“Romeo + Juliet” (1996)
Say what you will about Baz Luhrmann’s career to date—”Moulin Rouge!,” “Australia” and “The Great Gatsby” (of which, oddly enough, Paul Rudd starred in another adaptation, for TV as Nick Carraway) all divided people to one degree or another. But go back to 1996’s “Romeo + Juliet” and you’ll find the most successful distillation of his hyperactive, over-the-top visual style working brilliantly with (instead of actively against) the text. Here he reappropriated Shakespeare’s most famous play, to impressive results. Its impact might have been lessened to a generation who probably saw it in high school English, but the film’s still full of raw emotion and fun, big performances from a game cast. Though Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes got the leads (and both are great, especially Danes’ Juliet), Rudd here still makes for a goofy, affable presence with his take on Dave Paris, the man the Capulets have chosen for Juliet to marry, until she has a fateful (and aquarium-aided) glance of her Romeo. He’s not in the film long, but he does make an impression even in a mostly thankless role (this moment in particular is a winner), and one that’s a relatively rare non-comedic turn in the Rudd canon. This of course started a small wave of neo-Shakespeare adaptations/modernizations, but is still the best of the bunch.
“Wet Hot American Summer” (2001)
On July 31, just after the peak of maximum Ruddness, Netflix will premiere its bizarro reboot/prequel/follow-up of this hilarious spoof of 80s summer camp movies. They’ve managed to have almost the entire cast returning (somehow they wrangled all those schedules together) to play younger versions of their characters in an origin story, even though they look significantly older than they did in 2001, pushing the insane (lack of) logic of the film to what seems like dizzying heights. None of that would be possible, though, were it not for the slowly building cult of the original film, David Wain’s directorial debut, which brought along most of the crew from “The State.”. ‘WHAS’ is one of those comedies that,those who’ve seen it, love it, to the point they are pretty much obsessed with it and never stop quoting the film. Hopefully the miniseries doesn’t stretch the premise and characters too thin, and also can somehow live up to the hype for those who care (almost always the hardest group to please in these situations). Thankfully, Rudd is back (he and Wain have worked together quite a bit over the years) and with it his macho, jean jacket-wearing, bro-douche demeanor. He’s easily one of the highlights of the original film (the running gag of him killing off young campers is so damn funny), so sign us up for more of him and the rest of the (now way more famous) cast.