Can I mention The Phantom Menace again? The worst part is that I went into it with abysmally low expectations and it still disappointed me. I think it all crystallized during the pod race scene when I found myself thinking “Man, I wish I was watching the lightcycle match from Tron right now.”
Ah, so you skip the Scouring of the Shire. 
Yeah, it was about as faithful an adaptation of the book as O Brother Where Art Thou was a faithful adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey (but not nearly as good a film).
I didn’t see the Tim Burton movie, but I have read the book. Yes, I think the original Willy Wonka with Gene Wilder was a pretty close interpretation.
I saw the movie before I read the book, but that was awhile ago. What I do remember is that the ending of the movie is much better than in the book, which I don’t want to spoil, but was something of an anti-climax. Gobstopperless, you might say.
Well, the book had a sequel (Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator).
Agreed, and I live in Atlanta, so agreeing with you is kinda treasonous.
I think Rhett didn’t “give a damn” because he was sick of the movie too.
All I can remember of Broken Flowers is lengthy scenes of Bill Murray sitting. On a bed or something. That’s all.
Sheesh.
Dungeons and Dragons. I knew it would suck, but I thought it would suck in a good way. And there were ways in which it was a cheesy, enjoyable adventure, but they were overshadowed by the bad-bad acting (as opposed to bad-good acting) and lack of consistency of it all.
What’s sad is it has some of the most visually compelling CGI of any movie up to that time. Plus one of the best-delivered cheesy lines was wasted on the rest of the movie:
Give me the ROD!!!
I really like some of Tim Burton’s films a lot, but I hated his ‘Alice in Wonderland’ reboot. It was uninspired, and even Johnny Depp just seemed to be recycling old characters. And the 3D blew, too.
But I am utterly shocked that no one has mentioned ‘Finding Neverland’. It got tons of great reviews, but it was the most trite pile of cliches I had seen in ages. Oscar-biddy, one-dimensional, sappy, maudlin, pablum.
Maudlin pablum. Sort of fun to say. Very ploppy on the lips.
While I agree with you on Finding Neverland, I DO think that Freddie Highmore deserved an Oscar nod in that movie. He out-acted people with a lot more experience than himself.
I’d heard how good The Triplets of Belleville was supposed to be – maybe some of the stuff I slept through was interesting, but the stuff I saw sure as hell wasn’t.
I liked it just because of how weird and quirky it was.
Ditto on the Alice flick. Dull. And I can’t remember what happened in it or even how it ended.
Yeah it was the pod race for me too. I was watching my watch and when I looked down, I realized over half the movie was over and essentially nothing interesting happened, at all. Then, the creeping horror of bad dialogue, bad acting, bad cgi, and a race with absolutely no drama at all started to engulf the entire theater.
I agree on both of those. I did see some reviewer of Finding Neverland ask why no one can ever “just” cough in a movie, like all people occasionally do - coughing has become movie code for “this character has a debilitating disease and will die providing a poignant and tragic ending” (see also *Moulin Rouge). *Whoever knew coughing was so dangerous?
You think coughing is bad, try throwing up!
You threw up? When’s the baby due?
Oh, sorry, it isn’t. I put my hand to my abdomen and winced.
Nice knowing you, Zsofia.
It’s Snakes! On A Plane!
The meme was far better than the movie!
The diagnosis is unfortunate… she’s got a case of Ally McGraw disease, a debilitating condition that has as its only symptom the ability to make Zsofia increasingly beautiful the closer she comes to death.