2007 Kaedrin Movie Awards: Best Comedic Performance & Breakthrough Performance

The nominations for the 2007 Kaedrin Movie Awards were announced last week. This week, I’ll be announcing two winners every day, culminating in a post with my top 10 movies of the year and possibly some other wrap-up posts. Here comes the Best Comedic Performance and Breakthrough Performance awards:

Best Comedic Performance: (tie) Michael Cera and Jonah Hill in Superbad

A bit of a cheat, sure, but this comic duo works perfectly together, and Superbad was the movie that made me laugh the most this year. A big part of those laughs was Hill’s exuberance and, to offset that, Cera’s straight-man act was perfect. I do want to mention two of the other nominees though. Simon Pegg’s performance in Hot Fuzz was spot on and featured a number of extremely subtle in-jokes and references (for example, when he runs, he looks like the T-1000 from T2 and when he yells, he does so like Swartzenegger from the end of Predator (i.e. the “Ruuun! Get to da chappah!”)). I’d imagine that some people are confused by my nomination of Kristen Wiig in Knocked Up. After all, she’s only on screen for what? 2, maybe 3 minutes? Well, she steals every second, and IMHO she’s the funniest part of the movie.

Breakthrough Performance: Josh Brolin in Grindhouse and No Country for Old Men

Ok, nominating Ellen Page again was a bit of a cheat, but I wanted to recognize her again because she gave another exellent performance and she didn’t win last year. But she wasn’t really a breakthrough to me. Her performance was excellent, but I expected that. The other person in the running for this was Michael Cera who put in two good performances this year. In the end, though, Brolin was the real surprise. Where did this guy come from? Oh yeah, The Goonies! But that was over 20 years ago. It’s interesting, I suppose, how someone’s career can change so quickly, as Brolin went from B-level to A-list seemingly at the drop of a hat. He was excellent in both Grindhouse and No Country, and he turned up in American Gangster and In the Valley of Elah as well. He seems to be busy…

Next up: Most Visually Stunning and Best Sci-Fi or Horror Film

2 thoughts on “2007 Kaedrin Movie Awards: Best Comedic Performance & Breakthrough Performance”

  1. I’d also like to point out that Kristen has a HILARIOUS deleted scene on the 2 disc version of Knocked Up. It’s an extended version of the promotion scene and she basically just improvs.

Comments are closed.