With the award season officially over (and Leo finally has that Oscar), we’re now settling into the doldrums of the early season fare. And what better way to dirty up your palate than a couple of back-to-back Gerard Butler stinkers, Gods of Egypt and London Has Fallen?

But I must make a confession: Gerard Butler is one of my guilty pleasures. He’s an intelligent man who has a reputation for appearing in terrible movies, most of which have a nasty, insalubrious edge to them. Compared to the other classically handsome, well-dressed leading men that largely populate multiplexes these days, Butler is a bit rougher. His glowering appearance gives him a disreputable air onscreen, often portraying an unreconstructed ladies’ man, so macho that he will start a take clean shaven and finish it fully bearded.

His saving grace is that he flings himself wholeheartedly at any role, and is usually the best part of any dross that he’s starring in. Having blown his law career as a younger man, he chanced his arm at acting and is now headlining big, dumb Hollywood blockbusters. He makes no apology for that, which is his most endearing quality. He gives the impression of a man, now unencumbered by normal life, living the dream for all the geeks out there who ever fancied themselves as a movie star.

Let’s take a look at some of Butler’s greatest…ugh…hits.

1. Phantom of the Opera (Joel Schumacher, 2004)

This hot-and-heavy adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stage musical megahit is a nostalgia piece, blasting you back into the ’80s from the first cheesy guitar riff of the title tune. The film looks like a bordello bedroom, with Schumacher lavishly spending much of the film’s substantial budget on gaudy costumes and extravagant set pieces. That’s a good thing, and frankly I think all films should include a falling chandelier.

Butler plays LeRoux’s Phantom as a murderous stalker, looking like he genuinely can’t wait to get his big hairy hands all over co-star Emmy Rossum’s supple young body. Under the lascivious direction of Schumacher, the starlet gives as good as she gets, giving Butler both barrels of a “let’s get it on” stare in most of their scenes. She also wears lots of frocks that fall down at the shoulder whenever she gets excited.

2. 300 (Zack Snyder, 2007)

Butler’s major breakthrough and most iconic performance came in Zack Snyder’s highly stylized interpretation of Frank Miller’s comic. He plays King Leonidas, a fierce Greek warrior who leads the legendary 300 Spartan troops into battle against the vast invading army of a decadent Persian pervert. 300 is infamously homoerotic, and Butler’s the straightest thing on the screen. He channels Brian Blessed as the noble king, maintaining his dignity despite spending much of the film dressed in red underpants. If your eyes can take the artifice of Snyder’s vision, it’s a true spectacle, and nothing can undermine the rousing nature of the old myth.

3. P.S. I Love You (Richard LaGravenese, 2007)

Another big hit for Butler in this club-footed and contrived chick flick. Butler play Gerry, an Oirish fella married to Holly (Hilary Swank). After Gerry dies suddenly, Holly is guided by a series of letters penned by her deceased hubby before his untimely departure, encouraging her to start living again.

Part of Holly’s journey takes her to Gerry’s homeland, shot like a Guinness commercial. Her potential new love interests include an Irish pub singer who looks creepily like Butler, and a mentally unbalanced Harry Connick Jr. This is queasy, unintelligible guff.

4. The Ugly Truth (Robert Luketic, 2009)

The pitch for this gravely misconceived rom-com could be: what if a man who hates women falls for a woman who hates herself? Butler plays Mike, the misogynist host of a crass relationship TV show for guys. His shtick is a little like a blue collar version of T.J. Mackie from Magnolia, without the good writing. He ends up butting heads and eventually bumping uglies with his new producer, Abby (Katherine Heigl), a shrieking, neurotic, self-hating woman-child. Despite her initial gag-reflex at Mike’s antics, she can’t help falling for his masculine “charms”. Together, they’re the most unappealing romantic pairing since Fred and Rosemary West.

5. Gamer (Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor, 2009)

Although almost universally panned by critics, Gamer has a lot going for it. It’s a slick, brutal piece of business, combining elements of The Running Man and The Last Starfighter, imagining an all too plausible dystopia where people play video games using real-life avatars.

Butler plays Kable, a death row inmate controlled by a kid in an ultraviolent Call of Duty-esque shoot em up, which is televised to huge, baying audiences. Kable’s wife is trapped in a Sims-like game called Society, where closet rapists get to play out their most craven desires with living, breathing sprites from behind their semen-and-Dorito-dust encrusted keyboards.

Butler’s Kable is a typical Butler-esque action hero: a wronged man seeking retribution by murdering lots of people in a grisly fashion.

6. Law Abiding Citizen (F Gary Gray, 2009)

A throwback to the hackneyed Nineties trope of a criminal mastermind pulling the strings from behind bars. The moral centre of this gratuitously violent thriller feels a little off—Butler’s architect Clyde Shelton should be the protagonist, having witnessed his wife and daughter’s murder at the hands of two scuzzy home invaders. Thanks to a convoluted and far-fetched script, Law Abiding Citizen manages to turn him into a sadistic maniac orchestrating a series of gruesome murders from his cell.

