This thread has sort of been done before, but I want to have my try.
My inspriation is from the Seinfeld episode where Elaine hates ‘The English Patient’ but everyone else loves it. She ends up breaking up with her boyfriend and getting offside with her friends just because of her dislike of the movie. I liked that movie. But I had similar experiences with my dislike of other movies.
Examples- ‘Gladiator’. I love Russell Crowe. I love movies like ‘Spartacus’ and ‘Quo Vadis’ and ‘Ben-hur’. But ‘Gladiator’-no. It was so boring. It was about 4 hours long with about 9 minutes of action scenes. The story was also so predictable.
Only one friend of mine and Roger Ebert seem to agree with me.
‘Shrek 2’. I loved the first movie. I own copies of Toy Story, Bug’s life, Ice Age etc. I mention that because whenever I say I hate 'Shrek 2 ’ people always say “You must not like animated or kids films”. I love them. Just hate that Shrek sequel.
‘Sixth sense’-I just found this movie dull. Shyamalan thinks that having a twist in the end of a movie makes up for the two hours of tedium beforehand. It does not.
‘Crying Game’ - spoiler for this movie -it sucks. Just because a movie has a twist does not make it a good movie.
If anyone is happy to reply, I have heard all the objections to my views. I would be more interested to hear about the movies you hate but everyone else seems to love. But feel free to criticise my views if you must.
I hate 2001, and I second Gladiator.
I love both Shrek 2 and Sixth Sense, but I will not fault you for (gasp!) having an opinion.
Did you see the Godfather bit on Family Guy last week?
Saving Private Ryan Titanic The Sixth Sense or for that matter anything by M. Shyamalan.
Generally I dislike the work of any number of popular directors, generally on the grounds that they suck the life out of a movie (Ron Howard) or are predictable if technically proficient hacks (Spielberg, Lucas). The problem is they have gotten worse with each movie. Duel, Night Shift and THX1138 or American Graffiti were OK movies. Ever since then…
Nah, it’s not just the idiotic and unbelievable science fiction. The plot sucks six ways till Sunday. There’s not a surprise in the entire film. The moment you see Mel Gibson, you know how it’ll end: he gets his faith back. The divine message is “swing away” - yeah, figuring out that you might want to hit the intruder with a baseball bat, that takes a deity. We’d never have thought of that ourselves. The funny moments aren’t. And so on. It’s just a shitty movie.
There was no science fiction in Signs. For me, the valid flaws you point out pushed the movie into the “mediocre” category. On the other hand, I don’t know of anyone who thinks Signs was good, let alone a masterwork of cinema.
Let’s move on to bigger fish:
*The Godfather * was only OK
*Citizen Kane * sucked
*Sin City * was interesting visually, but ultimately useless. Heat was asinine
Miyazaki is overrated
*Annie Hall * store Star Wars’s Oscar
and
I walked out of La Strada
The Lord of the Rings trilogy. To me they are almost as tedious as the books.
The Princess Bride. I don’t hate it, but I don’t think it’s the pinnacle of comic gold everybody else seems to think it is.
Dr. Strangelove. I recognize why people love it, and I also realize why it’s funny. But when I watched it I just thought it was rather boring. Maybe I should watch it again, as I do like Kubrick’s other movies.
Shrek, that fish movie with Will Smith, Madagascar, etc. Dreamwork’s computer animated movies leave me cold. Movies low on plot that depend way too much on their celebrity voices and pop culture references.
This is kind of outdated but as far as I was able to determine at the time it came out I was the only person in the world who didn’t think that the movie War Games was the pinnacle achievment of Western Civilization to that point. Malienation I share your beef with E.T.. I have other problems with the movie as well. In addition, there are a lot of other movies that present scientists as EEEEVIIIILLLL which really gets tiring.
The Shrek films; I just think they’re amazingly, almost unbelievably terrible, almost like if The Simpsons or Family Guy needs to have a quick “fake really bad movie” to make a joke off of - but they’re real. Most of the humor is really embarrassingly dumb, and even though they’re ostensibly aimed at kids, I distinctly remember there being two rape jokes in the last one.
I have yet to meet another person that doesn’t just looooooooooove them.
Definitely overrated.
I kinda liked it because I could identify with the main character. I think this is why so many reviewers loved it so much. The Breakfast Club is another where, unless you identify with one of the kids, the whole thing makes absolutely no sense. My wife hated both.