I used to wonder at Peter O'Toole's stellar reputation. He's been critically acclaimed to the moon and back again for Lion in Winter, but I saw him in Becket, Masada, and Night of the Generals, and he was never anything but a fat, juicy ham. Where another actor might ask, ?Is it good for growing hair?? (Or, for method actors, ?'Zit good for growin' hair??), O'Toole asks ?Is it. Good. For growing heyah??). About a year ago, I realized what the problem was.
O'Toole trained in and for the theater.
Every artistic medium has its advantages and limitations. One of theater's biggest limitations is the need for people in the back rows to see and hear what's going on. Naturally enough, stage performers learn to make broad gestures, speak slowly, and to enunciate at all times, even while muttering sarcastically under their breaths. The stiffness of stage dialogue is one of the reasons I don't cotton much to theater.
Once I lay my finger on the problem, I quickly tagged a large batch of actors who, in my eyes, never measured up to their press for this very reason: Kenneth Branagh, John Malkovich, and Dudley Moore never quite made the transition to movies, never learned to suppress flamboyance. The leap isn't impossible. Angela Lansbury made it just fine; so did John Gielgud and Anthony Hopkins. Though you can see their classical training peeking through in patches, it doesn't distract from the story at hand.
It starches my undies when a critic judges a cinematic performance by theatric standards.