One of my greatest pleasures when watching movies is seeing
two actors that I like, pairing up again.
There’s nothing quite like the chemistry that the actors have shining
through the movie, regardless of how bad the movie is. I just want to see them again. They are so entertaining together that I
cannot dislike the pairing.
This was inspired by this week’s movie in the Sunday “Bad”
Movies. The movie was Money Train, a
1995 action comedy about… Well, it’s kind of a mess and difficult to
explain. Two cops are trying to stop
crime in subway stations. They end up
taking down a murderer who likes to burn ticket girls in their booths. Then they get fired, and there is a heist on
the money train, a train that delivers money to banks and stuff. The reason that the movie brought up the idea
of actor pairings was because of the stars of the movie. Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson.
Snipes and Harrelson were in a total of four movies
together. They started with the sports
film Wildcats in 1986. I haven’t seen
that movie. I have seen their second
outing together many, many times. White
Men Can’t Jump was a strange childhood favourite of mine. In the 1992 film, the two played street
basketball hustlers who were having problems in their daily lives. I’m not exactly sure why, but I love the
movie. It probably has to do with the
chemistry between the two guys. The
third movie they teamed up for was Money Train.
And finally, they paired up for Play It to the Bone, another movie I
have yet to see.
Between the two movies that I have seen them in together, I
know that I love seeing Snipes and Harrelson play off of each other. Their chemistry emanates through the movies
and brings them to another level. As bad
as Money Train is, it is still extremely enjoyable because of how well the two
guys work together. They are one of the
most entertaining pairings of actors that I have ever seen on screen.
However, there are other pairings of actors that are more
mind-boggling than the Harrelson and Snipes pairing. These are pairs that have worked on multiple
movies together. For whatever reason,
they worked on multiple movies together.
I don’t understand it, other people don’t understand it, yet we end up
with more than one movie in which the pair of actors are present. Today, I’m going to take a look at some of
these actor pairings. Some of them have
been in movies that I’ve featured in the Sunday “Bad” Movies before. Others have not. But I’ll write about them anyway. So let’s get to it then.
First up is a pairing that I’ve seen in two movies so
far. One of the movies was Freelancers,
a movie I’ve watched for the Sunday “Bad” Movies. The other movie I’ve seen them paired up in
was the movie Righteous Kill. And I know
that they were both in Last Vegas, if you care about that information at
all. The pair of actors I’m describing
are Robert DeNiro and Curtis Jackson. These
are two people that I never thought would be in movies together. And then they were in three movies
together. Somehow it happened. I cannot explain it at all. There’s nothing about having the two in a
movie together that shows that they make a captivating pairing. I didn’t watch either movie and think “These
two need to stick together. They’re good
together.” They just ended up together
thrice. And I still find it weird.
Another pairing which seems strange has also been featured
in the Sunday “Bad” Movies before. The
big difference is that this pairing works.
When I watched Exit Wounds, there were two actors that got paired up who
you wouldn’t think would be good together, but then were exceptional. Those two were Tom Arnold and Anthony
Anderson. Sure, they have only been in
two movies together. Sure, both movies
had the same director. Sure, DMX was
also in both movies so you might consider it a trio. And yeah, there might have been more people
in both. But it’s these two that really
shine together. They have an unexpected
chemistry that lights up the screen.
They’re hilarious when they work off of each other and they elevate the
movies they are in. It’s an unexpected
delight, and one that should have been capitalized on more than twice.
I should say right now that I don’t count franchises as
multiple movies when I’m discussing actor pairings. It would be unfair to say Shatner and Nimoy
and point at only the Star Trek movies. When
I’m talking or writing about actor pairings, I mean multiple franchises. I’m only putting this here to clarify and
explain why I don’t include the cast of the Police Academy movies.
The next one, and the one that I’m going to end on because
it’s a big one, is actually a bunch of actors.
I’m talking about the cast of Saturday Night Live. More specifically, I’m talking about the
early 90s cast of Saturday Night Live.
To name actual names: Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, David
Spade, Kevin Nealon, Norm MacDonald, Colin Quinn, Tim Meadows, and while he was
alive, Chris Farley. Those guys. They’re a bunch of guys who work together
often. Most of the time, it’s under
Sandler’s Happy Madison productions.
