4. Benjamin Mee - We Bought a Zoo
Cameron Crowe was so Hell-bent on getting Damon to star in his movie that he sent him a CD of songs he'd written and a copy of the classic movie Local Hero along with the script in an effort to convince him. It evidently worked, yet the actor doesn't get to be much more than a cog in a machine in this blandly inoffensive, schmaltzy offering from the director. Damon is far from terrible in it, but the down-the-line script just gives him absolutely nothing to do. Given that this performance (and the film entire) had been courted for awards in the lead-up to its release, it was very dispiriting indeed to see Damon doing nothing more than going through the motions, because the script didn't really allow him anything more. Though hardly offensively awful, it's just a massively missed opportunity to tell a fascinating true story.