The jackal jack black
This being the case, the wisest, fairest course is take a detached, scientific approach toward the situation and examine the very concept of hardcore, full-tilt sucking in all its manifestations. But you wouldn't want to bet the rent money that Black can do it. That is a process that it almost impossible to reverse. Following in the trail blazed by Bob Hope, Dan Aykroyd and a few others, Black is a sterling example of the actor who starts out seeming like a breath of fresh air, and then turns into something stale, fetid, mephitic, nauseating. At this point in his career, it is almost impossible to believe that Black could ever be anything other than what he is. It is not our purpose here to upbraid Black for sucking, nor to encourage him to stop sucking, nor even to suggest steps he might take to at least suck less. It may explain why Black pouts through the entire film.
#The jackal jack black movie
Tropic Thunder is the film in which Black, playing a fatso sourpuss, heroin addict movie star stranded in an Asian jungle, gets upstaged by Downey Jr, Stiller, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Cruise, Nick Nolte and basically everyone else in the film, including a small child who never says a word in English. It is almost impossible to suck in a film in which only your voice is used, but Black sucked anyway.Įven in the rare Jack Black film that is not explicitly revolting – the exuberantly irreverent and very clever Tropic Thunder is a perfect example – Black succeeded in turning in a useless performance while those around him shone. He also sucked in King Kong, Saving Silverman, Year One and yes, Kung Fu Panda. He sucked in Shallow Hal, he sucked in Orange County, he sucked in The Holiday, and he sucked in Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny. As far as I can tell, these are the only films in his recent CV in which he does not flat-out suck. Three years later, Black would achieve his greatest success in School of Rock, again playing a dyspeptic slob. Prior to that, he had appeared in a number of films, including The Jackal and The Cable Guy, in which he played the designated loser. As I sat there in that darkened room, listening to his half-hearted pitch for what sounded like a thoroughly generic video game, it occurred to me that it would now be almost impossible to convince anyone under the age of 20 that there was actually a time when Jack Black did not suck.īlack – the classic example of the raffish outsider who initially spits on the entertainment industry, then is seduced by it, and then comes to epitomise everything that is wrong with it – first came to the public's attention in the 2000 film High Fidelity, in which he played a hilariously idiosyncratic record store employee. Finally, I had watched him in Ben Stiller's 2008 comedy hit Tropic Thunder, where he played a subordinate role to Robert Downey Jr and Stiller himself. I had also heard my son mention both the band Tenacious D and the film based on their exploits, and seen a few snippets of Black's turn in King Kong, where he played a porky impresario. I had recently heard Black's voice in the animated film Kung Fu Panda and, while channel-surfing, had glimpsed a few minutes of Nacho Libre, Black's sendup of Mexican wrestling culture. The star of the game, whose highly recognisable voice would be used to bring the principal character to life, was Jack Black. M oments before the film The Time Traveler's Wife began rolling, the cinema I was attending screened a "preview" of a new video game.