I watched an actor's round table discussion on Hollywood Reporter's Youtube Channel that included James Franco.
It had Gary Oldman, Tom Hanks, John Boyega, James Franco, Sam Rockwell, Willem Dafoe.
It's a one hour show and each actor has quite a bit of time to talk about stuff, but not once did I ever feel James Franco belonged at the table, if you know what I mean. He seemed like the odd one out.
And it fits with both my and the industry's and the wider world's reaction to Franco as a Hollywood star. In that he hasn't really done anything of great note, and yet he is somehow sitting amongst all these greats, with all of us knowing who he is.
I mean, I'm quite the film buff, not to the extent of some, but I do take notice of a lot of films, and yet I'd struggle to come up with a top 5 James Franco films, let alone a top 10, and I'd have even less success in naming even one Franco movie that is obviously a great film.
Sure, he did The Room parody film, but so much of the fame of that relies on the original that it's kinda scraping the barrel to imply that's Franco's masterpiece.
Here's the link to that vid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egzvLWeMK_U though, obviously, it's going to be a bit long and boring for general, non-specialist viewing.