10 terrible movies that wasted an incredible cast
Few things get movie buffs more amped than seeing a trailer for a new film with a cast list that boggles the mind. As all those famous, acclaimed names and faces flash up on-screen, it’s difficult not to get carried away with the sheer possibilities of the end result.
Unfortunately, more than enough films over the years have revealed the disheartening – verging on depressing – reality of moviemaking. Sometimes, despite a studio and a director putting together a cast of luminaries whose talents know no bounds, the movies they wind up making together can still be terrible.
You see, filling a movie with big names isn’t necessarily a sign of quality. Instead, more often than not, it’s simply a sign that the studio in question pays these big names handsomely. Or maybe the director has dirt on everyone, and the time has come to call in those favours.
Either way, casts need to gel together in perfect harmony, and sometimes it really is a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth. Here are ten terrible movies that wasted their undeniably incredible casts.
Terrible movies that wasted an incredible cast:
Amsterdam (David O Russell, 2022)
For this quirky period mystery, it seemed like David O Russell rounded up every single A-list star in Hollywood, then threw in any young up-and-comers he could find for good measure. The cast list is genuinely astonishing: Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Robert De Niro, Rami Malek, Zoe Saldaña, Chris Rock, Mike Myers, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Michael Shannon. Oh wait, I forgot: modern pop megastar Taylor Swift is also in the movie. That cast reads like the lineup for three Oscar contenders, let alone one.
Yet, here’s the thing: can anyone remember what Amsterdam was about? Did it make much impact when it was released in cinemas and then disappeared without a trace? Nope. Conventional wisdom may be that Russell’s luck finally ran out, and his history of – shall we say – problematic behaviour on movie sets caught up to him. That logic only goes so far, though, because general audiences don’t pay any attention to backstage reports of who wronged who in Hollywood. If anything, people likely watched the trailer and thought, “Nah, there are too many famous people in that thing. No way it’ll work.” And you know what? They were right.
The Big Wedding (Justin Zackham, 2013)
Before making The Big Wedding, director Justin Zackham wrote the Jack Nicholson vehicle The Bucket List and created the FX boxing drama Lights Out. His only previous directorial effort was a little-seen 2001 comedy named Going Greek. Somehow, though, when he was hired to remake the Swiss-French comedy Mon frère se marie, he pulled together a cast that included Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, Robin Williams, Amanda Seyfried, Topher Grace, and Katharine Heigl.
On the one hand, Zackham deserves some praise for nabbing a cast of that calibre. They must have all thought it sounded like a nice holiday in the more affluent parts of Greenwich, Connecticut. They may have been correct, too. Maybe The Big Wedding was a joy to shoot, and everybody had a whale of a time. Unfortunately, the movie was so forgettable that it came and went from cinemas quicker than a drunk auntie can clear the dancefloor at a real wedding. It received scathing reviews, Heigl picked up a Worst Supporting Actress nomination at the Razzies, and Zackham hasn’t directed a film since. Not a great outcome.
All The King’s Men (Steven Zaillian, 2006)
The poster for All The King’s Men, featuring a smoking Sean Penn entirely concealed by shadow, with the smoke from his cigarette illuminating the cast list, is a thing of beauty. It promises something moody and mysterious, with a stellar crop of actors, including Penn, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Anthony Hopkins, Mark Ruffalo, and James Gandolfini. If you also read the credits at the bottom, you will see that the film was written and directed by Steven Zaillian, the genius behind Schindler’s List, The Irishman, and Netflix’s Ripley.
This kind of pedigree should’ve guaranteed something that would make Martin Scorsese himself weep with joy at the possibilities of cinema. The movie received early Oscar buzz, too, which made it seem like a new modern classic was on the way. Sadly for everyone, the film turned out to be a disaster, somehow boring and melodramatic at the same time. Unsurprisingly, that predicted Academy Award glory never came to pass.
Gangster Squad (Ruben Fleischer, 2013)
Anyone watching the trailer for this egregious motion picture in 2013 would almost certainly have been fooled into thinking the next Untouchables was upon us. Here was an old-timey cops and gangsters flick about a group of crusading police officers given carte blanche to dismantle crime boss Mickey Cohen’s operation by any means necessary. All the men had slicked-back hair, sharp suits, and Tommy guns, while the women were sultry dames with questionable moral compasses. All the elements were there for greatness.
Instead, the movie’s ludicrously talented cast was left high and dry by a half-baked script and direction that looked incredible but had very little substance. Instead of Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Josh Brolin, Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Anthony Mackie, and Michael Peña charming and shooting their way through a worthy successor to that Brian De Palma/Kevin Costner classic, Gangster Squad was an underwhelming reminder that we can’t always have nice things.
Now You See Me/Now You See Me 2 (Louis Leterrier/John M Chu, 2013/2016)
Full disclosure: I don’t think the Now You See Me movies are terrible, per se. Instead, they’re mildly passable diversions with some hugely entertaining moments that somehow wind up feeling mediocre overall. Perhaps the disappointment comes from a nagging suspicion that the movies don’t live up to their pitch. The concept of a team of magicians who use their performances to distract from the elaborate robberies they’re actually committing is 100% solid gold. That should have been a recipe for a fun time at the movies.
