Movies you thought you would hate but ended up loving?

Cafe Society
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Well geez I joined this board like 100 months ago and I’ve only made one reply and no threads. So I guess it’s high time I started a thread!

Have you ever seen a preview (or otherwise just heard about) a movie and your mind imediately said “This is stupid and I will never see it and I hate it?”

And then you see it. And end up loving it?

For me there are two such movies:

Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist
So I saw The Exorcist and it was okay, I guess. By the time I saw it, its plotline was blurred by pop-culture references. I recognized it as a landmark motion picture but other than that I didn’t think anything of it.

So one night I was surfing through channels and I saw a movie that branded itself as a prequel to The Exorcist. “That’s a stupid, clumsy title,” and “oh great, another 2000’s remake of a popular older movie. I’m sure it will be completely pointless and stupid, like when they remade Death Race 2000.”

And then I watched it.

And holy shit, you guys. Holy shit. This movie is fantastic! It’s incredibly smart and intriguing. It’s got obscure history (it’s set in British colonial Africa immediately following WW2. How many movies have a setting like that?). It’s got an awesome Swedish (I think) actor, a love story, horror, action. I mean damn!

And then there’s Watchmen
I was never into comic books. The last time I touched or looked at a comic book was 1995 or thereabouts. I’ve never enjoyed comic book movies. Batman Begins bored me to tears. And that Sacred Cow The Dark Knight was similarly stupid and boring.

So when I went to see Valkyrie in theaters, I saw a preview for Watchmen and of course I thought it was stupid as hell. Comic books are moronic, and one of the characters looked like a shameless copy of Batman. Completely worthless movie, right?

And then I watched it and I hate to admit when I’m wrong but…yeah, Watchmen is my favorite movie of all time. Talk about a 180.

I even read the “graphic novel” Watchmen(which, sorry, I have to be snobbish about this but a graphic novel is just a long comic book and you might as well read a real novel) and it was silly and stupid and pointless. But God bless the makers of the film Watchmen because it’s my absolute favorite movie ever.

But yeah, that’s way more than you wanted to know about me. I’d like to ask you guys and gals to reply with films (or TV shows, or books, or video games) that you thought you would hate but ended up loving.

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Fellowship of the Ring. I had only heard minimal buzz about this, and thought it was going to be some kind of nerded-out comic booky version of LOTR. Like, I went in expecting something along the lines of the Dungeons & Dragons movie.

Wow, was I wrong.

3

Fight Club – primarily because the marketing was total crap.

There’s Something About Mary – normally I despise the Farrelly Bros. type of comedy, but this one had style.

Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death – the greatest B-movie satire ever made.

4

Patton with George C. Scott. I don’t care about war movies at all, and this movie sounded boring as hell to me - a war movie about a general I have hardly heard about? No thanks. Then I finally watched it, and it is just marvellous. Just an all-round excellent movie.

5

Terminator: When it came out I only read one review, and it was scathing and very snarky. It looked stupid, and the review made it sound even worse, so I had no interest. But when I saw it, it was GREAT!

Under Seige: Looked dumb. Sounded dumb. Assumed it would be dumb. Was very wrong. I knew it might have potential when Seagal’s character puts some pies in the oven, then is taken away and I thought, those pies are going to burn and of course the screenwriter isn’t going to care, but then he calls out “Someone take my pies out of the oven!” :eek: It was fun, funny, exciting, and we even get the always great Tommy Lee Jones as the quippy bad guy. What’s not to love?

Starship Troopers: Looked dumb. Sounded dumb. Saw it on video, got the satire and sarcasm immediately, and enjoyed the HELL out of it! I wish I’d seen it in the theater.

6

One of my friends insisted our gang go see “Coal Miner’s Daughter” when it came out. I barely knew who Loretta Lynn was and didn’t know who Patsy Cline was when Lynn gushes over her character in the film. I said “why should I see a movie where Sissy Spacek signs and Levon Helm doesn’t”? But it was pretty good.

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I was reminded of this recently because I am enjoying the new Timothy Olyphant series Justified and he featured in The Girl Next Door a 2004 movie that I think is far better than ratings would have you believe. I saw this with my teenage son and, given the setup - porn star moves in next door to horny high school student, I had very low expectations.

However it is full of good actors - Olyphant , Emile Hirsch, Paul Dano, Elisha Cuthbert, James Remar, Chris Marquette and has a far better than average teen fare script. I have seen it twice since then and enjoyed it both times.

