Moments before the film The Time Traveler's Wife began rolling, the cinema I was attending screened a "preview" of a new video game. The star of the game, whose highly recognisable voice would be used to bring the principal character to life, was Jack Black. I had recently heard Black's voice in the animated film Kung Fu Panda and, while channel-surfing, had glimpsed a few minutes of Nacho Libre, Black's sendup of Mexican wrestling culture. I had also heard my son mention both the band Tenacious D and the film based on their exploits, and seen a few snippets of Black's turn in King Kong, where he played a porky impresario. Finally, I had watched him in Ben Stiller's 2008 comedy hit Tropic Thunder, where he played a subordinate role to Robert Downey Jr and Stiller himself. As I sat there in that darkened room, listening to his half-hearted pitch for what sounded like a thoroughly generic video game, it occurred to me that it would now be almost impossible to convince anyone under the age of 20 that there was actually a time when Jack Black did not suck.

Black – the classic example of the raffish outsider who initially spits on the entertainment industry, then is seduced by it, and then comes to epitomise everything that is wrong with it – first came to the public's attention in the 2000 film High Fidelity, in which he played a hilariously idiosyncratic record store employee. Prior to that, he had appeared in a number of films, including The Jackal and The Cable Guy, in which he played the designated loser. Three years later, Black would achieve his greatest success in School of Rock, again playing a dyspeptic slob. As far as I can tell, these are the only films in his recent CV in which he does not flat-out suck. He sucked in Shallow Hal, he sucked in Orange County, he sucked in The Holiday, and he sucked in Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny. He also sucked in King Kong, Saving Silverman, Year One and yes, Kung Fu Panda. It is almost impossible to suck in a film in which only your voice is used, but Black sucked anyway.

Even in the rare Jack Black film that is not explicitly revolting – the exuberantly irreverent and very clever Tropic Thunder is a perfect example – Black succeeded in turning in a useless performance while those around him shone. Tropic Thunder is the film in which Black, playing a fatso sourpuss, heroin addict movie star stranded in an Asian jungle, gets upstaged by Downey Jr, Stiller, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Cruise, Nick Nolte and basically everyone else in the film, including a small child who never says a word in English. That is really embarrassing. It may explain why Black pouts through the entire film. He knows he's getting smoked.

It is not our purpose here to upbraid Black for sucking, nor to encourage him to stop sucking, nor even to suggest steps he might take to at least suck less. At this point in his career, it is almost impossible to believe that Black could ever be anything other than what he is. Following in the trail blazed by Bob Hope, Dan Aykroyd and a few others, Black is a sterling example of the actor who starts out seeming like a breath of fresh air, and then turns into something stale, fetid, mephitic, nauseating. That is a process that it almost impossible to reverse. It can be done; it has been done. But you wouldn't want to bet the rent money that Black can do it.

This being the case, the wisest, fairest course is take a detached, scientific approach toward the situation and examine the very concept of hardcore, full-tilt sucking in all its manifestations. There are three questions that should concern us here: Were the seeds of thespianic vileness already planted in the performer's personality at an early age and the rest of us simply failed to notice it? Or was Black one of those supremely cunning individuals who masqueraded as an appealing, multifaceted, bona fide talent to get his foot in the door and then sprung the trap of suck on us all when the moment was propitious? Or was Jack Black always meant to be a churlish loser whose inherent obnoxiousness only became apparent once he moved out of the sidekick role and emerged as a star in his own right?

The shark awaits its cue

For what it is worth, here is my theory: When the fat slob Chris Farley passed away in 1997, Black gradually inherited the roles Farley could no longer fill. But unlike Farley, who emitted a sweetness and innocence - he did, after all, go to college in Milwaukee, hometown of Liberace and the Fonz - when he was actually born in Madison,Wisconsin., Black was almost certainly predestined to suck, because the very things that made him amusing when he was a sidekick would make him tiresome once he got top billing: his smirk, his snarl, his whining, his basic meanness, his poor grooming habits, his bred-in-the-bone creepiness, his face that only a mother could love, but not necessarily his mother. In the fullness of time, it was inevitable that Black would wear out his welcome. He would be given tasks too large for his meagre talents. Thus, in another nod to the Fonz, this is not a case where the shark got jumped inadvertently. Black's shark was just biding its time, waiting to be jumped.

