# Movies you hate but everyone else seems to love

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [May 20, 2006, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564 "2006-05-20T20:42:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 6

<div class="post-metadata">

**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:** [May 22, 2006, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564/101 "2006-05-22T18:18:53Z")

</div>

> [@](#):
>
> Almost forgot, anything by Shamylan or however it’s spelled. (Sixth Sense was alright though) These creepy settings with a twist that he’s so fond of…at least come up with a good story and a twist that isn’t completely moronic. Please, just once…

Well, that’s the problem. He did it. Once.  
He’s overall a superb filmmaker. His stuff is well shot, his sense of mood and pace and characterization are great. But his “twists” are getting increasingly dumb. a lot of people felt betrayed by the absurdity of **The Village** , Pepper Mill included. He’s got to get it together again.  
A lot of people say things like “That first movie ruined him for most people. Now they spend all the time looking for the twist, and don’t pay attention to the film.” Bull. I think that having a story with a secret or a twist is entirely legitimate, and that having your audience know you do it doesn’t invalidate later works. Heck, Rod Serling ran Twilight Zone on TV for years, and most of the stories had twists. O. Henry made a career out of the twist-ending story. So did lots of 1950s science fiction and fantasy writers. So, to a large extent, did thriller writer Frederick Forsyth.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Gangster\_Octopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a8b319/32.png) [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2006, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564/102 "2006-05-22T18:30:32Z")

</div>

Harold and Maude  
The Truman Show (Didn’t hate it, but thought it was ok)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2006, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564/103 "2006-05-22T19:55:10Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=Bertie Wooster]  
I’d like to second _The Breakfast Club_. It’s a dreary little teenage wine-and-wankfest. At least Holden Caufield had a dead brother to be upset about. The characters in this turd have the good life, but feel a need to cry anyway.  
[/QUOTE]  
I totally respect your opinion. I just happened to have seen that movie when I was in the middle of cliques, conformity, socializing with just your group, etc., IOW high school, and it hit pretty much every nerve. It feels so bad it does feel like something to cry about.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Little\_Plastic\_Ninja](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f07891/32.png) [@Little\_Plastic\_Ninja](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Plastic_Ninja)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2006, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564/104 "2006-05-22T20:59:30Z")

</div>

I’ve only ever walked out of the movie theater for one movie: **Heat**. Granted, I was in high school, and my major reason for seeing it was “Action movie? With Val Kilmer? He’s pretty; sure, I’ll go see it.” And as much as I liked action movies, as far as I remember:

Things blow up. Mostly cars. Too many minutes of gratuitous sex follow. Someone talks to an old guy about nothing coherent. More people get shot and blown up. There is a boat, I think. Val Kilmer looks like ass.

Apart from that:

**Daredevil**. Apart from my inability to take a world seriously where every single person that Matt Murdock fails to put in jail gets the snot beaten out of him and NOBODY SUSPECTS A THING (just because he’s blind doesn’t mean he can’t take a hit out on people), what’s the big shift in the character? “Killing people is wrong, even if they’re bad, so I will permanently cripple bad people instead.”

**Citizen Kane** made me want to sleep. I understand in a faraway sense that it’s very good, that it does a wonderful job, but I just couldn’t bring myself to care.

I can’t speak for **The English Patient** because I never saw it. It looked very dull and annoying.

**Barton Fink** never made sense.

**Chasing Amy**. A guy can’t get over this girl he loves who is a lesbian. He talks about sex a lot. That’s about all I got out of it.

**Sideways** had one marginally likeable character, and she got screwed over – literally – though I did rather like her revenge. 😃 I hated everyone else. Including the main character’s love interest.

**Napoleon Dynamite**. Hate. Heat of a thousand suns hate. Oh, there’s funny lines and all, but it’s an incredibly sad and depressing movie in my opinion.

**Sin City**. To be fair I don’t hate this, but I don’t like it nearly as much as many other people seemed to. I cringed in all the right places, but I wasn’t floored, I wasn’t blown away, I was just vaguely engaged and then it was over.

> [@](#):
>
> Lord of the Rings: A lot of dramatic music and art direction with no substance behind it.

