These 5 Brendan Fraser Movies Are True Classics
Brendan Fraser's career is one of Hollywood's most remarkable stories. Throughout the 90s and early 2000s, he established himself as one of the industry's most charismatic leading men, effortlessly bouncing between action blockbusters, broad comedies, heartfelt family films, and thoughtful dramas. Then, after years away from the spotlight, Fraser made an extraordinary comeback (with an Oscar in tow) that reminded audiences of the talent they had almost forgotten.
Of course, what makes Fraser's filmography so enduring is its remarkable range. He could carry a globe-trotting adventure with effortless charm, throw himself headfirst into an outrageous comedy, or deliver deeply emotional dramatic performances with equal conviction. But most importantly, he carries an unmistakable sincerity to every role he plays, making him impossible not to root for. So, for those wanting to go through a good nostalgia hit, why not check out the best of these Brendan Fraser classics?
5
Bedazzled (2000)
Elliot Richards (Fraser) is a painfully awkward office worker who's hopelessly in love with his colleague Alison (Frances O'Connor). And after a chance encounter with a charming Devil (Elizabeth Hurley), Elliot agrees to trade seven years of his soul in exchange for seven wishes that he believes will win him the life of his dreams. Unfortunately for him, every wish backfires as they always come with a comical twist.
Asone of Fraser's most underrated comedies, Bedazzledstands out as it showcases his wide range of talents, given that every new wish transforms him into a completely different character. Whether it's an egotistical basketball star, an impossibly sensitive intellectual, or an overconfident crime boss, Fraser commits wholeheartedly to every moment of absurdity. His fearless comedy and willingness to make himself the butt of the joke make the film an extremely fun watch, while the story's underlying message about self-worth gives it an unexpected amount of heart. Sure, it may not receive the same recognition as his other hits, but it deserves your attention, especially as it holds tons of 2000s charm.
4
Gods and Monsters (1998)
Set in the fictional final years of filmmaker James Whale's (Sir Ian McKellen) life, the retired Frankensteindirector finds himself developing an unlikely friendship with his young gardener, Clayton Boone (Fraser). But as Whale's health deteriorates and painful memories resurface, Boone slowly gains insight into the loneliness, regrets, and extraordinary life of one of Hollywood's most influential directors.
While McKellen deservedly received praise for his performance, Fraser provides the emotional counterbalance that makes Gods and Monsters such an affecting film. Boone could've been the mere "observer", but Fraser imbues him with compassion, decency, and a quiet complexity that leave audiences hooked as he uncovers the truth behind the revered artist. Frankly, it's a performance that served as an early indicator of Fraser's dramatic chops. Elegant, deeply humane, and emotionally devastating, this is a great biopic that people should watch at least once in their life.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz
Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie?
Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
FIND YOUR FILM →
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want?
The best movies don't just entertain — they leave something behind.
ASomething that pulls the rug out — that makes me think I'm watching one kind of film and then reveals I'm watching another entirely.
BSomething overwhelming — funny, sad, absurd, and genuinely moving, all at once.
CSomething grand and weighty — a film that makes me feel the full scale of what I'm watching.
DSomething formally daring — a film that pushes what cinema can even do.
ESomething lean and relentless — pure tension with no wasted frame.
NEXT QUESTION →
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film?
Great films are driven by a central obsession. What's yours?
AClass, inequality, and what people are willing to do when desperation meets opportunity.
BIdentity, family, and the chaos of trying to hold your life together when everything is falling apart.
CGenius, moral responsibility, and the catastrophic weight of a decision you can never take back.
DEgo, legacy, and the terror of becoming irrelevant while you're still alive to watch it happen.
EEvil, chance, and whether moral order actually exists or if we just tell ourselves it does.
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03
How do you like your story told?
Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
AGenre-twisting — I want it to start in one lane and migrate into something completely different.
BMaximalist and genre-blending — comedy, action, drama, sci-fi, all in one ride.
CEpic and non-linear — cutting between timelines, building a mosaic of cause and consequence.
DA single unbroken flow — I want to feel like I'm living it in real time, no cuts to safety.
ESpare and precise — every scene doing exactly what it needs to do and nothing more.
NEXT QUESTION →
04
What makes a truly great antagonist?
The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
AA system — invisible, structural, and almost impossible to fight because it has no single face.
BThe self — the ways we sabotage, abandon, and fail the people we love most.
CHistory — the unstoppable momentum of events that no single person can stop or redirect.
DThe industry — the machinery of culture that chews up talent and spits out irrelevance.
EPure, implacable evil — a force so certain of itself it becomes almost philosophical.
NEXT QUESTION →
05
What do you want from a film's ending?
The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
AShock and inevitability — a conclusion that recontextualises everything that came before it.
BEarned emotion — I want to cry, laugh, and feel genuinely hopeful, even if the world is a mess.
CDevastation and grandeur — an ending that makes me sit in silence for a few minutes after.
DAmbiguity — something that leaves enough open that I'm still thinking about it days later.
EBleakness — an honest refusal to pretend the world is tidier than it actually is.
NEXT QUESTION →
06
Which setting pulls you in most?
Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what's even possible.
