In a decade when celebrity couplings result in the obnoxious combining of names (Bennifer, Brangelina) and getting big roles in movies has less to do with acting talent than becoming famous, someone needs to speak the truth to these hacks. So here’s to all the thespians who we not only hate, but hate so much we love to hate them.
10. Ben Affleck
This list couldn’t exist without the contributions of the lesser Affleck over the last ten years or so – though he has excelled at mediocrity and incompetence for the better part of two decades. If there were an avatar of crappiness it would most likely be Affleck. Some people get a second chance in life, but Ben Affleck has had something like twenty chances, and he’s thoroughly screwed up each and every one of them. He’s living proof that who you know is what matters in tinsel town, because if Affleck hadn’t befriended Kevin Smith at an early age and been consistently cast by him, it’s unlikely anyone would have ever cast him in anything at all.
His most notable contributions to crappy cinema include: Pearl Harbor, Gigli, Jersey Girl, Surviving Christmas, and Armageddon. Having participated in Pearl Harbor alone qualifies him to be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. Luckily he seems to have become more interested in directing, and his film Gone Baby Gone was a refreshing change of pace: there was an Affleck starring in it, but it wasn’t Ben – the lesser of the two was no where to be seen.
9. Jennifer Lopez
It’s hard to talk about Ben Affleck without also mentioning Jennifer Lopez, and man does she belong on this list. Singer? Actress? Businesswoman? Trollop? She is all of these things, but more than that she is the object of our scorn whenever she’s up in our faces, and she has spent a disproportionate amount of time there for the past ten years.
The proud owner of one of the most annoying nicknames in celebrity history – J. Lo – this talentless hack has given us gems like The Cell, The Wedding Planner, Maid in Manhattan, Gigli, Jersey Girl, Monster-in-Law – come to think of it, I’m pretty sure she’s never really been in anything of value or merit. The question is how she ever manages to get cast at all. Is it her ass? That seems to be the only part of her anyone wants to look at. It certainly isn’t her charm or her talent for anything other than making as much money as possible selling whatever crap she can stamp her name on.
Once she and Ben Affleck were no longer a thing (and we were no longer being subjected to atrocities like Gigli and Jersey Girl), many of us hoped J. Lo would cease to exist altogether. Unfortunately for everyone, she realized life after Affleck was possible, and to this day she continues to inspire the greedy corporate capitalists of this country.
8. Mark Wahlberg
Let’s face it: Mark Wahlberg was meant to jump around in his underwear, show off his big muscles and occasionally rap - he was meant to stop doing this in 1995. Which is pretty much what happened. What he wasn’t meant to do was to then pursue an acting career. But this is America, and if you’ve proved you can annoy people in your underwear with a microphone, then you get a second chance to prove that you can annoy them in the movies, too. To be fair, Wahlberg has had a few successes. Boogie Nights, I Heart Huckabees and Three Kings all showed he had a glimmer of acting talent when given a role that suited him.
But for the most part the only roles that suit him require him to smash people in the face, shoot them, and run around really fast. Wahlberg delivers his lines best when out of breath, and it’s these moments of physical exertion that bring out his best qualities: his muscles. When he was supposed to emphasize his intelligence in the recent film The Happening he gave one of – if not the – worst performances of his entire career. He had no pistols with which to whip people; he had no enemies deserving of his punches; he had nothing but the wind in the air and the grass at his feet, and he showed us what happened when he had to say all of his lines with composure: he sounded like the utter idiot he is. He took a bad movie and made it worse. Because deep down he will always be Marky Mark in need of a new Funky Bunch.
7. Vin Diesel
Mark Sinclair Vincent’s (anyone who would rename himself to sound more like an automobile has some identity issues) character range has thus far have been pretty limited. He’s usually playing someone with uncanny athleticism, nerves of steel, gravelly-voiced charisma and a vigilante’s philosophy of justice. That’s Mark Sinclai – I mean Vin Diesel in a nut-shell.
Here’s Vin Diesel in a movie: being an athletic idiot in xXx, being a fast driver in The Fast and the Furious, and being a guy who can see in the dark and fight giant bats in Pitch Black. He’s been hired to actually act a couple of times, but considering his next line-up of films, it’s pretty clear he’s going to avoid doing that again in the near future. Who knows, maybe he’ll be the next Bruce Willis, but judging from the degree of ill-will that is focused on every movie that Diesel stars in – and the fact that he never brings these crap-fests up, though he does help drag them down – it seems like he doesn’t have a whole lot of political capital at his fingertips, so to speak. He should take up break dancing again, band together with Wahlberg, and join his new Funky Bunch.
6. The Olsen Twins
The Olsen twins represent everything that is worthless and repugnant about Hollywood. Neither of them can act their way out of a paper bag, neither of them are attractive, and neither of them has any reason for being famous except for the fact they successfully built fame on top of fame, and it kind of snowballed from there. I’m as big a fan of Full House as anyone else who was a kid back then, but let’s face it: neither Ashley nor Mary-Kate was a sentient being when they did their best work on that show.
How is it twenty years later we still know who the hell they are? I mean, when was the last time anyone heard anything about Dave Coulier? (Answer: the last time anyone listened to Alanis Morissette. Which was a long time ago.) So why is it that of the highly talented folks who made up the cast of Full House, the only ones we hear about with any regularity are the Olsen twins?!? If they wanted to further their careers they would become a part of Bob Saget's stand-up act.
