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Frasier Crane In ‘The Expendables 3’? Really?

Kelsey GrammerWENN.com

There’s a teaser trailer for The Expendables 3. It shows 15 people in silhouette in an airplane hanger. After a few seconds, they turn and their features become visible. A series of last-names show up … and they are impressive action-movie actor last names: (Mel) Gibson, (Harrison) Ford, (Jet) Li, (Arnold) Schwarzenegger, (Sylvester) Stallone, (Jason) Statham, even (Ronda) Rousey. But there was one that made me scratch my head. Grammer. Wait, where have I heard that one before? Kelsey Grammer? Are you kidding me? Kelsey Grammer? Frasier Crane? He’s in this movie? Did this suddenly be come a gag reel?

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Sure, it’s one thing to have him in the movie, but to have him hyped up as one of the bad-ass names in the teaser trailer? They might as well have had David Hyde-Pierce’s name in there as well. The image of Grammer’s character either trying to psychoanalyze Stallone’s or spending the entire time in battles sitting there assembling and re-assembling his guns because his OCD won’t let him do anything else stick in my mind. When I think of action movies, Grammer’s name is about no. 150 on my list. In fact, his last name is not someone that needs to be used in a movie ad, since I had to look on imdb.com to make sure that there wasn’t some new action movie actor with the same last name.

While I’m all for actors trying to push their boundaries to break out of typecasting, I just can’t get the image of Grammer as the nebbish, finicky Crane out of my head. Sure, he did play a ruthless terminally ill politician in Boss, but I never saw that since I don’t get Starz. It doesn’t seem likely that Grammer does anything like wield machine guns in that show. There may be one saving grace with this – Grammer’s character’s name is Bonaparte, which would seemingly lend itself to strategy.The movie bills itself as a high-tech group vs. Stallone’s more ground-and-pound foot soldiers. That could be an interesting one.

For all we know, he may be some comic relief. There’s probably a part in the movie where Bonaparte gets his ass kicked by Rousey’s character. I’d definitely pay to see that.



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