Peter Dinklage: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

2. Eddie - Pixels (2015)

You'd think acting alongside Adam Sander and Kevin James would be an easy job for Dinklage - even if he was phoning it in X-Men style he'd still come away as the best thing in the film. And yet while his turn in Pixels isn't terrible, it's totally insipid, with the Thrones star never coming close to eclipsing his comic co-stars. Part of this is down to Sandler and James playing characters so close to themselves that they're actually believable, whereas Dinklage's Donkey Kong champion is an arrogant, crude creation with such flip-flopping ideals that the actor can never really get a lock on him. That's no excuse though - the writing may be bad, but with a performance whose flair only goes as far as looking over a pair of sunglasses while sounding faux-badass, it's not like Dinklage is trying to elevate it one level. As some form of consolation, he does at least get the film's one genuinely funny line - he passively concludes that a night with Martha Stewart would at least result in getting a panini afterwards. Ha?