5 Weird Movie Pairings
Next week we’ll be treated to Getaway, an action movie starring indie king Ethan Hawke and former Disney princess and pop star Selena Gomez. It’s one of those strange movie pairings that could result in brilliance, but will probably leave us scratching our heads as to why any casting director thought they belonged in the same movie.
Obviously an attempt by Hawke to broaden his appeal and by Gomez to add some credibility to her resume, they’re just one recent example of two movie stars who seem to have wondered into the same universe by mistake. Here are five more that resulted in disaster:
Jennifer Lopez never really sat right for me as a rom-com lead, but Maid in Manhattan is probably the worst film she ever committed to in that period. Some of that’s down to the script, of course, but most of the bad comes from the casting of Ralph Fiennes as her romantic interest. It doesn’t help that Fiennes comes across as sinister even when he’s playing charming, but he’s also far better than the material and possesses zero chemistry with his co-star.
This appears less and less weird as Bruce Willis signs on to more and more action-comedies but, while films like The Expendables and Red pair the star with similarly aging 80s action heroes, 2010’s horrid buddy-cop spoof Cop Out cast him alongside Saturday Night Live star Tracey Morgan. They were probably aiming for something like the underrated The Other Guys but, due to the terribly-matched duo, what they got was a steaming pile of terrible.
The long-awaited comeback of Indiana Jones doesn’t have a lot of fans, but the decision to cast Shia LaBeouf as the titular character’s protégé and son was one of the film’s biggest mistakes. Not only is the actor totally unbelievable as Harrison Ford’s offspring, but neither of the actors seem interested in making the best of it, either. Even since, they’ve spoken out about their misgivings, and that tension can be seen on screen. Thank god we didn’t get that planned continuation with LaBeouf in the lead.
There are a lot of strange pairings in those compilation rom-coms, but Zac Efron and Michelle Pfeiffer’s weird dalliance in New Year’s Eve really takes the biscuit. Few rom-com pairings can make your skin crawl, but the friendship and eventual semi-romantic relationship between these two takes your breath away for all of the wrong reasons. It’s not just the age gap, either, but, again, it feels as if they belong in entirely different movie universes. Sadly, their pairing is actually one of the highlights of the film, if only because it alleviates some of the crushing boredom.
Do I even need to explain this one? Jack and Jill, besides being an absolutely abhorrent mess, stands out for it’s strange pairings. There’s the traditional ‘beautiful woman is married to the aging stoner dude’ cliché, but then it gets even weirder with Al Pacino’s fascination with the Jill of the title. Given that Jill is actually Adam Sandler again, just in drag, the rest of the film becomes a fascinating study of how far Hollywood icons can fall before they finally retire (see also, Robert De Niro). There are some things you just can’t un-see.