7. Olympus Has Fallen (Antoine Fuqua, 2013)

Cruel, humorless and xenophobic, Olympus Has Fallen is a despicable piece of Right Wing trash. The dastardly North Koreans take over the White House in a spectacular bloodbath, holding Aaron Eckhart’s snivelling President hostage. The crux of the villain’s plan is that Americans won’t be able to tell evil North Koreans apart from kindly South Koreans. Bloody foreigners, all look alike!

Luckily, Butler’s special agent Mike Banning is on hand to save the day, with his penchant for stabbing people in the head. The whole film has a morbid fascination with massive head trauma, with countless skulls popped. Banning even tells the lead baddie to keep one bullet for himself, because otherwise Banning’s going to knife him in the brain. Perhaps that’s the best thing for him, because surely any terrorist ready to take time out from an all-out assault on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to shoot up the stars and stripes must truly hate freedom, and deserves a length of cold steel driven into his cranium.

We all know the drill, March 17th comes around and everyone is poring over their family trees trying to find one Irish branch, somewhere, that justifies them joining in the St. Paddy’s Day festivities. There is nothing to say one shouldn’t be proud of any ounce of Irish heritage in a family’s history, but using that ounce as an excuse to carry on embarrassing Americanized behavior is, to say the least, embarrassing. But ‘Kiss Me I’m Irish’ T-shirts and getting plastered on American water-beer and Irish Car Bombs (yes it’s offensive) aren’t the only sins that have been committed on this sacred feast day.

Hollywood is no stranger to jumping on bandwagons to make a quick buck and they make no exception when capitalizing on Irish history and culture; from their penchant for getting Scottish actors to play the Irish (the accent is close enough right?) to perpetuating the old Irish stereotypes with big, poor, Irish families or fighting Irish drunks. For those of us that aren’t Irish, let’s at least re-educate ourselves and blow the lid off of some of these movies that you might otherwise have been tempted to pull out to celebrate ol’ Padraig. We have to admit to having a couple of favorites on the list, so we’re not perfect either. But we’re all in this together, eh?

Nine Times Hollywood Tried to Be Irish…and Failed

P.S. I Love You

This one is just a painful disappointment all around. We have Gerard Butler, ye olde Scottish dude, trying and failing for that Irish brogue for which he publicly apologized afterward. On top of that, there are so many awkward acting moments between Butler and Swank riddled throughout that we lost count. The ineffable Kathy Bates couldn’t even save this one. What makes it more of a shame is that it’s based on a book by Irish author Cecelia Ahern, so while much of it might have actually been a beautiful tribute to the emerald isle, the two main actors playing Irishmen are not, in fact, Irish. Which seems sacrilegious. One of the more grating traits of Butler’s character, Gerry, is that “loveable Irish scoundrel” thing he’s going for – you can almost see him pop a blood vessel trying to force a twinkle to come to his eye. Granted a lot of rom-coms, Irish or not, could be accused of such tactics, but we raise an eyebrow at any silly rom-com girl so easily swept off her feet by a complete stranger conning her for a kiss.[Scarlet]

The Jackal

Bruce Willis’s horrid moustache (and other various costume changes) and Diane Venora’s over-the-top Russian accent make this film one of the silliest action thrillers made. Pretty-boy Richard Gere as an ex-IRA sniper with an iffy accent really rounds out the circus that is The Jackal quite nicely though. Gere seems to insert a fair amount of charm into all his characters—the man’s just charismatic—but where his usual gleam-of-the-eye plays out as endearing, here it translates roughly to the equivalent of an action movie version of the Lucky Charms mascot. It’s not really his fault. In the ’90s the Irish and Russians were just the en vogue badasses and villains of the time. It’s not like we could have expected Hollywood to cast actual Irish or Russian actors. Oh, the horror. [Ananda]

Gangs of New York

A lot is wrong with Scorsese’s epic letdown Gangs of New York, but few bother me more than the casting of Cameron Diaz. A fantastic Daniel Day-Lewis as well as some fine supporting performances from Brendan Gleeson and John C. Reilly are not enough to make up for a sub-par DiCaprio and flat-out awful Diaz. Like a poor cutaway joke from Family Guy, you can just picture Diaz looking in the mirror after putting on a curly, red-haired wig before doing a vaguely Irish accent and exclaiming “nailed it!” It’s a shame Scorsese (due to studio pressure) was unable to cast his first choice of Sarah Polley. [Ryan]

Far and Away 

Tom Cruise, more often than not, plays Tom Cruise. From time to time, this Cruise version of Cruise is pretty fun (i.e. the Mission: Impossible series), and other times it’s almost impossible not to laugh out loud. Odds are when Far And Away was released back in ‘92, people hadn’t yet grown weary of his trademark grin and boundless energy (this is way before his couch jumping days), but now, in retrospect, this little gem of a film is mostly a bad accent contest between him and costar/chemistry-less wife, Nicole Kidman. Here Cruise plays a sometimes-Irish-Cruise fighting to make it in America, his accent slipping off and on in the space between words, and even at its best sounds more like a harsh whisper. So, if you are looking to laugh at some Americans acting like Irishmen coming to America, this film might be perfect for your St. Paddy’s day—even if it’s only real joy is its kickass Super 65mm format (the same as The Master). [Gary]

