Animal House… at the time it was kind of fresh, now it just seems like all the stupid college hijinks movies that came after it.
I was trying to introduce my s/o to the wonders of John Belushi… it certainly left her wondering what was so great about him.
On a coincidental note (for me at least), the local film discussion group here in Knoxville did “Thunder Road” just last week.
My wife and I thought it was pretty lame, but she was able to make a discussion out of it.
“Star Wars” hasn’t aged well at all for me. Turgid acting, topped only by the awful direction. Somebody (Harlan Ellison?) said it best: when the best performances are given by the robots, a lot of people just aren’t doing their jobs.
What’s that initial title-card say again?
And a few nightmares.
I LOVE the way that the Civil War flashes by in title-cards in GWTW, because it’s one of moviedom’s greatest bloopers:
-
Melanie announces her pregnancy.
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Later in the movie, we see a sequence of title cards flashing the names of several famous battles.
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Later still, Melanie has her baby.
If all those battles happened during Melanie’s delicate condition, then she was pregnant for twenty-one months!
(To be fair, the error originated in Margaret Mitchell’s novel. When someone called her on it, she laughed at her mistake, saying, “You know we always do things more slowly in the South.”)
A “great” movie that has not aged well: GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER.
It plays more like a series of separate, “socially conscious” dialogues than a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. (Of course, part of this is because it was patched together after Spencer Tracy died part of the way through production. If his final “summing-up” scene–which really IS wonderful–hadn’t already been shot, there would have been no movie at all.)
But the biggest problem is the relationship between intelligent, charismatic Sidney Poitier and Katharine Houghton, who is a stick of wood. ZERO chemistry between the two (not that Poitier doesn’t give it the old college try). Their relationship is simply unbelievable–and if you can’t buy THAT, the premise of the film, then there’s not much point in sticking around for the rest of it.
JohnT
I’m not surprised Knoxville (or parts thereof) holds “Thunder Road” in some measure of awe, since in the movie it’s “…later out of Knoxvile, out on Kingston Pike, right outside of Bearden, there they made the fatal strike…” It’s even in the song.
We stayed at a B&B in Asheville NC where they had available VHS’s of all the movies filmed in and around Asheville, and TR was one of them. Until I read in Mitchum’s biography (a neat book for any Mitchum fans out there) I didn’t know the full extent of his part in the venture of getting TR made. That chapter alone made the book fun for me. Michum was Senor Cool!
FWIW, IMDB lists those movies made in Asheville (or any other location you’re interested in) with a simple search tool.
I’d love to have been part of that discussion y’all attended.
Z
There I did it agin: left a “t” out of
“Michum”
Big fan, right?
I second Breakfast at Tiffany’s too. The first time around, I thought it was charming, but the second time I watched it I realised how shallow it was, plus how poor the acting was.
I was thinking the same thing the last time I saw this movie. It’s partly Houghton’s fault, but also the film-makers for being so careful about any physical interaction between the two supposed lovers that their relationship comes off as bizarrely passionless, which is a pity, since it undermines the whole point of Spencer Tracy’s wonderful speech about how much they love each other.
Oddly, the one time you do see real passion is in the scene where Poitier’s character tells his mother what it was like for him to fall in love again–a scene Houghton’s not even in.
The other thing I find odd about this movie is how stacked the deck is in favor of Poitier’s character: he’s not just an ordinary black man, or an ordinary doctor, but this leading figure in the World Health Org. A major “catch” by contemporary standards. Plus, the couple has the opportunity to go live in Switzerland and not have to deal with the racism of late-'60’s America. It’s very idealized and not, I think, anything like what an interracial couple of the time would have really had to face. I can’t help wondering if the situation would have seemed more real and relevant if the couple had been, for example, two hyper-political but somewhat naive Berkeley-type hippy kids.
It’s not a movie, but the Masterpiece Theatre adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. The first time I saw it it thrilled me to death, the second time I couldn’t finish watching it (and that was before I saw the Colin Firth version, so I wasn’t comparing it to anything else I’d seen). Not sure what happened in the meantime, just the acting suddenly seemed very wooden, the whole thing very “stagy” and the sets ugly.
A lot of William Friedkin movies don’t age well for me:
The French Connection - I was blown away by the procedural tone and gritty look when I first saw it, now it seems so tedious (but not near as much as the book)and cheap looking.
The Ninth Configuration - Loved it when I first saw it, I thought it was an underrated gem. Now all the performances seem hammy and the story sinks under psychobabble and macho melodrama.
To Live And Die In LA - Only the great car chase seems worth a damn now.
Zeldar, Matinee A t The Bijou must have been a syndicated series, since I used to watch it with my Dad on our PBS station. It was prime nostalgia for his childhood. Yes, some parts of the show were goofy, especially the “B” picture, but that just told me why they were “B”'s in the first place.
