Image via Complex Original
Rumored for nearly a decade, Steven Spielberg's long-awaited Abraham Lincoln biopic, simply titled Lincoln and starring Daniel Day-Lewis, finally debuted in a limited number of theaters nationwide yesterday (the film's screen count will expand next Friday). So what's the verdict? Unsurprisingly, an overwhelming number of critics adore Lincoln, citing Day-Lewis' towering performance as Honest Abe, the intimate script from accomplished playwright/screenwriter Tony Kushner, and the film's narrowed focus on Lincoln's efforts in getting the slavery-ending Thirteenth Amendment passed as laudable components.
Our opinion? While Day-Lewis is indeed brilliant as the 16th President of the United States (and looks stunningly like his subject), and Spielberg's directorial flourishes (namely his handling of the staggeringly large ensemble cast's performances) are top-notch, Lincoln suffers from a meandering narrative that falls apart near its end. When it's strictly centered on the amendment chase, Lincoln excels, but sidesteps toward his strained relationship with son Robert Todd (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), his assassination, and far less interesting characters hinder what could've been an outstanding cinematic achievement. But, hey, that's just one take—don't be surprised if Lincoln is all over next February's telecast of the 85th Academy Awards ceremony.
With those qualms in mind, we've taken a look back at how much worse Lincoln could have been and ranked The 10 Worst Biopic Movies of All Time. Compared to these biographical turkeys, Spielberg's film is on Malcolm X's level.
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Written by Matt Barone (@MBarone)
10. Beyond the Sea (2004)
Director: Kevin Spacey
Stars: Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, Bob Hoskins, John Goodman, Brenda Blethyn, Caroline Aaron, Greta Sacchi
Kevin Spacey's passion for Beyond the Sea is commendable. In addition to directing the picture, Spacey also co-wrote the script and tackled the leading role, of legendary singer Bobby Darin, who topped charts and participated in politics before dying at the young age of 37 after a heart operation. Obviously a huge fan of Darin's, Spacey puts his all into the film, even singing the entire soundtrack himself in his best Darin impersonation.
But that's also the issue here: Beyond the Sea is little more than a paint-by-numbers mimicking of the entertainer's performances surrounded by middling character development. Once Beyond the Sea is over, all that's learned about Darin is that he dreamed of being bigger than Frank Sinatra and wanted to make his mother proud. Which, yes, describes just about every guy who's ever sang a single note over the last 50 years.
9. J. Edgar (2011)
Director: Clint Eastwood
Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts, Josh Lucas, Judi Dench, Ed Westwick, Stephen Root, Denis O'Hare, Damon Herriman
J. Edgar should have dominated the 2012 Academy Awards. The intimate story of one of American history's most controversial figures, directed by Clint Eastwood, and starring Leonardo DiCaprio? All J. Edgar needed to ensure some Oscar attention was a co-starring Meryl Streep and the Coen Brothers handling second unit camerawork.
The pioneer of law enforcement as we know it today, J. Edgar Hoover was the first director of the F.B.I., as well as a closeted homosexual with serious mommy issues. But in Eastwood's hands, Hoover was reduced to a melodramatic puppet in an unfocused mishmash of real-life events not connected by any real narrative thread. DiCaprio's performance is excellent, mind you—ultimately, he's done a disservice in a hollow film that only looks like an award-worthy biopic.
And as awkward-looking as DiCaprio's and co-star Armie Hammer's old man makeup work appears, it'd be excusable if J. Edgar gave any sort of definitive opinion of Hoover to allow viewers to care about who's behind the prosthetics. By the film's end, you're not sure whether the man was a kind, misunderstood softie or a ruthless, go-getting enforcer. He's shown both ways here, though at least the former puts DiCaprio in women's clothing for a scene that's unintentionally hilarious.
