10 Underrated Movies With Jaw-Dropping Ensemble Casts
Is anyone NOT in this movie?
It's ultra-rare for a large group of A-list actors to come together to make a movie together without it devolving into a giant pissing contest that ultimately ruins (or at least greatly diminishes) the end result. Sure, there have been a few Oscar-nominated ensemble casts with a collective ego so large that it could have its own movie (Heat, anyone?), but, by and large, the most star-studded casts also tend to have the most difficulty living up to the hype (there's also the possibility that the director called in a few hundred favours to supplant a terrible script, as was the case with the staggering amount of star power in Movie 43). And that's why it's always such a pleasant surprise to watch a film and notice a whole hoard of well-known, well-respected actors show up on screen one after another and not immediately be disappointed or underwhelmed by their collective output. How do they manage to pull it off? Typically, it's about finding professionals with the right attitude, who are able to embrace being part of a collective without needing to outshine everyone else, although you could go the route assemble a cast of up-and-comers who won't become stratospherically famous until after the film is released, making it look jam-packed with stars in retrospect with none of the fuss. The examples here are a bit of both. Some of the movies featured a bunch of unknowns who went on to become Hollywood heavyweights, while some dutifully managed to wrangle a bunch of mega-stars together without imploding. The one commonality? None of these movies get the credit they deserve, star power or not.