Image via Complex Original
This Sunday the 88th Academy Awards will air and, barring a catastrophe soaring in from left of left field, Leonardo DiCaprio will finally get his Oscar for Best Actor. Dude has more than put in his work, with his performances in The Departed and the The Wolf of Wall Street, along with a pair of Supporting Actor robberies from What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and Django Unchained (the latter of which didn’t even secure a nomination). But let’s not straight up anoint the guy just because his time has come—let’s still remember the other side of the coin. Leo D has given us greatness for so long and has been so consistent, in both movies and tabloid news, that it’s hard to remember he has, in fact, thrown up a few bricks. In order to remind myself that Leonardo DiCaprio is human and therefore fallible, I decided to spend a weekend binge-watching Leo’s worst films. If anything, these Ls will just make Sunday’s big W that much sweeter.
The Man in the Iron Mask (1998)
The Man in the Iron Mask is overly romanticized garbage, but it also secured a historic award for Leo. To this day he is the only person to win Worst Screen Couple at the Razzies alone, which he secured for the scenes in which he played both Louis and Philippe. The young gawd wasn’t yet ready to command as a villain, as he did so well later on in Django. But it didn’t matter that the film was big budget dinner theater. Iron Mask was the first Leo film to drop post-Titanic, and it CRUSHED at the box office. He could have been in a snuff film after becoming Jack Dawson, and it would have surpassed $100 million. The Leo effect even carried over to his next project, The Beach, another dubious decision from King of the World era DiCaprio.
The Beach (2000)
Danny Boyle and Leonardo DiCaprio teaming up to bring Alex Garland’s fantastical vacation novel to the big screen should have been killer, but it ended up being a hollow depiction of a classic idea posited by stoner groups everywhere: “What if we started a commune, man.” Francois summed up the entire film when she shut down Richard’s thirst as he tried to spit astronomy-based game: “This is just the kind of pretentious bullshit that Americans always say to French girls so they can sleep with them.” To be fair, there were moments of joyous escapism. But they were promptly soiled by the pseudo-intellectual bullshit that Leo’s character espouses. And the surrealistic interruptions, which could have provided a Lynchian spark, ended up more cheesy than avant-garde.
(Side-note: Leonardo DiCaprio did not age from ages 18 to 32. In The Beach he was a 25-year-old playing a 24-year-old who easily could have passed for 18.)
Blood Diamond (2006)
Leo nabbed a Best Actor nomination for this flick. But as true as his performance was, the movie itself is one of his worst. Even the elevator pitch must have been a mess. We’re gonna combine a diamond smuggler thriller with the tearjerking of an African genocide drama with an odd couple romance with a touch of journalistic truthing. Do. Less. Blood Diamond. There were so many things going on at once that they were all underserved, especially Danny Archer’s curious romance with journalist Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly). Why should she fall for this smuggler? Sure, he gave her the scoop to expose blood diamond trade in Sierra Leone. But at no point did he seem morally righteous. He gave her the story to aid his quest for a fat ass rock and to get in her pants. And his redemption at the end—intended for her eyes and ours—in the form of giving the diamond to Solomon Vandy and his rescued son, was prompted by his impending death—not a rebuffing of his unethical profession. Leo getting nominated for this trainwreck makes it all the more frustrating that Beasts of No Nation, a far superior depiction of an African nation torn by civil war, was snubbed by the Academy.
Body of Lies (2008)
Another foray into action stardom, another wasted Leo Performance. This time around our boy Leo was stuck in a Middle Eastern spy thriller so simultaneously cliche and implausible it should be a season-long plot line for Homeland. The ease at which his CIA character conjures up a fake terrorist to lure a true Al Qaeda mastermind is laughable. His romance with the nurse who delivers his polio shots is forced and unnecessary, beside giving him a (weak) reason to tell Russell Crowe’s excellent puppet master to fuck off. And the dysfunction between the CIA and Jordanian Intelligence magically pays off in the end, only at the expense of a few of Leo’s fingers. If anything, this movie only existed to give Leo more writhing-and-screaming preparation for The Revenant. And, shit, so did Blood Diamond and The Beach. Leo has writhed and screamed in so many disparate nations!
J. Edgar (2011)
I’m not gonna lie. I did not finish this movie. Technically, I was present as the movie played out in its duration. But I was bored to death sleep within an hour. J. Edgar Hoover was a fascinating, paranoid hounder of evidence as the first director of the FBI, but this snooze fest doesn’t do his story justice. And as fantastic as Leo is at diving into his characters fully, he was seemingly possessed by the spirit of Johnny Depp and his obsession with using makeup to make him less pretty. You could put this movie on a projector inside a study hall full of college kids on Adderall, and they would still fall asleep. Even a historian would call J. Edgar dry. Why did Clint Eastwood have to do our guy Leo like this?