AA gleaming modern city with a hidden underside — beauty masking rot, wealth masking desperation.
BA collapsing suburban life that opens onto something infinite — the multiverse of a single ordinary person.
CThe corridors of power and science at a world-historical turning point — where decisions echo for decades.
DThe grimy, alive chaos of New York and Hollywood — fame as both destination and trap.
EVast, indifferent landscape — desert and highway where violence arrives without warning or reason.
NEXT QUESTION →
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most?
Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
AProduction design and mise-en-scène — every frame composed to carry meaning beneath the surface.
BEditing and tonal control — the ability to move between registers without losing the audience.
CScore and sound design — music that becomes inseparable from the dread and awe of what you're watching.
DCinematography as performance — the camera not recording events but participating in them.
ESilence and restraint — what's left unsaid and unshown doing more work than any dialogue could.
NEXT QUESTION →
08
What kind of main character do you root for?
The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
ASomeone smart and resourceful who makes increasingly dangerous decisions under pressure.
BSomeone overwhelmed and ordinary who turns out to be capable of something extraordinary.
CA brilliant, tortured figure whose gifts and flaws are inseparable from each other.
DA self-destructive artist whose ego is both their superpower and their undoing.
EA quiet, principled person trying to make sense of a world that has stopped making sense.
NEXT QUESTION →
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time?
Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
AI love a slow build when I know the payoff is going to be seismic — patience for a devastating reveal.
BGive me relentless momentum — I want to feel breathless and emotionally spent by the end.
CEpic runtime doesn't scare me — if the material demands three hours, give me three hours.
DI want it to feel propulsive even when nothing is technically happening — restless energy throughout.
EDeliberate and unhurried — I want dread to accumulate in the spaces between the action.
NEXT QUESTION →
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema?
The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
AUnsettled — like I've just seen something I can't fully explain but can't stop thinking about.
BMoved and energised — like the film reminded me what actually matters and gave me something to hold onto.
CHumbled — like I've been in the presence of something genuinely important and overwhelming.
DExhilarated — like I've just seen cinema doing something it's never quite done before.
EHaunted — like a cold, quiet dread that stays with me for days.
REVEAL MY FILM →
The Academy Has Decided
Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it's ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels' Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn't want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it's about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it's about. Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor's ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn't be possible. Michael Keaton's performance and Emmanuel Lubezki's restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
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3
George of the Jungle (1997)
After being raised by animals following a childhood plane crash, the lovable but hopelessly naïve George (Fraser) spends his days swinging through the jungle with his animal friends. But his peaceful existence is suddenly disrupted when he rescues San Francisco socialite Ursula Stanhope (Leslie Mann), eventually following her back to civilization where he struggles to adapt to a world that makes even less sense than the jungle.
On paper, George of the Junglecould've remained as your typical goofy family comedy. Instead, Fraser's complete commitment transforms the film into something genuinely delightful (abs aside). Throwing himself into the physical comedy with infectious enthusiasm, he makes sure that George remains endlessly adored and sincere rather than simply ridiculous. His natural earnestness allows every joke to land perfectly as audiences are laughing with George, not at him (at least most of the time). Add in the film's wonderfully self-aware narrator, clever visual gags, sweet romance, and an irresistible sense of fun, and it's easy to understand why generations continue to revisit this 90s favorite.
2
School Ties (1992)
Set in an elite New England prep school in the 1950s, David Greene (Fraser), a gifted football player, earns a scholarship despite coming from a working-class background. Initially welcomed by his wealthy classmates, David's popularity begins to unravel when they discover the truth behind his faith, exposing the deep-rooted prejudice lurking beneath the school's polished exterior.
While School Tiesis undeniably a sports movie, its lasting impact comes not from a final match victory, but from its thoughtful examination of discrimination, privilege, and moral courage. Fraser anchors the film through one of his most emotionally resonant performances, by playing David not as an untouchable hero, but a character with vulnerability, quiet dignity, and a growing sense of isolation that becomes increasingly heartbreaking as the story unfolds. The filmalso benefits from an extraordinary young ensemble that features the likes of Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Chris O'Donnell, and Cole Hauser. A true catapult of phenomenal careers.
1
The Mummy (1999)
When librarian Evelyn Carnahan (Rachel Weisz) uncovers the location of the lost city of Hamunaptra, she recruits charming adventurer Rick O'Connell (Fraser) to guide an expedition into the Egyptian desert. But their treasure hunt accidentally awakens Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo)—an ancient high priest cursed for centuries—unleashing a supernatural force determined to reclaim his lost love and bring devastation to the modern world.
It's impossible to talk about Fraser's career without mentioning The Mummy. For one, Rick O'Connell remains one of the great cinematic blockbuster heroes simply because Fraser effortlessly balances rugged action-star charisma with self-deprecating humor and genuine warmth. He's believable in a fistfight one minute and delivering a perfectly timed comedic line the next. More importantly, the film itself captures a sense of epic adventure that most modern blockbusters often struggle to replicate. Blending horror, comedy, romance, and action into one endlessly entertaining package, The Mummy has only grown more beloved over the years—and will (hopefully) continue to do so through the long-awaited fourth installment.
Release Date
April 16, 1999
Runtime
124 minutes