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The love guru - After reading reviews and seeing the crap that Myers was putting out at the time I thought there was no way it would be any good. A friend of mine lent me the DVD and I was totally into it, I can see why not many people liked it but sometimes silly, stupid films are just simply fun. And of course seeing Jessica Alba in a sari and getting jiggy was so worth it.

What can I say? I really do have bad taste. :slight_smile:

9

Forrest Gump. The idea for it sounded stupid to me, it seemed like a chick flick and I resisted seeing it in theaters. Then my wife wanted to rent it on VHS so I watched it…and loved it. It’s one of my favorite movies now and I will often watch it any time it’s on cable from any point in the movie.

10

I didn’t think I’d hate it but I had low expectations for SPEED RACER.

I left the theatre singing “Go, Speed Racer-Go Speed Racer-Go Speed Racer, Go-oh!”

Later that day, I saw “Indiana Jones & the Lucas-Spielberg Gang Rape”. :frowning:

11

1977, I’m 7 years old. My mother and aunt wanted to take me and my cousin to a movie. I wanted to see the new Benji movie but instead they insisted that we go to some dumb war movie. I was VERY pissed. I didn’t want to see a stupid war movie, I wanted to see Benji!

Of course, it was Star Wars, and it pretty much framed my existence for the next, oh, 30 years or so.

12

I didn’t have high expectations for Gran Torino, as I’m not a big Eastwood fan or grumpy people learn a life lesson fan, but it blew me away.

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Seconded. Great movie. I even liked the Renny Harlin version, Exorcist: The Beginning, though I thought Dominion was far better.

One for me was Tommy Boy. I wasn’t a Chris Farley fan, and I thought it was going to be stupid, but I laughed all the way through it–and I’ve since seen all of Chris Farley’s movies. I just had a great time all the way through it.

I was in the army when Major Payne came out, and we thought Damon Wayans was going to trash the military. Then we saw it, and for the next year and a half, everyone in the army was walking around imitating Major Payne. I have yet to meet anyone in the military who thought that film was anything worse than excellent.

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Another vote for “Fight Club”. I thought it was just going to be about a bunch of guys who got together to beat the crap out of each other. A friend of mine convinced me that I really needed to see this movie, and boy was he right.

15

I can’t say I went into* Last Action Hero*, expecting to hate it. But I didn’t have very high expectations of it, given the mixed reviews and poor box office.
It turned to be a spot-on satire of the action genre and to this day I can’t understand why it’s not more appreciated.

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*Children of a Lesser God.
*

I went to it out of a sense of obligation - ok, I owe her a chick flick. that sort of thing. I walked out with tears in my eyes. Outstanding movie, and oh gawds, Marlee Matlin is so beautiful.

17

Planet Terror–I rented it at the suggestion of a coworker(the 28 year old virgin who still lives at home and went to see Twilight and New Moon with his mother). I thought I’d watch a little of it just so I could say I did and I ended up buying a copy of the movie. It’s one of my favorite kick ass movies–up there with Kill Bill.

18

300

Never watched it cos the previews looked stupid.

Flipping through the channels one day a scene caught my attention.Great movie.

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Interestingly enough, I saw the previews, thought it looked cool, saw it on VHS a few years later in high school, was blown away… read the book in college… and could never enjoy the movie again, basically because it seems to me the movie Totally Misses The Point.

Project Mayhem wants to destroy society because they feel society, their dads, and possibly God doesn’t care about them. Contrast to the support groups for people dying of blood parasites, cancer, etc. and how they’re just *dealing *with it. In the book, one of these support groups even goes into a building they know to be wired with explosives specifically to save the narrator from dying in the imminent explosion and collapse.

As for movies that looked like they would suck before I saw them: Zombieland. I know, I know! I’m sorry! That movie rocked my world when I finally saw it.

In a somewhat related vein: 28 Days Later. That movie also rocked. For the inverse, see 28 Weeks Later. That movie blew.

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Dodgeball is mine. I hate anything vaguely slapstick/grossout (I can’t bring myself to watch any of the Dumb and Dumber or Something About Mary stuff), and Ben Stiller makes me stabby, so I asumed I’d hate it. I was stuck for something to watch on a plane, because I never watch anything I really want to see as the environment is so horrible, and Dodgeball looked like the least bad option. I genuinely laughed out loud a number of times and I have done so every one of the four or so times I’ve seen it since.