Vanilla Sky had to have surprised me the most, probably because I had no idea at all what the movie was supposed to be about previous to seeing it.
Fight Club definitely deserves mentioning as well.
Another vote for Galaxy Quest
Harry Potter/Sorcerer’s Stone
Some co-workers (rabid HP fans) described the book’s setting to me, in great detail, and it sounded ho-hum. Not worth my $8.50 plus snacks, gas and driving time. But I finally got around to watching it Thanksgiving day, and I quite enjoyed it.
One more for Fight Club
The trailers made it look like 90 minutes of underground boxing. How very exciting.
And Harold and Maude
The explanations paled compared to the movie. This is a movie you should never try to explain to someone. If you think they will like it, tell them to see it.
Several turned out to be better than expected…
Fight Club - This turned out to be a pretty good story and not just a vehicle for violence (Not that I’m opposed to violence per se)…
Galaxy Quest - Sigourney Weaver as a BLONDE? I resisted this one for a long time due to a fear of excessive - and poorly done - campiness… Turned out to be a personal favorite of mine…
Sixth Sense - Here was one I expected to be standard run of the mill kids stuff scary movie drivel… I left the theater in a daze… A week later I hadn’t managed to convince several friends of mine to see it yet so I paid for their tickets just to get em to go…
Tremors - Another one that made it into my collection promptly after seeing it. Val and Earl are PERFECT for their parts… Michael Gross as a hard core survivalist? But it works!
The Green Mile - I really didn’t know what to expect from this movie… But I did NOT expect what I got… I can watch it over and over again and not get tired of it…
Near Dark - I didn’t know who Bill Paxton was yet at the time I saw it… I’m glad… I’d have expected more from the film than I actually did going in… Since I had no preconceived notions of what it would be like I was all the more surprised at how good everything about it was… Casting… Sets… Plot… Acting… All good… Beyond good… If you haven’t seen it, do… Even if you are more into suspense/drama type films more than vampire movies… It fits the bill…
Falling Down - Any film that is able to make a psychotic seem rational is worth the time spent viewing it…
Shrek - Whats all this nonsense about onions? Sounds like a kids movie… I’ve already SEEN Beauty and the Beast… Yes yes… thank you… May I at least have some salt for the crow I’m eating?
Suicide Kings - Christopher Walken is in it… has to be good, right? Well… Its better than that… Much much better…
True Romance - My SO at the time wanted to see this one… She really did… I don’t think she knew anything about it other than the title… I figured I’d score some brownie points and suffer through it… Little did I know that I was going to get to see one of the finest speeches ever given on film (Dennis Hopper to Christopher Walken… Hopper KNEW what was going to happen… Did what he had to do and did it well… I get chills even thinking about it) Very well done… Probably Christian Slaters best film to date…
Ocean’s Eleven
Nahh, It has WAY to many stars to be good. And what do they do? Rob casinos? Yeah, sure, two thumbs up…
damn, was I wrong
BTW, was it just me, or was Brad Pitt always eating in his scenes?
Already mentioned: Tremors and Galaxy Quest.
B movies that I expected to be stupid and unfunny but were surprising and hilarious: Return of the Dead and Night of the Comet.
Office Space - My brother (who has never had a cubicle in his life) wanted me to watch this with him. At first I was saying to myself,“What is this crap?”
Then I realized it…“This crap” was my life…
:eek:
And it was damn funnier than my life, too.
I’m going to have to put another vote in for Rushmore. That was a great movie (and a good soundtrack, too), even though it looked like it would be a chore to sit through.
Also, I just rented The Prophecy with Christopher Walken, and it was much better than I thought it would be (I actually stopped reading the SDMB in the first scene). I was expecting something like The Puppetmaster, which was pretty bad.
The Matrix
no, realy. I hadnt realy heard that much about it and when I walked into the theatre, I thought it was just some other sci-fi action flick. I thought it would be a bit like die hard actually
Turn off your brain and just enjoy…
Boy, was i in for a surprise 
The paradigm case of this for me is The Sure Thing, Rob Reiner’s first “conventional” film as a director. Marketed as another teen sex comedy, it turned out to be a funny, smart, appealing update of It Happened One Night.
Shanghai Noon – I like Jackie Chan movies. Like most of you, I’m sure that you go in looking for a) Jackie’s crazy stunts, and b) plot contrivances to beat the band. I was not expecting things like “character” and “Owen Wilson being a damned good actor”. Of course, SH was the first movie that I’d seen Owen Wilson in. Now, he’s one of my favorite actors.
Several of my friends also think that SH was not only better than we expected, but better than it had any right to be.
12 Monkeys. I expected just some stupid thing that over-intellectual film students call great because they wanted to sound like each other. Turns out, it’s the best time-travel movie I’ve ever seen (and coming from a guy obsessed with time travel, that’s saying a lot).
And I’ll second Shrek. The film I was expecting was exactly the sort of thing they were mercilessly making fun of.
There are a bunch of other movies mentioned here that I liked, but which I was expecting to like. Galaxy Quest I figured couldn’t fail, and I had already heard good things about Attack of the Clones, for instance.
*The Phantom Menace. All of the buzz on this movie was really negative, so by the time I actually saw it (on TV), I was prepared for it to totally reek. So I was pleasantly surprised to find it not all that bad. It wasn’t brilliant, but not bad.
I even found Jar-Jar far less obnoxious than I had expected. I actually liked the slapstick in the battlefield sequences, which I understand were ripped off from Buster Keaton.
Note that “less obnoxious” is a comparitive. He was still obnoxious, just not as bad as expected.
I’ll second Lilo & Stitch. I thought it would be a cute little film. I had no idea it would actually move me the way it did.
Also, L.I.E. was incredible. There were numerous praises on the cover of the box at the video store, so I figured it would be worth my time. I wasn’t expecting it to be that good, though.
Same with About Schmidt. After hearing so many praises, I figured it would be good. It was so much more than good.
I have a feelings there’s a film I’m forgetting. Oh well.
Another vote for Pleasantville. A slightly strident friend of mine insisted that I watch this movie, so of course I avoided it like the plague. Finally the Spouse saw it and liked it, so he picked it up. I watched it with him and was absolutely floored. Of course, the original friend and I see completely different things to like in it . . . he sees it as media criticism, while I see it as a meditaton on free will.
Something similar hapenned with But I’m a Cheerleader.
One that I don’t think has been mentioned yet: I had 0really low expectations for The 5th Element and I ended up enjoying it as a self-referential bit of pop SF/future fantasy. I generally don’t think much of Bruce Willis, so that was a factor for me here. (As a matter of fact, for me to enjoy a Bruce Willis movie, there generally has to be a British actor acting circles around him - this one had both Ian Holm and Gary Oldman, which made up for the lack of Alan Rickman . . .)