Funny - I mentioned this as a bad movie for which I have a soft spot because I loved it as a kid, 2 reasons why "Wiz" is a bad movie but not a traditional "waste of talent", IMO: 1) the casting was just wrong for so many roles. Ted Ross and Mabel King reprised stage characters and were arguably the only 2 who matched well with their parts. 2) Sidney Lumet was 100% a terrible choice to direct a musical. Someone thought "hey, let's have the dude who did 'Dog Day Afternoon' and 'Serpico' direct a light musical adaptation of 'Wizard of Oz'"??? So yeah, there's real talent there but the bad choices doomed the film in ways that aren't true for a lot of the movies in this thread.
My go-to pick for Biggest Waste of Talent: "Meet the Fockers": "Meet the Parents" wasn't a classic but it was an entertaining comedy. "Fockers" offers a complete disaster where the biggest laughs come from a baby who says "a$$hole" and puerile humor abounds. Jay Roach. Ben Stiller. Owen Wilson. Barbra Streisand. Robert De Niro. Dustin Hoffman. Blythe Danner. Tim Blake Nelson. Great cast and crew. Painfully bad movie. FWIW, "Little Fockers" brings back most of the above and adds new talent like Harvey Keitel, Laura Dern and others, all while it becomes arguably worse than "Fockers". I pick "Fockers" as the bigger waste of talent because it launched that particular ship. Blame the originator!
I almost want to say "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". Not because Frampton or the Bee Gees or anyone else in the movie besides George Burns could act, but because they collected five or six dozen talented late 70s musicians and random celebrities to do nothing front of the camera at the end of the movie.
The 1979 all-star-cast movie BLOODLINE was poorly regarded at the time of its release and I don't believe its reputation has improved.
Popeye with Robin Williams is IMO the worst movie ever made. Robert Altman, Robin Williams, Shelly Duvall, and a pile high of cocaine. Heartbeeps with Andy Kauffman and Bernadette Peters was also awful. Score by John Williams
if it was played straight without the songs it would have ruled..Robin was a great Popeye, actually the rest of the cast were great as well!
Only Angels Have Wings (1939) with James Stewart, Jean Arthur, and Rita Hayworth. Rita was not used to her, cough, magnificent potentials! Trivia: 1 of a few pretty good movies Thomas Mitchell was in that year: Gone With the Wind, It's a Wonderful Life, The Hunchback from Notre Dame, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Stagecoach (Best Supporting Actor)! Some actors would KILL for a year like that!
I WANTED the focus to be mostly on Yossarian (Yo Yo) and ORR, so the rest of the cast was sorta distracting to me. Anthony Perkins the Anabaptist might have been the best one in that wasted supporting cast, but I also remember Yossarian's love interest and the old man who told Nately about life!
Now, I might concede about Heartbeeps, but I still kinda like it. Blame my access to cable TV when I was young.
The blu-ray has a music-only feature where it's a 35 min mini film that's all singing. I've watched that a couple of times recently and seen what they were aiming at and think they succeeded to some degree. It's all the other stuff that has me wincing.
i thought it was okay. to me, the best part of the movie was bob ballaban as orr. i agree that the scene were the old man was talking to art garfunkle was great. i also like the scene when all the pilots give a thumbs up to signal that they are ready for take off. then they get to yossarian, who flips the bird.
i think bob newhart was miscast as major major. i don't know they didn't cast henry fonda. the character in the book was suposed to be a dead ringer for hank fonda
Did either of you ever see the 1973 television pilot of 'Catch 22' with Richard Dreyfuss as Yossarian? Really dreadful.
