Gwyneth Paltrow: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

2. Rosemary Shanahan - Shallow Hal

With Shallow Hal, it's really hard to get past the flawed central idea, although if you do, what's left is far from inspiring. Jack Black is Hal who is, shocker, a bit of a shallow guy until he magically gets to see people's inner beauty. But while it has the message of not judging people by their physical attributes, the film sure does spend a lot of the running time making fun of how Paltrow's Rosemary is fat. And the whole concept still trumpets traditional beauty standards, representing a "nice" woman's personality as a pretty woman because that is what it still thinks beauty is. Paltrow looks ridiculous in the fat suit and when showing her inner self is as bland and forgettable as the film.

2. Pepper Potts - Iron Man 3

No, it's not cheating to put the same performance down twice if it's from different films, regardless of the fact that they're part of the same mega-franchise. Iron Man 3 gets a lot of unfair criticism from fans for its handling of the Mandarin and the Extremis storyline. However, they're more than allowed to criticise how Pepper Potts was handled. After being set up as a perfect verbal sparring partner for Tony Stark in earlier movies, Shane Black's threequel ups the ante and has Potts become more integral to the plot. And Paltrow isn't up to the challenge. As the exasperated girlfriend sick of nagging she's fine, but as a captive in an evil plot or the dispatcher of the movie's big bad a lack of range shows. It's just a bunch of panting and gurning, which no one (not even Chris Martin it seems) wants to see. When up against the always on Downey, Jr. this is only accentuated, leaving her a weak link in an otherwise pretty fun movie.