23 Dreadful Comedies That Waste Their Impressive Casts
When the stars align (literally and figuratively), comedy movie magic can be made, including comedic box office heavyweights like Anchorman, This Is the End, Wedding Crashers and Girls Trip.
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Yet sometimes, there's no amount of cast padding and stunt casting that can save a movie from escaping the confines of a painfully unfunny script. With that in mind, I've assembled 23 of the most laugh-free movies with star powers that most films would kill for.
23.The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
With a cast that includes Steve Carell, Steve Buscemi, Alan Arkin, Olivia Wilde, and James Gandolfini, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone fails to make comedy magic as it bounced between raunchier yet inconsistent dark humor and toothless, family-friendly jokes that rarely land, though if the film has any saving grace, it comes in the form of Jim Carrey's scene-stealing performance as a Criss Angel-esque antagonist.
22.A Million Ways to Die in the West
Though Seth MacFarlane caught lightning in a bottle with the Ted movies, his attempt to star in the flesh wound up misfiring, as this big budget western parody featuring Charlize Theron, Amanda Seyfried, Neil Patrick Harris, Liam Neeson, and Sarah Silverman lacked the charm, wit, and timing of MacFarlane's previous work, though cameos from Christopher Lloyd and the late, great Gilbert Gottfried keep this one from being put out to pasture.
21.Analyze That
Missing the biting edge of original co-screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan, Analyze That's recycling act fails to bring anything new or funny to the screen despite the returning Robert De Niro, Billy Crystal, and Lisa Kudrow attempting to bring whatever life they can to the paint-by-numbers proceedings.
20.Cop Out
Kevin Smith's first production for a non-Miramax/Weinstein Company studio, as well as his first directorial credit without a writing credit, Cop Out was anything but arresting with its all-star cast, including Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, Kevin Pollak, Seann William Scott, and Rashida Jones, largely unable to nail the chemistry or gags required of the so-called comedy.
19.Rough Night
Scarlett Johansson, Zoe Kravitz, Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, and Ilana Glazer all try their damnedest but can't quite seem to elevate this Very Bad Things-esque dark comedy into anything more than the sum of its parts.
18.Be Cool
While its cinematic predecessor, Get Shorty, has only aged like a fine wine as a dark comedy classic, Be Cool remains aimless, laugh-free, and existing entirely on winks and nods to cameos and references to other films. Oddly enough, with a cast that includes John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Vince Vaughn, Andre 3000, and Danny DeVito, to name a few, the film's sole standout comes in the form of an early role for Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who plays a queer bodyguard with aspirations of acting and country music fame in a performance that showed surprising comedic range and the confidence to hang with some of Hollywood's major stars.
17.Hudson Hawk
Bruce Willis' self-indulgent passion project is a real deal stinker that's somehow both obnoxious and dull, with its impressive ensemble supporting cast comprised of Danny Aiello, Andie MacDowell, James Coburn, Richard E. Grant, and Sandra Bernhard all making choices to chew the scenery which, incidentally, leaves the film with no real comedic ground to stand on.
16.Leatherheads
They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and that seems to also be true with George Clooney's attempt at reviving the screwball comedies of cinema's golden years, as neither Clooney nor his costars Renée Zellweger, John Krasinski, Jonathan Pryce, or Stephen Root can garner any real laughs throughout the film's tonal tug-of-war.
15.Your Highness
Not even Danny McBride, James Franco, Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel, Justin Theroux, or Damian Lewis could save David Gordon Green's forgettable one-trick pony that works neither as a CGI-laden fantasy epic or as a crass gross-out comedy.
14.Zoolander 2
Released 15 years after the original Zoolander, this sequel fails to capture the back-handed satire and ingenuity of the first film while relying on a string of eye-rolling cameos and the power of its cast, which brings back Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, and Justin Theroux while adding Penelope Cruz, Kristen Wiig, Fred Armisen, and Kyle Mooney, none of whom seem particularly inspired to make the supposedly funny material pop off of the script.
13.Stuber
An action comedy that is criminally low on laughs and shamefully inept with its action, Stuber unfortunately wastes the talents of Kumail Nanjiani, Dave Bautista, Natalie Morales, Betty Gilpin, Karen Gillan, and Iko Uwais, which feels even more painful seeing the hints of something special just out of reach of the performers and filmmakers.
