It's been a while since he's made anyone laugh, hasn't it, and it's a damn shame he fell in love with mawkish drama and stopped doing what he was best at.
And yeah, saw this movie for the first time in years, and it really is fun! And involving! One of the best movies ever made about baseball, for what that's worth.
Remember when that chaperone lady tries to wake him on the bus? Nowadays he'd be charged with sexual assault, he'd be fired, he'd be classified as a sex predator and his name would be all over the news. I just saw that last night, that was kind of a funny scene, a funny accident/misunderstanding as he must have been dreaming he was with a woman or something when he came out of sleep. It is interesting how the times we live in made me think about him being charged with sexual assault.
shareYeah, at some point he just decided to leave the comedy behind. Probably the last film he made that could be considered a comedy was The Terminal and that was in 2004. I guess he just decided it was time to get serious, permanently.
And I agree that A League of Their Own is one of the best movies about baseball. It's certainly one of my favorite films on the topic. It may even be my very favorite.
It's the movie that put Gina Davis on the map for me. It's a shame that this spike in her career would only last a few more years before she just kind of receded back into the shadows. At least she gave us the underrated The Long Kiss Goodnight before dropping off the radar.
I recently rewatched A League of Their Own and was surprised by how well it held up. It really is an excellent film that you rarely hear mentioned anymore, and it's also the kind of family-friendly movie that you rarely see made anymore either.
Remember when funny was funny? Now funny is just "offensive". The lack of comedies in Hanks' (or anyone's) recent stretch of films is just a byproduct of the political war. Like you said above, a very lighthearted joke in '92 would now be seen as "encouraging sexual assault on women from men in power". I'm so fucking sick of politics.
shareThen don't post about it. I'm sick of politics too, but I'm sick of being undermined by amoral forces, so that's why i stand up and bitch about it. It's not fun, it's my civic duty.
shareHe goes on SNL all the time. Maybe that's his outlet. I mean, he's David S. Pumpkins.
shareTo Otter: Personally, I think Tom is a very versatile actor. He could have stayed with comedy, of course, but that is not what an actor wants, is to be pigeonholed in one genre. He proved his abilities by winning 2 Best Actor Oscars back to back, for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump.
shareIMHO he's lost his way as a dramatic actor, he's been a dreadful ham in the last ten films I've seen him in.
I think doing more comedy would have been good for his evolution as an actor, dramatic actors can be hugely self-indulgent but comic actors can't. They have to keep that laser-sharp timing or give up the game, and Hanks for one needed that kind of discipline.
You are entitled to your opinion. I just do not share it. I personally thought that he did a wonderful job capturing the spirit of Fred Rogers.
shareI am totally willing to accept your opinion of his Mr. Rogers movie, since I never liked Mr. Rogers and am not going to see that movie.
shareOtter, I’m with you. Comic acting is MUCH harder than dramatic acting, but generally less respected by the hoi poloi. The other day, I noticed that Hanks is starring in yet another “serious” film, and thought, “It’s time for this guy to go away.”
shareBut his serious films are usually pretty good though. . .
shareSully was good, and I liked Bridge of Spies and Saving Mr. Banks as well. The Post wasn't bad.
Cloud Atlas is underrated.
If you want to see him do something different and get outside the dramatic fold, you can always watch him go action hero in Inferno.
I will agree about "Sully", Hanks toned it down to play a regular guy for once, and was pretty good.
Thought he was moderately hammy in "Saving Mr. Banks", but I didn't mind much since Emma Thompson's hilarious bitchery took the movie completely away from him.
I thought he was dreadfully, horribly, monumentally hammy in "Cloud Atlas", and single-handedly dragged the whole film down by several notches. I consider the film an interesting failure as a whole, but definitely a failure as every scene with Hanks went down the ubes.
And the book of "Inferno" was so dreadful that I've never tried to see the film, but I never liked Hanks in the role. I really liked the first two books in that series, and always pictured the hero as looking very much like Harrison Ford, so that's who I wanted to see. Irrational prejudice there.
He was hammy in Cloud Atlas, I agree, but I still thought it was a good movie. It is, at the very least, an absolute triumph in terms of editing. The fact that they were able to weave so many storylines together and keep it coherent is amazing.
Regarding Inferno, it's not a great movie, so if you're already prejudiced against Hanks in the role then it will do nothing to change your mind. But I'd say for someone who likes Tom and is just in an action movie mood, it's not bad. I didn't love it, but I didn't walk away asking for those two hours of my life back either.
I think a lot of comedians stop being funny after several years. Or perhaps we stop finding them funny. Perhaps they just get older and the zany goofiness, or whatever appeal they have, wears thin. Or times and taste change. Whatever the reason it's probably a good career move to drift away from making comedies.
shareHanks definitely shifted from "young comedy lead" (and a handsome one, at that, in the 80's) to more dramatic roles after the Philadelphia/Forrest Gump Best Actor Bonanza of 1993/1994.
But something else happened -- as early as Turner and Hooch(1989) which I think led to Hanks succession of $100 million grossing movies in the 90s(domestic only, back when that was a big figure):
"Tom Hanks Makes You Cry."
Maybe not YOU, but a lot of people. I can report that in theaters where I saw these fimls, there was range from sniffing to sobbing at the endings (and sometimes earlier) of these Tom Hanks movies:
Turner and Hooch
Sleepless in Seattle
Philadelphia
Forrest Gump
Saving Private Ryan
You've Got Mail
The Green Mile
Cast Away
The Road to Perdition
...and not ALL of those movies had unhappy endings. Sometimes it was tears of joy.
Hanks seemed to have a direct route to his emotions. He cried during at least one of his two Oscar acceptance speeches.
He seems to make fewer tearjerkers today. Perhaps with age he's less connected to his emotions.
He's in his 60s. No one writes comedies about old people anymore. That stopped being a thing since the Golden Age
shareHey, most comedies have a role for someone older! And Hanks has always been willing to accept a good supporting role, there's no reason he couldn't do a bit of comedy here and there these days if he wanted to.
I think he'd rather ham it up.
Always thought he's a better comedic actor than dramatic.
shareI always thought his best roles were kind of an even mix of the two. 'A League of Their Own' is a great example. It's a dramatic film, but with tons of comedy in it, and Hanks played both the comedy and the drama elements of his Jimmy Dugan character perfectly.
Same with 'Forrest Gump.' Dramatic film, but his performance was hysterically funny for half the movie, when he wasn't making you choke up with emotion in the serious parts.
I see these same elements of comedic and dramatic excellence going all the way back to 'Splash,' 'Big,' and 'Turner and Hooch.'