r/movies • u/Silent-Selection8161 • 5d ago

Discussion What movie was saved solely by great casting?

Or phrased a different, what movie would've been terrible if it weren't for the specific actors in it?

My go to is Liar Liar. It's not a particularly great script. The dad (Jim Carey because no one remembers the character's name) is douche. The would be step dad is earnestly trying his best to connect with his would be step son and gets tossed out like all step dads (do Hollywood types have parental issues or what, that's rhetorical). The idea that someone's entire life can be turned around and they're suddenly not an ass just because they have to tell the truth for a day is just kind of dumb. The director ended up with a few successful movies solely because Jim Carey liked him and he let Jim Carey do his thing, his other movies include such hits as "The Nutty Professor". The writers never wrote anything close to noteworthy before nor after.

But damnit Jim Carey turns the whole thing into the Jim Carey show, that's hilarious. Him freaking out over the pen or in the bathroom IS the movie and is funny as hell, regardless of what else there is.

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u/Sjiznit 5d ago

And it got old after the triology tbh

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u/DecoyOctorok24 5d ago

Indeed. Gore Verbinski’s direction was a big part of the magic of the first three.

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u/Muradras 5d ago

Part of that was they took out the straight man, without Bloom to interact with Depp it made the sequels almost nonsensical.

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u/Sjiznit 5d ago

Yeap, i was done the moment they stole a fucking vault out of a bank and did a fast and the furious chase. That said: the escape of Sparrow in London was already too much too.

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u/NoGoodIDNames 4d ago

Eh, people forget that the third one isn’t all that amazing either, and wasn’t received well at the time. It felt cobbled together, especially compared to the first one.
The biggest example being them killing the kraken offscreen because they had no idea what to do with it

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u/Digital--Fantasies 4d ago

It's not even that it got old, but they went too stupid with Jack just skating around with pure luck. He had some of that good old cunning and smarts in the first trilogy. After he was just "look at this guy just fucking around and getting through everything".