Has anyone else seen those unnerving Hanes commercials with box office toxin Cuba Gooding, Jr., alongside erstwhile basketball star Michael Jordan? It’s not merely bad enough that Gooding’s in a forthcoming sad-sack sequel/spin-off, Daddy Day Camp, directed by Fred Savage, but he’s also prostrating himself in commercial work. The pieces (of which I’ve seen two cuts), find a couple production assistants instructing Gooding to be cool in front of Jordan as they prepare to shoot an ad, and then Gooding running up like a fan-child, and locking himself around Jordan in a bear hug.
To be clear, this would (or at least could) be funny if it played off the dignified image of a cool and collected customer, but Gooding reeks of flop-sweat and desperation. He’s got the accumulated stench of a dozen bad choices on him, and it’s clearly a burden that weighs on him. I last interviewed Gooding for Dirty, writer-director Chris Fisher’s very derivative amoral cop drama, and he seemed like a dead man walking even then, before the release of the emotionally overdialed, air-quote artistic Shadowboxer. (His action movie End Game, meanwhile, didn’t even make it to theaters.) It’s not mortgage-payment commercial work in and of itself that is misguided (Kevin Bacon also appears in Hanes ads with Jordan, and Jennifer Love Hewitt has some herself), it’s just the shuck-and-jive desperation to please that comes across as debasing — here as in the Daddy Day Camp poster. Can Chill Factor 2 really be that far behind?
It’s crap like this where people should consider taking his Oscar away and for good. And in all honesty, he never earned it. Even when he was going against far stronger, more memorable performances from the likes of William H. Macy (“Fargo”), Edward Norton (“Primal Fear” and his film debut), Armin-Mueller Stahl (“Shine”), and James Woods (“Murder in Mississippi”).
How the hell do you go from saying “Show Me The Money” to actually becoming a guy just winning an Oscar for that fucking catchphrase?
How the fuck do you become a whore when you won an Oscar and all you have to show for is being in shitty films like “Pearl Harbor”, “Chill Factor”, “Boat Trip”, “Radio”, “Men of Honor”, “Norbit”, “Daddy Day Camp”, and of all fucking things, Fucking “Snow Dogs”.
Take his fucking Oscar away, immediately!