Or maybe movies that were more interesting than you thought they would be, or movies that turned out to have more to them than what it said on the box.
(To have it out of the way: I suppose some spoilers are inevitable in this sort of thread. You are hereby warned.)
I have a few:
**
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind:**
*What I expected: *A romantic comedy with Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet. Yeah, that sounds like it should have “meh” written all over it.
*What I got: *One the weirdest, quirkiest, best written and most intelligent movies I’d had the pleasure to see in ages. Still one of my all-time favorites.
Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man: What I expected: A Discovery Channel nature documentary about bears. What I got: 103 minutes of pure WTF. This was the first Herzog movie I saw, so… yeah, exactly, mind blown all over the TV screen.
Let the Right One In: What I expected: A Swedish vampire horror movie with kids. Sounds like some kind of Twilight crap, right? I fully expected to hate it. What I got: Well, you’ve all seen it by now, so you know, and anyway, it’s no longer a secret what a wonderful piece of filmmaking it is. But when I first saw it, it took me by complete surprise.
Fight Club
What I expected: A macho movie about guys beating each other up.
What I got: Something completely different
Being John Malkovich
What I expected: Not much - I didn’t even know who John Malkovich was
What I got: A quirky fun movie with a story and twists that were so unlike any other movies that I never saw them coming.
Repo Men - Went to see this during a ski trip for a break from skiing, and there wasn’t much in the theaters. Expected an action-y thriller with some mild sci-fi stuff that might be fun. Instead it’s a deeply satirical thriller that provides plenty of action too. I really liked it and feel it’s highly underrated. It’s on par with Robocop, in my opinion.
Pink Panther with Steve Martin, a big gulf between the tetchy reviewers who demanded no less than Peter Sellers, and what was actually a pretty good film.
Thank you for this. I had never heard of that film, and just finished watching it on netflix because of this thread. It’s been a long time since I saw anything like it.
Well, it really was pretty stupid, but my husband and I were both majorly stressed out at work and needed to relax, and he is a big Pink Panther fan, and he was not at all disappointed. We laughed and got our money’s worth 100%.
Thor - Admittedly I went in with very, very low expectations but I really enjoyed this. It still wasn’t a great film by any standards but Loki turned out to have a lot more depth than you’d expect from a cartoon supervillain and the plot had some interesting twists. Portman and Hopkins phoned it in, but not enough to ruin it for me completely. I might even venture to say that I liked it more than Iron Man.
Sideways I expected nothing, hadn’t heard of it, wasn’t a big fan of Thomas Haden Church, but liked Paul Giamatti. Rented the DVD, and my wife and I loved it. It was funny, thoughtful, sentimental, and fun.
Soul Kitchen: Again, no expectations, but I found this on my cable’s free on demand channel. Like Sideways, it was funny, sentimental, and just plain a fun movie to watch.
What I expected: an apocalyptic survival thriller, with lots of graphic disease imagery, and probably they’d find some way to shoehorn in explosions. So like a Nic Cage vehicle without the Nic Cage.
What I got: a smart, tasteful, slow burn of a movie about science and exploring the consequences of events in the 21st century, with funny moments and really likable characters.
I’ve always thought that the football movies Necessary Roughness and The Replacements were better than they had any right to be. Yeah, they’re pretty much paint by numbers uplifting sports comedies, but I was expecting more raunch (a la screwball comedies of the 80s) and less heart. These two are really well done - I watch 'em every time I happen across them in idle channel surfing.
Real Steel- Expected movie about fighting robots with a bit of estranged father & son bonding. Got a movie about estranged father & son bonding with fighting robots on the side.
The Smurfs- Expected extended commercial for Smurf toys & rape of 1980s-kids fond childhood memories. Got cute movie about fatherhood, family, trusting ones better instincts than the path of least resistance & hilarious Gargamel scenery-chewing.
The Doors- Expected a quality movie with Val Kilmer doing a decent Jim Morrison impression. Got a quality movie with Kilmer channelling Morrison.
I didn’t expect much at all, as I had nothing better to do and just wanted to sit in some AC for a couple of hours. What I got was a very clever and fun movie that I’ve watched a hundred times since.
Mean Girls. It really didn’t sound promising, but it was at the drive-in, and we went anyway. Very good comedy with something to say and Lindsay Lohan showed she could have been a very successful actress if she hadn’t been a train wreck in her personal live.
I went into Limitless, starring Bradley Cooper and Robert DeNiro, with kinda low expectations, and it just blew me out of the water. A really, really good technothriller with a great cast, nifty plot, unexpected twists and turns, and an ambiguous moral. A helluva ride that kept me guessing.
The 1987 sf thriller The Hidden, starring Michael Nouri and Kyle MacLachlan, was better than it had any right to be. Cops hunt an alien fugitive in L.A. and get more than they bargained for - wow! Really a great movie.