# Movies that you thought you'd love but wound up hating. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 4, 2010, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-you-thought-youd-love-but-wound-up-hating/534900 "2010-04-04T11:38:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-you-thought-youd-love-but-wound-up-hating/534900/121 "2010-04-07T01:06:27Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > **2001: A Space Odyssey**. Here it was, science fiction at a time when filmed SF was rare, and by a director who did one of my favorite films of all time, **Dr. Strangelove**. I saw it in its original run at the Criterion Theater in New York (this was long before wide openings – it wouldn’t have reached me for at least a month). Found it visually fascinating, but duller than dirt, with a meaningless psychedelic light show at the end. A real disappointment. It opened in the Capitol Theater in New York (I saw it there twice) so your criticism is invalid. 😃 SW Ep. I. My wife got us tickets to see it for our anniversary (we saw the original Star Wars the day after we got engaged) and for me Maul didn’t even help. Ep. II was slightly worse than I expected, but I didn’t expect much, and Ep. III was actually slightly better. For a new one, Story of O. We hadn’t read the book, but we did know what it was about. We walked out in the middle not because we were offended, but because we were bored. Seeing gerbils mate was more erotic than that movie. ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-you-thought-youd-love-but-wound-up-hating/534900/122 "2010-04-07T01:24:52Z")
The king of disappointments in this category for me was **Four Rooms**. Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Allison Anders and (admittedly) someone else I didn’t recognize each write and direct their own segment, with a drool-inducing cast, including Tim Roth tying each scene together? One year after **Pulp Fiction** and **Desperado** came out? Ugh. Horrible, and horribly disappointing. I can still remember the sensation when I realized I’d been had. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-you-thought-youd-love-but-wound-up-hating/534900/123 "2010-04-07T01:50:45Z")
> [@](#): > > (admittedly) someone else I didn’t recognize Alexandre Rockwell. He directed other movies before _Four Rooms_ - _Hero_, _Sons_, _In the Soup_, and _Somebody to Love_ - and since - _Louis & Frank_, _13 Moons_, and _Pete Smalls Is Dead_ - but I haven’t seen any of them. He’s also Jennifer Beals ex-husband. Interesting trivia fact: Actor Sam Rockwell has appeared in four of Alexandre Rockwell’s eight movies but the two men are not related. ---
**Author:** ![panamajack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/47e85d/32.png) [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-you-thought-youd-love-but-wound-up-hating/534900/124 "2010-04-07T03:21:01Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > Also, _In Bruges_. It looked like a “Wacky Hitmen on holiday in Europe” film, with amusing hijinks all round, but it was (IME) a depressing, unfunny film in which I didn’t even smile once. Not even at the racist dwarf. I’ve found the film’s popularity on the SDMB to be quite baffling, actually… I had the opposite reaction. I wasn’t at all interested in seeing the ‘wacky hitmen on holiday’ movie that it appeared to be. But I gave it a chance (based partly on recommendations here) and enjoyed it, because it wasn’t wacky. I did find some scenes humorous, but the movie is shot through with a melancholy that I really loved. I’ve run into other people who hated it when they expected to love it (pretty similar to your experience, ME). I think it’s unfortunate how mismarketed the movie was. Tonight’s NCIS made me think of the best (worst) case of this: **Starship Troopers**. Though that was apparently a deliberate insult to the book, so maybe it doesn’t count. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-you-thought-youd-love-but-wound-up-hating/534900/125 "2010-04-07T05:20:03Z")
> [@panamajack](#): > > I’ve run into other people who hated it when they expected to love it (pretty similar to your experience, ME). I think it’s unfortunate how mismarketed the movie was. Oh, I think it’s a textbook case of mis-marketing a film. But rather a lot of the “humour” in the film seemed to come from the idea they were in this place that no-one had ever heard of; IIRC Colin Farrell asks “Where the fuck is Bruges?” at the start of the film, to which my immediate thought-response was “It’s a port city in North-West Belgium.” ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-you-thought-youd-love-but-wound-up-hating/534900/126 "2010-04-07T06:22:29Z")
I have to confess that I was entirely disenchanted with _Even Cowgirls Get the Blues_. I love Tom Robbins’s books, but I’d never appreciated before I saw this movie how difficult it can be to put the great things about a great book onto a screen. ---
**Author:** ![Elysian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c77e96/32.png) [@Elysian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elysian)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-you-thought-youd-love-but-wound-up-hating/534900/127 "2010-04-07T06:45:23Z")
Clash of the Titans. What a huge disappointment, especially after the opening cut, to have some whiny slimy kid with artistic facial hair try to be Perseus. Oh yeah, and someone, anyone, explain the scorpions? What the hell were they doing there? ---
