Worst Performance of 2011
#5 - Glenn Close -- Albert Nobbs
Yes, this was an Academy Award-nominated performance, but Glenn Close as the title character is so one-note, emotionless, and all-out boring that she alone made this film a chore to sit through.
#4 - Taylor Lautner -- Abduction
Constantly mugging for the camera and overly mannered, he's the opposite of charming and charismatic. Lautner is simply painful.
#3 - Kathy Bates - Midnight in Paris
While most everyone in Midnight in Paris gives believable performances, Kathy Bates is so over-the-top and "fake" that she does the worst thing an actress can do -- make you remember you're watching a movie as opposed to a real story unfolding in front of your eyes.
#2 - Jordana Spiro - Trespass
I realize this is a movie that was released in only ten theaters and next to no one has even heard of it, but a bad performance is a bad performance and Jordana Spiro gives a whopper of disappointment as a coked-out former stripper. Granted, her role isn't exactly pivotal to the plot, but that even makes it worse since I felt they could have just cut her out of the whole thing and had a slightly better film.
#1 - January Jones - Unknown
Wooden. No other words are really needed to describe Ms. Jones's performance in the action flick Unknown. If you go to Google Images and throw "January Jones Unknown" into the search engine, you'll see the minute range of emotions on display from this "actress" in this film. Failing to show emotion or deliver a believable line reading, if this is the way Jones acts on Mad Men, there's no reason I need to add that show to my Netflix queue.
Previous Worst Performance Awards
All of Sucker Punch?
ReplyDeleteAnyone in Transformers?
Shark Night?
The Roommate?
Etc.
Ultimately, those movies you mentioned above weren't any good, but the actors in those films weren't exactly given a lot to work with. I mean, Shark Night? For what it was, those hick shark collectors did what they could. Same thing with The Roommate...although Leighton Meester was #5 on my list and I went with Glenn Close instead at the last minute.
ReplyDeleteIt's more depressing to me when there's a truly awful performance in a good or okay movie (see #s 3 and 1 as an example)...it makes their role stand out more than it probably should.
But Taylor Lautner had a lot to work with but ruined it.
ReplyDeleteMhm.
^.^ Contrarian!
In another's hands, Abduction may have been passable as fluffy nonsense. Unfortunately, he was the main draw and literally made me cringe while watching it.
ReplyDeleteI realize it's not a great argument, but over the past three years of this category, I tend to place people in it whom I've specifically "called out" in my reviews for heinousness. Lautner was specifically railed against by me in my review which is one of the reasons he's here.
That said, there is something contrarian about my comment, I realize...
ReplyDelete