Despite being forgettable in almost every way, new comedy Breaking the Bank does at least maintain one important tradition of British film-making: it features a big American star slumming it in a lead role. Breaking the Bank stars Kelsey Grammer as Charles, a failed upper-class British banker with a voice like a moose being shoved through a tube. It is not a particularly good performance, it is not a particularly good role, and it is most assuredly not a good film.
Frankly, it’s not much of a tradition, either. With minimal exceptions, it’s always heartbreaking when a famous American actor takes a role in a small British film. It shows that we’re still in thrall to Hollywood, both creatively and financially. It demonstrates a lack of confidence on the part of the film-makers, a need to bolster appeal by tacking on an often unnecessary element to an otherwise solid project. And of course, from painful experience, it means that we almost certainly won’t be seeing anything close to the actor’s best work.
So, to commemorate Grammer’s Breaking the Bank role, let’s look at some other British films that have managed to shoehorn in an ill-fitting American.
The 51st State
While technically a Canadian-British film, this witless action-comedy nevertheless featured a murderer’s row of turn-of-the-century Britpack faces. Robert Carlyle. Rhys Ifans. Sean Pertwee. Ricky Tomlinson. And, of course, Samuel L Jackson. This was a bad time for Jackson – around the era of Shaft and The Phantom Menace – and yet his performance in this film, requiring him to talk as if he’d been raised in isolation with only a VHS copy of Pulp Fiction to parent him, was the absolute nadir.
The Boat That Rocked
This list could have been filled to the brim with movies by Richard Curtis, who adheres to the “token American” rule almost as violently as he adheres to the “airports as a location for romantic reunions and not mindbreaking stress” rule. However, let’s single out his 2009 disaster The Boat That Rocked for absolutely wasting the talents of Philip Seymour Hoffman. Somewhere there’s a Paul Thomas Anderson masterwork that will forever go unmade because Hoffman was contracted to do this.
The Iron Lady
In theory, you can see why Meryl Streep wanted to be in this film. Margaret Thatcher was a towering figure in world politics, and Streep is one of the few actors with the chops to do her credit. But still, wouldn’t it have been better if a British actress had been given her role instead? What about Rosamund Pike? What about Patricia Routledge? What about that bloke who did the Mrs Thatcher voice on Spitting Image?
Snatch
In the year 2000, Brad Pitt could have chosen any project on Earth. That he chose to play an incoherent Irish bare-knuckle boxer in a genuinely impenetrable Loaded-era Guy Ritchie film is proof that, at that point in his life, he absolutely could not be trusted. Admittedly, Pitt wasn’t the only actor shipped over from Hollywood for Snatch – Dennis Farina and Benicio del Toro came along with him – but he was the one with enough clout to get the film made, for which he should be eternally ashamed.
Shooting Fish
Nobody remembers the 1997 crime comedy Shooting Fish, nor should they. With its lack of a cogent plot, Shine compilation of a soundtrack (featuring the Supernaturals, the Wannadies and two separate Space songs) and Wikipedia entry that can only have been written by someone involved in the production (“Shooting Fish continues to command a cult status among fans and bears up remarkably well today against films of a similar era, including Up ‘n’ Under and High Heels and Low Lifes”), what stands out now is its role as the low point of Dan Futterman’s career. He’d soon go on be nominated for two Oscars as the writer of Capote and Foxcatcher.
A Long Way Down
This is a film about four suicidal people who all independently plan to throw themselves off the top of a London skyscraper on New Year’s Eve. One of these people is a pizza delivery boy. He is played by Aaron Paul. Aaron Paul, the universally beloved star of Breaking Bad. Aaron Paul, who at that point seemed like he was about to conquer the world with his matinee-idol looks and undeniable charisma. Playing a pizza delivery boy. Not an astronaut, or a rock star, or a groundbreaking scientist. A pizza delivery boy. This was a very silly film.
The Knot
You haven’t seen The Knot, because it was trashed beyond recognition on its release in 2012. A brazen Bridesmaids rip-off written by Noel Clarke, it was called “slap-dash”, “half-finished”, “unfunny”, “tedious” and “unpleasant”, and made Peter Bradshaw want to kill himself. But it is a British romantic comedy, so it only stands to reason that a faded US actress like Mena Suvari would turn up and just sort of hang around in a do-nothing role that only existed to make you sad about the way that Mena Suvari’s career turned out.
Night Caller from Outer Space
This is far from a modern trope, though. The entire history of British cinema is filled with out-of-place Americans hoping their presence will somehow ensure Stateside success. There are too many of these films to go into, although one of the best is Night Caller from Outer Space; a cock-eyed 1965 sci-fi about a meteor that crashes to Earth and unleashes a monster that starts abducting young girls via adverts in Bikini Girl magazine. The only figure that punctures the film’s air of cut-glass silliness is insanely prolific American actor John Saxon (Enter the Dragon, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Cynic, The Rat and the Fist) who turns up, looks confused and then shouts at an alien in a coat. He’s terrific. Maybe this isn’t a completely bad tradition after all.
