8 Miscast Movie Roles That Received A Bizarre Amount Of Praise

4. Roberto Benigni - Life Is Beautiful

Robert Benigni's performance in the audacious and frankly bizarre Life Is Beautiful is "okay." No more, no less. Playing a Jewish father who attempts to transform a Nazi concentration camp into a nice place for his son to live during World War II through some carefully deployed lies, the subject matter was bound to both trouble and challenge all those who saw it. And yet Benigni's performance was thought to be noteworthy. Why, though? Fact is, Benigni was best left out of Life Is Beautiful in the same way that Robin Williams, no matter how sincere a performance have might have given, was best left out of Schindler's List: the association is just wrong (to our knowledge, Robin Williams was never considered for that movie - which is the point). Miscasting aside, then, the script for Life Is Beautiful was written by Benigni himself, which is part of the problem. Does the movie trivialise the holocaust? Perhaps. But the miscasting here goes back to the script stages: maybe the whole thing was a bad idea. The Praise: Roberto Benigni won an Oscar for Best Actor for his role here, as well as numerous other awards - strange, considering his performance is noticeably one-note.