9 Great Directors Who Could Really Use A Career Boost

6) Rob Reiner

If an average North American movie lover were to make a list of their favorite films of the 1980s, odds are that there would be at least one Rob Reiner title on it. Among his most iconic are the charming and endlessly quotable family adventure The Princess Bride, the hilarious and endlessly quotable mockumentary This is Spinal Tap, and the charming, hilarious and endlessly quotable romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally. (Among his less hilarious but still endlessly quotable classics are A Few Good Men, Misery and Stand by Me.)

Reiner’s early films are rich and varied, and he tackled a wide variety of genres. However, almost everything after A Few Good Men has been an unmitigated disaster. (The American President is an exception, serving as a corny but quite good West Wing audition tape for its scribe, Aaron Sorkin.) Whether it’s the sappy and dated Alex & Emma – a film as forgettable as its title – or the septuagenarian-leaning snoozers that were The Bucket List or this summer’s And So it Goes… Reiner is not taking many risks, on the page or the screen.

Roger Ebert titled one of his adored books of critical takedowns, I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie, a line taken from his review of Reiner’s putrid family-aimed misfire North. That statement could be an apt impression of how audiences have reacted to the last two decades of the director’s output. It would be really sad for such an industry great like Rob Reiner – also a fantastic actor in movies and television for more than 40 years – to slump out of directing without making a good film in two decades.