Friday Face Off: Jim vs. Jenny vs. Jamie...

Ah, "In Living Color".

One of the funniest shows of the last 20 years. It's respected for being creative, courageous, innovative and a breeding ground for future superstars.

We're going to take a look at three of the biggest stars of that show, Jennifer Lopez, Jamie foxx and Jim Carey. We're going to examine their careers (the highs and lows) to see if we can determine who is the best of the "In Living Color" alumni.

What's that smell? Oh, never mind. It's the Friday Face Off...




Right off the top, lets be clear: We are aware that the Wayans family is arguably the most powerful family in show business. We're pretty sure they could take a crap into a burlap sack, take it to a major studio and get a movie about it green lit by the end of the business day.



They're too powerful for this list.

We're gonna respectfully give them their props and completely ignore them in this face off.

Also, sorry David Alan Grier And Tommy Davidson And the white girl (who I spent 10 minutes trying to find a decent picture of on the internet with no luck), we had to stick with the big dogs.

We're breaking this comparison into 3 categories:

Best Movie in general. Best Biopic. "Best" Flop. And the trifecta (we'll explain that later).

Lets start with Best Movie in General:

First, we spent way to long yesterday deciding that "Collateral" was Jaime Foxx's best movie.



It was a strong original story with a great performance from Tom Cruise and a performance from Foxx that earned him a supporting actor Oscar nomination.

For Jim Carey we selected "The Truman Show". Whatever, we like that movie a lot.



And For JLo we went with "Out Of Site", easily the best she that ever had her name attached to it.



Considering how awesome "Out Of Site" is, we really had no problem figuring out that it was better than almost anything Foxx or Carey has ever done. It's a clever, caper movie that is able to be funny and sexy with action and danger and it's filled with great performances from everyone including George Clooney, Don Cheadle, Albert Brooks and Steve Zahn.

Advantage: JLO



Next up, we look at which actor had the best Biopic. Jamie of course won an Oscar for his portrayal of Ray Charles in the film "Ray", JLO played doomed Latina sensation Selena to much acclaim but neither film had the nuance or as interesting a a subject as Andy Kaufman in "Man On The Moon".



Arguably one of the most brilliant and misunderstood comedic minds of our time, Kaufman made a name for himself with his brave and cutting edge comedy and Carey was not only able to capture what made Kaufman so unique but he also helped show us how human Kaufman was.

On the contrary, while Ray is a very good movie, it played as a sort of paint by numbers biopic, we stand by the opinion that Foxx showcased his mimicking ability more than his acting chops in that flick and it's a great impression of Ray Charles, but not really all that great of a movie. And quite frankly, Selena didn't resonate with us at all.

Advantage: Carey



Now the speed round: "The Trifecta".

We decided to create a category that only 2 of our subjects could compete in at a time, giving one a free pass. It breaks down like this:

Better Stand up comic: We're not sure if you ever saw Carey on stage but it's pretty lame. A lot of impressions and falling down and shit like that. Jamie Foxx is funny as hell.

Advantage: Foxx



Better Family Fare: Foxx hasn't really done a family movie, but JLo was in "Antz", the dismal CGI fest that was, at the time, the "other" movie about insects next to "A Bugs Life" and pretty much wack enough to be remembered as that forever.



Carey on the other hand has a few family flicks under his belt. For our purposes we'll pick "Horton Hears A Hoo". A really cool family film that took on the daunting task of turning a 15 page short into an 80 minute feature that was funny.

Advantage: Carey



Rounding out "The Trifecta" we have "Better Music Career". We're gonna come right out and say we like "Blame It", Jamie Foxx's ode to getting sloppy drunk at the club is currently the number 3 song in the country for a perfectly good reason. The beat is crazy and it's infectious. His other singles are all decent too.

Not so fast though Jamie.

JLo however has a career that has transcended genres. She's killed on the pop chart, the Hip Hop/ R&B charts, the Latin charts and has gone on huge tours. Sorry Jaime, JLo (for now) has had the better music career.

Advantage: JLo



Finally, we have "Best" flop. None of these performers have been perfect, lets check out some of their worst movies to find out which one had the best bad movie.

Jamie's list of crappy movies was almost long enough to warrant it's own Friday Face Off. Seriously. Like, have you seen "Held Up"? Or "Booty Call"? Or "Breaking All The Rules"? Or "Bait". Don't bother. But lets give him "Stealth".



We'll say that's his biggest flop. It came out right after "Ray" so it felt especially shitty and it's probably his best "bad" movie.

JLo's biggest Flop was easily Gigli.



This film nearly killed her and Ben afleck's career. By the time it came out it was so over hyped and her career was so over exposed that most people welcomed it's failure. Still, it's so bad that it's actually funny at this point. Not quite in the gloriously-awful-so-bad-it's-almost-good "Showgirls" territory, but pretty damn close.

Jim Carey's career was almost DESTROYED by a movie called "The Cable Guy".



It was a commercial flop and it was almost universally panned by critics. But guess what? That movie is damn funny and it stands the test of time as a hilarious and extremely underrated movie. Think about it, we're not even sure if you could get all of those actors in one film today without bankrupting a studio.

There was Jim Carey, Jack Black, Leslie Mann, Mathew Broderick, Owen Wilson, and it was directed by (and featured in a dual role) Ben Stiller! At the time, the general public was disturbed by a dark Jim Carey and many expected something like Ace Ventura from him, but looking back it was way ahead of his time.

Advantage: Carey

So there you have it. The final scores:

Carey-3
Foxx-1
JLo-2

Jim Carey rises above his "In Living Color" alumni in a very close match, he has family movies, the better biopic and even his shittiest movie wasn't all that shitty.

Stay tuned next week for The Recession version of the Friday Face Off: Cat Food vs. Dog Food.

Delicious!