more than a few great performances in shitty films.

nic cage in bad lieutenant

Two Girls and a Guy is a good movie, maybe one of RDJ's two or three best.

― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, June 1, 2010 11:02 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

I watched it again the other day, and found the other two performances to be pretty awful, especially Heather Graham. There isn't exactly a lot of great filmmaking either.

RDJ carries the movie.

nic cage in bad lieutenant

― cozen, Tuesday, June 1, 2010 11:05 PM (40 seconds ago) Bookmark

Nah this movie is pretty much awesome throughout. I mean come on, what about the "ohhh yeah" guy?

nic cage IS that movie

yeah, that's fair

Dennis (RIP) Hopper in "Blue Velvet". THAT'S RIGHT I WENT THERE

actually, that would have been my first post on the thread.

jim carrey in truman show would be second

It said great LEAD performances in terrible movies, and Hopper wasn't the lead (x-post). Kyle Maclachlan was.

Agree that Hopper wasn't the lead, but I thought he'd gotten top billing for himself nonetheless.

Huppert in The Piano Teacher

Colin Farrell in Cassandra's Dream, or at least it was one of the biggest gulfs I've seen between quality of performance and movie (I guess him and Euan McGregor are joint leads)

This isn't really the same thing, but sometimes I feel like I only really appreciate how charismatic certain actors are when I see them in a crappy movie they make watchable/that would be unbearable with most other actors - I thought this while watching Tom Hanks in Turner & Hooch. I thought Baby Driver was terrible, but Kevin Spacey and Jamie Foxx are so charismatic that it almost seems like a good film while they're on screen. John Hamm is good in it as well, but not so good that he makes you forget you're watching a terrible film, that's why I would put him in a different category to Spacey and Foxx

harvey keitel in city of industry comes to mind, he was thoroughly terrific as a vengeful crook hunting down stephen dorff. the movie is pretty generic at best, but keitel gives it his all like it’s tarantino-level.