These actors really gave it their worst.
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00:00No matter which way the Hollywood winds have blown lately, big and small hitters from across
00:05the A-list have delivered some pretty listless performances.
00:08Granted, it's not always the actor's fault.
00:11Whatever the cause, no matter the symptom, even the more decent films didn't stand
00:16a chance with these actors putting in their worst performances.
00:19So with that in mind, I'm Adam, this is WhatCulture, and here are 9 more actors who
00:24just gave their worst performance ever.
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01:46Alright, back to the list.
01:50Chris Evans and Arnade Amas first set our screens on fire in Rian Johnson's mystery
01:55movie Knives Out.
01:56This was followed up by an antagonistic set-up in the Russo Brothers' actioneer The Grey
02:00Man, which, although not an out-and-out success, still showed the pair made good big-screen
02:06companions.
02:07Therefore, it made sense that producers wanted to get them back together in a more co-operative
02:11role.
02:12Unfortunately, the film that united them for the third time was the secret agent action
02:16comedy Ghosted.
02:18Failing on both the action and comedy fronts, the film suffers from not really knowing what
02:23it is and where it belongs, and this extends to the cast.
02:27De Amas is bad, the usually reliable Evans is worse, and the pair don't have enough
02:32chemistry to strike a spark, never mind set fires.
02:35Now, much of the blame here can be placed on the script and overall direction of Ghosted,
02:40but the rest is on the performances.
02:43No two ways about it, Evans is the worst thing about this dull disaster.
02:48He falls flat on the banter and doesn't even sell a moment of the supposedly budding
02:52relationship with his co-star, definitely an all-time worst for the man who led Captain
02:57America and Snowpiercer.
03:00Harry Styles, My Policeman It's fair to say that Harry Styles is really
03:05only at the beginning of his acting career, with Dunkirk, Don't Worry Darling, My Policeman,
03:10and a cameo in Eternals as Eros under his belt.
03:13In his small amount of acting, however, he has demonstrated that, in the right role,
03:17he can actually shine.
03:19But in a more dramatically challenging role, the limitations of his range really begins
03:23to show, which is evident from his performance in My Policeman.
03:27Styles plays Tom, a closeted policeman in late 1950s England who falls in love with
03:33Patrick and Marion in a complex love triangle, but the implied anxiety and struggles his
03:38character faces are lost in a monotone performance of flat-line delivery.
03:42Seriously, it's like he's just reading from the page for the first time.
03:46David Dawson absolutely carries the scenes he shares with Styles, and it's very difficult,
03:52if at all possible, to buy Tom's innocence as anything but disinterest from Styles.
03:57Studios will continue to build his acting career because, hello, it's bloody Harry
04:01Styles, but his beautiful face and celebrity status will only take him so far.
04:07If he wants to be taken seriously as a dramatic actor, then he really needs to give better
04:11than what he offered in My Policeman.
04:147.
04:15William Thickner, Hypnotic
04:17Once a director you could comfortably mention in the same breath as Quentin Tarantino, Robert
04:22Rodriguez has spent the bulk of his career since the 90s creating a pretty uneven filmography,
04:28with highs in Once Upon a Time in Mexico and lows in Sin City, A Dame to Kill For.
04:33His recent effort, Hypnotic, sadly falls into the latter bracket, taking us into a
04:37sub-Matrix world where illusion and VR reign supreme.
04:42Despite having Ben Affleck in the lead role, who can, if nothing else, definitely put in
04:46a performance and pull serious numbers, the film is uninspired, confused, derivative,
04:52and, well, just really dull.
04:54Thickner stars opposite the ex-bat as Del Reyn, a gifted hypnotic who knocks over banks,
05:00makes no prisoners, and has something to do with the disappearance of Detective Danny
05:04Rourke's son.
05:05Thickner is an old hand at this kind of role, but that is precisely what's wrong.
05:10He spends the film sleepwalking through a part he's played a hundred times before.
05:14But it's not all on him.
05:16The script is thin, the dialogue stiff, and every actor on screen suffers as a result.
05:216.
05:22Amy Adams, Disenchanted
05:24Disenchanted follows up the 2007 fairytale fantasy, Enchanted, where the young, animated
05:30Giselle is blasted into the real world, in a real body, by a piece of sinister magic,
05:36and must find her way home before she's trapped there forever.
05:39Naturally, she found her handsome prince in the form of divorce attorney Robert Phillip,
05:43and opted to stay, signing off with a happily ever after.
05:47Well, almost.
05:49Disney has never been afraid of resurrecting an old property to profit off the back of
05:53the name and brand recognition, and so the House of Mouse dug up the bones of this moderate
05:58success story to put together a jangly sequel it could release straight to streaming.
06:03The sparkle of the first film is gone, along with its originality, and though Adams returned
06:08for an as-of-yet undisclosed sum, Disenchanted finds her at a career low.
06:14Almost totally at odds with the role she's playing, her performance feels weighed down
06:18by something, as if she herself has lost the magic.
06:21But don't say the title didn't warn you.
06:24Number 5.
06:25Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
06:28Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny had fans of the 80s adventurer raring to go, hoping
06:34that this, likely Harrison Ford's last outing in the role, would redeem the middling kingdom
06:38of the Crystal Skull and go out on a high.
06:41And while not the worst thing ever, James Mangold's entry into the series doesn't
06:46offer a whole lot to get excited about.
06:49All the hallmarks are there, the hat, the whip, the dry humour, but none of it feels
06:53fresh or essential.
06:55Least essential of all, though, is Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Helena Shaw, Indy's goddaughter
07:00and a slippery grifter to the core.
