20 Great Movie Remakes With One Miscast Role

Quentin Tarantino knows how to put a film together, combining high and low culture to make auteur pictures that play like tentpole actioners. And Inglourious Basterds is just that: a new version of war film The Inglorious Bastards that ditches most of the plot and characters to make room for wise-cracking dialogue and brutal violence, with an ensemble cast that unites US and German stars, including Brad Pitt as US Lieutenant Aldo Raine, Michael Fassbender as British Lieutenant Archie Hicox, and Christoph Waltz as SS Standartenführer Hans Landa.

In an alternate history of the Second World War, Aldo heads the Basterds, leading a mission into occupied France to snuff out the Reich leadership once and for all, while Landa is hot on their heels. It's bloody, it’s chaotic, and it takes a top 3 spot in Tarantino’s filmography.

But there’s one scene that doesn’t play like the others, wedged into the second act during Archie Hicox’s introduction. The man recruiting him to assist the Basterds abroad is General Ed Fenech, played by Mike Myers. And he’s doing what Mike Myers does. He’s got a fake moustache, facial prosthetics, and a preposterous British accent, and it’s hard to take anything Fenech says seriously. It feels, for five minutes, that we’ve dropped out of Basterds and are watching Austin Powers do undercover work.

Tarantino is known for casting against type, but this does nothing for the character, scene, or film, and is an unsightly stain on a masterpiece.