The single greatest problem posed by Black's appearance on screen today is a phenomenon sometimes referred to as the aureole of anachronistic atrociousness, whereby people who did not always suck are surrounded by a glimmering halo of barely visible non-sucking that evokes vague memories of the time when they were not fully fledged enemies of the people. Each time these actors perform, the Ghost of Goodness Past hovers above them, bathing them in a flickering light, serving as a bittersweet reminder of the time when they seemed fresh and new, when their very existence was a relief from the appalling triumvirate of Daniel Stern, Joe Pesci, and Steve Guttenberg. Like Judas Iscariot or Robespierre or Chris Martin, these people were not born monsters. They grew into the role.

Scarlett Johansson's seven-year-itch

Obviously, it would not be fair to Black to single him out as the only member of his generation who started out tickling the common man's fancy, and then told the public to stick it where the sun don't shine. When Scarlett Johansson first burst upon the scene, her air of normality, her sleepy manner, her reassuring lack of movie-star looks, made her seem fresh and new. This was back in the days of Ghost World and Lost in Translation. Now, years later, after Scoop and Match Point and The Nanny Diaries, as Hollywood has tried every trick in the book to repackage her as a postmodern Marilyn Monroe, that early charm has faded and she has been exposed for what she is: Scarlett Johansson.

A similar trajectory describes the careers of Matthew McConaughey, Gwyneth Paltrow and even Jude Law. This trio made their names in films like Emma, Lone Star, The Talented Mr Ripley, Dazed and Confused, Amistad, Hard Eight and Shakespeare in Love. But that was a long, long time ago, and in the interval there have been How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Sleuth, The Wedding Planner, Two Lovers, The Good Night, Sahara, We Are Marshall, Failure to Launch, Fool's Gold, Two for the Money, Infamous, View from the Top, Alfie and, of course, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. The difference here is that Paltrow, Law and McConaughey are talented actors who have lapsed into sucking but could easily stop sucking if they wanted to. Paltrow took time off from being useless to make The Royal Tenenbaums. McConaughey made Tropic Thunder. Law made All the King's Men. They may suck now. They will not suck forever.

The Travolta syndrome

We can all take solace from the realisation that those who suck can in fact revert to a pre-sucking state, if they only put their minds to it. This is a phenomenon sometimes referred to by clinicians as Travolta Syndrome. Caution, though: Those who suffer from Travolta Syndrome invariably have lapses and go back to sucking. There is also a second condition called Clapton's Septic Aphasia, which causes those who did not always suck to momentarily revert to not sucking. The non-sucking may never be repeated, but it is there. It also doesn't last very long. If you blink, you will miss it. It could be an optical illusion. I have a friend who insists that on 13 January 2002, Rod Stewart stopped sucking for a minute-and-a-half. She actually claims to have been there when it happened. She timed it. She even had a video of the event.

I checked the videotape. Alas, she is quite mistaken.

Several years ago, after Dan Aykroyd admitted that he had never seen a good number of his movies, I wrote an article in GQ demanding to know why Aykroyd should be exempted from such misery while the rest of us had to suffer. The problem, as I soon learned when I was contacted by one of Aykroyd's simpering minions, was that Aykroyd himself was not aware of the low repute in which his films were held. I suspect the same is true of Jack Black. Black is not evil; he is merely oblivious. This is the difference between Black and Aykroyd and, say, Ghengis Khan. Ghenghis Khan was aware that he was not a nice person. He did not delude himself into thinking that the millions of people he put to the sword enjoyed it. And to his credit, he never tried to pass himself off as a maverick, an iconoclast, a subversive, or an outsider. Ghenghis Khan was a standup guy.

Ghenghis Khan knew the score.

• This article was amended on 9 October 2009. The original gave Chris Farley's birthplace as Milwaukee. This has been corrected.