8. Patch Adams (1999)
Director: Tom Shadyac
Stars: Robin Williams, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Daniel London, Monica Potter, Irma P. Hall, Bob Gunton
Patch Adams was a physician who believed that he could heal patients by making them laugh. A noble concept, indeed, and one that seems perfect for somebody like Robin Williams, who'll do anything short of bodily dismemberment in order to get chuckles out of audiences. Just watch one of his borderline manic appearances on late night talk shows.
In the Patch Adams movie, however, director Tom Shadyac and screenwriter Steve Oedekerk unwisely followed the leads of other biopics and drowned the film in sappy, cheeseball dramatics, which, in turn, prevented Williams from ever settling into the character's funny side. And whenever Williams does get to be humorous, the filmmakers rely on the worst facets of the funnyman actor's shtick, namely his most obnoxious, in-need-of-Ritalin hysterics.
7. The Iron Lady (2011)
Director: Phyllida Lloyd
Stars: Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Alexandra Roach, Harry Lloyd, Iain Glen, Olivia Colman, Anthony Head
Of course Meryl Streep won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in last year's The Iron Lady. Why wouldn't she? She's Meryl fucking Streep. Simply casting her in a movie guarantees that production Oscar consideration at the least. The problem here, though, is that Streep's larger-than-life performance as the polarizing first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is just that—she dominates every single scene with what often verges into overly operatic acting, and it's distracting.
It's also one of the most biased, ridiculously self-serving biopics in years. Thatcher certainly has her fair share of detractors and haters, for policies that some argue promoted greed and racism towards immigrants, yet you'd never know it from The Iron Lady. Director Phyllida Lloyd's squeaky clean flick avoids confronting any of its subject's faults and opts to lazily stage one career highlight after another, usually through montages and always damaged by Streep's theatrical mannerisms.
6. Factory Girl (2006)
Director: George Hickenlooper
Stars: Sienna Miller, Guy Pearce, Hayden Christensen, Jimmy Fallon, Jack Huston, Mena Suvari, Shawn Hatosy, Mary-Kate Olsen, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Illeana Douglas, Patrick Wilson
Sienna Miller is a beautiful woman who also happens to be a solid actress—she's just not the best at selecting projects. Yet to find that one breakout role, the English stunner has mostly slogged through well-meaning but nevertheless disappointing movies like Factory Girl. The 2006 biopic about 1960s Manhattan socialite, and frequent Andy Warhol collaborator, Edie Sedgwick does have one unique distinction: It's arguably Miller's worst movie to date.
Director George Hickenlooper does an admirable job of emulating the look and feel of '60s culture, down to the spot-on costumes and fast-paced vibe of the artsy culture. Underneath its flashy presentation, though, Factory Girl struggles to generate any sympathy for Sedgwick's short, tragic life—she died at age 28 of what the coroner determined was either an accident or suicide via a combination of too much alcohol and prescription medication.
As this shallow movie tells it, Sedgwick was nothing more than a pretty fixture within an altogether lavish cultural movement.
5. Amelia (2009)
Director: Mira Nair
Stars: Hilary Swank, Richard Gere, Ewan McGregor, Christopher Eccleston, Joe Anderson, Mia Wasikowska
When looked at as American tragedy, Amelia Earhart's story is one of history's creepiest events. The first woman to ever fly over the Atlantic Ocean alone (a feat she accomplished in 1932), Earhart was a highly ambitious pilot who thought she could commandeer her plane all the way around the world. Unfortunately, on the globetrotting journey, her plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean, and her body disappeared. Basically, it's one hell of an Unsolved Mysteries segment.
As directed by the otherwise respectable Mira Nair, everything preceding the crash is comparable to watching Earhart take a two-hour nap in the cockpit. A better-suited filmmaker could one day present Earhart's tragic life with an acute sense of underlying dread, which it deserves. Here, Nair and star Hilary Swank are way too concerned with making audiences fall in love with her, treating Earhart as if she's Julia Roberts in period drama outfits.
The presence of Roberts' Pretty Woman accomplice Richard Gere (playing her publicist/husband) doesn't help matters, either. Amelia spends far too much time dabbling in Earhart's romantic dramas and hardly any examining her unique brand of pop star celebrity, or, as previously mentioned, what the fuck happened to her.
