Trainwreck drops in UK cinemas this week. Directed by US comedy godfather Judd Apatow, it’s the first big movie written and starring pretty much the funniest woman in America right now, Amy Schumer. And while there’s plenty of great supporting actors in the film, like Bill Hader, Brie Larsen, Tilda Swinton and Ezra Miller, the guy who steals the film is Lebron James. Yup, that Lebron James. NBA All-Star Lebron James. Really. He is legit the funniest thing in the whole film.
Athletes trying to act doesn’t normally go this well. They might be great on the court, or on the pitch, or in the ring, but stick a camera on them and they have the charisma of an inanimate carbon rod. Some of them manage to resemble human beings though, and a rare few even get near the heights of Lebron. Here are some of the best, and, well, weirdest.
Big name cameos aren’t anything unusual in a Judd Apatow movie. But Lebron James has far more than just a walk-on part in Trainwreck. He’s in it throughout the whole thing, as Bill Hader’s sidekick. And he is fucking hilarious. Not just funny because it’s 'Lebron in a film'. He has perfectly line delivery, and his comic timing is as on-point as his court skills. Him and Hader are a legit incredible double act together, and now I just want a remake of Lethal Weapon or something starring the two of them.
Do you remember Djokovic appearing in The Expendables 2? No? That’s because his cameo was cut out. Which is mental. The ten-second scene, which is on YouTube, shows the world No.1 killing terrorists with his tennis racket during the film’s big airport-set finale. Why the hell would you cut that out? It’s amazing.
Ok, it’s a kind of sad fall from grace that the one-time Baddest Man On The Planet was reduced to doing Phil Collins karaoke in a Bradley Cooper comedy. But the first Hangover was great, so he gets off. What’s really embarrassing though it that he returned for the fucking terrible Hangover Part II, where he got to sing with a full band.
Bruce Lee’s unfinished masterpiece Game Of Death wasn’t just meant to be about Lee kicking the crap out of guys. It was supposed to be a metaphor for his philosophy on martial arts, with a different style of fighter on every level of a mysterious pagoda. On the top level, as the most mysterious fighter, Lee cast the 7 ft 2 in Abdul-Jabbar, and it’s one of the sickest moments in kung-fu movie history.
After Michelle Rodriguez went toe-to-toe with Gina Carano in Fast 6, it would only make sense that Ronda Rousey would step up for the next instalment. It’s a small but incredible fight, with Rodriguez and Rousey brawling through a ultra-rich Abu Dhabi Tycoon’s party, and eventually landing on the DJ booth.
There’s a lot going in Captain America 2. So much, that it’s easy to miss things. Really great things, like three-time UFC Welterweight Champion Georges St-Pierre fighting Cap early on as 'Batroc The Leaper'. Batroc was always a bit of a joke in the comics, a stupid character with a stupid French accent, but Montreal-born GSP easily redeems him delivers probably the best pure fist fight of the Marvel movies so far.
Oh, how a few years changes things. When Dodgeball came out in 2004, Lance Armstrong was an international hero, a guy who overcame multiple cancers to win seven consecutive Tour de Frances—so it made sense for him to pop up and give Vince Vaughn a (hilariously over the top) inspirational speech. In 2015 though, we just know him as a drugs cheat. So it’s less inspiring tbh.
Imagine if you had to describe Space Jam to someone who had somehow never heard of it: “So Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny have to team up to have a basketball match against some aliens, who have stolen the skills of Charles Barkely and Patrick Ewing, and want to enslave the Looney Tunes in an amusement park, run by Danny DeVito. Oh yeah, and there’s loads of 90s hip-hop on the soundtrack, and Bill Murray is also in it.” Space Jam is amazing, y’all.
Goal! was meant to be a three-film epic about the rise of Mexican-American wonderkid Santiago Muñez, from the LA slums to the World Cup. Instead, it fizzled out and part 3 ended up going straight-to-DVD. The first one has a incredibly wooden cameo from Beckham, but also since Santiago signs for Newcastle United, features a host of mid-2000s Premeir League stars and also-rans—including Alan Shearer, Lee Bowyer, Jermaine Jenas and Shola Ameobi.
So yeah, Cars 2 is easily the worst thing Pixar have ever done. It does however have a cameo from Lewis Hamilton, playing himself. Well, himself, as if he was a car. Like everything else in the Cars universe, it just creates a lot of questions. Is he a car that drives a car around for a living? And why is he a sports car, and not an F1 car?
Yes, Steven Gerrard has had an even more embarrassing moment than when he slipped up against Chelsea. He made his acting debut in this ‘feel-good’ story about a young Liverpool fan—who is also an orphan!—who travels to Istanbul on his own to attend the 2004 Champions League Final. It looks so sickly sweet you’d probably develop diabetes from watching it.
The enigmatic, incredible Eric Cantona has spent most of his post-football career trying to become an actor. But his best performance so far (outside of Nike adverts, at least) has been as himself in Ken Loach’s gritty fable Looking For Eric. The film follows a down on his luck Manchester United fan who is visited by visions of Cantona at his time of need (it works much better on-screen than it sounds).
Former Chelsea centre back Frank Leboeuf was part of the great French side of the late 90s that won both the World Cup and European Championships. But since hanging up his boots, he’s followed Eric Cantona and started acting. His highest profile role so far was as a Swiss doctor in last year’s Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory Of Everything, which shockingly makes him the first person to both win the World Cup and appear in an Oscar winning film.
It should have been The Rock. If you’re remaking The A-Team, replacing Mr T is going to be your hardest task. But how good would The Rock have been? (And this was 2010, before he was a megastar, so you could have probably got him). But instead they got UFC fighter Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson, who was pretty good, actually. But he’s not The Rock.
Aw, the mid 90s. A time when giving an NBA star with no acting skills their own movie was a perfectly acceptable thing to do. Along with Space Jam, Kazaam was the apex example of this, having Shaq play a 5,000 year old genie with a magical boombox. It’s god-awful, obviously, but it’s impossible to hate Shaq in anything.
Much like The Hangover, the sequel to this Kevin Hart smash is also set during a Vegas stag night. So like The Hangover, it also has a boxer cameo. Thing is, the Think Like A Man films are based on best-selling relationship advice book. And you can’t really think of anyone worse to give advice on how to treat women than Floyd Mayweather…
Yeah, there was a sequel to Basic Instinct, and yes Stan Collymore was in it. The film starts with Collymore driving speeding around in a sports car with Sharon Stone, whilst she starts touching herself. She then crashes the car into a river and kills him. Strangely, Collymore has never been in another film, before or since.
We all know Vinnie Jones was in Snatch, and Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels. And, er, X-Men 3 and Eurotrip. But the best Vinnie Jones film is day-glo Japanese yakuza ensemble movie Survive Style 5+, where he plays an English hitman in Tokyo, traveling around with a gawky translator in bright yellow tartan suit. It’s weird.
In 2015, the long-threatened Entourage movie happened. The show had been off the air for years, Turtle wasn’t fat anymore, and Adrian Grenier still can’t make himself a movie star in the real world. The film did however have its expected amount of big-name cameos, with Theirry Henry making his screen debut alongside the likes of T.I., Calvin Harris and Liam Neeson.
Will Smith made a pretty great Muhammad Ali is Michael Mann’s biopic a few years back. But that wasn’t the first film about Ali’s life. Ali even starred in this weird 1977 tale, playing himself. But everyone else is played by actors, including recognisable faces like James Earl Jones and Robert Duvall. It’s a very strange experience, but Ali is always watchable, so it never gets boring—something that can't be said about the Will Smith version, sadly.
Trainwreck is in UK cinemas August 14.
