Ben Affleck: This has nothing to do with the whole J. Lo thing. I could care less. Have you seen anything he’s made in the last three years? Do you see where I’m going with this? I don’t think he reads scripts anymore. If I had to guess, I’d say he covers them in gravy and lets his dog gnaw on them, then films whatever the dog won’t eat. He’s not a bad actor. I’ve enjoyed him in the past, even in movies like “Dogma,” which weren’t all that great as a whole. But if he’s going to salvage his dignity, if he wants history to judge him with a compassionate eye, he needs to step away from the camera. One more stinker like “Gigli” and he’ll be doing infomercials with Ron Jeremy on Comedy Central at four in the morning – if he’s lucky. Do us all a favor, Ben, go enjoy that woman of yours and let us enjoy Affleck-free multiplexes.
Michael Douglas: To put this in perspective, this guy won an Oscar once. He was in a number of landmark films in the 15 years between “Romancing the Stone” and “Traffic.” But that’s all over now. If you had the misfortune of catching “It Runs in the Family” or “The In-Laws,” you noticed that, once a man who bristled with intensity and glowed with charisma, Douglas now shambles through films just trying his best not to hurt himself. He looks like a mere shell of the talented artist he once was. Catherine Zeta-Jones is a vampire in the most literal sense of the word. She’s just slowly feeding off of him like the remorseless show business lamprey that she is, and she won’t stop until he’s a desiccated husk that can only be trotted out once a year on Oscar night. We can’t let it go on like this. Either Douglas needs to retire so he can wither away out of the public eye or we all need to start sending him crucifixes, cloves of garlic and long wooden stakes.
Haley Joel Osment: I hate to tell a 15-year-old that he’s completely washed up and is only deadening western civilization by continuing to work. But hey, when you’re right, you’re right. “Awkward” doesn’t begin to describe this guy. I’m starting to think he really does see dead people; in every movie I’ve seen him in since “The Sixth Sense” he’s looked like he is just one sudden movement away from vomiting all over the set. To be fair, Disney does own a controlling interest in the little android, and a lot of his most offensive works – “Secondhand Lions” and “The Country Bears” – has come from the twisted Skeletor-like claw of Michael Eisner. But that’s no excuse for the pain this kid has caused me with his disturbingly alien laughter and pathetic simpering in every single film he’s appeare in. Osment needs to stop acting so he can salvage the flaming shards of his childhood and so I can go to the movies without the wholly reasonable fear that he’ll make a cameo and destroy what little faith I have left in cinema.
Keanu Reeves: I’ve been petitioning the United Nations for years now to make a certain caliber of bad acting a war crime, and I’ve done so with Mr. Reeves specifically in mind. Stop for a minute and try to come up with two Keanu Reeves films that didn’t make you feel like living another day would be pointless and terribly painful. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Done? I’d be willing to bet that every last one of you thought of the same two movies: “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” and “The Matrix.” The reason these two movies stand out in everyone’s mind as evidence that, under the right conditions, Reeves might not suck is because he wasn’t acting in them. He was being completely natural. All his character does in either film is stumble around blindly, as if completely astonished by the world around him. Convincing, wasn’t it? What you don’t realize is, that’s how Reeves lives every day of his life. Light above a certain wattage can entertain him for days. He periodically forgets to breathe. All the directors of his movies have to do is guide him around the set by dangling shiny objects in front of him. This guy shouldn’t be making movies; he should be in a medical facility being studied by neurologists. It’s really the only humane thing to do, for all our sakes. And in the wake of the “Matrix” sequels, it’s looking more necessary by the day.
