Robin Williams: 5 Awesome Performances & 5 That Sucked

5 That Sucked

5. Jack - Jack (1996)

On paper, Jack should have been the ideal role for Williams: it was another from the pile of contradictory character roles - this time a child who looks like a middle aged man thanks to some rare genetic condition - but the performance suffers because of the lack of quality of the source material. Francis Ford Coppola should really look back at this as a terribly misfire in an otherwise great career: it is an entirely too saccharine, mawkish thing that completely ignores everything that made Williams such a good straight actor and not providing him enough material to raise much of a smile. Yes the concept is compelling, but Williams looks bored with the material - he was after all an edgy comic in his earliest days - and the end result is a performance that feels restrained; trapped in an unchallenging sugary morality tale whose belief in the sanctity of its message is as misplaced as its director. It's this sort of dross that gave critics and cynics license to reduce his whole shtick to "infantile silliness". That it's a compelling argument is this film's worst crime.