“The Sound of Music” won the 1965 Academy Award for Best Picture, and is now close to universially regarded as the worst Rodgers & Hammerstein musical.
Have to disagree with Zeldar on the point that comedies age badly. They do not ALL age badly. Frex, the Thin Man movies, the Philadelphia Story, Bringing Up Baby, It Happened One Night … oh, it’s a pretty long list.
widdershins
Glad to hear somebody else knows of MATB!
Did you happen to watch the old John Wayne movie with a title something like “Across The Great Divide”? Great Divide was in there for sure; not sure of the preposition(s).
We laughed at how much time was taken by this guy riding into town (almost deserted) and going all the way down to the other end of the street, dismounting, tying up the horse, then walking all the way back up the street to where the camera (and John Wayne) were. Must have taken several minutes.
That same bit (useless prolonged “action” shots) was employed in so many of those old things. Guess they had to when the real action and plot could have fit into a modern day commercial.
Evil Captor
I think I said “so many” as opposed to “all” in that comment about comedies. Your list is not for me to argue with, but in the AFI list of the Top 100 comedies, they missed badly on some of their top ones, as my tastes run.
Case in point: “Some Like It Hot.” While that was amusing when it came out, it’s (for me anyway) not even worth a smirk now.
And did you happen to notice that a common theme in their higher ranking picks was just about guys in drag?
This may have to do with my general lack of enjoyment of movie comedies. “Raising Arizona” is my favorite, remains so after many watchings. But I rarely rent and never buy a comedy.
Comic moments are fun, but the effort to sustain a comic theme in a two hour movie rarely works for me. “There’s Something About Mary” is the most recent one I can think of that had me rolling the whole way.
Personally, I consider a lot of the movies starring John Wayne to be crap from the get-go. I was watching one where he was a commander in Vietnam (I think it was called “Green Berets,” or something) a while ago with my stepfather, who is a HUGE fan of his. Well, I noticed about halfway through that Wayne was carrying his M-16 as if it were a walking stick, not a weapon. In some battle scenes, the thing didn’t even have a magazine inserted!
I started ragging on it really bad. He was leaning on the gun, swinging it around, setting it down, picking it up, etc. Everything except firing it! What the hell was he carrying it for, anyway? My stepfather was NOT amused.
A lot of the movies mentioned in this thread I also thought were crap the first time I saw them, including West Side Story, it’s a Wonderful Life, and GWTW (all boring as hell). Even Blazing Saddles and The Producers hardly made me laugh at all. Star Wars? All I could think was “Huh. Long ago in a galaxy far, far away, and all the men still wore 1970s American haircuts.”
For me, a lot of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s early movies have not aged well. Commando, Raw Deal, The Running Man, and Conan the Destroyer all seem incredibly cheesy now.
Nas1illmatic
Except for a hndful of Wayne’s movies, I tend to agree. Just watched “True Grit” the other night for the first time in a long time and liked it even better than the first time. Guess I tolerated Glen Campbell a little better this time.
The Searchers
Rio Bravo
The Shootist
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
maybe a few more
Otherwise, John Wayne was never as good as Robert Mitchum for me.
Please change Nas1illmatic to Lizard in my previous post.
I picked the wrong one to copy/paste from.
Sorry to confuse!
Z
When I was a wee 'vark they showed Disney films at my School during lunch hour about once a month. Some time between 2nd and 4th grade I thus viewed both “Sword and the Stone” and “The Phantom Tollbooth”. I can still remember how jaw-droppingly wonderful I found both of these films at the time, and playing scenes out at recess, thinking about it over and over (in particular I remember DESPERATELY wanting the Toll Booth to come to my house!)
Got them both from the public library recently (some 20 years later) to watch with my wife, since during a nostalgia-ridden dinner conversation I raved and gushed about how great the old films were.
Meh. I found S&S to be merely o.k.; setting aside the crude animation the characters were flat, the plot motivators made no sense, and the ending was pure fromage. And Tollbooth? Waaah! Whiny little kid, crap animation and the musical numbers jarringly busted up the story line. Half way through, wife says, “Is this the right movie?”
Mitigating factors: I read the Tollbooth book a few years later in life, and as is so often the case, the book is just plain better than the movie. Also, I understand that animation techniques and colour quality have improved in huge leaps (Pixar, anyone) but I still expected echoes of the powerful resonation that the underlying story left me with as a tot.
snif Can’t go back again, I guess.
Watched this with my father a little while back, who saw it when it first came out. His sentiments were pretty much the same as yours – not nearly as poignant and funny now.
One I’m kind of betting on is Jurassic Park. Everyone saw this, everyone owns it on video – how many have actually felt like watching it recently?