# Movies that underwhelmed you **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 1, 2018, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-underwhelmed-you/825403 "2018-12-01T16:38:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![EscAlaMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/escalamike/32/4177_2.png) [@EscAlaMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EscAlaMike)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2018, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-underwhelmed-you/825403/101 "2018-12-05T18:12:32Z")
**Mean Streets** for me. It was okay, but not great. Certainly not a classic. > [@nearwildheaven](#): > > I also didn’t think “The Big Chill” was that good, Agree on _The Big Chill_ > [@RTFirefly](#): > > Anyone mentioned the _Lord of the Rings_ trilogy yet? Agree on this too. I love the books. The movies, meh. ---
**Author:** ![amaguri](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/49beb7/32.png) [@amaguri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amaguri)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2018, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-underwhelmed-you/825403/102 "2018-12-05T18:13:40Z")
I’ll agree with everyone who said **Avatar** , but I’m not much for “spectacle” movies… like, where you have to ignore everything else about the movie because it’s less of a movie and more of an EXPERIENCE. My roommate at the time paid to see it in the theater three times and wouldn’t shut up about it. I could barely sit through it one time. Is it sacrilege to say I’m not a fan of James Cameron in general? Titanic also left me… cold. 😛 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Peanuthead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peanuthead/32/360_2.png) [@Peanuthead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peanuthead)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2018, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-underwhelmed-you/825403/103 "2018-12-05T18:30:07Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > It was an [ass movie](https://xkcd.com/37/)? A tip of the hat to you sir! I admire your sophisticated sense of humor. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2018, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-underwhelmed-you/825403/104 "2018-12-05T18:37:21Z")
_First Man_ bored me throughout, action scenes included. ---
**Author:** ![Brayne\_Ded](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Brayne\_Ded](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brayne_Ded)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2018, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-underwhelmed-you/825403/105 "2018-12-05T19:39:46Z")
> [@BrickBat](#): > > There have been many I’ve been disappointed with, but top honors for having the lowest ratio of enjoyment compared to hyper-emphatic recommendations goes for these two: > > - ‘Borat’. Sold to me as groundbreaking-ly funny…exponentially so, was horrifically un-funny. Almost anti-clever. I could tolerate it only in half-hour hunks. I actually thought worse of my friend’s thought processes and mental capacities for it. > > - ‘Pearl Harbor’. I was hoping for a modern ‘Tora Tora Tora’ and instead got a brutally inane gag-fest conflation of “rom-com” schlock and flag-waving jingoistic glurge. UGH! What made it worse, after comparing notes with the rave-reviews of a couple of friends, was the parts they swooned the most over, were the parts that repulsed me the most. I heartily agree with both. I have never seen SBC before “Borat”, and I heard good things about his Ali G persona. Which I still have not seen, so I can’t say. Anyway, Borat turned out to be adolescent humor - sorry, I take back the word “humor” - and mostly just plain offensive without really being funny. The few good bits were countered by the the a film that just left me squirming in embarrassment. SBC’s actions to the villagers later make me wonder if he is funny, or just vicious. And he is supposed to be a well educated person? A great many war flicks are pure dreck, but none more so than “Pearl Harbor”. We all know what’s going to happen, so we don’t need the irritating love interest, but then we find out that history got changed slightly. Why? What we are left with is the usual jingoistic nonsense. I have not seen it, mainly because of the bad reviews, but I gather that “Enemy at the gates” is more or less fictitious, and ruined by the intruding live interest. I suppose I ought to try and find “The green berets”, but it is probably unwatchable today. And in the unwatchable category: “Battlefield earth.” I expected a drawn-out Scientology tract; instead I got something so badly made and so ridiculous that I gave up after 15 minutes. What was bad? Plot, acting, direction makeup … not much left after that. ---
**Author:** ![Brayne\_Ded](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Brayne\_Ded](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brayne_Ded)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2018, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-underwhelmed-you/825403/106 "2018-12-05T19:45:36Z")
> [@Peanuthead](#): > > **Easy Rider**. Good god, what a boring ass movie! Haven’t seen it since it came out, but I’ll hazard a guess that it is now very dated. ---
