Dave Franco Ranked

Welcome to "Ranked", a weekly series where I rank a franchise or filmography from worst to best and hand out assorted related superlatives. This week, I'm profiling the work of Dave Franco-whose latest project "Love Lies Bleeding" is in select theaters now and opens nationwide on Thursday night.  

Dave Franco's Filmography Ranked:

(Note: Both of his directorial efforts that he does not act in have been included)

20.The Little Hours (D)

19.Warm Bodies (D)

18.Unfinished Business (C+)

17.The Lego Ninjago Movie (B-) 

16.Fright Night (B-)

15.Somebody That I Used to Know (B)

14.Day Shift (B) 

13.6 Balloons (B)

12.Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (B)

11.6 Underground (B)

10.Nerve (B)

9.The Rental (B+)

8.Neighbors (B+)

7.If Beale Street Could Talk (B+)

6.Now You See Me (B+)

5.Now You See Me 2 (B+)

4.The Lego Movie (B+)

3.The Disaster Artist (A)

2.21 Jump Street (A)

1.22 Jump Street (A)

Top Dog: 22 Jump Street (2014)

It remains wild that Christopher Lord and Phill Miller made one of the funniest movies of the 2010's in 21 Jump Street then came back and topped it with 22 Jump Street just two years later. Applying the same meta-satirical formula they used to poke fun at reboots to the concept of sequels, 22 Jump Street is able to achieve similarly uproarious results by ensuring the writing remains clever and the cast has ample space to creative playful comedic magic.         

Bottom Feeder: The Little Hours (2016)

A comedy about nuns leaving their convent and behaving badly that's populated by tremendous talents including Aubrey Plaza, Alison Brie, Kate Micucci, Franco, John C. Reilly Fred Armisen, Molly Shannon and Nick Offerman should be a home run. In practice, it's very much not. Writer/director Jeff Baena has created something that somehow keeps finding ways to make this fun premise brutally unfunny and boring at every turn despite all of the batshit stuff that happens on screen throughout. It's sincerely one of the more stunning failures that I've ever seen and for that reason alone, I'll never forget it.      

Most Underrated: The Rental (2020)

Franco's directorial debut is an impressively assured piece of horror filmmaking that uses a pair of fractured romantic relationships and inevitable privacy concerns that come with staying at a rental home to create a paranoia-driven atmosphere that gradually ratchets up until it boils over into a deeply uncomfortable, gruesome finale.   

Most Overrated: Warm Bodies (2013)

Warm Bodies has a tremendous premise: a zombie (Nicholas Hoult) falls in love with a human woman (Tersea Palmer) and slowly comes back to life amidst a massive apocalypse where the two species are fighting each other that just happens to be delivered in the most insufferable way possible. The romance is cheesy as hell, the human characters are all pretty obnoxious and the mixing of comedy with the more serious elements is stunningly clunky.