6 Terrible Cameos That Just About Ruined the Movie
A well-handled cameo subtly acknowledges the fourth wall without taking the audience out of the flow of the movie. A poorly-handled cameo hurtles through the fourth wall and furiously pimp slaps you until you're unable to remember what the fuck this movie was about in the first place. Here are six of the pimp-slappingest cameos of all time.
#6.
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
The Cameo:
Ted Danson
The Lead Up:
We're immersed in the movie for a full hour already. We've seen the most graphic vision of D-Day ever shown on film. We've learned of the mission to save one man and we've seen the team lose a man in exchange.
Philosophical questions abound when suddenly the soldiers find themselves face to face with a squad of Nazis. Everyone has their guns pointed at one another, sweat is slowly forming on top of each and every brow. People are screaming in German and English and the entire theater is quiet with tense anticipation. And then it happens, the Germans get mowed down by ... Sam mother-fucking Malone from Cheers. Hey, Sammy!
Why it Nearly Ruined the Movie:
Maybe they got the idea to cast an '80s sitcom star in a war movie from Casualties of War. That Vietnam movie answered the question "Who do people want to see in a horrifying movie about cultural and oh so literal rape?" with the name Alex P. Keaton.
But Sgt. Sam Malone causes even more problems than Private Marty McFly, because his whole comedic persona on Cheers was based around a stone-faced droll delivery. So when he actually tries to be serious, you just keep waiting for him to crack a joke about how much tail he used to score when he was pitching in the minors.
Think back right now and see if you can remember anything about Ted Danson's role in the movie. If you're like us, all you hear is:
Sam: Hey there guys, looks like you've had a rough day. Sit down and tell me all about it.
Tom Hanks: We're looking for a Ryan. Private James F. Ryan.
Sam: Ryan eh? Let me go check. Carla! Hey Carla! You know guy named Ryan?
Sergeant Carla: Yeah, two of my eight kids are named Ryan.
Sam: No, Private James Ryan. Poor sap lost all his brothers and these guys need to find him.
Sergeant Carla: Haven't seen 'em. But you can have my boys instead. They're already proficient with firearms.
Tom Hanks: Thanks anyways, we'll be leaving now.
Lucky for us, Danson's only on screen for about six minutes, and Spielberg sucks us back into the action with a 10-minute scene of the guys holed up in a church for the night doing nothing but talking.
#5.
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock(1984)
The Cameo:
Christopher Lloyd
The Lead Up:
Spock is dead, Bones has Spock's soul, the Vulcan chick isn't Kirstie Alley anymore and Scotty's weight gain continues unabated. Kirk and crew then proceed back to the Genesis planet so that they can save Kirk's bastard son because he's being threatened by ... Christopher Lloyd?
Why it Nearly Ruined the Movie:
This cameo transcends the space-time continuum that Trek writers regard with such reverence that they screw with it at least once per movie (and 10 times per season). People who watched The Search for Spock on the big screen in 1984 did not see the Klingon villain Kruge, but rather the perpetually stoned cab driver "Reverend" Jim Ignatowski from the recently canceled TV show Taxi. For our under-30 readers, imagine if The Matrix had ended with Neo having to fight Kramer.
And while the makers of The Search for Spock can't be blamed for what came later, it should be noted that things didn't get any better for the later generation, who watched it post 1985 and saw the guy from Back to the Future who liked to say Jiggowatts.
While he's on screen for a large portion of the movie (being the main villain and all), Lloyd's role seems less like a top-billed performance and more like a cameo that just won't end. In trying to pinpoint exactly what it was about Christopher Lloyd's performance that made a horrible movie worse we discovered that he bore a striking resemblance to a stereotypical relative most of us have.
Lloyd is that annoying uncle that comes for Thanksgiving and doesn't leave until Groundhog's Day. While he's there he eats all the food (takes up all the screen time), bullshits about how he used to be in the special ops (pretends he's a barbaric Klingon warrior) even though there's no picture of him where he weighs under 200 pounds (looks like he could scare a 4-year-old). When he finally leaves (gets kicked into a river of molten lava) we feel relieved that we will not have to see him until next Thanksgiving.
#4.
Signs(2002)
The Cameo:
M. Night Shyamalan (playing a douchebag/himself)
The Lead Up:
Mel Gibson is an ex-Episcopal priest who stopped believing in God after M. Night's character killed his wife by being a drunken asshole.
Mel and his family discover a crop circle in their farm, they see an alien on their roof and chase it into a corn field where it disappears. It's around this time that they start to suspect something out of the ordinary might be going on. Unfortunately, it's not much longer before the audience starts to suspect the same.
It starts innocently enough. M. Night drives by in a car. No big whup. M. Night had tiny parts in The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable. Sure it's egotistical, but Hitchcock did the background cameo thing, and Hitchcock has always given M. Night a boner. Time to get back to the business of story telling as the family has another close encounter and then ...
Wait a second, now M. Night is calling them at home. A voice cameo in addition to the visual? Wait, what is Gibson doing at M. Night's house? Oh, M. Night just happens to possess key plot development points (they don't make crop circles near water) while also inviting Gibson to go deal with the alien stuck in his basement. Why, that doesn't make sense at all.
Why it Nearly Ruined the Movie:
Up until this movie, fans of M. Night's work had two assumptions that always came to fruition:
1) The movies would have an engaging plot with a twist that would make your skull explode.
2) He'd have a short cameo that had little to do with the actual plot.