4. Against the Ropes (2004)
Director: Charles S. Dutton
Stars: Meg Ryan, Omar Epps, Charles S. Dutton, Tony Shalhoub, Timothy Daly, Kerry Washington
Our bad: While putting together our list of the 10 lamest white savior movies, we totally overlooked Charles S. Dutton's all-around pedestrian biopic Against the Ropes, about a Jewish woman, Jackie Kallen (played by Meg Ryan), who successfully manages troubled black boxer Luther Shaw (Omar Epps). Or, on second thought, Against the Ropes seems more worthy of the inevitable, more bluntly titled Shittiest White Savior Movies list.
Just in case you didn't realize, Kallen was one feisty, take-no-prisoners chick, and Dutton was determined to hammer that point over any and all viewers' unfortunate heads. Against the Ropes forgoes any real character development in favor of concealed feminism, finding every possible way to accentuate Kallen's resiliency, from telling off employers to confidently strutting through inner city projects with a "Yeah, I'm white, so what" demeanor. And she does it all with a goofily exaggerated Detroit accent, which Ryan fumbles through for nearly two hours' worth of laughably bad "inspirational" dialogue.
3. The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999)
Director: Luc Besson
Stars: Milla Jovovich, John Malkovich, Faye Dunaway, Dustin Hoffman, Vincent Cassell, Desmond Harrington, Andrew Birkin
On a technical level, Luc Besson definitely knew what he was doing while making The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc. A visually minded filmmaker, the Frenchman behind action movies like La Femme Nikita (1990) and The Professional (1994) approached the 15th-century tale of a teenage girl leading French troops with a real sense of grandeur. The Messenger looks magnificent, full of gorgeous cinematography, immaculate sets, and well-choreographed battle scenes.
The only thing that's missing in the film is a leading lady who can, you know, act. Cast as Joan of Arc, model turned actress Milla Jovovich—who, at the time, didn't even have the so-so skill-honing experience of any Resident Evil movies under her belt—fails to evoke any of her character's leadership qualities. Mostly, Jovovich looks lost, searching for any grasp of Joan in a movie that's about as informative as a closed history book.
2. Alexander (2004)
Director: Oliver Stone
Stars: Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer, Anthony Hopkins, Jared Leto, Rosario Dawson, Christopher Plummer
Oliver Stone’s disastrous biopic on Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great has so many things wrong with it that it seems unfair to cast the heaviest blame on Farrell’s lead performance, but, fuck it, the undeniably miscast actor deserves the scorn.
Alexander is the most glaring example of Farrell’s inability to carry a movie; asked to exude both macho presence and layered gravitas, he stumbles through Stone’s catastrophe with neither intact. And boy does the audience get to watch Farrell stumble—at nearly three hours long, Alexander plays like an extended study in how not to cast a cinematic epic.
1. The Conqueror (1956)
Director: Dick Powell
Stars: John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorehead, Pedro Amrendariz, John Hoyt, Thomas Gomez
Genghis Khan's story could make for a truly badass movie one day, if a director like John Woo, Takashi Miike, or even Neil Marshall can get his hands on the right script (hell, we're intrigued by RZA tackling the subject). Khan, born Temujin, both launched and forcibly ruled over the Mongol Empire through brutality, masterful command, and the heavy spilling of blood, all of which is just waiting to be put on film and done its proper justice. Until then, however, Khan's legacy will continue to be tarnished by good old John Wayne.
Years after The Conqueror debuted and was quickly dismissed, Wayne went on record saying that he only took the role out an obligation to friend, and producer, Howard Hughes, which explains why the iconic actor's performance is an absolute snooze. One of history's most colorful and notoriously bombastic figures gets diminished into a lifeless parody.
Think about it: You've got John Wayne, who's regarded as the ultimate American movie star, playing the decidedly un-American Genghis Khan. "Casting fail" doesn't even begin to cover it.