Jack Nicholson: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

2. Mark Forman - Heartburn

Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, two of the greatest actors of all-time, brought together in a film by the wonderful Mike Nichols? What could go wrong? A lot, actually. Try as they might to make do in this drama about a New York food writer (Streep) who meets a Washington newspaper columnist at a wedding (Nicholson), the biggest problem with the movie is that they share little to no chemistry.

Surprised? Don't be. The script isn't that good either, and the characters inhabited by the leads aren't really worthy of actually having their own movie. So they get by, of course, because they're Nicholson and Streep, but the drab tone and middling story only serve to make Nicholson's performance here... well, a little boring.

His character, a Washington D.C. political correspondent, is a highly unlikable son of a gun, and just as Streep's character does throughout the film, you wonder why she bothered to marry him (Nicholson doesn't have an answer, either). There are moments where you can see ol' Jack coming to life now and again, but mostly this is an uninteresting addition to his filmography.