But this movie fell short on both accounts because:
1) A "twist" being that your dead wife gave you a clue to defeat ONE fucking alien, instead of ALL of them seems like a waste of the power to see into the future.
2) M. Night's cameo was one of the first "Signs" (betcha didn't see that coming!) that he was descending into clinically insane narcissism.
We're guessing the character he plays is supposed to be mysterious: is he a deeply remorseful man seeking redemption or a sadistic bastard that still wants to fuck around with Mel Gibson's mind? Of course this would have only been mysterious if the character wasn't such an unremitting asshole: he killed his wife and only apologizes to him when he needs someone to kill the alien in his basement? That's not spooky, that's just fucking wrong.
Also, if you're going to create a character who's only reason for existing is to deliver a key piece of information and move the plot forward, it's probably best not to cast yourself. That tends to feel less like a cameo and more like you realized your plot wasn't going anywhere, and jumped in front of the camera and made up a bunch of shit that would get your movie to make sense again.
Of all of the above I only agree with #4, M. Night isnt a good actor and he should just have really small cameos like Alfred Hitchcock.
ReplyChristopher Lloyd is awesome
ReplyAnd Star Trek 3 is a tad underrated
i loved the julia roberts/bruce willis thing in oceans 12
ReplyTyler Perry in the 2009 Star Trek movie.
Reply"Hi, I'm Tyler Perry! You'd be surprised at the movies I show up in!" -- My cousin at that scene.
I guess I should just be grateful they didn't let William FATner have a role and make everything awkward.
Are Americans really this clueless about the metric system? It's GIGAWATTS, moron! Hey, you know those things your computer has...what are they called? Oh yeah, gigabytes. That should have been your first clue.
ReplyThe f**k do you have against foreigners, you damn xenophobic bigot?
It's how the Doc pronounced it, and the author spelled it phonetically.
Are you (I assume) Britons really that terrible at deductive reasoning?
Hey, I thought Ocean's 13 was pretty good, even if it was pretty cheesy.
ReplyWasn't the alien in his pantry, and not the basement?
ReplyM. Night ALOMST ruined signs. The alien, casually walking by a birthday party and and everyone screaming their heads off saved it.
ReplyReaders under 30? You misspelled "all of the readers."
ReplyThe only one I agree with is Signs, which did seem like it was just M Night jumping in front of the camera to save his bad movie. Bruce Willis in Oceans 12 made the least amount of sense though. Mainly because he acted the exact same as anybody would have if they were in a different country and randomly saw one of his best friends. He wanted to see how she was doing and why she was there, once he noticed something was off he wanted to make sure she was ok, how is that acting like a pussy?
ReplyAll in all not a great article
So we won't see Mr. Lloyd as Kruge until next Thanksgiving?
Reply"Klingon bastard, you ate all the turkey--you Klingon....bastard!!!"
"There's stuffing and potatoes left. You want to watch me eat all that too?....Surrender the house!"
"You're not supposed to fly when you're eight months pregnant" unless he's fighting a female assassin who is pretending to be pregnant in order to conceal a bomb and he's just thrown her out of an airplane at 30,000 feet, and watched her body explode in midair."
Replywhere were you when they were hiring script writers for die hard 4?
Dansen was great in Saving Private Ryan I guess the problem is really with dumbasses who see an actor in one role and can't ever picture them in anything else.
ReplyIt's not like Ted Danson never did dramatic roles in his life. Ever see The Onion Field or the Gulliver's Travels miniseries?
ReplyBruce Willis is awesome in everything
ReplyHave you seen the trailer for G.I. Joe 2?
Yeah, and it looks a hell of a lot better than the first one
The problem with every "famous person appears in a small, supposed-to-be-humorous role" is the famous person himself. He (or she) knows that he's only there because he is who he is, and thus their own ego and presence get in the way of everything else that happens to be going on onscreen, good or bad. It's also completely distracting from the plot of the movie. It's like the damned CGI singers from Jabba's Palace in the Star Wars Episode VI "George Lucas decided to take a large, steaming s**t on your childhood" edition.
ReplyOnly #1 on this list is an actual cameo. Learn what the word means before making an article about it.
Reply"A cameo role or cameo appearance (often shortened to just cameo; English pronunciation: /ˈkæmioʊ/) is a brief appearance of a known person in a work of the performing arts, such as plays, films, video games and television, often appearing as themselves." Hmm. The word "often" is in there.
you forgot Dustin Hoffman in Luc Besson's The Messenger (Joan of Arc) ... an otherwise excellent film with a stunning performance by Milla Jovovich and, suddenly, there at the end Dustin Hoffman appears as a monk sounding totally contemporary and with that knowing L.A. smirk on his face - destroyed the movie ... yet, later, in Perfume, Hoffman redeems himself in a period piece - go figure
ReplyHoffman could never redeem himself after that, in my book. Also, I actually said out loud in the theater, "What is Samuel L. Jackson doing on the Jedi High Council?" All these cameos do is remind you that you are watching a Hollywood movie, so forget the idea of becoming engrossed in the story.
He didn't "forget" anything. He didn't put it in. Just because it's the thing you think of when you hear "terrible cameos" doesn't mean it's what everyone else thinks of.
Yes, actors ruin movies. Need more giant CG smurf-cats with no tits
ReplyI skipped down to the bottom specifically to point out that TOM HANKS WAS AN 80s SITCOM STAR TOO! Remember Bosom Buddies?
Reply