The other actors sell it as more straight drama for the most part, and the film isn't really all that hammy (though it is weird in various different ways). I was also thinking of another Nic Cage film, Color Out of Space, where Cage feels like, well, "actor out of place." He delivers a wonderfully Cage level of hammy insanity, but the tone of the film and the other actors do not match. Yes, to continue this line of conversation, I was thinking it often comes down to "does this feel right for the context of the film?" (#1 here) and "is it performed in a way that feels natural for the character?" (#2 here).Ī performance that was already mentioned in this thread is Pedro Pascal in WW84, which works because Pascal sells the hamming up in a way that feels both natural for the character and the potential context of the film (though that context seems lost to the majority of the rest of the film). But in the hands of a truly virtuoso ham, it soars like the demented operatic aria it's meant to be. Doesn't work, does it? You have to have this lack of self-consciousness, this total abandon, this willingness to look absurd, or else the scene just comes off as bad camp. Now try imagining it with an actor who thinks he's above this material, an actor who seems to be visibly cringing from this insane dialogue and seems slightly ashamed to be delivering it - in other words, an actor who isn't committed. Think of the monologue that introduces his character. Does this actor seem embarrassed to be doing this? Let's turn to a prime example of an actor and performance that is very much Mileage-Varying for a lot of people: Nicolas Cage, in Moonstruck (also a good example of Point #1.They're part of the overall tone, the complete design, and the effect they have on you is intentional. Put performances like that - overwrought and shrieky, or stilted and artificial - in films that are supposed to be naturalistic, and they just seem bad, right? But they're perfectly calibrated to the kind of films they're in. Is this performance appropriate for the material? Think of the performances in, say, John Waters' films, or David Lynch's.
But for me, I think it boils down to two factors:
Interesting question, and the boring answer, I guess, is that Good Big Acting versus Bad Big Acting is very much in the eye of the beholder - one viewer's awesome over-the-top delight is another's nails-on-a-chalkboard unwatchability. Kristen Wiig was perfectly good as Barbara so actually use her instead of having her be an almost random side character in the Maxwell Lord show. That movie's problem is it had too many ideas and they decided to throw them all into one movie. It should have been a more personal, smaller scale story instead of going bigger. They should have spent the film developing their relationship so that when Barbara really starts to turn to the dark side, we feel bad about it and Diana would be much more conflicted because this is a friend, not just a coworker she had lunch with once. I think that the writers made a mistake by not committing to a Diana and Barbara friendship.
CHEW SCENERY MOVIE
I think he was one of the worst things about the movie but not because Pascal himself was bad - he did his best and was clearly trying - I just think that entire character and plot device of the wishing rock was silly and unnecessary.
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