Vince Vaughn: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

2. Fred Claus - Fred Claus

Clearly, Vaughn has a thing for terrible Christmas "comedies." Not content with having one black mark against the good name of Santa, the giant actor has made two abominable snow-movies, with this being the pick of the pair.

In truth, Fred Claus was one of the first movies to signal Vince Vaughn losing some of his mojo, and it's probably because of the tighter reigns on his content. In a PG-rated movie aimed squarely at the family audience, Vince not only lost some of his bite but thought he could just be himself and everyone would be entertained. He thought wrong, and it's a uniquely jarring experience to have an actor's performance completely over-shadowed by something he wasn't saying (i.e. curses) and something he wasn't doing (i.e. being skin-crawlingly provocative.)

Without their usual framework, his usually-reliable tics and mannerisms grew stale, and his performance is badly hamstrung by the bland script, which turned Fred Claus into another completely predictable, schmaltzy holiday movie designed to capitalize on Christmas.

Watch this trailer and see how many times you cringe:

It seems pretty clear that by the time Fred Claus came out, Vaughn was done with playing characters and wanted to rehash his persona over and over, with limited success, but the worst was yet to come...