Six Great Cinematic Turns From Beloved Sitcom Stars

Sitcoms have never been the most reputable of television genres. Before single-camera series like 30 Rock, The Office, and Arrested Development nixed the laugh track and raised the bar to more highbrow territory, the respect was significantly lacking. Even when reeling in record-breaking audiences and amassing awards, the likes of Friends, Murphy Brown and Will & Grace were always critically perceived as being the lesser television art form compared to their hour-long dramatic brethren.

Thanks to critical reassessment likely spurred on by a new generation of writers’ nostalgia, it’s not odd to see Seinfeld, The Golden Girls or Roseanne now listed as some of the best and most important television programs ever made. Still, no matter how much the sitcoms of the ’80s and ’90s find themselves looked upon with a new critical light, nothing can quite change the reputation of sitcom stars turned movie stars. Jennifer Aniston will always have Picture Perfect (1997) during her heyday as Friends’ biggest breakout star, and Ray Romano will always have the knowledge that his big screen comedy vehicle Welcome To Mooseport (2004) made Gene Hackman retire.

But with Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ star turn in the new Enough Said, it’s time to look back at some of the best performances by sitcom stars on the big screen. (Don’t worry, there’s nobody from The Bob Morrison Show featured here.)

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Courteney Cox in Scream (1996)

For a while, of all the cast members from Friends who attempted movies — Matthew Perry in Three To Tango (1999), Matt LeBlanc in Ed (1996) — Cox was the one who found the most box office success.

Her biggest and best role was as catty diva news reporter Gale Weathers in Wes Craven’s slasher classic, Scream. Her college campus chase sequence in Scream 2 is one of the best screen representations of pure fear I can recall, and gave the films a much-needed dose of maturity.

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Lisa Kudrow in The Opposite Of Sex (1998)

As great as Cox was, Phoebe Buffay was the Friends alumni who landed the label of critics’ choice. As blissfully hilarious as Lisa Kudrow is in Romy And Michelle’s High School Reunion (1997), it’s her role as the emotionally cold Lucia DeLury in Don Roos’ midnight-black dark comedy The Opposite Of Sex that many still cite as Oscar-worthy. Kudrow came close, too, picking up awards from the prestigious New York Film Critics Circle, Chicago Film Critics Association, and the Independent Spirit Awards. She later gave another great performance in a Roos film, in 2005’s Happy Endings.

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Queen Latifah in Chicago (2002)

Few in Australia would remember the charismatic rapper-slash-actor Queen Latifah in her role as Khadijah James on the sitcom Living Single (which ran from 1993-98), because local TV networks shunted it to after midnight alongside late-night shopping commercials and reruns of Mad TV. Thankfully, her Oscar-nominated turn as Mama Morton in Rob Marshall’s adaptation of Chicago helped clue people in to her talents, and now she’s even voicing children’s movies like the Ice Age franchise. She didn’t win the Oscar for the role — losing to heavily pregnant co-star Catherine Zeta-Jones — but the two did perform on stage to an audience of millions, all of whom were presumably instant fans.

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Sara Rue in Gypsy 83 (2001)

I guess we should be thankful that Sara Rue was given her own sitcom at all, given Hollywood’s double standards with weight and gender. Or perhaps it was fate given that she’d once portrayed ‘Young Roseanne’ in a flashback on the sitcom, Roseanne. Rue’s office place sitcom Less Than Perfect (2002-06) was a minor late night comedy diversion, but her role on Ryan Murphy’s pre-Glee high school comedy Popular (1999-2001) made me a fan for life. So when I saw her play a Stevie Nicks obsessed goth queen in the charming but little-seen queer road-trip comedy Gypsy 83, I was quietly blown away. Her rendition of “Voice So Sweet” is beautiful and should have earned her better roles.

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Ellen DeGeneres in Finding Nemo (2003)

Sure, Mr. Wrong (1996) was terrible (and retroactively ironic) in the way only a ‘90s comedy starring a sitcom actor can be — I’m looking at you Michael ‘Cosmo Kramer’ Richards in Trial And Error (1997). But when Pixar cast the controversial lesbian star of Ellen as a fish with short-term memory loss, they unknowingly helped build an empire (that’d be The Ellen Show) and create a childhood icon.

In a year where many are calling for Scarlett Johansson to be Oscar-nominated for her voice-only work in Spike Jonze’s upcoming Her, it’s fair to remember that DeGeneres should have been there first. The Academy made it up to her by giving her the hosting position a few years later.

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Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Enough Said (2013)

Nobody else on this list has had quite the level of consistent TV success as everyone’s favourite neurotic, bad-dancing, forceful-shoving, exclamation point-loving, frizzy-haired Elaine Benes. Louis-Dreyfus is the only woman to have won Emmy Awards for three separate programs — Seinfeld, The New Adventures Of Old Christine, and Veep (twice) — but she more or less stayed away from cinema.

But with Enough Said — the latest film from that purveyor of American upper-middle class anxiety, Nicole Holofcener — she’s found a big-screen role that taps into her formidable small-screen strengths. A rom-com for those who’ve been through the ringer more than enough times, Louis-Dreyfus is fabulous opposite James Gandolfini (in one of his last screen roles) and reminds us how effortlessly and hilariously she’s able to convey mean-spirited awkwardness.

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Enough Said is now showing in cinemas nationally.

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Glenn Dunks is a freelance writer and film critic from Melbourne, and currently based in New York City. His work has been seen online (Onya Magazine, Quickflix), in print (The Big Issue, Metro Magazine, Intellect Books Ltd’s World Film Locations: Melbourne), as well as heard on Joy 94.9.