As Justin Timberlake gets ready to headline the Super Bowl Halftime Show, here’s a look at his best films to date (“Wonder Wheel” Not Included):
“INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS” (2013)
Timberlake co-starred alongside Oscar Isaac as a musician, performing the Critics Choice and Golden Globe nominated song “Please Mr. Kennedy” … which is now stuck in my head again.
“JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE + THE TENNESSEE KIDS” (2016)
This Netflix concert documentary of JT’s “20/20 Experience World Tour”, directed by the late Jonathan Demme, is an incredible experience.
“THE SOCIAL NETWORK” (2010)
Timberlake’s best live-action performance to date comes from this Facebook origin drama – as Napster founder Sean Parker. And like wine (or so people tell me), this movie gets better with age.
“TROLLS” (2016)
JT not only voiced male lead character Branch in this DreamWorks Animation musical comedy (and last year’s holiday special), but he also served as executive music producer, contributing new versions of old songs and creating the phenomenon “Can’t Stop the Feeling”, which took him to the Oscars.
In November, “Trolls Holiday” director Joel Crawford told me what it was like working with Timberlake and why the song was released a whopping six months before “Trolls” opened in theaters:
“Justin Timberlake is amazing. With his involvement as the music producer on the first movie [“Trolls 2” is coming in 2020]… we had rough ideas on where we needed to end up. ‘We need some kind of joyful song that feels like it changes the hearts of the Bergens and shows them true happiness. And the audience feels it – and they just wanna dance in the aisles.’ This big request for Justin, right?
And he’s like, “Okay. I got it.” And… he’s amazing. He went away and came back and presented the song. And I think… it was so good, and it was so clear that it was a hit song, that it worked perfectly for the movie, but it was like: the world needs to hear this first.
And I think, in a way, it really helped represent the movie ahead of time. And when people heard the song, they got it. They got the feeling. They got that kind of… happiness that’s just so built into “Trolls”. And it was great to have a song that captures that feel.”
“YOGI BEAR” (2010)
Timberlake’s voice performance as Boo-Boo was spot-on in this 2010 live-action/animated film adaptation of the classic cartoon. “When I was approached about doing the voice of Boo-Boo, I don’t know that they were ready to handle my Boo-Boo skills,” JT said in an interview. Timberlake and Dan Aykroyd (who voiced Yogi) recorded most of their scenes together.