Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, and Rachel McAdams could carry a romantic comedy on awkward glances alone. Aloha buries that advantage beneath a military-contracting subplot and dialogue that strains painfully for charm. McAdams finds some feeling in an old relationship, but Cameron Crowe keeps interrupting the human connections to deal with satellite business. Even Bill Murray struggles to make this Hawaiian getaway feel inviting. | © Columbia Pictures
Entire alien civilizations get more attention than the people leading us through them in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Dane DeHaan’s twitchy intensity sits awkwardly inside a swaggering space-hero role, while Clive Owen is handed stern military business. Ethan Hawke briefly injects some grubby showmanship, then disappears. The casting offers intriguing possibilities that the film barely pauses long enough to explore. | © EuropaCorp
Shrinking Matt Damon turns out to be considerably easier than giving him a compelling journey. Downsizing jumps from consumer satire to inequality to humanity’s future, leaving its cast to supply continuity the screenplay cannot. Hong Chau brings urgency and personality to Ngoc Lan, while Christoph Waltz supplies welcome mischief. Their appearances expose how much livelier this miniature world could have been with a clearer dramatic focus. | © Paramount Pictures
Uma Thurman understands the assignment: her Poison Ivy poses, purrs, and treats villainy as a glamorous occupation. Unfortunately, Batman & Robin surrounds that commitment with repetitive innuendo and frantic spectacle. George Clooney’s easy charm barely develops into a personality for Bruce Wayne, while Arnold Schwarzenegger’s tragic villain becomes a delivery system for ice jokes. All those distinctive performers, and the costumes do most of the talking. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
Michael Fassbender investigating murders in snowy Norway sounds like a perfectly reasonable way to spend an evening. The Snowman makes it feel like you missed several crucial scenes—and director Tomas Alfredson acknowledged that portions of the script were never filmed. Rebecca Ferguson and Charlotte Gainsbourg struggle to establish emotional stakes amid the gaps. Nobody can act their way around missing pieces of a mystery. | © Universal Pictures
Eddie Redmayne alternates between a shredded whisper and sudden shouting in Jupiter Ascending, making every entrance a small vocal emergency. Around him, Mila Kunis spends too much time receiving explanations about her cosmic inheritance, while Channing Tatum handles rescue duty. Both have comic instincts that might have enlivened this elaborate space fantasy. Instead, their chemistry has to compete with another briefing about who owns Earth. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
Watch Mark Wahlberg negotiate with a plastic plant and try remembering how intimidating he can be elsewhere. The Happening directs his nervous energy into bewilderment, gives Zooey Deschanel little room for her comic timing, and sidelines John Leguizamo’s warmth. M. Night Shyamalan’s stiff exchanges make ordinary conversations feel stranger than the unfolding catastrophe. The cast spends an apocalyptic thriller looking uncomfortable before the wind even picks up. | © 20th Century Fox
Sean Connery and Naseeruddin Shah sharing a Victorian adventure should have been an event. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen instead funnels their authority into introductions, mission briefings, and noisy action. Shah’s Captain Nemo looks magnificent but rarely becomes more than an imposing presence, while Connery supplies gravitas the story hasn’t earned. A team assembled from extraordinary literary characters ends up with surprisingly ordinary things to say. | © 20th Century Fox
Idris Elba gives Roland enough weary authority to suggest the Stephen King adaptation we might have had. Then The Dark Tower hurries him into another abbreviated explanation or gunfight. Opposite him, Matthew McConaughey’s Man in Black gets supernatural menace without much interesting psychology. Casting two such magnetic actors as mortal enemies should generate friction; this compressed fantasy barely gives their antagonism room to develop. | © Columbia Pictures
Everybody in The Counselor seems prepared to deliver a dissertation on desire, greed, or consequences. Holding an ordinary conversation proves harder. Michael Fassbender, Javier Bardem, and Brad Pitt wrestle with Cormac McCarthy’s elaborate speeches, while Penélope Cruz receives a disappointingly narrow role as the endangered fiancée. Ridley Scott assembles performers capable of communicating danger with a glance, then repeatedly makes them explain it at length. | © 20th Century Fox
Al Pacino and Christopher Walken turn up in Gigli, which is easy to forget beneath the Ben Affleck–Jennifer Lopez notoriety. Their brief appearances add eccentricity without rescuing a kidnapping comedy smothered in labored sexual arguments. Affleck’s bluster becomes monotonous, and Lopez’s assured screen presence gets trapped in an unconvincing romance. The film keeps demanding chemistry while giving its leads every possible reason to stop talking. | © Columbia Pictures
Let Viola Davis intimidate a room, Will Smith talk his way through danger, and Margot Robbie cause trouble: the ingredients are right there. Suicide Squad repeatedly interrupts those pleasures with introductions, flashbacks, and an exhausting supernatural emergency. Its barroom pause hints at the character-driven ensemble hiding underneath. Then everyone gets marched back outside to fight anonymous enemies instead of doing anything especially interesting with each other. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
The real disappearing act in Fantastic Four is the chemistry between Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, and Jamie Bell. Early scientific collaboration offers glimpses of an ensemble worth following, but isolation and an abrupt time jump interrupt its development. Once the action takes over, personalities shrink into powers and functions. Marvel’s famously quarrelsome family barely gets the chance to become acquainted. | © 20th Century Fox
Kate Winslet’s horrified reactions opposite Hugh Jackman’s dangling neck testicles demonstrate considerable professional discipline. They also establish the ceiling of Movie 43: accomplished actors sustaining jokes that have nowhere to go after the initial reveal. Halle Berry, Naomi Watts, and the sprawling ensemble receive similarly crude assignments. The problem isn’t that respected performers attempt filthy comedy; it’s that their timing and commitment so rarely meet an actual punchline. | © Relativity Media
Jennifer Hudson pours real hurt into “Memory,” an awkward reminder that human emotion still exists somewhere inside Cats. Judi Dench and Ian McKellen also bring theatrical experience that the restless camerawork and distracting digital bodies struggle to accommodate. Faces, gestures, and movement should be the attraction in a musical. Here, you spend half the performance trying to understand how the performers’ bodies are supposed to work. | © Universal Pictures
A great cast can sell a movie before anyone has seen a trailer. Then the film arrives, and you’re left watching actors you love wrestle with dialogue nobody could rescue. These 15 movies wasted incredible acting talent on thin characters, baffling scripts, and roles that barely gave their stars anything to do. Imagine landing that cast and handing them this material.