:eek: …BWAHAHAHAHAHA. _ahem_ I’ll admit that as pretty as the movies were, they mostly didn’t quite manage to capture the incredible grandeur of the source material (which may be only Incredibly Apparent to people who read it early in their lives; it’s dry as hell and very likely strikes other people like Citizen Kane strikes me), but to say there is no substance behind it is laughable. There’s ACRES of substance to the story. It’s thick with the stuff. It’s just that a lot of the substance got dug out like a pumpkin’s innards when you make a jack-o-lantern.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2006, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564/105 "2006-05-22T21:15:57Z")

</div>

Back to arguing about “Signs”. Thing is, the aliens just don’t make any fucking sense. But I have the feeling this was intentional. Shamalayan wanted the aliens to be incomprehensible, because, hey, they’re aliens doing mysterious things, and it would be unrealistic if we understood what they were up to. But they were so incomprehensible that they pretty much ruin the movie.

The only fanwank that makes sense is that the aliens we see aren’t the real aliens. The kidnappers are slaves, sent down to a hellworld on an impossible mission for the amusement of the real aliens. The people who were captured? Later the aliens take the enslaved humans to a lava planet and order them to capture as many lavamen as possible, otherwise their families will be brutally tortured. The real aliens are just doing this for kicks, and the kidnapper aliens are pawns, who know nothing about Earth, and can’t even recognize a doorknob.

Eh, it still doesn’t make much sense, I know it’s not supposed to make sense, but it still makes no sense.

Now, back to movies everyone likes that I can’t stand:

“Good Will Hunting”. Damn, I hated this movie. I never for one second bought the character of Will. Just found it impossible for this person to exist as presented. I can believe a genius from a blue collar background. But not this one. And the psychoanalysis scenes were just laughable. The most cringeworthy scene was were Will shows up the preppy in the bar with how knowledgeable he was compared to the preppy. What the hell? Totally unbelieveable scene. Just rank. I hated, hated, hated this movie.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![BwanaBob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bwanabob/32/2985_2.png) [@BwanaBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BwanaBob)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2006, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564/106 "2006-05-22T21:44:59Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=Polerius]  
Caddyshack!  
[/QUOTE]

Blasphemer! 🙂

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![merrily](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@merrily](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/merrily)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2006, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564/107 "2006-05-22T22:01:21Z")

</div>

Spiderman 2

The first entire hour was, anything Peter tries to do will fail. I got that after 5 mintues, thank you very much. Doc Ock was cool, but the second hour didn’t have much more than that, and the train action was ludicrous, as well as the Christ imagry.

And she left that guy at the alter! She couldn’t make up her mind earlier.

Bitch.

Hope she makes boring Peter Parker’s life just as miserable.

By the way, I liked Spiderman 1.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![koeeoaddi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/koeeoaddi/32/408_2.png) [@koeeoaddi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/koeeoaddi)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2006, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564/108 "2006-05-22T22:09:39Z")

</div>

All the Star Wars movies except _The Empire Strikes Back_.  
Everything Woody Allen made after _Annie Hall_ (parts of _Bullets over Broadway_ were funny, but I doubt I’d watch it again).  
_Dances with Wolves_  
_Terms of Endearment_  
That tedious movie with Mary Tyler More where some family member drowns, everybody feels guilty and they all wear golf cothing.  
_Dark City_  
_Scarface_. I walked out on near the beginning so I don’t know if the whole movie was repulsive. I’m not likely to ever find out, either.  
_Mad Max_. All of 'em.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![lisacurl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/41988e/32.png) [@lisacurl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisacurl)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2006, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564/109 "2006-05-22T22:27:06Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=koeeoaddi]  
That tedious movie with Mary Tyler More where some family member drowns, everybody feels guilty and they all wear golf cothing.

[/QUOTE]

😃 I love this description very much. I think the movie’s called _Ordinary People_.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Linty\_Fresh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Linty\_Fresh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Linty_Fresh)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2006, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564/110 "2006-05-22T23:01:35Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=merrily]  
Spiderman 2

The first entire hour was, anything Peter tries to do will fail. I got that after 5 mintues, thank you very much. Doc Ock was cool, but the second hour didn’t have much more than that, and the train action was ludicrous, as well as the Christ imagry.

