Michael Keaton’s 10 Most Underrated Movies

Michael Keaton is an Oscar-nominated actor with decades of success in Hollywood, but some of his best movies still don’t get the audience they deserve. Since breaking through as a comedic actor in the 1980s, Keaton has thrived in a variety of roles. His fame reached a new peak a few years later when he starred in Beetlejuice and Batman in back-to-back years. Although he has been a bankable star for many years, he has a lot of underrated movies.

Michael Keaton’s best movies showcase his talents as both a comedic actor and a performer with serious dramatic chops. He can pop up in surprising roles from time to time, since he isn’t afraid to throw himself into a supporting role. Although they may not be as famous as some of his biggest hits, these are the movies in which Keaton shows a different side to himself and provides something surprising.

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10 The Founder (2016)

Ray Kroc

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Director John Lee Hancock Release Date December 16, 2016 Cast John Carroll Lynch , Nick Offerman , B.J. Novak , Steve Coulter , Laura Dern , Patrick Wilson , Michael Keaton , Linda Cardellini , Griff Furst , Kimberly Battista

The Founder‘s mediocre box office returns prove that it was a hard sell to a lot of people, but what may appear on the surface to be a drawn-out advertisement for McDonald’s is actually more layered and interesting than that. While The Founder does tie the story of McDonald’s to the story of the United States in the late 20th century, it doesn’t always paint a sympathetic picture. Michael Keaton’s Ray Kroc is a morally ambiguous character who represents the machinations of the free market.

What may appear on the surface to be a drawn-out advertisement for McDonald’s is actually more layered and interesting than that.

Keaton’s innate likability is part of what makes The Founder so interesting. Even while Ray Kroc is muscling out the McDonald brothers from their own family business, he never seems to be a bad guy in the typical sense, or at least he never believes himself to be one. Like any hard-working American, Kroc is the hero in his own story. The Founder leaves the broader impact of his attitude open to interpretation.

9 Pacific Heights (1990)

Carter Hayes

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Director John Schlesinger Release Date September 28, 1990 Cast Melanie Griffith , Matthew Modine , Michael Keaton , Mako , Nobu McCarthy , Laurie Metcalf , Carl Lumbly , Dorian Harewood

Pacific Heights is like many psychological thrillers of the 1990s in some ways, but its premise means that it has fallen out of fashion. Michael Keaton gets a chance to play the villain, as Matthew Modine and Melanie Griffith are two landlords who find that their downstairs tenant is slowly ruining their lives. This set-up means that the villain is frighteningly close to home, even if it does hinge on the audience caring about property values for a while. Pacific Heights becomes more violent, more urgent and more compelling as it progresses.

Pacific Heights
becomes more violent, more urgent and more compelling as it progresses.

Throughout the movie, Keaton’s performance provides the beating heart that keeps things interesting. Even when his character’s true motives and true identity remain unknown, he is a reptilian presence capable of sending a shiver down the spine. There is always the underlying threat of escalation, and this is enough to cause the homeowners to become their own tormentors.

8 The Other Guys (2010)

Captain Gene Mauch

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Director Adam McKay Release Date August 5, 2010 Cast Will Ferrell , Mark Wahlberg , Adam McKay , Eva Mendes , Samuel L. Jackson , Michael Keaton

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The Other Guys is a great buddy cop comedy starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg as two detectives used to sitting on the sidelines and filing paperwork who throw themselves into the thick of the action. Adam McKay, director of other Ferrell classics such as Anchorman and Step Brothers, is at the helm once more. Michael Keaton has a hilarious supporting role as the police captain who also works at Bed, Bath & Beyond.

The Other Guys
is a great buddy cop comedy starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg.

The Other Guys is filled with funny quotes, as well as some physical humor that highlights the mismatch between Ferrell and Wahlberg. Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson steal the show early on as two hero cops with plenty of pithy one-liners, but Keaton is another great supporting cast member. He gets the movie’s funniest running gag, since he’s always quoting TLC lyrics while claiming that he has never heard of the band.

7 Much Ado About Nothing (1993)

Dogberry

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Generally, William Shakespeare’s tragedies get adapted into movies far more often than his comedies, because modern audiences don’t connect with Elizabethan English enough to find it funny. While some movies have mapped Shakespeare’s plots onto modern settings to bridge this gap, like Anyone But You and She’s the Man, Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 version of Much Ado About Nothing is funny without changing too much.

Michael Keaton plays Dogberry, one of Shakespeare’s funniest characters, and his portrayal as inept and inebriated works well.

Some of the casting choices are a little unusual in Much Ado About Nothing, but they work very well. The key is that each actor understands the role they’re playing within Shakespeare’s romantic comedy, so Robert Sean Leonard and Keanu Reeves seem perfectly at home. Michael Keaton plays Dogberry, one of Shakespeare’s funniest characters, and his portrayal as inept and inebriated works well.

6 Porco Rosso (1992)

Porco Rosso

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Director Hayao Miyazaki Release Date July 18, 1992 Cast Shûichirô Moriyama , Tokiko Katô , Bunshi Katsura Vi , Tsunehiko Kamijô , Akemi Okamura , Akio Otsuka , Hiroko Seki , Reizō Nomoto , Osamu Saka , Yu Shimaka

Michael Keaton has had a few high-profile voice-acting roles over the years, most notably as Ken in Toy Story 3 and Chick Hicks in the Cars franchise. Away from Pixar, his most memorable voice-acting role has been that of Porco Rosso, the eponymous porcine pilot of one of Studio Ghibli’s best movies. Keaton was part of the 2005 English dub, which came out 13 years after the Japanese original.

