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Sylvester Stallone

Of the five actors on this list, Sylvester Stallone may seem the most out of place. Despite Sly’s action prowess, Stallone has rarely been in family movies. He’s never been as bewildered as Arnie was in Kindergarten Cop, nor has he ever voiced a talking baby (as we’ll talk about soon). It’s not for a lack of talent; I’d say that Stallone’s got some comedy chops, so it’s not unbelievable that we’d see him in a film similar to Kindergarten Cop. Alas, it was never to be. However, Sly has been in a few family-oriented movies, most notably as the main antagonist of Spy Kids 3D: Game Over, the third and final film in the Spy Kids series, helmed by Robert Rodriguez. The third Spy Kids film positions Stallone as the inventor of a video game so immersive that it threatens to tear the Spy Kids apart.

The movie’s not great, nor is the 3D (remember, this was way before Avatar or even Coraline helped people appreciate what magic can be created with 3D technology). Stallone’s performance (or performances) is very impressive, if more nuanced than what you usually find in kids’ movies. This film aside, Sly’s only other family-oriented movies were Antz (where he voiced the role of the lead’s best buddy) and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot!, wherein he co-stars with Estelle Getty. I’ve not seen the latter film, but have heard of its badness (and come on, from reading that title, what are you expecting?). Bad action movies don’t stop any of the men on this list, but bad family movies seem to put a stop in their tracks. The familiar can be bad, but if these guys do something unfamiliar and it fails, they cower back to their comfort zones. Stallone’s no different, but there’s nothing wrong doing what’s comfortable, I guess.

Bruce Willis

Just an average guy, right? That’s what Bruce Willis sold himself as in the Die Hard series, and on the ABC series Moonlighting. So, when people were looking for someone to provide the voice of an average guy who happens to be a baby for a film called Look Who’s Talking, where did they go? To Bruce Willis, of course. Willis has never starred in a film like Kindergarten Cop, where the whole concept is that he has to deal with children, despite the fact that the guy knows (or knew) what comic timing was, and can be appropriately pissed off when the time is right. This is not to say that Willis never went down the route of the family film. He was the star of Disney’s The Kid, where he came face-to-face with himself as a child. The film I’ll talk about a little bit here, though, is a movie I’m sure he’d rather forget, and right quick: the 1994 family film North.

You probably haven’t seen North (I did when it came out and, even though I was still at the age where I thought I loved everything, even I knew the movie wasn’t that good), but you may well have heard of it, specifically in the context of a review from the famed critic Roger Ebert. Due to his recent rants on the morality of Kick-Ass and the idea that video games can never be art, we may not be fans now, but Ebert is more than right when he claimed that he “hated, hated, hated this movie.” That’s a direct quote, so memorable that it’s the title of his first compilation of his most negative reviews. North, about a boy who looks to adopt new parents because his don’t pay attention to him, co-stars Willis as a mysterious stranger who helps the title character along his journey. He dresses up as the Easter Bunny, a cowboy, and a FedEx deliveryman. The movie’s terrible. Avoid it, and any Willis family movies, at all costs.

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