To be fair, time they could’ve used on the story went to having Kirsten Dunst sing.
I don’t remember the script talking about any of the characters wearing bargain clothes. Unless you consider Calvin Klein or Alaia bargain? Cher also wears Jimmy Choos. You’re right about the wardrobe people on a budget, but I don’t think the characters were supposed to be wearing bargain clothes–if so, Tai would have been a lot more stylin’ when she first walked in.
My working assumption with Clueless was that they were trying to establish their version of reality for rich-girl Beverly Hills. They would have their own look, their own catchphrases, etc. So Heckerling borrowed from current but made her own thing, and since that world felt so internally consistent within the movie, it worked.
So it wasn’t attempting to be some faithful rendition of the real BH and would become dated. It was a stylized version and successful at creating its own world and it stands today. Great movie that stands up to repeated viewings to this day - it and Mean Girls are going to be ones that last.
With a Metacritic score of 59 and an IMDb score of 6.2, Spider-Man 3 was deemed mediocre in the aggregate when it came out, and I think that’s probably where it still stands.
Naw, I was just kidding. 
I was only two when the first one came out. I think I saw 3 or 4 first anyway.
Homer: When I first heard that Marge was joining the police academy, I thought it would be fun and zany, like that movie “Spaceballs.” But instead it was dark and disturbing, like that movie “Police Academy.”
A box of chocolates?
I’m not really taking (much) exception to your critique, but the original idea behind Star Wars was Lucas’ fondness for the Saturday Matinee “Serials,” and his concept was to take that concept “big time” to the big screen, with state-of-the-art special effects.
The “retread” plot of The Bad Guys building a new (replacement) super weapon is well in keeping with that.
In fact, many of the criticisms of Star Wars (not counting the TPM; I have no defense of that) seems to forget the core concept behind the entire franchise, and seem to think of it as LOTR (In SPACE!), or the entire Dune saga.
I could be wrong about how well it was received.
Yes, the things you mention are quite stupid. There’s plenty in the movie I love, however. Harry taking a bite of pie and saying, “So good,” etc. etc.
My favorite of the movies is the first by far. Two and three are good in my book, however.
I agree. Both movies are great.
Homer: Stealing! How could you? Why do you think I took you to see all those “Police Academy” movies, for fun? I didn’t hear anyone laughing, did you?
I’d noted that Heathers plays very differently now than it did when I first saw it, particularly in that early scene where the jock bullies give Christian Slater a hard time, and he stands up, pulls out a gun, and shoots them.
We find out in the next scene that the gun was loaded with blanks, but I remember a time when this was laff laff funny haw haw guffaw stuff. It seems considerable darker now than it once did… I’m not sure if I’d say the movie’s “decayed” or not, but while it has not changed, the society around it certainly has.
Well, that, and it’s far from safe to shoot someone at point blank range, even with blanks.
They don’t play “The Homecoming Queen’s Got a Gun” very much these days either. As with Network, society caught up with satire.
Everyone hated the Ewoks, yet somehow they were popular enough that The Ewok Adventure TV movie got made. And somehow, that was successful enough that it got a sequel Ewoks: Battle for Endor. Yeah, no one like them at all, no siree bob, they totally ruined Jedi for everyone at the time, oh yes they did, you know it.
Don’t forget the cartoon series.
But yeah, George Lucas flat out said that all he wanted to do was make a new Flash Gordon type thing. It was after that that the merchandising demon possessed him…
Here is the original review of Titanic in the New York Times, written before it became the highest grossing film of all time, before it won all the academy awards, and before it became fashionable to hate it.
Had a conversation recently in which I am told that *Jaws *has not aged well, and wouldn’t be considered all that scary now, and even was compared to a SyFy Original Movie.
I disagreed. I felt the characters were interesting and well done by the actors, and that Spielberg made the right call in his use of malfunctioning robot sharks – that is, as little as possible. If the movie were made today, the shark would be CGI, three times as big, and would have jumped out of the water to tap dance across the deck, juggling mackerel or something… not because it needed to, but simply because it COULD.
And I find myself wondering if my judgment is skewed by the fact that I’m old enough to have seen that movie in a theatre.
I love Jaws and consider it one of the greatest movies of all time, but even Spielberg couldn’t stop the shark from leaping out of the water at the very end.
Of course, the hokiness of the effects are immediately rendered moot by the sheer badassery of “Smile, you son of a bitch!”
Well, yeah, gotta have a biff bang boffo ending, particularly after not seeing a whole lot of shark for the last two hours.
But if it’d been CGI, shark woulda had his own musical number… (I’m sorry, but I’ve seen way too many awful movies with CGI critters who have more screen time than the humans do…)
nm