Everyone who cares about great acting loves PSH, his Oscar acceptance speech is one of my favourites and really says a lot about the quality of the man in addition to his acting. But even great men turn up in cinematic atrocities from time to time.
Or so I thought. This was really quite a difficult bottom five. Much more so than last weeks Paul Giamatti post.
1. Patch Adams
I shall bow to the superior wording of Roger Ebert on this one: "This movie is shameless. It's not merely a tearjerker. It extracts tears individually by liposuction, without anesthesia." On top of the obvious attempts to tug at the housewives heartstrings, I was really quite bored when I saw this one.
2. Along Came Polly
Salon.com used the line "for everyone who's been waiting for a love story between an anal retentive and a flake," which is perfect but aside from the terrible humour of yet another Aniston movie the acting from Stiller, Aniston (obviously) and sadly Hoffman is mediocre at best. Perhaps Hoffman's worst performance.
3. Flawless
A Joel Schumacher film. Pretty much tells you everything you need to know on this film. Even De Niro's most hardcore fans couldn't possibly defend the movie. You can see why Hoffman would have jumped at the role of a drag queen, it's one of those that real actors love but it's a shame he was swimming against a tide of awful.
4. Twister
I'm starting to clutch at straws here, I quite enjoyed this movie and so did a lot of reviewers. It's nothing special, it's not amazing AND most importantly it stars the indefensible over actor Bill Paxton BUT it's not on a par with Big Momma's House in terms of terribleness.
5. Red Dragon
This one really is an OK film, it's not great but it's OK. As a more faithful adaptation than the better Manhunter it's nice enough and Hoffman is good enough in it but really who would watch this more than once?
Clearly Hoffman has a near immaculate decision making process, only making the wrong choices rarely and in the case of Flawless he wasn't the star he is now. Agree? Disagree? Leave some blah below.