**Author:** ![EvilTOJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee59a6/32.png) [@EvilTOJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EvilTOJ)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 10:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-you-thought-youd-love-but-wound-up-hating/534900/128 "2010-04-07T10:00:28Z")
There Will Be Blood. I love highfalutin period movies, but I was bored to tears. The 4th grade music class they hired to play the violins made it annoying. I turned it off at the climactic scene where the oil derrick exploded. If explosions can’t keep my interest, it’s a horrible movie. Also the same for No Country For Old Men. It was just … just pointless. I only saw it the second time because I was trying to get in a girls pants. That didn’t work either. I saw Clash of the Titans, and there isn’t any one reason why I hated it. It could be because Sam Worthington needs to grow his hair out and stop being a stone-faced marine in every movie he’s in. All I kept thinking was “He looks just like he did in Avatar. And Terminator;Salvation” Or the anime armor Liam Neeson wore. Or [del]Arwen[/del] Io that watches over him like some weird pedobear. The good part about Clash of the Titans is it did verify to me that Liam Neeson and Ralph Fienne are indeed two separate people. **Elysian** , scorpions! Everyone loves scorpions. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-you-thought-youd-love-but-wound-up-hating/534900/129 "2010-04-07T12:02:16Z")
> [@](#): > > Oh yeah, and someone, anyone, explain the scorpions? What the hell were they doing there? As I explain in the thread on _Clash of the Titans_, the scorpions are there in the new film because there were giant scorpions in the 1981 film. There were scorpions in the 1981 film because Screenwriter Beverly Cross, who knows his classics, knew about Apollodorus’ line stating that the blood that dripped from Medusa’s head onto the sands of Libya engendered poisonous serpents and scorpions. This fit in fine with Harryhausen, who likes animating creepy-crawly things, especially if they can be made big (he put a giany crab in his version of **Mysterious Island**. So Calibos puinctures the bag holding Medusa’s head, the blood drips out, and makes giant scorpions. Therefore, although there are no giant scorpions in any version of the myth of Perseus and Medusa, they ended up in the 1981 movie because they needed spiffy effects that could be animated, and a chance line about a folk belief/saying gave them an excuse for scorpions, and the interests of the animator and the needs of spectacle of the movie blew them up into giant scorpions. But they’re in the new movie, shoehorned uneasily in, only because they were in the older movie. ---
**Author:** ![Elysian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c77e96/32.png) [@Elysian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elysian)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-you-thought-youd-love-but-wound-up-hating/534900/130 "2010-04-07T12:10:45Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > So Calibos puinctures the bag holding Medusa’s head, the blood drips out, and makes giant scorpions. > \ > > But they’re in the new movie, shoehorned uneasily in, only because they were in the older movie. Thank you for that cogent and reasonable explanation. How about the djinn with the wood faces? Where the hell did that come in? With the scorpions? Djinn? Really??? Perhaps I should use a spoiler box…or read fewer classics. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-you-thought-youd-love-but-wound-up-hating/534900/131 "2010-04-07T12:31:47Z")
> [@](#): > > Thank you for that cogent and reasonable explanation. How about the djinn with the wood faces? Where the hell did that come in? With the scorpions? Djinn? Really??? You should go to the other thread, where I’ve been dissecting the current movie: > **[Clash of the Titans (for those who have seen it, spoilers)](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=558207)** > > (I saw the other thread but it seems to be mostly anticipatory so I thought I’d make a new one) Anyway saw it tonight… the effects were certainly a hell of a lot better than the original. Unfortunately that’s about all I can say for it. As much as I... Quick answer: They made it up. It’s not in the old movie, it’s certainly not in Greek Mythology, and it’s not an accurate depiction of real Djinn either. My suspicion is that they brought them in after they made the scorpions so damned big and strong that they needed something special to take care of them. They could’ve simply eliminated the last three or so super-huge scorpions, but that would’ve eliminated one impressive and dramatic shot. Plus, with the djinn they get to advance the plot in an interesting way. So they’re basically making it up as they go along. I’ll bet you suspected that already. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-you-thought-youd-love-but-wound-up-hating/534900/132 "2010-04-07T12:32:13Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > Oh, I think it’s a textbook case of mis-marketing a film. But rather a lot of the “humour” in the film seemed to come from the idea they were in this place that no-one had ever heard of; IIRC Colin Farrell asks “Where the fuck is Bruges?” at the start of the film, to which my immediate thought-response was “It’s a port city in North-West Belgium.” You _totally_ missed the point, then, which is okay since it happens to the best of us quite often. The point wasn’t “no one has ever heard of Bruges”, the point of those remarks was simply that _that character_ hadn’t heard of it. By extension, the point was that that character is the sort who simply wouldn’t care about and can’t appreciate the kind of beauty involved in appreciating a city like Bruges. To head off a possible misunderstanding, I’m just saying that was the point of those remarks, not, of course, that that was the point of the movie or something. The humor in those remarks doesn’t go “Ha ha, just like me and everybody else, he’s never heard of this nowhere place!” but rather “Ha ha, he’s stuck in a place he’s incapable of appreciating,” which of course may not be your cup of tea as far as humor goes, but I’m just clarifying what the humor is supposed to actually be. ---
**Author:** ![joebuck20](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/74df32/32.png) [@joebuck20](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joebuck20)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-you-thought-youd-love-but-wound-up-hating/534900/133 "2010-04-07T14:03:39Z")
> [@EvilTOJ](#): > > Also the same for No Country For Old Men. It was just … just pointless. I only saw it the second time because I was trying to get in a girls pants. That didn’t work either. I liked it all the way up until the end. They spend the whole time setting you up for a big showdown, only to deliver some existentialist crap at the end. Yeah, I get what they were going for, but it would have been nice to have some sort of payoff. Granted this is more the fault of Cormac McCarthy, who wrote the original story, than it is the Coen Brothers. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-you-thought-youd-love-but-wound-up-hating/534900/134 "2010-04-07T15:11:17Z")
