Inspired by the “movies that make you squirm” thread.
Wedding Crashers. First time was kinda funny, and topless women. Every time after that (the roommate bought the DVD and all our friends love the movie) I’m just deeply annoyed. It’s so stupid and pointless.
Ditto Meet the Parents. I would have punched Robert DeNiro after at least 20 minutes, if he treated me that way.
The Story of Us. Just another “everything will be back to the way it was” divorce fairy tale.
Forrest Gump. Sends a clear message that virtue is more important than intelligence, not in any abstract scale of values but for purposes of worldly financial success. Which is false. Real-life Forrest Gumps never get rich save by inheritance or connections.
The Dungeons and Dragons movie. When me and my friend came out of that, I said, “You know, now I really just want to punch someone that was involved with the making of that. Anyone, really, I’m not choosy.”
Employee of the Month. Not the Jessica Simpson vehicle but some earlier flick. The copy on the back of the case billed it as being a black comedy “in the tradition of the Coen Brothers”. Perhaps that would be true if the Coen Brothers had been exclusively fed a diet of paint chips as children.
Besides being incrediby unfunny (even in a black sense) and unentertaining in general, they had the gall to pull the “We’re too clever for our own good” shit where the surprise* ending makes no sense unless you watch all the cutscenes during the credits which explain what the hell you’d just been watching for the past 90min.
I’ve been disappointed by tons of films but that one actually managed to just piss me off with how much it sucked.
*It’s not really a clever surprise if you saved all the hints and clues for it until after your big reveal.
See, I thought of Forrest Gump when I was watching Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. The movie made me laugh, but it left an accumulating bad taste in my mouth. It gradually occurred to me that what bothered me about it, I think, was that the running joke was that no matter how retarded or naive the hetero-stoner-dudes’ view of the world was, it kept being validated. I strongly dislike both characters, especially Kumar, a lot. If I knew him I’d punch him in the cock at least once a day. But the world he lives in is like his perfect, retarded fantasy world: everything always works out perfectly, more than perfectly, no matter what kind of fuckup he brings to it. Like Forrest Gump. Depressing.
The Life of David Gale. It didn’t help that I saw it at an advance screening with Mr. Spacey smugging up the room.
That was pretty egregious; it was like some kind of satire of a strident anti-death penalty message.
The oeuvre of Nora Ephron gets my goat, especially Sleepless in Seattle: “Oh, you ran my store out of business, stalked me over the Internet, and lied to me about your identity. You are my one true love!” Seriously, who thinks like that?
Casablanca tends to piss me off, too, or rather, the romanticized interpretation most people have of it as this story of love and noble sacrifice. Give me a break: Ilsa Lund was playing Rick for everything she could, and got him to fall upon his sword (by appealing to his desire to redeem his own chivalry) so that she could escape to America with her pasteboard-but-inevitably-successful husband. It’s a true noir with deception, lies, betrayal, and not just a hint of homoerotic feeling between the men (who all know that they are really too good to be spending themselves on women), and while Bergman doesn’t leave by plugging Bogart with a snub .38, she’s just as manipulative as Kathy Moffet or Phyllis Dietrichson. He’s well to be rid of her, even if it did cost him is bar, his home, and his fortune. “As time goes by,” indeed. An entertaining film to be certain, but hardly romantic.
Stranger
I don’t get Forrest Gump haters. Are you mad because you think everybody else thinks it’s an instructional video? I have a lot of respect for lissener’s opinions of movies, but I think a lot Gump haters just want to bash an insanely popular movie. It was fun because it was innocent, reminiscent, and most of all absurd. Nobody (save the haters, I guess) thinks life really works that way.
Re: movies that annoy me: I’m prejudgemental as hell about movies, and I’m almost always right. I knew Wedding Crashers was gonna suck but I tried to watch it anyway and I don’t think I made it 45 minutes. The last one that snuck in under my radar, and that I was in a charitable enough mood to finish, was Crash. It reminded me of Margaret Cho in that it said something I completely agree with, yet somehow managed to annoy the hell of me in the process. Aesthetically, it looked like a made for tv movie, and the story is something I would expect out of a high school senior.
Patch Adams. Hey, cancer patient, why the frowny face?! Here, a doctor in charge of your care will put on a clown nose and big shoes and then you’ll turn that frown upside down! Hey, kids in chemotherapy! Screw your compromised immune systems; come with me to the big, stupid, totally pointless courtroom finale scene so that you can look cute in front of the judge!
That movie fills me with grr.
Crash is my choice too. I might hate it less if it hadn’t won the Best Picture Oscar. It’s Lifetime Channel material.
[nitpick]I haven’t seen it, but I think you mean You’ve Got Mail.[/nitpick]
Yeah, smug glib self-congratulatory cliche.
It’s really just best to develop a blind spot to any film featuring Robin Williams in a listed role after The World According to Garp and The Survivors. Just blot it all out of your mind and you will be so much better off for it.
Yeah, I hate that one, too. In fact, any movie that has both Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks in it is right out, and the addition of a cute kid doesn’t help any.
Stranger
Um, Ernst Lubitsch?
Seriously though, while I agree that *You’ve Got Mail *is abominable dreck, it’s a remake of a romantic comedy masterpiece. Needless to say, Ernst Lubitsch handled the material much better. Check out The Shop Around the Corner to see just HOW badly Ephron screwed it up.
“Sicko” by Michael Moore.
Shocking, powerful, and heartbreaking.
I cried through the first half and as an ex-pat American I was ashamed of the treatment of some individuals by some insurers.
The US is one of the wealthiest nations on earth and it offers some of the poorest health coverage in the free world. I know there have been many debates here about health care and I am not trying to stir a debate. My comments are simply my opinion about what I have expereinced with family members and what I saw on this film.
By the end of the movie I was very angry.
That movie still haunts me.
The way I “review” movies is to ask myself how I *feel *about a movie after I’ve seen it; an almost entirely emotional response. Step two is I try to explain intellectually–to myself, usually, or to others if I think anyone is listening–*why *I feel that way.
In other words, you’re wrong: I didn’t *actually *enjoy FG and then decide to dishonestly pretend to hate it simply because it was popular. I hated it as I watched it; I started out liking it, and gradually became dismayed, and then disgusted. By the time it was over I was just about as nearly sickened by a movie as I ever have been.
FWIW.
That sounds to me as if you’ve constructed a reason to explain your dislike. Me, I liked the movie and didn’t bother to psychoanalyze why.
I don’t understand the need to post such an obvious, yet empty, response. “Contructing a reason to explain your dislike” is as accurate, if clumsy, a definition of “criticism” as I can think of. “I liked the movie and didn’t bother to psychoanalyze why” is as clear, and as clumsy, a way to say “I don’t particularly enjoy being a critic.”
So, to restate, if I understand you correctly, you’re saying that I like to analyze/criticize a movie, while you don’t. Only you seem to be saying it in such way as to suggest that this makes you better than me. Cool, whatever, good to know.
FG is a very conservative movie. The key theme, that gets repeated over and over again, is that if you just sit there and watch history pass before your eyes you will reap great riches. But if you try to change things, you’ll get AIDS and die. It’s all about being inactive, letting the ones in power do their thing, not questioning the social order and not speaking out when you get screwed.