Worst Actors - Shia LaBeouf

Shia LaBeouf is pretending to be sorry about
ruining the 80's for everyone.
Source: gossipalacarte.com

There are a few of actors that are currently working that, when I know they are involved with a film project, I avoid like the plague.  I have covered a few of these already but while I do really dislike actors like Adam Sandler and Katherine Heigl, I have seen movies that feature them that I have liked.  This is not the case with Shia LaBeouf, a former-child-star-turned-professional-douchebag who ranks high on my list (maybe even the very top) of the worst A-list performers of all time. It is really hard for me to pinpoint what it is specifically that I find so ineffective or flat out annoying about “The Beef”.  I can definitely point out what I did not like about his various performances.  It maybe his annoying behavior on screen, his voice, the fact that he is incapable of closing is freaking mouth!.. I do not know for sure what it is specifically, though. I wasn’t aware of LaBeouf as an actor until a few years into his career.  Still, I will start at the beginning with this guy, because I think it goes to the point of why he should be avoided like the plague.

Shia LaBeouf got his start in single-episode cameos in various TV shows like ER, the excellent-but-short-lived series Freaks and Geeks, and the X-Files.  He appeared in a few kids movies but none that were particularly notable (that is unless you count the re-release-dub of Studio Ghibli’s Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind).  His first recognized, lead role was on the Disney series Even Stevens, a show I have never seen and this I wear this fact as a badge of honor.

Shia LaBeouf is enjoying his time at a commune focused
on the worship of shawarma and the band Rusted Root.
Source: avclub.com

During his three-year run on Even Stevens, LaBeouf slowly began a rise in mainstream cinema, though all of the movies he was in were bad.  It started with the family movie Holes, based on the book by Louis Sachar.  The story involves a boy named Stanley who is wrongfully-convicted of theft and as punishment, chooses a work camp over jail time  When he gets there he and the other kids are forced by a corrupt warden (Sigourney Weaver) to dig countless holes in search of buried treasure.  The movie goes deeper than this primary plot with some intrigue about a family curse, but that does not alter the fact that the acting, by everyone in-general and LaBeouf in-particular, here was bad.  The movie was praised for its story but with film, story is only part of the larger equation.  

After Holes, LaBeouf had small parts in two dreadful sequels, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd.  Both films are famous for their badness, so I don’t think I’m breaking anyone’s hearts by simply calling them pieces of trash.  Still, unfortunately, LaBeouf kept on trucking.  He had a role in the by-the-numbers and mostly-ignored golf sports drama The Greatest Game Ever Played and a part in the dreadful action flick Constantine.

His next major movie was the film adaptation of Isaac Asimov's series of shorts: I, Robot.  The Hollywood adaptation of this thought-provoking examination of man creating life and his will being exacted on said life is a butchering to say the least.  Action movie cliches abound in this hot mess.  There are tons of ugly CGI explosions, Will Smith defying the laws of physics and LaBeouf, in a smaller part, shouting and screaming his lines.  I guess people really liked that screaming because that would become his default acting mode from here on out.

Disturbia, released in 2007, was a shallow, uninteresting Rear Window knock-off.  I would like to point out that some genius over at Dreamworks thought this perpetually-dumbfounded-looking, droning ass was a replacement for James Stewart.  Just.. let that sink in for a moment.  Disturbia was bad, but successful.  Somewhere along the lines the film’s success was attributed to LaBeouf and this put him over the top in the eyes of Hollywood.  However, in spite of Disturbia’s success, LaBeouf was already lined up for his worst role to date… and boy-oh-boy is it a doozie!

Shia LaBeouf's career simulator.
Source: tvrecappersanonymous.files.wordpress.com

The idea for a live-action Transformers movie had been floating around Hollywood for a while.  There were project pitches, press releases and rumors going back as early as the mid-90’s but it seemed like every time one party was interested, they could not get a producer, writer, director, or any combination thereof, to sign on.  Well, in 2007, long-suffering fans finally got the movie they had waited roughly two decades for.  The initial buzz was huge.  Steven Spielberg was lined-up to produce, the original Optimus Prime, Peter Cullen, was cast to voice the Autobot leader… and that’s pretty much where the excitement wore off for a lot of people.  A majority of the early fan-rage came out in flames when Michael Bay was announced as the director.  Bay’s distinct… style (?) … is widely regarded as one of the most horrid wastes of film imaginable.  Bay spent much of the 90’s working with blockbuster producer Jerry Bruckheimer, but that partnership ended shortly after Bad Boys II tanked.

