The Cine File

"Right, 'The Prime Minister's Speech', take one"

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Trite screwball com-com Just Go With It is reviewed in this week’s Prague Post, and sees Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler play their usual selves. Let’s face it folks, they’re one trick ponies.

Here are a few more of cinema’s OTPs.

The Action Man OTP Arnold Schwarzenegger is somewhat of a paradoxical one trick pony. On the one hand, not many of us can say we’ve been Mr Universe, a Hollywood actor, millionaire businessman and a leading US politician (nope, not even you Mr Reagan). On the other hand, however hard we try, we probably couldn’t produce such an unbroken string of identikit performances. Even when Arnie’s being a doting dad in Jingle All the Way, you feel a certain cold emptiness creeping over you.

The geeky OTP When you reside behind a giant pair of spectacles and measure in at about 4 foot nothing, your Hollywood roles are always going to be limited. Such was the situation of now-retired Canadian comedy actor Rick Moranis. His three biggies – Ghostbusters, Little Shop of Horrors and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, all have him play a puny, pusillanimous (if endearing) schmuck. When he was an SNL player, Moranis used to do an accomplished impression of another geeky OTP, Woody Allen.

The bad boy OTP Oi you! Yes you, mug. Ray Winstone is very good at being an angry person with an East End accent, as proved in a long line of films right up to recent kids’ animation Rango. What’s all the more remarkable is that Winstone actually spent the first 20 years of his life in Reykjavik speaking fluent, honey-toned Icelandic. Nah, actually we’ll save that kind of nonsense for April 1.

The bumbling OTP Cripes! It’s Hugh Grant. Love him or hate him, the foppish Brit is no Peter Sellers. Even when he’s playing a Prime Minister in Love Actually, he doesn’t really possess the kind of decisiveness you’d want from someone running your country.

After the recent success of his old mate Colin Firth, Hugh’s probably dying to get his teeth stuck into a career-changing role. The Prime Minster’s Speech, anyone?

The legendary OTP Contentious, because this man is one of the most revered actors of all time. Still, Archibald Alexander Leach, aka Cary Grant, was the quintessential gentleman – dapper, witty and with looks to charm your entire family into bed. Quipped Grant once: “Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I do.”

Yet Grant might not be included here, had he not turned down some notable roles that would have flexed his acting muscles a bit more. To name but three, Grant shunned Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, the part of Humbert Humbert in Lolita (he considered the film ‘depraved’) and he also decided against playing a certain James Bond in Dr. No.