most wasted cast…ever (and I don’t mean in the good way)
Posted by rollinsloane on 9 January 2008
I was just sitting around and innocently flipping channels last night when my modestly sized, far-from-high-def TV screen suddenly filled with the unbelievable swashbuckling team of John Malkovich (Being John…well, Malkovich), Gabriel Byrne (Crying Game, go-to Irishman), Gerard Depardieu (Hollywood’s favorite Frenchman — Cyrano de Bergerac) and Jeremy Irons (gravel-voiced and not afraid of Lolita). Can you imagine those four decked out in full Three Musketeers frills and tights? With their wide range of accents and generous helping of thespian gravitas, I was more than ready to hunker down and let the period drama begin.
Too bad the movie was 1998’s The Man in the Iron Mask.
Has a worse Alexander Dumas movie adaptation ever been made? I can’t imagine how. Even relentlessly optimistic moviegoer Roger Ebert had to admit that it’s little more than a “costume swashbuckler.” When stalwart side players Hugh Laurie and Peter Sarsgaard can’t lift the cheesy plot muck from Leonardo DiCaprio’s well-coifed shoulders , you know there’s a problem.
And it’s quite possible the coif was the problem. Did it occur to anyone during production that maaaaaybe long hair was a no-go on young Leo? Call me crazy, but somehow I couldn’t help but feel he bears a striking resemblance to Blue Lagoon Brooke Shields — too prissy for even the easy-to-thump hearts of the late 90s’ teen girls.
– Ollie