**Author:** ![Brayne\_Ded](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Brayne\_Ded](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brayne_Ded)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2018, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-underwhelmed-you/825403/107 "2018-12-05T19:53:39Z")
A huge disappointment: Godfather 3. GF 2 was not as good as the first, GF 3 looked like a bad remake of GF 1 with the good parts missing. Contrived and unrealistic plot, and dreadful “acting” from Sophie Coppella. Somebody mentioned “Mean streets”. I saw it on TV long after it came out, and found it good but not great. “Lord of the rings”: I have read some of the books, and wondered how it could be translated to film. It’s a worthy attempt, but in so many ways it looks like a dozen other sword and sorcery epics that were ground out over the years. OK, the SFX could not have been done a decade earlier, but many other films just look similar. The battles also get very repetitive. And I haven’t seen “The hobbit”, which is probably overextended. It is really not a big book, and they made _three_ films from it. “Jurassic park” was another one I saw a few years after its initial appearance. Underwhelming. And why so many sequels? Anything with Jim Carrey; you either love or loathe his manic style. I just think he acts like he is s bipolar (and I believe that actually he is). ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2018, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-underwhelmed-you/825403/108 "2018-12-05T23:54:24Z")
Lost in Translation tops the list for me. Critics raved about it, but I found it borderline unwatchable. Anchorman. I cringed through the first half of the movie and never did see the whole thing all the way through. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2018, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-underwhelmed-you/825403/109 "2018-12-06T00:52:53Z")
> [@Dendarii\_Dame](#): > > _First Man_ bored me throughout, action scenes included. Most of the people I’ve known who saw that said the same thing. Another critically acclaimed movie that underwhelmed me was a British film called “My Beautiful Launderette.” I was in a college literature class; we had to read the short story and the professor arranged a time and place for us to get together for a screening. Most of my classmates loved it; I didn’t think it was all that terrific. ---
**Author:** ![CaptMurdock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/captmurdock/32/11736_2.png) [@CaptMurdock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaptMurdock)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2018, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-underwhelmed-you/825403/110 "2018-12-06T01:20:05Z")
_Platoon_ _Napoleon Dynamite_ ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2018, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-underwhelmed-you/825403/111 "2018-12-06T01:53:07Z")
any Jurassic park movie …….I liked the dinosaurs and the tidbits of humor but it wasn’t THE GREATEST MOVIE EVAH !!! like the world proclaimed …. no country for old men wasn’t horrible but wasn’t great ……. the big Lebowski fat old stoned hippie who bowls lives by hippie code … I have relatives like that …… ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2018, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-underwhelmed-you/825403/112 "2018-12-06T01:58:52Z")
Interstellar was a letdown, mainly because of the potential that somehow slipped away. Avatar, it was very good, however I seemed to miss the ‘it was great, one of the few greatest of all times’ feel of it. Yes i enjoyed it, but didn’t get that earthshaking wow others seemed to have. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2018, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-underwhelmed-you/825403/113 "2018-12-06T06:19:14Z")
Here’s another that I haven’t seen on this list yet, and was so underwhelming for me, I didn’t remember it until just now. The following is not a typo; that movie is “Dirty Dancing.” I’m like, “THIS is what everyone’s raved about for the past 25 or so years?” ---
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2018, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-underwhelmed-you/825403/114 "2018-12-06T07:31:40Z")
Ugh, I can’t stand **Dirty Dancing**. There are a lot of films in that subgenre that I don’t like, while still recognizing that they are well-made; I just don’t personally dig them. DD? **Is not a good film**. Completely linear plot, inaccurate period piece, crossing class lines is the Big Bad but no one seems to care about statutory rape…But I’m of the generation that **wept** , literally, over that film, so I’ve been obliged **numerous** times to either watch it or leave the room. Gah. **Blair Witch** : I wonder how many people thought that movie was worth it, after they’d seen it and let it sink in. There was a sequel, so someone must have thought it had enough of a residual audience to justify spending more money. (Thought wrong, it appeared.) But does anyone remember that BW (the first one) came out the same month, or at least within weeks of, **The Sixth Sense**? Which ended up utterly stomping it re: box office, critics, and awards. TSS didn’t even get mentioned in Entertainment Weekly’s fall preview issue! Just goes to show how hard it is to predict what’s going to be a hit/have staying power. **Big Chill** : For what it’s worth, according to the director’s commentary on the DVD, John Sayles does not think Lawrence Kasdan stole his idea. He addressed the issue several times, pointing out differences, such as the SS characters having these get-togethers every year, while the BC group was reunited by a funeral, and that BC was overall “a darker film”. His last word was, “I wrote my movie about my people, and Larry wrote his movie about his people, and they’re not the same.” If you don’t like BC, you just don’t, but Kasdan wrote **Raiders** , okay? He doesn’t have to steal from anyone. (And I also might point out that Sayles did not originate the unglamorous-people-doing-everyday-things style. There were plenty of films in the '70s, like **Girlfriends** , like **Next Stop Greenwich Village** , that were “non-Hollywood”.) **Easy Rider** : Again, if you don’t like it, you don’t like it, but I think it’s not so much dated, as that it functions as a time capsule in a way that many turn-of-the-70s counterculture films don’t. **Amelie** : Well, **Quercus** and **amaguri** , maybe I’ll give it another shot. But I’m not in a big hurry to do so. ::holds up demitasse spoon and smirks winsomely:: ---