Michael Bay flooded Transformers with his trademark: unnecessary comic relief.  These gag “characters” became more central to the “story” than the titular Transformers.  Countless sex gags, toilet humor and stupefying slapstick dominated every scene and every time the movie started to feel grandiose and epic, something utterly idiotic would happen, completely wasting what little effort was made to give the film a mythos.  Michael Bay owns about 80% of blame for this failure.  Spielberg gets 10% for his now-commonplace hands-off, just-sit-back-and-make-money approach and the other 10% falls on the cast.  Shia LaBeouf’s character Sam is thoroughly unlikable.  He talks to everyone like they’re pieces of crap, he screams at the heroes, he shouts every line with a guttural droll that makes him sound like he just tripped over puberty and he spends scene-after-scene standing around with his mouth agape, as though there is a stage hand off-screen who is there to toss him Cheetos between takes.  LaBeouf’s Sam, being the lead in this franchise, is the character we are meant to relate most to, yet he is so badly-written and such a tremendous asshole in all three movies that there is just no way I can.  I cannot see myself cheering this guy on.  He is the only guy in the history of the world who would actually be pissed at the fact that he got a nice car from his dad that also happens to transform into a freaking giant robot.  Am I missing something here? What is worse is I think this character was actually meant to be a Michael Bay proxy! (I feel so unclean right now)

Now, as much as I hated Transformers, I had to see LaBeouf’s next movie.  The Indiana Jones franchise is easily one of  my favorite film series.  Issues I had with Temple of Doom aside, the character of Indiana Jones is an iconic, important film character.  So, I was legitimately excited about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  Then I actually saw it.

I was mad about Transformers, but I did not go into the theater expecting greatness.  At the very minimum I expected to be moderately-entertained.  So, imagine my surprise when I saw this piece of ASS!  Kingdom is the worst sequel to any quality film franchise I have ever seen.  I hate it more than the Star Wars Prequels, more than Rocky V, more than Alien: Resurrection. I hate this movie more than any of them.  Indy 4 is a complete betrayal plagued by indifference from the creative team and a money-grubbing George Lucas’ talentless hands scraping all over this bastard project.  Every little moment of awfulness in this movie reminds me why I hate major Hollywood.  It is everything bad about modern films in one, ugly, unimaginative, boring mess.  

LaBeouf is just terrible in his crap.  We see him swing through trees with CGI monkeys, get hit in the groin by tree limbs, shout incoherently and then, after all of this, they have the inflated, bright-red BALLS to give him Indy’s hat!  GO TO ALL OF THE HELLS!!!  Fan rage about this movie is nothing fresh or clever, I know.  It has been documented, and repeated, and removed, and reported and perma-banned.  Yet, you will not find a sane, intelligent defender of this movie.  Still, if you do, against all odds, please make sure this person cannot procreate.  Do everything you can as the fate of humanity just may depend on a single makeshift sterilization.  

With all the rage I felt over the crushing of a childhood icon, I still found the Transformers sequels to actually be worse!  Worse than Indiana Jones 4, people!!!  The second film, Revenge of the Fallen, suffered delays due to a WGA strike, which forced Bay himself to ultimately touch up the remaining scenes in the unfinished script.  Needless to say, Bay is no Walt Whitman, and when his awful, awful additions were put to screen, it became almost unanimous that Michael Bay was a shoo-in for a Razzie.. and he got one!  In fact, Bay was nominated for a Razzie for his directorial work on all three Transformers films, but Revenge of the Fallen was the only one to win.  I’m not going to dwell too much on Revenge of the Fallen’s endless misogyny and racist “humor” as that has been well-covered in hundreds of reviews online, but Revenge of the Fallen deserves its title as the worst of three entirely awful films.

Dark of the Moon followed shortly after and was met with equal derision from fans and critics, but, like its predecessors, it made money.  Dark of the Moon was not as bad as the other two, if only due to it cutting back somewhat on the sexism and racism and the recasting of the vacant Megan Fox with the still-bland-but-slightly-better Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.  The movie held on to Revenge of the Fallen’s co-writer Ehren Kruger but without Bay’s “additions” the screenplay was a little better.  It wasn’t good!  Not by a long shot! Cut me some slack, though, as I’m trying to dig a little gold nugget out of three turds here… it is not an easy or pleasant task.  