07:02More interested in getting her own way than sincerely engaging with the history old Dr.
07:06Jones is interested in.
07:08Having already succeeded on stage and television to a significant degree, a career low for
07:13Waller-Bridge isn't as damning as it sounds.
07:15Nevertheless, she brings a deep smugness to a 2.5-dimensional part in the Dial of Destiny
07:21that only serves to highlight the inadequacies in the plot and character motivations.
07:26No doubt designed to remind us of the savvy and street-smart Marion from Indy's first
07:30adventure, Waller-Bridge's delivery is instead smarmy to a fault.
07:35And to you that's watching, let's balance this out just a little bit.
07:38Why don't you let us know down in the comments of your favourite recent movie performance?
07:42And while you're there, you know the usual drill, make sure you give us a like and a
07:46subscribe.
07:474.
07:48Shawnee Smith, Saw X
07:49Despite Saw's self-proclaimed final chapter coming around in 2010, the Splatter franchise
07:54has lived on in various spin-offs and prequels since.
07:58While the quality of the films has varied wildly, Tubman Bell has been the one stalwart
08:03performance, marshalling the role in Saw X, the latest and potentially final instalment
08:08involving Jigsaw killer John Kramer, with a gravitas hitherto unseen in the franchise.
08:14His castmate, Shawnee Smith, didn't come quite as prepared.
08:17Returning as Jigsaw's protégé, Amanda, Smith cleaved away the more tender and conflicted
08:23aspects of Amanda's personality, and switched the hysteria up to full gear.
08:28This gives Amanda a kind of raw thirst for blood and punishment in Saw X that she rarely,
08:33if ever openly displayed in the original films.
08:36Perhaps the full blame can't be laid on Smith's shoulders, however, as almost everything
08:40about Saw X was constructed to give long-time fans the serving the studio clearly thinks
08:45they needed, only leaving room for Kramer to have any character development.
08:50And the less said about that insane wig, the better.
08:543.
08:55David Duchovny, You People
08:57With the weight of the world's money behind it, Netflix has presided over a raft of sensational
09:01films over the past decade, but it has also introduced us to some absolute shockers.
09:07Despite having Jonah Hill and Eddie Murphy on board, You People is of the latter category.
09:12The basic premise is geeky white Jewish man falls in love with a hip black woman, and
09:17the ensuing cultural clash that occurs via her overbearing father.
09:22Somehow director Kenya Barris manages to bungle this premise, and everyone comes out of it
09:26worse for wear.
09:28With You People's depiction of Jewish characters coming in for heavy criticism following its
09:32release.
09:33Murphy and Hill have had plenty of career duds to rival this, but the film's standout
09:38bad performance is David Duchovny, simply because it's the worst he's turned in yet.
09:43The usually humorous and charismatic actor struggles with a straightforward, embarrassing
09:47dad part, supposedly representing white boomer Judaism in a way that never lands.
09:53Again, as is so often the case, the weakness of the dialogue and script in general do a
09:58lot of harm here, but you'd think Duchovny would have been able to work through it better
10:02than this.
10:042.
10:05Ashton Kutcher – Your Place or Mine From one Netflix disaster to another, Your
10:10Place or Mine is another entry in the canon of the middling-to-awful rom-coms the streamer
10:15churns out on a regular basis.
10:18Except this time, instead of hiring the next up-and-coming nobody to flounder in the surf,
10:23they got noughties rom-com darlings Ashton Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon.
10:27The pair play Peter and Debbie, best friends who swap houses for a week, discovering in
10:31the process that the lives they think they want may not be what's best for them, and
10:36that each other might be the answer.
10:37Like Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail Before, the film keeps its romantic leads
10:42apart for as long as possible, but while this worked with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, who seem
10:47if not made for each other and at least comfortable in each other's presence, it doesn't for
10:51Kutcher and Witherspoon.
10:53Their long-distance interactions and screen time together speak not of two friends of
10:5720 years, but of an awkward couple who have been forced together for someone else's amusement
11:02– probably ours.
11:04And this is Kutcher's fault more than anything, sleepwalking through his scenes, soft-serving
11:08the emotional moments, and cruising towards the easy payday at the end of it all.
11:13Given that he has starred in films like Dude, Where's My Car?, he should be embarrassed
11:17that this one is his worst.
11:201.
11:21Megan Fox, The Expendables 4 With nearly a decade since the previous instalment
11:25in Sylvester Stallone's all-action, guns-and-muscle film series, it was high time for another
11:31Expendables.
11:32The world and filmmaking have moved on since 2014, and there was a real opportunity to
11:37comment on this, lampooning the 80s action hero in a new light while bringing on some
11:41young stars of today and tomorrow.
11:44But no, Stallone instead brought together the remaining fragments of the old team – or
11:49anyone he could get to still run around dodging bullets and explosions – and a host of new
11:54martial arts star villains, as well as 50 Cent, Andy Garcia, and Megan Fox.
12:00Inhabiting a similar yet more physically involved role to the one Charisma Carpenter had in
12:04the first couple of films, Fox is Lee Christmas' on-again, off-again girlfriend and new leader
12:10of the Expendables team.
12:12Not known for her action chops, the decision to bring Fox on board jars with the premise
12:16of the series – to bring together action legends in one film.
12:20Delivering lines throughout as if she's reading them for the very first time, the
12:24ex-Transformers star stuck out as hammy and unconvincing in a film series that is supposed
12:29to thrive on being hammy and unconvincing.
12:32The plot and dialogue aren't exactly up to scratch, but neither is Fox's performance,
12:37which helps to bring the film, and by extension the series, to new, perhaps unrecoverable
12:42goals.