Stylistically, it borrows from old adventure movies from Hollywood’s golden era, but its animated action scenes are remarkably inventive.

Porco Rosso has plenty of Hayao Miyazaki’s signature magic sprinkled throughout, but it’s also grounded in a time and place of immense historical significance. While some other Studio Ghibli movies can be seen as allegories, Porco Rosso is more up-front with its intentions. Stylistically, it borrows from old adventure movies from Hollywood’s golden era, but its animated action scenes are remarkably inventive.

5 Out Of Sight (1998)

Ray Nicolette

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Director Steven Soderbergh Release Date June 26, 1998 Cast George Clooney , Jim Robinson , Mike Malone , Donna Frenzel , Manny Suárez , Dennis Farina

Three years before directing Ocean’s Eleven, Steven Soderbergh created another stylish heist thriller starring George Clooney.Out of Sight is based on an Elmore Leonard novel, so it has a lot of humor mixed in with its captivating crime plot. Clooney plays a dashing thief who starts a flirtatious relationship with the detective tasked with tracking him down, played by Jennifer Lopez.

Out of Sight
is based on an Elmore Leonard novel, so it has a lot of humor mixed in with its captivating crime plot.

Michael Keaton doesn’t play a huge role, but his appearance is noteworthy since he reprises his role as Ray Nicolette from Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown a year earlier. Both movies are based on Leonard novels. Some parts of Out of Sight seem like Soderbergh warming up for the Ocean’s franchise, but it stands on its own two feet as a twisty crime drama worth watching.

4 Jackie Brown (1997)

Ray Nicolette

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Director Quentin Tarantino Release Date December 25, 1997 Cast Bridget Fonda , Michael Keaton , Robert Forster , Pam Grier , Samuel L. Jackson , Robert De Niro

Michael Keaton’s first appearance as ATF agent Ray Nicolette gives him much more to do than Out of Sight. Nicolette is one of the agents trying to trace some stolen money and a variety of seedy thugs. Keaton makes him a likable character, in way over his head and struggling to understand the various machinations of the criminal world around him. He’s a good man in a world of selfish thuggery.

Jackie Brown
is arguably Quentin Tarantino’s most underrated movie.

Jackie Brown is arguably Quentin Tarantino’s most underrated movie, released between the explosive success of Pulp Fiction and the epic Kill Bill duology. It’s a crime drama that plays things relatively low-key. Tarantino’s flair for dialogue still shines through, and he has some action scenes which erupt with violence, but many of the best parts of Jackie Brown are in its quieter moments, aided by a sumptuous soundtrack.

3 Worth (2020)

Kenneth Feinberg

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Director Sara Colangelo Release Date September 3, 2021 Cast Michael Keaton , Tate Donovan , Stanley Tucci , Amy Ryan , Laura Benanti , Shunori Ramanathan

Worth takes place in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, but it tells a relatively unknown story about real-life history. Michael Keaton plays Kenneth Feinberg, a lawyer who heads the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, the group who have to figure out how to financially compensate the families of the victims. Feinberg tries to do what’s best for the victims, but he finds his attempts marred by strict regulations and red tape.

As its title suggests,
Worth
examines what value can be placed on a human life, and it raises some interesting ethical questions.

As its title suggests, Worth examines what value can be placed on a human life, and it raises some interesting ethical questions. There are different cases among the roughly 7000 victims taken from real life which highlight the problems with the Victim Compensation Fund’s methods, although these come tinged with the understanding that offering no restitution would be even more damaging. Worth doesn’t offer simple answers, but there are moments of hope amid the tragedy.

2 Knox Goes Away (2023)

John “Aristotle” Knox

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Director Michael Keaton Release Date September 10, 2023 Cast Al Pacino , Joanna Kulig , Michael Keaton , Marcia Gay Harden , James Marsden

Knox Goes Away is just the second movie Michael Keaton has directed, and it’s a step-up in quality from 2009’s The Merry Gentlemen. Keaton plays the role of an aging assassin with a rare form of dementia who must help his estranged son out of a tight spot. Keaton’s performance and direction combine to create an interesting visual representation of mental decline, and this gives the action scenes more jeopardy.

Knox Goes Away
is just the second movie Michael Keaton has directed.

Keaton’s supporting cast includes James Marsden and Al Pacino, but he remains in the spotlight throughout Knox Goes Away. It’s an interesting twist on an action thriller, with elements of John Wick and The Father balancing each other out, but its languid pace makes it a different proposition than the usual actioners. First and foremost, Knox Goes Away is a personal drama about aging and loss, but the fight scenes make for some punchy interludes.

1 Night Shift (1982)

Bill Blazejowski

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Director Ron Howard Release Date July 30, 1982 Cast Henry Winkler , Michael Keaton , Shelley Long , Gina Hecht , Pat Corley , Bobby Di Cicco , Nita Talbot , Basil Hoffman

After making his film debut with a non-speaking role in the critically-panned comedy Rabbit Test, Michael Keaton got his first starring role in Night Shift. He and Henry Winkler play two morgue workers who start running a prostitution ring. A morgue isn’t a normal setting for a sex romp comedy, and this adds an extra layer of dark humor when the two friends find themselves being pursued by cops and rival pimps.

With Ron Howard’s snappy direction,
Night Shift
keeps the pace up and the gags rolling.

Night Shift helped turn Keaton into a star. Younger audiences may only know him from movies such as Beetlejuice, Batman and Birdman, but his early comedies are worth watching. With Ron Howard’s snappy direction, Night Shift keeps the pace up and the gags rolling. Keaton plays the eccentric wildcard in his dynamic with Winkler, and it’s the kind of role that has come naturally to him many times.

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