The reception of the Transformers movies was mixed.  They were widely successful, but fans of the original series (myself included) hated them and Shia LaBeouf was right in the middle for me.  Yeah, I hate Michael Bay.  I would call him dirt, except I kind of like dirt a little more than Bay.  Still, I cannot, and will not let LaBeouf off the hook for these movies.  If I called his performances as Sam “awful”, that would be dishonest, because I really could not believe a film character could be this bad.  Johnny from the Room is Rhett Butler by comparison.  I would take Halle Berry as Jinx in Die Another Day (coming soon, by the way) acting alongside Victoria Jackson in a stadium full of drunk vuvuzela players over Sam-I-Wish-His-Herpes-had-Syphilis-Witwicky any day!  He is, at least in my book, a strong contender for the worst character in any major movie in film history, and yes, he just may rank worse than Bella Swan or.. GASP!!! Jar-Jar Binks!

Okay… Deep breaths...

I cannot really comment on any other later performances in LaBeouf’s career for two reasons:  One: he has not had many roles of note since Transformers 3, and two: After seeing the Three Films of the Darkest Depths of Cinema HELL I could not take anymore of this talentless nothing of an actor.  I have seen good actors give bad performances.  I have seen terrible actors give good performances.  However,  I have not, out of all the films I have seen spanning over a hundred years of cinema, seen a major, A-list, Hollywood actor act as bad as I have seen from LaBeouf in ANY of his roles.  He is one of the worst actors I have ever had the misfortune of witnessing perform, and I am not the only person who feels that way.  At least, so it seems, people are catching on, as studios have been passing him up on major roles since the Transformers and Indiana Jones fiascoes.

Worst Actors - Chris Tucker

Chris Tucker being just horrible in the Fifth Element.
Source: cdnds.net

Following my outrage over Adam Sandler’s existence, I wanted to do a quick, simpler article reflecting on the diminutive career of one of the most annoying performers of the millennial era.  Well, referring to the career of Chris Tucker as “millennial” may be pushing it.  Still, he did appear in a few films post-2000…  Like I said: A quick article… Yeah, right.

Chris Tucker’s most notable early performance was in the popular comedy Friday.  The movie was okay, not awful, but Tucker himself stood out.  The bug-eyes, loud-mouthed shrieking, his flamboyance, the boisterousness of his performance... I’m not sure what clicked with audiences but something did, at least for a while.  He gained a little more notoriety in a supporting performance in the Hughes Brother’s Dead Presidents, a heist film about a war vet trying to make ends meet on the streets.  The movie was met with mixed reviews, as was the Hughes’ other ode to ghetto life, Menace II Society. Both films were criticized by some for supposedly glorifying street violence.  Chris Tucker was obviously not up to the task of maintaining such a controversial track record, so he went back to playing the loudmouth comic relief roles that got him started.

The Fifth Element was a change of form for filmmaker Luc Besson, whose previous works like La Femme Nikita and Leon: The Professional were tough, gritty and risque.  The Fifth Element, on the other hand, was more of a fun sci-fi romp.  It was good… for the most part.  Yet, it did have one glaring issue: Chris Tucker was in it.  Now, I do not mean that he is in it for a few scenes then forgotten about.  No, he is a major character in the story despite having demonstrably nothing to do with the plot.  The Fifth Element has a cast member named “Tricky”.  His actually named on the credit roll is Tricky... and Chris Tucker is out acted by this guy.  This is the level of talent we’re dealing with here.

The Fifth Element bombed at the box office but did get some new life on home video and has since earned an admirable cult following.  Still, Chris Tucker was not deterred, obviously, as he went on to star in the comedy Money Talks alongside Charlie Sheen, who was already more or less a wash-out at the time.   Together, Tucker and Sheen were about as captivating as two Big Brother contestants that are locked in a room and given a double-dose of Ritalin.  The movie was boring, lame and all-around unsuccessful, despite making its meager $25 million budget back… barely.  However, the film’s director, Brett Ratner, was not done with Tucker yet.  First, however, Chris Tucker had to appear in his obligatory good movie.

This good movie is not something that is simply likable like the Wedding Singer.  No, Chris Tucker had the balls to be in one of the single best movies of the 90’s: Jackie Brown.  Quentin Tarantino’s throwback of a suspense flick starring former blaxploitation princess Pam Grier was a slam dunk.  However, I am more than happy to say that Chris Tucker’s part in this film was particularly small, only amounting to a few seconds of screen time, so I don’t have to give him any credit for it!  HA!  This is the point where a majority of people had almost forgotten Chris Tucker entirely.  He was still acting fairly regularly but most of his roles since Friday were either small, or in movies nobody saw.  That changed in 1998.  