_War_: When I first heard of this movie, I was on a huge Jet Li and Jason Statham movie kick. I’d just watched _Forbidden Kingdom_, _Fearless_, _Hero_, _The One_, _The Transporter_, _The Bank Job_, and _In The Name Of The King_. I heartily enjoyed them all, even the last one despite being an Uwe Boll flick. Statham is just that fun. So when I heard about a movie that pitted Li and Statham against each other, I was _all_ for it. …Instead I got a movie that was 80% talking heads and 20% action, and it wasn’t even _good_ action. It was a boring, badly paced drag of an “action” movie. _The Gamer_: Yet another “action” movie that turned out to be worse than it looked, and it didn’t look all that amazing to start with, although the trailer made it look fun enough. The action sequences were pretty good, but the movie veered off into Creepy Street. I assume it was supposed to be a statement on the excesses internet users indulge in because they’re virtual and harmless, but it just came off as a revolting and biased caricature. ---
**Author:** ![DiggitCamara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df788c/32.png) [@DiggitCamara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DiggitCamara)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-you-thought-youd-love-but-wound-up-hating/534900/135 "2010-04-07T18:14:10Z")
[Jackie Brown](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Brown_%28film%29). I loved \*Pulp Fiction \*(one of the few movies I’ve watched in the theater twice), and thought that Tarantino could do no wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Nefarious\_Chipmunk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nefarious_chipmunk/32/1045_2.png) [@Nefarious\_Chipmunk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nefarious_Chipmunk)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-you-thought-youd-love-but-wound-up-hating/534900/136 "2010-04-07T20:12:13Z")
\*Where the Wild Things Are \*was such a huge disappointment for me. I loved the original book as a child and had seen previews that looked amazing. I was really excited walking into the theater. When I went to see it, I just couldn’t wait for it to be over and kept looking at my watch and being surprised at how little time had passed. I found the plot to be boring and contrived. I hate messages that hit you over the head like that. To top it all off, it had that shaky camera thing that I really hate. Visually, it was interesting, but that is about all it had going for it. ---
**Author:** ![FallenAngel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@FallenAngel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FallenAngel)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-you-thought-youd-love-but-wound-up-hating/534900/137 "2010-04-07T20:20:23Z")
My all time biggest is Once Upon a Time in Mexico. I liked El Mariachi. I flat out loved Desperado for its blend of silliness and darkness. The that blasted thing came out and it was as if Rodriguez had torn five different scripts into four equal pieces, threw them all into the air and took five random segments. Johnny Depp was fantastic, but he no place in that steaming dog turd. ---
**Author:** ![pope\_hentai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@pope\_hentai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pope_hentai)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-you-thought-youd-love-but-wound-up-hating/534900/138 "2010-04-07T22:11:44Z")
1. My friends had hyped it up as some rediculous, over the top orgy of violence so i was worked up as hell to see it. when i finally did, and there were only 3 onscreen decapitations and 5 lost limbs (i counted). they kept asking how much i liked it, all to get the answer of “where was all the violence?”. ---
**Author:** ![phouka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c5a1d2/32.png) [@phouka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phouka)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-you-thought-youd-love-but-wound-up-hating/534900/139 "2010-04-07T23:34:43Z")
_Duel in the Sun_. Shut up. I was a teenager, I stumbled across it on cable TV on summer afternoon, and it had Gregory Peck, who I’d only recently discovered. My dad said he liked it, and he has good taste in movies. It should have been good! I kept watching it, thinking at some point all the badness would coalesce into a singularity, undergo a quantum restructuring, and become good. GREGORY PECK! Then it turned out that my dad had first seen it when he was a teenager at just the right age for that sort of silly melodrama, and he usually referred to the movie as _Lust in the Dust_. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2010, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-you-thought-youd-love-but-wound-up-hating/534900/140 "2010-04-08T03:13:24Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > The humor in those remarks doesn’t go “Ha ha, just like me and everybody else, he’s never heard of this nowhere place!” but rather “Ha ha, he’s stuck in a place he’s incapable of appreciating,” which of course may not be your cup of tea as far as humor goes, but I’m just clarifying what the humor is supposed to actually be. It still sounds like I wouldn’t have enjoyed the film even if I had picked up on the “Stuck in a place he can’t appreciate” thing because I don’t really find that sort of thing funny either. It just comes across as whiny and I don’t like whiny humour. At least we’ve established that there’s no point me watching the film a second time, though. 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-you-thought-youd-love-but-wound-up-hating/534900.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-you-thought-youd-love-but-wound-up-hating/534900.md?page=8)