Darn it, simulposted myself.
It works much better if you go into it without too many preconceptions and just think that it might be good movie, which it is; I had to make an effort that way.
It really did suffer from Fandom Helium. Hold a show/movie proudly up high, let it down with a - who cares? Pfft!
I would have enjoyed Black Swan a lot more if it were all no-name actors rather than a vehicle for Natalie Portman. In fact, as a small arthouse flick it would have been thoroughly enjoyable. But with the Oscar hype and an A list actress, it made me too aware of the low budget look (shakycam, anyone?), spare plot and unintentionally comical occurrances (Natalie dragging the body to her dressing room and the dirty old man on the subway). For an unknown film all these flaws would have come across as part of its charm.
If I had done that, I never would have seen Avatar in IMAX 3D. Because if those visuals were simply “normal” big screen fare, it would have been pure crap. There’s no way I would have sat through it again. But the IMAX 3D vision was pure crap that looked absolutely amazing - easily the most visually stunning thing I’ve ever seen in a theater. And that was at least worth something.
Master of Disguise. At the time it was the lowest rated movie ever on Rotten Tomatoes. But surely I would like it! I liked the other Dana Carvey movies no one liked!
It was shockingly bad, and I know why. The DVD had a commentary track. Listening to Dana Carvey say that he knew no one would understand a joke, no one would like the joke, but that he did it anyway was a real eye opener.
I’ll add another vote for Batman and Robin. I knew it was bad, but I assumed it was boring bad. It came on TV one day, and after two minutes I pressed record. Because Batman and Robin is that unique, special bad that you can savor and mock. I waited until my brother could watch it with me, and we gave it the full MST treatment. At times we had to stop the tape to laugh, because we couldn’t believe the movie was so unbelievably stupid and wrong.
And you were seriously expecting something better?
This movie was precisely what I expected it to be, thus I was not disappointed by it even tho I hated it.
Oh you lucky, lucky, lucky person that you were able to bail on that piece of redolent horseshit. I was stuck on a plane with that piece of crap, but trust me, I was clawing at the windows trying to to break out because plummet to my death which would have been a far kinder fate.
I’d agree with **Hangover **and **Crystal **Skull.
I’d add Blair Witch Project (which made me sea-sick), and the** Royal Tenenbaums** (which is not the “funniest comedy of the year”, but rather a pile of steaming pile of self-indulgent wank with no hint of being amusing).
No other movie released in my generation will ever have this much promise yet fail on every conceivable level as this abortion.
My child will be raised to believe there were only three Indiana Jones movies. I want this stricken from existence.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Wouldn’t normally even ping my radar but my wife was really stoked to see it. Lots of famous people, cool sounding story and Heath Ledger, her heart throb, in his last movie. What a steaming pile.
I started watching the new Karate Kid movie last night. I thought it’d be a decent little lightweight diversion, probably not great but at least not terrible.
But holy crap, I didn’t expect Jaden Smith to suck so much. The most talentless child actor I’ve ever seen. Can’t use his face, can’t use his voice…it’s dragging the whole film down, and I want to like it, because I love Jackie Chan movies.
Hi Sam, just wanted to say that I had a similar reaction. Apparently I disliked it enough that I blotted it from mind recently when talking about the worst Pixar films. I’m not sure if I’d rate it below Cars, but I’m not about to watch either one again to make the evaluation.
I had similar feeling about Wall-E. It started out promising even though the robot watching an old musical felt a bit hipster forced. I liked the daunting skycrapers built of trash landscape that they created. But the mixing of live humans with animated humans was an odd choice and the whole second act of a robot chase picture seemed below Pixar’s standards.
Yeah, I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more if I hadn’t known anything about it before, and just wanted to look at the neat special effects. My expectations were all wonky, though, and I was really disappointed as a result.
Going back a few years:
*Singin’ in the Rain *and The Music Man.
Both were touted to me as wonderful examples of old musicals, classics (I like old movies, so it’s not like I just don’t care for the whole genre) but I found both to be the most catastrophically boring things I’d seen in years. I could barely sit through either of them.
Also, Jurassic Park 2: The Lost World. I adored Jurassic Park. It’s one of my all time favorite movies. I’ve probably seen it a couple of dozen times. And I particularly like the Ian Malcolm character. So when I heard that LW was going to be mostly about Malcolm, I was excited. I even got tickets to an advance screening. What a letdown *that *turned out to be–the movie was boring, they messed up Malcolm’s character, and it was just alltogether dreadful. Especially gymnast-kid. Ugh.
I was reading something once about Roger Ebert thinking “Dark City” was the best thing to happen to film since they stopped using those hand-cranked cameras. I saw it and it was two hours of boring dumb punctuated by the occasional Jennifer Connelly appearance for eye candy.
A film I had less hopes for was “It’s Complicated”. My mom saw it with her boyfriend and they both loved it. My sister liked it. I saw it with my wife and we both hated it. I actively detested every character in the movie (except perhaps Krasinski’s character) and I don’t think I laughed once.
I’ll agree with you about Cars. It was a huge pile of suck. HUGE. PILE. OF. SUCK.
*
But WALL-E *was charming, and worth watching just for the part before he left Earth. It kind of felt like another movie after that, but not a bad movie. A bit of a gear shift between Wall-E’s world and the work of the ppl on the ship. I rank it near the top of Pixar movies.
Opinions vary.
By the time it ended, it was so cartoonish that I thought an anvil was going to fall on someone’s head.
I’ll vote for Eraserhead. I thought it would be interestingly freaky, but it was just tedious.
Inception, meh.
I remember liking The Music Man, but I only watched it all the way through once, and for the life of me I can’t call up any scene from it other than “Marian the Librarian” and “Gary, Indiana”. And then only snippets flash through my mind like a trailer.
Singin’ in the Rain is a big favorite of mine with one glaring exception. Please, please, please, ditch the “Gotta Dance” number with Cyd Chyrisse (sp?)! It advances the plot not one whit, and it’s boring as hell.
Actually, “Gotta Dance” is what in the old days of opera was a “sherbert aria”. A lesser production during a performance when the audience could get up and get refreshments without missing anything. Apparently, in the early 1800’s, it was sherbert instead of popcorn.