Remember when I mentioned that Brett Ratner was not done with Tucker?  Well, here is the culmination of that “filmmaker’s” misplaced confidence.  The early 90’s saw a sudden stateside resurgence in the popularity of Hong Kong martial arts cinema, most notably in the form of a growing interest in superstar Jackie Chan.  He had already released a number of his homeland successes re-dubbed in English for American audiences and they did well... for the most part.  So, by the late 90’s, the Hong Kong action hero realized he could make significantly more money in U.S. productions, and he did just that. A majority of Chan’s American successes so far had been from Hong Kong filmmaker Stanely Tong. However, in order to garner further favor with American audiences, Chan’s big move would require him to work more with Hollywood producers, directors and actors, and this move was the birth of the absolutely brain-melting Rush Hour.  

Brett Ratner’s style has always been something along the lines of: Film a bunch of action crap and edit in lots of shots of stars swinging, sliding, screaming and hurdling about.  His style is chaotic and actually, very uninteresting.  There is often literally so much going on that your brain just sort of tunes most of it out, and one finds themselves ultimately bored.  I can best compare a Brett Ratner film to one of those 3D Magic Eye prints from the 90’s.  Once you learn to see the sailboat, it is kind of cool. Yet, no matter how seemingly-awesome what you are seeing really is, eventually you get tired of it and find yourself wanting to do something productive with your time. I think Willam went on to be a Neo-Nazi (double-movie-reference!).

Rush Hour is a special level of bad because it featured Chris Tucker at his worst and Jackie Chan at his most unintelligible.  Chan was trying in this load of crap but the shame on the veteran action star’s face is palpable throughout the film.  This is accentuated by the fact that Chris Tucker ultimately dominates much of the movie.  Between bouts of not being able to understand half of Jackie Chan’s dialogue (a problem addressed in the movie as a gag) and Tucker being an obnoxious douchebag through the entire film, I just felt bitter.  Add to that Chris Tucker’s actual lines, which are just back-to-back ethnic jokes at Chan’s expense, referencing numerous unfunny racist stereotypes that Hollywood still seems convinced are worthy of screen time.  If the roles were reversed, and Chan was commenting endlessly about Tucker’s race, somehow I don’t see this movie having as many fans.

So that’s Tucker’s legacy.  Yep, that's pretty much it.  In 2001, Tucker and Chan reunited for the obligatory Rush Hour sequel (because the first film made money).  It was the same movie except this time Tucker goes to Hong Kong!  Oh-ho, ZANY!  We get more lame references to Chan’s poor English, Tucker’s aggravating and chauvinistic lasciviousness, and a complete and total waste of Ziyi Zhang, which is just unforgivable.  Her appearance in Rush Hour 2 is best compared to Jet Li’s in Lethal Weapon 4.  She has no lines. She just does her villain-thing, has one lame fight scene at the climax and then is out of the movie.  Pathetic!

Rush Hour 3 was released in 2007 to generally-negative reception.  It barely cleared a profit.  I did not see it, so I cannot comment on it.  I just had no interest after the first two, and apparently neither did most people.  So, now here we are, Chris Tucker has had three film appearances since 2001.  He was in Silver Lining’s Playbook in 2012, which I found to be only an okay entry from rising filmmaker David O. Russell, and IMDB has Tucker listed in a rumored future role in Rush Hour 4.  Given that Rush Hour 3 barely broke even, I don’t really see a third sequel happening.  However, I have been wrong before.  The way I see it, by the time Rush Hour 2 came out, the public at large had pretty much forgotten about Chris Tucker.  Now, history has shown us that an actor can make a major comeback pretty quickly, so you never know.  Still, I don’t see this happening with this mostly-forgotten has-been.

Worst Actors - Tyler Perry

Tyler Perry.
source:stupidknews.com

Tyler Perry has had a rough life.  I empathize with him, but I will not and cannot let that background effect my opinion of his work. I have heard, from one member of thecinemasnob.com, one of Tyler Perry’s films compared to a minstrel show.  I found this to be a little extreme, but I do respect those guys and enjoy their opinions, and I can see how one can view his over-the-top, cliche-driven storytelling as more than a little offensive.

Tyler Perry escaped his rough upbringing and his reportedly abusive father to become a writer.  He was inspired by Oprah… I guess.  Now, go ahead and call me a skeptic, but Oprah more or less made this man, so I would not put it past her to fabricate some sort of influence on her part to take some credit for his “success”.  I’m not making any accusations, but I smell bullshit somewhere, and it’s not me.  I checked.  Twice.

