I’ll agree with this. Very underrated.
The Lovely Bones. I seem to recall it getting a lot of buzz before it was released, but I didn’t pay attention to what the critics said when it actually hit theaters, and I didn’t get around to seeing it until it hit DVD anyway.
Maybe it’s just because a close friend of ours had just died when I saw it (who happened to be the father of another friend who died a few years before), but the movie really struck a chord with me, and I was pretty surprised when I looked it up on Rotten Tomatoes and saw that the critics lambasted it.
Anyone who thinks there’s a James Bond film other than 1967’s Casino Royale that’s worth watching once, let alone twice, is just plain WRONG.
Yet somehow, the Rotten Tomatoes site has an extraordinarily large number of wrong people on it, where this film is concerned.
Missed the edit window:
I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the 1966 Batman, which is to Batman as Casino Royale '67 is to Bond, was treated much better on that site, although there are still a lot of WRONG people who rated many of the post-1988 ones higher.
I mentioned this recently in another thread, but Return to Oz. Critics are reassessing it these days, but it’s a fine movie and probably ahead of its time. Nowadays, when darkness is a virtue, it’d be very well received.
Close. It’s con-air in space.
I thought White Noise was an interesting, tense horror movie with a refreshing amount of suspense.
9% last time I checked.
As far as I can tell, critics tend toward the “true art is incomprehensible to common rabble” school of thought that holds that if it’s entertaining, it’s not ART, therefore it is unworthy.
I tend to ignore critics and form my own opinions.
“Thoroughly enjoyed” may be overstating it, but I thought The Postman was okay. Rotten Tomatoes lists it at 9% from critics, 51% from audiences.
Not really. I mean, there are movie critics like that, but the majority are middlebrow. I will say, though, that I tend to be skeptical of some movies with very high RT scores. Critics tend to be generous toward films that offer novelty or prove some sort of point. Currently, a movie called The Sessions has a 95%.
Yeah, no. I might watch it if my wife gets it but it just sounds lame to me.
As for movies I liked that got panned, all I really have is Not Another Teen Movie, which wasn’t particularly good. It’s just not as bad as RT made it out to be (28%). There’s one scene I’m particularly fond of: the popular hero has to date the most hideous girl in school but not the conjoined albino twins, no, it’s the arty girl with glasses and a ponytail.
All the damn time. Including a depressing amount of what I see in theaters.
Starting with—one of my favorites is “GI Joe the Movie.” The animated one, from the 80s. 'Nuff said.
Lessie…I enjoyed the Star Wars Prequels well enough and DIDN’T hate Jar-Jar; I liked Daredevil; I’m somewhat baffled by the hate for X3; I found Prometheus rather charming…
Jeez, I’m not sure where I am when it comes to “serious” movies that I liked, but the critics hate. I can’t even think of any big examples…which I hope doesn’t mean I’ve had too narrow a movie watching experience. 
I heard a very intense interview with someone in The Sessions, maybe it was the actor playing the disabled guy. I can’t remember; I was so busy being incredulous at the entire premise. The thing I do remember is that it sounded like complete idiocy. But I’m prepared to believe a moving with a stupid-sounding premise can be good; there have been tons of them. It’s all in the execution.
Yea, if you could judge a movie by a brief synopsis of its premise, there wouldn’t really be much point in having critics.
I mean “a space wizard and a farmboy must rescue a princess from an evil space-station” sounds like tripe to.
It’s not. It’s very entertaining and poignant, with really well-drawn characters. Plus, it has a refreshingly positive attitude about sex and the need for people to both understand and enjoy their sexuality. You should see it if it’s showing near you.
But I do agree with you that the view of critics as anti–mainstream entertainment is way, way overstated, if not outright false. If you look at the summer blockbusters from the last decade or so on the Tomatometer, many of them have an overwhelming amount of critical support behind them. This summer had The Avengers (92%) and The Dark Knight Rises (87%), plus The Hunger Games (84%) from the spring and Skyfall (92%) from the fall. And last summer you had:
Thor (77%)
X-Men: First Class (87%)
Super 8 (82%)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 (96%)
Captain America: The First Avenger (79%)
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (83%)
It’s pretty hard to look at those numbers and claim that critics (at least in recent years) don’t give a fair shake to mainstream entertainment.
I agree that critics tend toward liking middle brow entertainment. Most of the time, I hate a movie and then find out that it got a high score on RT, rather than the situation described in the OP.
Sometimes when I’m feeling blue, I pull up the opening intro to that movie (with the fight at the statue of liberty). Always perks me up.
Don’t know if this will make a difference to you, but it is based on a true story.
Mine is Duets, with Gwyneth Paltrow and Huey Lewis. It has a tomatometer rating of 20%. Ouch. Say what you will, I really enjoyed it both the first and subsequent times I saw it.
My usual experience is the reverse - suffering through a bad movie (or leaving early) and finding out the critics loooved it.
Pluto Nash- It was ok, kind of a tongue in cheek sci fi comedy(mob going after a guy living on a future moon with colonies). Going in I expected it to be the worst movie ever based on critic reviews, not even close.
John Carter- I am baffled how this movie got a single bad review, it has some mild problems but on the whole is a visually dazzling sci fi adventure.
I think sometimes reviewers get too caught up in the popular zeitgeist, a movie like The Postman just starts getting buzz as a turkey and then everyone feels compelled to pile on until the consensus has lost all contact with reality. See the numerous bad reviews Blade Runner received on its release, another case where buzz started that it was a turkey and it just snowballs. Roger Ebert has even done a 180 on his original review.