The Quiet Man

There are many things to love about John Ford’s The Quiet Man. For instance, it is one of the few Hollywood movies where the Irish language can be heard, being that many of the extras were actually from the countryside of County Galway and County Mayo where the movie was mainly filmed. Its scenic landscapes make it an especially exquisite painting of Ireland in Technicolor, which was rare for Republic pictures. It is not without its faults, however. Though it garnered substantial financial success with both American and British audiences, it was not well received in Ireland when it was first released; especially in Mayo and Galway by those native to the counties. Most significantly were the negative reactions to the scenes that are the most controversial today: John Wayne dragging Maureen O’Hara across the hills in a mare-breaking sort of way or the time he’s offered a stick by a neighbor with which to beat her. But there is also the purposeful re-imagining of an Ireland untouched by the garish obscenities brought about by the violent oppression of British rule and Ford, perhaps naively, paints a picture of a lovingly tolerant community with no divisions or hints at political unrest, except maybe that which occurs between a husband and wife. This idyllic conjuring could be upsetting to those who would see it less as a true to life telling and more as America turning a blind eye to their very real plight. [Scarlet]

Michael Collins

Here we have Hollywood taking an actual Irish historical legend in Michael Collins and giving it a good shakedown. A noble subject and an intense period of Irish history that everyone should be familiar with, actual historical inaccuracies do abound within the film, which offer a tainted view of what actually happened. There are also many poor accents here as well, most notably that of Hollywood favorite, Julia Roberts. Liam Neeson is Irish-born and gives an impassioned performance even though it’s never easy for a 44 year old man to pass off as 25. We’ll give Aidan Quinn an out since he has some Irish ancestry as well, and we could never fault a movie for casting Alan Rickman, non-Irishman though he may be and though his accent received much criticism as well. It is considered perhaps an essential watch if one were to need to freshen up on a vague sense of Irish history before traveling to said country, and it’s really hard to knock it when it was written and directed by Bligo-born Neil Jordan. However, it was one of the most successful films ever released in Ireland, herself, so it wouldn’t be too off color to watch on this day…with an actual history book by your side as a supplement. [Scarlet]

Darby O’Gill and The Little People

One of the first times Hollywood hijacked and bastardized the traditional legend of the Irish leprechaun via this Disney classic, it’s also another perpetrator of the time-honored tradition of the Scotsman-playing-Irish debacle. Sean Connery is always lovely to look at and equally lovely to listen to (except maybe whilst singing) and I’m sure Disney was banking on that goodness to distract everyone from his unfortunate attempt at the brogue. We won’t say you can’t still indulge in this fanciful twisting of Irish culture and folklore, but know that it hardly qualifies as authentic. [Scarlet]

Leprechaun

While Warwick Davis is one of our absolute favorites, and one can’t help but be impressed that he has held on for so long to this steadfast addition to the horror franchise collective, Davis’ Irish accent leaves one less than impressed. Not to mention the fact that the entire premise of the films center around a flagrant disregard for the actual historical mythical tradition surrounding the leprechaun. The first film for both Jennifer Aniston and Trimark, the video of it has sold less than 100,000 copies. The series in general still tends to be well watched for Halloween and St. Paddy’s day which only goes to show our never-quenched thirst for camp in this country. It’s not something we would promote, however, except maybe after several pints of the black stuff. Sláinte!  [Scarlet]

Leap Year

This movie received several poor reviews for its pat stereotypes and rom-com clichés, despite the endearing appeal of its ever charming star, Amy Adams. A.O. Scott of The New York Times is quoted as saying it was, “witless, charmless, and unimaginative” while Richard Roeper said it had a “recycled plot, lame sight gags, [and] leprechaun-like stock characters.” With several geographical inaccuracies throughout, they couldn’t have been expecting viewers to ever have been to Ireland in real life. Most damning of all the evidence against this film, however, is the review given by Donald Clarke of the Irish Times who said, following his viewing, that “Hollywood is incapable of seeing the Irish as anything but IRA men or twinkly rural imbeciles” and described it as “offensive, reactionary, patronising filth”. And this was only made five years ago! We would say that you could watch this one only in the dark recesses of your own home with all of the doors and windows locked and covered – and tell no one. [Scarlet]

Just so we’re not raining on everyone’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, we do have a few movies you COULD unashamedly watch on March 17th without feeling the need to refrain from posting it as your Facebook status:

The Commitments
Bloody Sunday
The Guard
My Left Foot
Once
The Snapper
Waking Ned Devine
In the Name of the Father
Netflix’s Peaky Blinders

Éirinn go Brách!