10 Movies That Actually Benefited From Bad Acting

Even the best writing and tightest direction can be undone by a bad performance or two, where a miscast actor or downright shambolic performance fatally distracts the audience from the story and characters.

And so, with potentially hundreds of millions of dollars on the line - as well as their own artistic reputations - filmmakers tend to invest a lot of time and energy in ensuring they've cast the right actors for the job.

And then there are those rare occasions where an actor gives a bad performance that's actually to the movie's overall merit, for one of several strange and unexpected reasons.

Perhaps a wooden performance ends up unintentionally informing an actor's spaced-out character, or it lends the film a certain charm it might otherwise lack, or even helps emphasise the themes in a surprising way.

Whatever the reason, these 10 movies all benefitted enormously from poor acting that could've theoretically sunk the entire project, yet the directors were smart enough to lean into these qualities and even glorify them for impact.

As much as nobody wants their lead actor to give an off-note performance, in these cases it absolutely worked out for the best...

Keanu Reeves is an absolutely fascinating human being - so effortlessly likeable, enough that sheer charm alone has allowed him to shrug off a number of critically maligned performances over the years.

Surely the most consistent criticism levelled against Reeves is that he's a bit wooden, demonstrating a lack of emotional affect which in turn prevents the audience from fully connecting with his characters.

But that flattened quality was totally perfect for the role of Neo in The Matrix, a character who is basically supposed to be a blank slate more-or-less devoid of feeling, especially in the early going.

This isn't to say that Reeves is distractingly terrible in the film, but in an ensemble including Carrie-Anne Moss, Lawrence Fishburne, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantoliano, he's clearly the weakest link.

Yet the Wachowskis were smart enough to appreciate that Reeves' malleable stoicism actually made him a superb fit for the reserved computer hacker who becomes the savour of the human race.

Will Smith was originally up for the part and would've brought an entirely different, ultimately ill-suited energy to it. Smith, who turned the film down, even admitted that he would've screwed it up and that Reeves was a much better fit for this type of role.