Things should be better for Michelle Monaghan

I love Michelle Monaghan.

Let's just get that out of the way the start.

I've already devoted an entire post to my love for her, which can be found here. I think she is personality incarnate. She's bubbly and cute (physically but also in her mannerisms), but she can also bring it dramatically when need be (see the first season of True Detective). She should be a star.

However, True Detective is just about the only feather in her cap lately. The other places she's been turning up are just not becoming of a person of her talents.

I have two reasons for writing this post, but the first and most pressing seems to be this:

Now, I try not to damn a movie before I've seen it, especially when some movies that have received plenty of scorn -- most recently, The Giver, which I saw Sunday night -- have turned out to be big wins for me.

But the vitriol for Pixels has been at historic levels. Even by the pathetic standards of an Adam Sandler movie it is being shat upon. It's so generally acknowledged that this movie is or must be terrible that sites like Funny or Die have seen it fit to joke about the awareness we all share that it sucks. As seen here:

Oh, and then there's MovieBob's review that it so laden with colorful adjectives about the poor quality of this movie that I am either highly impressed by -- or take issue with -- the fact that he says he saw it just hours before the recording. As seen here:



So yeah, as you have determined by now, Michelle Monaghan is in Pixels. Maybe it was not a bad career choice on the face of it -- I mean, Sandler has flirted with respectability before, and continues to try to do so every third or fourth movie -- but the outcome was that she was front and center in what is being hailed as one of the biggest turds of 2015.

But what may be more disturbing is the fact that MovieBob does not see it fit to even mention her inclusion as being a travesty. He asks why Peter Dinklage or even Josh Gad would lower themselves to be in a movie made by such "shit-gargling fuckwits," but no mention is made of the lovely and charming Miss Monaghan. Either she did not register to him at all, or she did not register to him as someone who's great and deserving of better work.

So perhaps that brings me to my second point. The other place I've seen Monaghan's face most recently is on the cover of what we used to refer to as "straight to video" movies -- or movies that look like they should be that, in any case. Such as:

Or:

(Then again, these movies also feature Captain America and a recent best actor frontrunner, so maybe I should lay off.)

Or worse, a Nicholas Sparks adaptation:

Oh, she's working. There's no doubt about that. Hollywood recognizes her value on some level.

But I feel like Monaghan deserves the kind of career that another of my favorite actresses, Emily Blunt, is having. She should be not only in good big movies (Blunt was in Edge of Tomorrow), but also in good independent movies by hot directors (Blunt will be in Denis Villeneuve's Sicario later this year).

And Monaghan turns 40 next year, which is starting to be over the hill for a woman in Hollywood if you have not already firmly established yourself. I think of Monaghan as firmly established, but I guess your average person -- someone like MovieBob -- doesn't think of her that way. He thinks Josh Gad is more firmly established than she is.

Well, as usual with a piece like this, there is hope. Monaghan is currently filming the English language remake of the French thriller Sleepless Night, which I haven't seen, but which I have on good authority is terrific. Of course, American remakes of foreign films are certainly no guarantee to be good, but this one is being directed by Baran bo Odar, whose 2010 movie The Silence was really good. So it's not definite that it will be a good independent movie by a hot director, but it's in that realm, anyway.

Look, I just want the people I like to do good things. Is that so wrong?

And for Miss Monaghan's sake, I will eventually watch Pixels ... and hope to like it.

The best part of every movie she's in

Michelle Monaghan is delightful.

I've thought it for a long time, so I might as well just go ahead and say it.

She's like a breath of fresh air personified. She's like carbonated joy.

Monaghan may never be an Oscar winner, but she is delightful as all get-out. And who knows, maybe she will win an Oscar. She can do independent drama with a high amount of credibility, if you saw her in Trucker.

However, like every actor or actress, the delightful Michelle Monaghan has made some bad choices. She was in The Heartbreak Kid. She was in Eagle Eye. She was in a couple movies I haven't seen, but was told were bad (Due Date, Made of Honor). In each case of the ones I've seen, and assuming in the cases I haven't, she was not the reason these movies were bad. In fact, she probably made them almost worth watching.

What is it about Michelle Monaghan that makes her so damn charming?

Yes, like many actresses in Hollywood, she's beautiful. But true star quality takes a lot more than beauty, which is why Monaghan has it but Megan Fox doesn't. Star quality involves having personality in your face, and that's where Monaghan really separates herself from the crowd. Just look at how much personality she's expressing in that photo above. In one single expression she manages to convey playfulness, sarcasm and a tendency not to take herself very seriously. Okay, the first and third may be related. But I challenge Megan Fox to make a face like that. She can't because it doesn't come naturally to her. You have to first feel those things to express them in your face, and robots don't have finely detailed thoughts and feelings.

I saw another weak entry in the Monaghan canon, Source Code, this past weekend. After seeing a movie with a ridiculously high concept plot from a director who fills you with high hopes, you should want to blog about any number of other things before you blog about the underdeveloped romantic heroine. The fact that the romantic heroine was underdeveloped was the fault of director Duncan Jones and writer Ben Ripley. The fact that I'm still talking about her was the fault of Michelle Monaghan.

Once again, Monaghan brought the delightful sass that just makes your eyes gravitate toward wherever she is on the screen. You really don't know much about her character, and that's partially driven by the scenario -- you only get to know her during the eight-minute snippets of time that our hero (Jake Gyllenhaal) has to try to solve a train bombing. What he doesn't know, we don't know, and there are iterations of this Groundhog Day scenario where he basically doesn't interact with her at all. So although Monaghan is more involved in some of these vignettes than others, her character still exists at this sort of basic level.

Good thing she's so damn watchable. Even just delivering a few flirtatious lines, she stakes her claim and sticks in your mind. And even though the script hasn't done enough to support the idea that Gyllenhaal's character is falling in love with her, you get it, for the same reasons you fell in love with her in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Mission Impossible III.

Wow, weird choices for movies to fall in love with someone, right? And that's because we still haven't gotten that perfect role from Monaghan, the role that could make her a Sandra Bullock or a Julia Roberts. She's so damn delightful that I really do think the sky is the limit for her. Instead of taking these supporting roles in action thrillers, she needs a successful romantic comedy to propel her into the forefront of our minds. Maybe she thought that movie would be the Farrelly Brothers' remake of The Heartbreak Kid, which ended up being a disaster. Let's hope that experience hasn't scared her off from that type of movie, which, if done correctly, could be the perfect vehicle for her talents. Her next credited title on IMDB is something called Machine Gun Preacher, so I guess she hasn't gotten that particular memo just yet.

However, as long as she keeps working, I'll keep going, no matter what the movies are. Spunky doesn't get much more delightful than this, and delightful doesn't get much more spunky.

And sure, it helps that she's adorable.