Cinematical Seven: Underrated Robert Downey Jr. Movies

The son of a famous underground filmmaker, Robert Downey Jr. started out playing a series of smartass, wisecracking comic sidekicks and villains. There were glimmers of some greater ambition from time to time, but he emerged fully-formed, and knocked all his detractors for a loop, with his astonishing, Oscar-nominated lead performance in Chaplin (1992). There were many stays in rehab and a few arrests, and even some jail time, but he always came back. And no matter how bad the material, he was always the best thing in it. (See Mike Figgis' One Night Stand for a prime example.) Last year was his year, with two highly acclaimed hits, Iron Man and Tropic Thunder, and a second Oscar nomination. His new film The Soloist is being released this week. By now he has firmly established his reputation as one of the greatest actors alive, but what about all those years between Oscar nominations? The great work is there, but the movies themselves may have been mistimed or badly advertised and therefore failed to find the proper critical reception or audiences. Here's a look back at Downey's most underrated, underappreciated or overlooked films.

1. Two Girls and a Guy (1998)
Maverick filmmaker James Toback wrote this for Downey (with whom he had worked once before), and I can't think of a more mind-blowing one-man show on film. He plays actor/musician Blake, who arrives home to his spacious New York loft to find both his girlfriends (Heather Graham and Natasha Gregson Wagner) waiting for him. The catch is that neither girl knew about the other. So for 90 minutes, Blake attempts to talk, sing, joke, and charm his way out of trouble. It's a virtuoso work if there ever was one, but the reviews were mixed and the film faded away too quickly. Months later, Roberto Benigni won the Best Actor Oscar.

2. Wonder Boys (2000)
What a perfect role for Downey, in a movie about geniuses and talent! He plays Terry Crabtree, the flamboyant agent to Michael Douglas's Grady Tripp, arriving one winter weekend to perhaps take a look at Grady's long-overdue new novel. Directed by Curtis Hanson, this movie is a masterpiece of comic mood, taking its time and savoring the air and the weather and the conversation, but finding time for wonderfully stupid jokes. It opened in February of 2000, when most movies are getting disposed of, and despite glowing reviews, didn't do much business. Paramount tried a re-release toward the end of the year, but to no avail. It wound up winning an Oscar for Bob Dylan's song, but lesser movies stole the limelight that year.

3. Game 6 (2005)
Written by one of our country's greatest living authors, Don DeLillo (White Noise, Underworld), this terrific film barely opened in 2006. Another underrated actor, Michael Keaton, had the lead role as a playwright whose new work opens on the same day as game six of the infamous 1986 World Series between the Red Sox and the Mets. Downey has the showier role as Steven Schwimmer, a notorious theater critic who mentally prepares in a bizarre loft before attending the show. Some probably accused it of being overwritten, but it's a film in love with the sound of words, just as it loves the pace of a well-played (or well-lost) ball game.

4. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
The one-time millionaire screenwriter Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, etc.) made his directorial debut with this delightfully pulpy, funny crime tale. This time Downey gets the lead as a fast-talking small-time thief who lucks into an acting job and winds up teaming with a real detective (Val Kilmer) to learn the ropes. Of course, there's a real-life case to be solved. Why audiences stayed away from this is a mystery in itself. Perhaps it had something to do with the detective, a streetwise, openly gay man called "Gay Perry." (He wasn't as blandly non-threatening as that year's gay cowboys.)

5. Home for the Holidays (1995)
Jodie Foster was very hot -- Silence of the Lambs hot -- when she made her directorial debut Little Man Tate (1991), but she was significantly cooler when she made her follow-up, which is for my money, the greatest Thanksgiving movie ever made. The reviews were decidedly more mixed, unable to easily understand or define the movie's frantic, ultra-dark humor, mixed with sad, realistic characters. Downey plays the gay brother to Holly Hunter's sad-sack Claudia; his constant attempts to lighten the mood, even at the expense of others' dignity, never gets old or obnoxious. And then, just as he's about to turn into a cartoon character, he throws in a tiny but powerfully truthful scene with their mother (Anne Bancroft).

6. A Scanner Darkly (2006)
Richard Linklater probably made his quasi-animated, Philip K. Dick adaptation a little too intelligent and complicated. The reviews were polite, but the sci-fi fans didn't bite. (I loved it.) Despite all the heavy design and dialogue, Downey still manages to steal his scenes as a lazy, chatty, drug-addled layabout.

7. Zodiac (2007)
2007 was a great movie year, and at the end of the year all the critics' polls ranked David Fincher's Zodiac squarely in the year's top three, right behind No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. That was as close as Downey had come to an Oscar nomination in years, though when the actual nominations came out, Zodiac was totally ignored; it apparently had to be moved aside for the likes of Atonement and Juno. For Downey, there were two other cases of close-but-no-cigar with Short Cuts in 1993 and Good Night, and Good Luck in 2005. No matter. The films are still great.

Four More: Heart and Souls (1993), Richard III (1995), The Gingerbread Man (1998) and The Singing Detective (2003)

Downey's Highest-Grossing Hits: 1) Iron Man, 2) Tropic Thunder, 3) Back to School, 4) Bowfinger, 5) The Shaggy Dog, 6) Gothika, 7) U.S. Marshals, 8) Soapdish