TIL of the Jon Hamm conundrum
TIL of the Jon Hamm conundrum
From The Playlist's review of last year's "Corner Office":
Because it’s so drab and one-note, “Corner Office” leaves the viewer with lots of time to contemplate the Hamm Conundrum. To wit: in Jon Hamm, we have an actor who seems genetically engineered for movie stardom, a chiseled slab of masculinity who wears a suit like he was born to it, and is a magnificent actor, plus possesses an admirable refusal to take himself too seriously. He seems born of another era, a time when icons like Mitchum and Wayne and Brando filled our screens, which is part of why he was so perfect for “Mad Men.” And perhaps that’s why he has yet to find a single feature film that suits his skills; as my friend, the film critic Sean Burns told me, he’s a man, and now they make movies about boys.
So perhaps that’s why, its many other virtues notwithstanding, it’s so depressing to see Hamm as the sputtering bureaucrat, a role that any one of a hundred other actors could’ve played, in “Top Gun: Maverick,” a movie about a (59-year-old) boy, and that’s certainly why it’s so depressing to see him succumbing to the temptation of actorly dowdiness in “Corner Office.”
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I thought this was gonna be about his fratboy antics when he was younger. That aside, maybe he just needs that one leading man role that will push him to mainstream stardom. That or maybe he's a character actor stuck in a leading man's body. Actors like Colin Farrell and Ryan Gosling are at their best as character actors instead of playing dashing leading men.