**Author:** ![DerNils](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f14d63/32.png) [@DerNils](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DerNils)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2018, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-underwhelmed-you/825403/115 "2018-12-06T08:49:30Z")
While I hate Blair Witch myself, It has to be given props for ist ingenious viral marketing campaign fitting very well with the (at that time) new “found footage” style. I vividly remember that there were loads of online discussions if or if not this was “real” found footage. It basically started a whole genre. My underwhelming experience was “Bullit”, but that wasn’t the films fault either. It just doesn’t cut it as an action film 50 years later, however revolutionary it was during ist time. ---
**Author:** ![DummyGladHands](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/49beb7/32.png) [@DummyGladHands](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DummyGladHands)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2018, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-underwhelmed-you/825403/116 "2018-12-06T13:02:56Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > _The Horse Whisperer._ I like Redford, and I wasn’t expecting an action movie, by any means, but daaaaaamn, that movie was in serious need of an editor who was empowered to trim down the scenes. Glaciers move more rapidly than that film did. And the fact that they completely changed the ending which burns my ass still today. Titanic was awful. Horrible writing. The lines they spoke grated on my ears. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2018, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-underwhelmed-you/825403/117 "2018-12-06T14:41:37Z")
> [@DerNils](#): > > While I hate Blair Witch myself, It has to be given props for ist ingenious viral marketing campaign fitting very well with the (at that time) new “found footage” style. I vividly remember that there were loads of online discussions if or if not this was “real” found footage. It basically started a whole genre. > > My underwhelming experience was “Bullit”, but that wasn’t the films fault either. It just doesn’t cut it as an action film 50 years later, however revolutionary it was during ist time. Bullitt isn’t really an action film. Its a police procedural with a few action sequences thrown in. Its also remarkable for filming almost everything on location. And the Lalo Schiffrin score. ---
**Author:** ![DerNils](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f14d63/32.png) [@DerNils](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DerNils)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2018, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-underwhelmed-you/825403/118 "2018-12-06T15:22:35Z")
Maybe - it’s just that it was always highlighted to me as basically inventing the modern car chase. And that was, well, not exactly adrenaline dripping action there. I don’t blame the film, it was ok - just not what I was expecting. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2018, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-underwhelmed-you/825403/119 "2018-12-06T15:54:10Z")
> [@Rilchiam](#): > > **Blair Witch** : I wonder how many people thought that movie was worth it, after they’d seen it and let it sink in. To this day, I’m mystified about how that movie gained a following. > [@](#): > > **Big Chill** : For what it’s worth, according to the director’s commentary on the DVD, John Sayles does not think Lawrence Kasdan stole his idea. He addressed the issue several times, pointing out differences, such as the SS characters having these get-togethers every year, while the BC group was reunited by a funeral, and that BC was overall “a darker film”. His last word was, “I wrote my movie about my people, and Larry wrote his movie about his people, and they’re not the same.” Doesn’t matter, really: Kasdan had to be aware of S7, he set himself up for the comparisons, and he deserves to be on the losing end of them. BC wasn’t so much a darker film, so much as that all the characters were a bunch of jerks. If a film is about the characters rather than a plot-driven film, and you can’t stand the characters, that doesn’t leave you with much. ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2018, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-underwhelmed-you/825403/120 "2018-12-06T16:18:07Z")
_Titanic_; I was just there for the ship and the actual historical domain figures, couldn’t care less about Jack & Rose, or a stupid diamond. _Hurt Locker_; angsty, very vaguely military. Iron Man 3; [convection](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ConvectionSchmonvection) apparently works differently in the MCU than it does in our universe. Took me right out of the movie. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-underwhelmed-you/825403.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-underwhelmed-you/825403.md?page=7)