The Best and Worst of Danny McBride

The "Best and Worst" series profiles the best and worst work of an actor starring in one of the week's new theatrical releases. This week I take a look at the filmography of "Alien: Covenant" star Danny McBride.

Films starring Danny McBride that I've seen:
Hot Rod
The Heartbreak Kid 
Drillbit Taylor
The Foot Fist Way
Pineapple Express
Tropic Thunder
Land of the Lost
Up in the Air
Despicable Me
Due Date
Your Highness
Kung Fu Panda 2
30 Minutes or Less
This is the End 
As I Lay Dying
Aloha
Rock the Kasbah
Sausage Party

Best Performance: This is the End (2013)
In a film that was led by elite comic actors (Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, James Franco, Jay Baruchel), McBride managed to stand out as the MVP. His turn as the "villain" in this brilliant "self-absorbed celebrities vs. the apocalypse" comedy is a masterclass in the art of scene-stealing. McBride's biting delivery and willingness to go to extreme distances to obtain a laugh allows him to run away with one of the most consistently hilarious films of the past decade.    

Worst Performance: Aloha (2015)
McBride was one of the many talented actors that got caught in the wreckage of the shocking trainwreck that was Cameron Crowe's Aloha. Even though he plays a character (a hot-headed, hard-partying Air Force colonel) that is well within his wheelhouse as a performer, Crowe's corny clusterfuck of a script buries McBride's gift for delivering effortlessly rage-filled laughs.

Best Film: Hot Rod (2007)
The first major-studio film McBride ever appeared in also happens to be his best. The Lonely Island's Hot Rod is an unrelentingly strange, clever and highly rewatchable piece of absurdist comedy gold that has only gotten better with age.

Worst Film: As I Lay Dying (2013)
James Franco's fearlessness in selecting projects is a large part of why he's one of the most interesting actors in Hollywood right now. However, that willingness to experiment with so many different genres and filmmaking styles occasionally results in epic misfires like the big-screen adaptation of William Faulkner's beloved novel As I Lay Dying. Behind constant split-screens and exposition-filled voiceovers, Franco-who also wrote and directed the film-turns this iconic story about death and the many ways people react to it into a pretentious, disjointed snoozefest that is legitimately painful to sit through.   

Thank you for reading this week's installment of "The Best and Worst of". Next week, I'll take a look at the best and worst work of "Baywatch" star Zac Efron.