There are and always have been actors who have a certain gravitas. Those whose involvement in a project cause it to command a certain level of respect. Those who lend credibility just by mere presence and nearness. Gravitas aside sometimes you may want to just have a bit of fun and cash a paycheck for relatively little work, or perhaps someone just thought of something funny and decided the right face, voice or mannerisms would make it funnier, or finally due to a person’s association with an IP perhaps they will be put in like 40 movies (and several TV series).

Cameos date way, way back to black and white movies and can be really great if executed properly. And as discussed earlier there are a lot of ways to use a cameo appearance/role. Humour, Nostalgia, Fan Service are widely the three main reasons, but also sometimes you just want to see Sean Connery’s smiling face for no real good reason other than: Sean Connery (and to be fair to Prince of Thieves Sean Connery is always a good reason for anything). For me personally a good cameo should answer three questions: One, is it a good use of the cameo actor? While this one may seem pretty simple a lot of movies still mess this one up, I think Nick Offerman is great but what was going on with him in Civil War, just completely wasted, previous to this movie I would have believed it was impossible to mess up or waste Nick Offerman. Two, does the cameo work? If it is meant to be funny, is it funny? Does it tug at the nostalgia heart strings? If it accomplishes it’s task well AND uses the cameo appearance well then you have something, and finally: Three does this work in the movie? If the cameo screeches the movie to a halt or goes off on some side quest that doesn’t add to the movie then why have it. Imagine a world where Peter Jackson had decided to do an extended, extended cut of Fellowship of the Ring and got Sean Connery to be Tom Bombadil for some reason. That would have been a waste of time, attention and totally invalidate what I already wrote about Sean Connery. As such the cameo should serve the movie, not the other way around.

Now Personally I love a good cameo, but I don’t want to treat it like an Easter Egg hunt, I want it to come out of nowhere, fit the three criteria above and wow me. Allowing for the fact that everyone’s criteria could (and should) be different as to what makes a good cameo this week’s prompt is: What is your favourite movie cameo appearance (or sound, it could be voice acting after all)? I went through a lot of cameos in my head writing this prompt and I come back to the Beatles scene in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. This is a good use of the not one, two or three but FOUR actors in question, achieves it’s objective by being riotously funny, and as a biopic parody it fit’s perfectly into the movie itself. A trifecta of creative cameo championship casting.