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Squandering Comedic Talent
By Alison Willmore
, Matt Singer
on 07/21/2008
"Run Fatboy Run," Picturehouse Entertainment, 2007
Finding a good vehicle for a great comedian can be tough -- the ability to be funny doesn't always come hand in hand with the ability to act, and the film needs to work with a comedian's persona and particular strengths. A few recent or upcoming films have done brilliantly bad jobs of this -- most notably "Run Fatboy Run," with Simon Pegg, but to a lesser extent "The Rocker" with Rainn Wilson and "Hamlet 2" with Steve Coogan. This week on the IFC News podcast, we look at ten past films that have, in different ways, squandered the comedic talent attached to them.
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Teddy Bears' Picnic (2002). It's Harry Shearer's stab at what Christopher Guest does best. It has great improvisers/Chris Guest alumni such as Michael McKean, John Michael Higgins and Shearer himself. It's a slop of a movie. It's as if Shearer just rolled the cameras, yelled "Action" and put together whatever came out. The main plot (if you can call it that) is too absurd to believe. The perfect Wasted Comedians "comedy".
I love the IFC podcast and I have downloaded back episodes. One complaint/suggestion:
Matt Singer- please stay on your microphone! Your voice fades in and out all episode on every episode and it is completely annoying! Otherwise a great podcast...