Perry’s rise seemed far too rapid to be truly organic.  You hear about writers and filmmakers struggling in the indie scene for years before breaking out, yet Tyler Perry went from playwright to writer, director and star of major motion pictures in just under seven years.  Somebody was pulling some strings somewhere.  It certainly is not because he is the next Quentin Tarantino (who is not that great of an actor either, but is a stellar filmmaker); No, I attribute it more to a brush of luck and more than a little help from "someone" with a lot of influence.  

Perry’s first line of films were straight-to-video but were rather successful.  Services like Netflix and Vudu had not yet made video stores entirely irrelevant, so independent releases were still getting rated by rentals.  Perry entered the scene with his trademark character: the old-school, loudmouth matriarch Madea.  Madea’s Family Reunion is… well, it’s horrendous.  We get lots of typical jokes at characters' expense, mixed with heavy-handed family drama, likely stemming from Perry’s own life experiences.

Tyler Perry has been quite successful at pandering to a family-values black audience. This is a fine goal as a number of filmmakers made good careers out of pandering. However, there is still something about Perry’s own unique blend of dull, one dimensional writing, bland bored-as-all-hell acting and his utter refusal to not be the center of attention in any one scene, despite his complete lack of charisma, that makes him an easy target for detractors.  He wants recognition.  Oh, he’s recognizable, but not for the reasons he wishes.

Tyler Perry has maintained a certain level of financial success over the years, with his Madea movies still bringing in revenue and his supporting performances subsidizing his less successful ventures.  However, in 2007 we saw just how bad things could get.  Why Did I Get Married? is one of Perry’s stories he wrote very early on, adapted to stage and then rewrote for the big screen.  Of course, he has top-billing in this steaming heap and he takes 100% of the blame for just how absolutely awful this movie is.  This dull, boring, self-indulgent piece of crap was meant to be a strong piece of introspection, but turned out to be a big hanging piece of something else.  We are supposed to empathize and sympathize, but the characters in the story are indistinguishable from one another. This is due to Perry’s obvious inability to write for characters outside of his limited experiences, and thus they are all mere reflections of himself.  This further accentuates his arrogance, which shines in every role and every line of dialogue.

Tyler Perry’s next big attempt at depth was the film For Colored Girls, which is kind of like poorly-dramatized, all-black Vagina Monologues. However, we do not hear the words of women with strong feminist views, espousing gender equality, vulnerability and strength in mixed scenes. No, instead we get a commentary on social justice and a heavy-handed slap across the face if you do not fall into the film's very narrow market demographic.  Just listen to a freaking Beyonce album instead. It's shorter and, surprisingly, a lot less painful. There was no demand for this film to reach a mass audience, and the reception was overwhelmingly negative.  

The failure of For Colored Girls sent Perry straight back to the video market.  He continued to get limited theatrical releases on some of his films. Why Did I Get Married Too? was a tremendous flop of a movie that was more or less the same as the original and Perry was just as bland and boring in this film as ever.  Things looked almost over for Perry, but, for some strange reason, he was able to get a series of television shows lined up for TBS.  He would occasionally make cameo appearances as Madea on utterly bland, forgettable and meaningless family sitcoms like House of Payne and Meet the Browns (Hell, even the names scream “We are not even trying here”).  Still, things did not look good for Perry for several years.  

Still, somebody with a lot of money apparently likes this guy as he was able to land intermittent roles in major movies like Star Trek and Alex Cross.  He sucked in Star Trek (of course) but Alex Cross itself deserves some examination   Another trait Perry is often pegged with is his expression.  The one expression.  I have heard it described as an odd smile but to me it’s more like amused bewilderment.  He is so captivated by the fact that he is acting alongside people way more talented than him that he just cannot keep himself composed.  Perry spends the entirety of Alex Cross with this dumbass look on his face, as if he just thought of something really funny, but is trying to hold it in so as not to seem like a complete ass.  That, or he is perpetually constipated, either one is definitely possible.  Factor in the fact that the character of Alex Cross was cemented on film by none other than Morgan-FREAKING-Freeman and you can just see the embarrassing juxtaposition here.  Look at Along Came a Spider. Not one of Freeman’s better films, but he was still good in it.  Now, compare his performances as an aging-but-super-intelligent detective to that of Perry’s, which resembles a DMV worker about to close out his shift for a week’s vacation: bored but just a little happy that things are looking up.

What is worse is that Perry shows no signs of slowing down.  Even after a far-too-brief career rut, he has managed to maintain a degree of success in film, major or otherwise.  He’s also apparently still doing plays as well, so we have a lot of his bland, insipid, beige-ass writing and acting to look forward to in the future.  Yaaaaay... (said with all of the enthusiasm of a Tyler Perry character).