Instead, the absolutely bonkers cast assembled for the two movies does solid work but never quite lets you forget that the Now You See Me movies are paycheque gigs. Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Mark Ruffalo, Mélanie Laurent, and Isla Fisher are all in the first film, while Lizzy Caplan and Daniel Radcliffe join them in the second one. If anything, the real magic trick is that gathering of stars pulling a middling film franchise out of the hat instead of a rabbit.
Don’t Look Up (Adam McKay, 2021)
To give you an idea of how smug, self-satisfied, and achingly unfunny Don’t Look Up is, I entirely agreed with its climate change message, which still left me cold. Even though I was 100% on board with the targets of the film’s satire – the American government, the media, vapid celebrities – it still felt like a squad of highly paid Hollywood rich guys and gals slapping each other on the backs in victory. That, my friends, does not make for a fun Netflix watch.
Before seeing Don’t Look Up, I would’ve told you that no movie could make me hate Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Mark Rylance, Jonah Hill, Timothée Chalamet, and Himesh Patel. As I watched the film, though, I realised with mounting horror that I was wrong. Hell, this movie even made me annoyed to see Michael Chiklis and Ron Perlman, the stars of The Shield and Sons of Anarchy, two of my favourite TV shows of all time. That takes some doing.
Righteous Kill (John Avnet, 2008)
I swear I’m not trying to pick on the legendary Robert De Niro. This may be the third time he’s appeared on this list, but it’s just how things have worked out. It’s easy to understand why he signed up for all three movies, to be fair. With Amsterdam and The Big Wedding, a host of other big stars were doing it, so why shouldn’t he get in on that action? Then, with Righteous Kill, it was a chance for him to work with Al Pacino again after collaborating so beautifully in Michael Mann’s crime epic Heat.
Heartbreakingly, though, Righteous Kill was proof that you really can never go home again. While it was undeniably still thrilling to see the two greatest movie stars in history on-screen together, the movie was them slumming it to an almost comical level. John Avnet (Fried Green Tomatoes, Red Corner) is no Michael Mann, and the script – about two NYPD detectives hunting a serial killer – was crushingly paint-by-numbers. Carla Gugino, John Leguizamo, and Brian Dennehy comprise a solid supporting cast, but they don’t have the same juice as Val Kilmer, Ashley Judd, and Tom Sizemore.
Snow White & the Huntsman/The Huntsman: Winter’s War (Rupert Sanders/Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, 2012/2016)
Snow White & the Huntsman boasted a cast that included Kristen Stewart, Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth, Sam Claflin, Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone, and Ian McShane. Its sequel, The Huntsman: Winter’s War, added Emily Blunt, Jessica Chastain, and Liam Neeson as its narrator. This is an embarrassment of riches for a two-film franchise that never really set the world on fire, and it makes you wonder just how much money Universal was throwing around at the time.
In the end, it’s hard not to see the Huntsman films as just another part of the misguided wave of live-action updates of old fairy tales given an action-heavy makeover in the 2010s. They’re just as bad as Red Riding Hood with Amanda Seyfried and Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters with Jeremy Renner, and marginally worse than the Maleficent movies. Best avoided.
Aloha (Cameron Crowe, 2015)
When Cameron Crowe put together his all-star cast for 2015’s Aloha, it was easy to get excited. Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, and Rachel McAdams were a strong lead trio, and support came from Bill Murray, Alec Baldwin, John Krasinski, and Danny McBride. OK, the story of a US Air Force officer returning to Hawaii to guide the launch of a weapons satellite in the skies above the island didn’t exactly sound like a laugh riot. Then, the film was engulfed in a whitewashing controversy thanks to Crowe casting Stone as a quarter Hawaiian, quarter Chinese character. But it could still be good, right? Wrong.
Aloha turned out to be Crowe in Elizabethtown and We Bought a Zoo mode, as opposed to Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous mode. Simultaneously too sentimental and borderline incomprehensible, the movie stranded its cast in a quagmire of unconvincing relationships and even more unconvincing spirituality. All in all, it felt like they needed another pass at the script to try and make it all mean something.
The Monuments Men (George Clooney, 2014)
When George Clooney stars in movies written and directed by the Coen brothers, cinematic magic happens. O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Burn After Reading, and Hail, Caesar! all feature Clooney at his eccentric, weirdo best. Heck, I even like Intolerable Cruelty, which not many Coen fans can say. Unfortunately, though, bad things happen when Clooney stars in and/or directs films that clearly aim for a Coen-esque energy.
First, there was Grant Heslov’s The Men Who Stare at Goats, which saw Clooney joined by Jeff Bridges and Ewan McGregor. It sucked. Then, five years later, Clooney stepped in front of and behind the camera for The Monuments Men, which had an even more stacked cast including Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, and John Goodman. It sucked even worse. Both movies proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that when it comes to marrying dark subject matter with an off-kilter comedic tone, the Coens have a magic touch that few others can come close to.