12.Big Trouble
Seemingly defanged at some point in post-production, Barry Sonnenfeld's bizarre crime comedy has an exceptional cast featuring Tim Allen, Rene Russo, Stanley Tucci, Ben Foster, Zooey Deschanel, Johnny Knoxville, Jason Lee, and Sofia Vergara, among others, but fails to make anything substantial, interesting, or even particularly amusing before finding its place in cinematic obscurity.
11.Year One
The final directorial effort of comedy great Harold Ramis, this disappointing Judd Apatow-produced biblical farce somehow couldn't make much use of the inherent talents of its shockingly loaded cast, which includes Jack Black, Michael Cera, David Cross, Paul Rudd, Olivia Wilde, Oliver Platt, and Bill Hader.
10.The Love Guru
Critically eviscerated and universally rejected by audiences, The Love Guru failed to launch another comedic franchise for star Mike Myers while doing seemingly less than nothing for its supporting cast, which includes Jessica Alba, Ben Kingsley, Justin Timberlake, Romany Malco, Meagan Good, and John Oliver.
9.The House
Woefully unfunny despite an incredible comedic assembly including Will Ferrell, Amy Poehler, Nick Kroll, Allison Tolman, and Michaela Watkins, The House's biggest crime is otherwise bogging down a solid co-leading performance from the wildly talented Jason Mantzoukas with otherwise pitiful attempts at lazy and derivative humor from the rest of the cast.
8.The Whole Ten Yards
In a similar camp as Be Cool and Analyze That, this calamitous sequel not only doesn't reach the heights of its inspired predecessor but somehow even tarnishes any good will from the first film as the chemistry between Bruce Willis, Matthew Perry, and Amanda Peet seems to have dried up entirely, and the addition of a bizarre Kevin Pollak only helps to crater the film's comedic ambitions.
7.The Adventures of Pluto Nash
This $100 million sci-fi comedy was intended to skyrocket Eddie Murphy toward another big screen cash cow, but it seems that no one in the film's outstanding cast, which includes Randy Quaid, Rosario Dawson, Peter Boyle, Luis Guzmán, and John Cleese, were quite on the same page, resulting in a comedy with an identity crisis that seems to be hurt even more by the fact that the film's potential is seemingly just out of reach.
6.Pixels
While a number of Adam Sandler's star-studded studio comedies could likely pad out this list, few have whiffed as bad at its attempts at humor as the high-concept fiasco that sees Kevin James, Peter Dinklage, Michelle Monaghan, Josh Gad, Jane Krakowski, and Brian Cox failing to make any of the film's four-quadrant humor work.
5.Envy
Rain Man director Barry Levinson may be incredibly talented, but even he somehow can't wrangle Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Amy Poehler, Rachel Weisz, or Christopher Walken to make this ho-hum, one-note comedy work on any level, which eventually resigns the Larry David-produced film to lifeless mediocrity.
4.Gigli
A comedy so unlikable that it nearly derailed the careers of stars Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, Gigli's dead-on-arrival script and unfocused direction from Midnight Run great Martin Brest sent the film spiraling to a point where even supporting turns from Al Pacino, Christopher Walken, and Justin Bartha couldn't squeeze an ounce of charm into the proceedings.
3.Holmes & Watson
The "lightning in a bottle" energy of Step Brothers and Talladega Nights is nowhere to be seen in Etan Cohen's dreadful send-up on Sherlock Holmes, as there's no mystery that Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Steve Coogan, Hugh Laurie, Rebecca Hall, Lauren Lapkus, and Ralph Fiennes can't aid this dated and lame comedy in justifying even its brisk runtime.
2.Almost Heroes
Christopher Guest's attempt at a big-budget adventure studio comedy was apparently snakebit, as Matthew Perry (at the height of his Friends fame), Eugene Levy, and Chris Farley in his final leading performance can't transform this low-brow comedy into anything more than a Wagons East-level snoozefest.
1.Movie 43
Labeled by esteemed film critic Richard Roeper as the "Citizen Kane of awful," this tasteless anthology movie wastes not only one of the most stacked ensemble casts of all time, including Hugh Jackman, Kristen Bell, Halle Berry, Gerard Butler, Anna Faris, Jason Sudeikis, and Emma Stone, but also a talented directorial roster that includes Peter Farrelly, James Gunn, Elizabeth Banks, Steven Brill, and Rusty Cundieff, all of whom somehow fail to muster up any segment that is genuinely funny from start to finish.
