The First Annual Torpedo Awards over at filmfodder is an interesting read. The award “honors” a film performance by an actor or actress that is so bad it keeps a good movie from being a great movie, hence “torpedoing” it. They’ve done a decent job of it, picking out most of the obvious ones (such as Sofia Coppola in “The Godfather III”, The entire leading cast of “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”, Denise Richards in “The World is Not Enough”, or my personal favourite Jeremy London in “Mallrats” – that guy couldn’t deliver Smith’s brilliant dialogue for shit) and making a few controversial but debateable choices (such as Jack Nicholson in “The Shining”, Quentin Tarantino in “Pulp Fiction”, or, perhaps not so controversial, Mark Hamill in “Star Wars”). The only glaring ommission I can see (and I’m notoriously bad at picking stuff like this) is Edward Furlong in “Terminator 2”. That whole crackly-voiced whiny-ass punk kid routine got real annoying real fast. Of course, there were other problems with T2, and you’re supposed to look only at the performance not the role, but I think that movie could have been a lot better had it not been for little Eddy’s performance… I’m sure there are lots of others – anyone want to give it a shot?
