Stage Fright: Celebrating the worst performances by musicians in recent films

Keith Richards, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

Young filmmakers everywhere, heed our call: Do not listen to your fanbase about how great it might be to have someone cameo in your movie. Please, for the love of god, don’t listen to them. Someone somewhere said “man, that Johnny Depp sure does act like Keith Richards when he’s in those Pirates movies!” and dummies everywhere agreed with him. At some point, this boiled over into an outright call for Richards to be in the third (and, what was then presumed to be, final) installment in the maritime franchise, to play Depp’s on-screen father. And lo and behold, their wishes were granted. It was just terrible, and the novelty value of such a cameo can’t make itself notable from the terrible writing and the hackneyed plot bullshit that’s needed to get him there. Richards’ might have been more interesting had he’d been given good material to work with (and hey, at least it’s not Freejack), but the real problem here is that it couldn’t just be a one-time thing. He came back for more in the fourth film, and we have no doubt that he’ll show up in the fifth (though we’d love to be proven wrong!).