John C Reilly: 5 Awesome Performances & 5 That Sucked

4. Larten Crepsley - Crique Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (2009)

By 2009, Reilly was attracting more leading man projects after his well-received comedic turns, but quite why he thought this was a good idea to build his profile is anyone's guess.

There was obviously a lot in Darren Shan's book series that suggested adaptation (not least its sales), but it wasn't given to the right people at all. Paul Weitz might have been great for American Pie, but his executive producer credit on The Golden Compass should have offered fair warning for Cirque Du Freak.

Though Reilly offers a spirited performance as ginger vampire Larten Crepsley, he's hampered by the film's wayward tone and identity crisis that fails to establish whether it's trying to be grim or funny. That ends up making him look a little like an idiot, clowning around in a landscape of dull characters all plodding towards a painfully rote moral conclusion.