3. Jack A Fantastic Fear Of Everything
This just seems like it was an impossibly bad idea in a way only a film featuring stereotypical accented Vietnamese women and outrageously flamboyant homosexuals can be. Intentionally low-budget, A Fantastic Fear of Everything featured Pegg as Jack, a childrens author turned crime novelist who becomes totally obsessed with serial killers until he's scared to do anything. As befitting the role, Pegg invests in several neuroses and becomes pretty much afraid of everything. However, the role is just too one-note. The idea of somebody being afraid of something in just about every situation he encounters (seriously, whos scare of launderettes?) can become grating rather quickly, and youre overloaded with too much slapstick from the word go. Couple this with an extremely fraught persona and a hodgepodge of a plot and youve got something of a disaster on your hands. Basically, Peggs on a hiding to nothing in this role the character is unsympathetic, he doesnt get any good lines and any chance he had of shining as a pratfaller is taken out back and shot within the opener. Its a simple case of overkill watching a character be neurotic can be funny if its part of a unified whole, yet with Jack it appears as if thats all there is to him, and this results in something painful to watch.