From Billy Madison all the way up through the Grown Ups movies (with the
second having upwards of fifteen SNL cast members), to the recent Top Five, the
guys are always finding ways to get each other into their projects. So I thought I would take a look at a notable
few.
Billy Madison was the first big Sandler movie in the sense
of the Sandler movie style. He’d done a
few movies before that, but Billy Madison was where he really became Adam
Sandler the movie guy. It solidified
Sandler’s manchild persona on the big screen, and he brought along a few of his
SNL friends for the ride. Norm MacDonald
played one of his best friends in the movie.
Chris Farley played the driver of a school bus. Robert Smigel showed up for a little bit as
well. That’s four SNL people off the top
of my head that were in Billy Madison.
And they weren’t going to stop appearing together there.
Let’s move forward a few years to Deuce Bigalow: Male
Gigolo, mostly because it was featured in the Sunday “Bad” Movies. The star this time is Rob Schneider, but the
movie was produced by Adam Sandler’s production company. In fact, it may have been the first movie
under the Happy Madison banner. Yes. It was the first one. Anyway, other SNL cast in the movie were future
cast member Amy Poehler, Norm MacDonald, and the voice of Adam Sandler. The sequel would include Sandler and
MacDonald as different characters, Fred Armisen, Chris Farley’s brother John,
and SNL writer Heather Anne Campbell before she was a writer for SNL. So, although not all had been working for SNL
prior to the movies, they could all be associated with it in some way now.
Fast forward to Grown Ups 2, just because I want to
list off all of the SNL alumni that were in the movie, that I recognize as SNL
alumni. Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, David
Spade, Maya Rudolph, Colin Quinn, Tim Meadows, Jon Lovitz, Cheri Oteri, Ellen
Cleghorne, Andy Samberg, Bobby Moynihan, Taran Killam, Paul Brittain, Will
Forte, and Melanie Hutsell, as well as relatives of some of the cast and the
other two Lonely Island guys. That’s a
lot of SNL people. The movie is filled
with them.
And finally, the last one I want to mention is Top Five,
which is one of the most recent movies with multiple SNL cast members. The movie was written and directed by Chris
Rock. It starred Chris Rock. He pulled a few strings and got a few other
SNL people into the movie. He got writer
J.B. Smoove, and actors Tracy Morgan, Jay Pharoah, and Leslie Jones. Also, Adam Sandler and Dean Edwards. For the most part, Rock was pulling from the
black history of SNL.
Yes, none of that is really a pairing. It’s a bunch of people who like to work with
each other. Presumably, it’s because
they all shared that experience of late nights and rushed writing. Many of them became friends working together
on the show. Others just feel a
connection because they went through the same trials and tribulations. Some of what they make comes out as stinkers. Look at Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo. It’s an odd group of people to work together
so often, but at the same time it makes perfect sense.
I’m sure there are many more pairings or groupings of actors
working together that have produced a varied quality of films. You’ve got your Hanks-Ryan pairing and your
Affleck-Damon pairing. But for now, I’m
going to leave it at the ones that I’ve already written about. I’m sure I’ll come back to this subject at
some point. Maybe I’ll even elaborate on
things that I’ve written about here. (*cough* SNL *cough*) But for now, I leave you with this post.
I’ll leave you with some notes as well:
- Jennifer Lopez was in Money Train. If you look back a little bit in the Sunday “Bad” Movies, you’ll see that I covered Anaconda, another movie she was in.
- I mentioned a few movies in this post that I’ve covered. I mentioned Freelancers, Exit Wounds, and the Deuce Bigalow movies.
- There’s another post going up this week. I take a look at some of the bad movies that were released in 2014, that I hadn’t already covered for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.
- Are there any actor pairs or groups that I neglected to mention who have made bad movies together? What are some of your favourites? If you have any comments to make related to what I wrote about in this post, the comment section below is where you can do that.
- You can also use the comment section to suggest movies for me to cover in future installments of the Sunday “Bad” Movies. Or you could suggest them to me on Twitter or at sundaybadmovies@gmail.com
- Next week’s movie will be four movies, actually. The Toxic Avenger series is getting the Sunday “Bad” Movie treatment. I’ll see you then.
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