And she left that guy at the alter! She couldn’t make up her mind earlier.

Bitch.

Hope she makes boring Peter Parker’s life just as miserable.

By the way, I liked Spiderman 1.  
[/QUOTE]

_Thank_ you, I thought I was the only one who hated that shit-fest. I just felt so bad for that astronaut kid humiliated in front of his friends and family. He was a genuinely good guy.

I usually don’t go for too much plastic surgery, but if we could get a team of doctors to work on Tobey Maguire’s face so that he could make other expressions besides “Confused virgin with the stupid grin,” I might start seeing his movies again. The kid looks like Elijah Wood’s stoner cousin.

I’ll second, third, fourth, whatever **There’s Something About Mary**. The movie as a whole sucked, but I still quote from it shamelessly.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![blinkingblinking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ea5d25/32.png) [@blinkingblinking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blinkingblinking)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2006, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564/111 "2006-05-22T23:21:08Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=Lemur866]

“Good Will Hunting”. Damn, I hated this movie. I never for one second bought the character of Will. Just found it impossible for this person to exist as presented. I can believe a genius from a blue collar background. But not this one. And the psychoanalysis scenes were just laughable. The most cringeworthy scene was were Will shows up the preppy in the bar with how knowledgeable he was compared to the preppy. What the hell? Totally unbelieveable scene. Just rank. I hated, hated, hated this movie.  
[/QUOTE]

That is one I forgot. Good Will Hunting was meant to be so original and so great. What on earth were those people talking about. And Oscars for screenplay and Robin Williams. WTF !! I hate this movie.  
So original -not. Who did you think would solve the physics problem ? The nerds who have studied physics since they were 8 or the cute janitor ? Well, it is a movie. What a surprise…the janitor solves it.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Linty\_Fresh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Linty\_Fresh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Linty_Fresh)\
**Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564/112 "2006-05-23T00:23:14Z")

</div>

Forgot one.

**Das Boot**. OK, I didn’t _hate_ it, but I didn’t exactly empathize with the U-Boat crew either. After the triumphant return and subsequent bombing of the harbor, I found myself looking at Jurgen Prochnow as he slowly died among his crew and going “BWAAAAA-HA-HA-HAAAHHHHH!!! Yeah, that broke my fucking heart!!”

So no, I don’t think I got the message the film wanted me to get.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![saoirse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)\
**Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564/113 "2006-05-23T00:43:02Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=Lemur866]  
“Good Will Hunting”. Damn, I hated this movie. I never for one second bought the character of Will. Just found it impossible for this person to exist as presented. I can believe a genius from a blue collar background. But not this one. And the psychoanalysis scenes were just laughable. The most cringeworthy scene was were Will shows up the preppy in the bar with how knowledgeable he was compared to the preppy. What the hell? Totally unbelieveable scene. Just rank. I hated, hated, hated this movie.  
[/QUOTE]

Apparently that character would be called a [Gary Stu](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=372669). I liked the movie, but that did keep bugging me.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Yookeroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yookeroo/32/323_2.png) [@Yookeroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yookeroo)\
**Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564/114 "2006-05-23T05:53:55Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=Little Plastic Ninja]  
Too many minutes of gratuitous sex follow.  
[/QUOTE]

I understand all the individual words in this sentence, but togther they just don’t make sense.

😛

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![DxZero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@DxZero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DxZero)\
**Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564/115 "2006-05-23T06:03:13Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=Little Plastic Ninja]  
I’ve only ever walked out of the movie theater for one movie: **Heat**. Granted, I was in high school, and my major reason for seeing it was “Action movie? With Val Kilmer? He’s pretty; sure, I’ll go see it.” And as much as I liked action movies, as far as I remember:

Things blow up. Mostly cars. Too many minutes of gratuitous sex follow. Someone talks to an old guy about nothing coherent. More people get shot and blown up. There is a boat, I think. Val Kilmer looks like ass.

[/QUOTE]

Hmm… **Heat** , eh…There was no boat, no gratutious sex scenes(No sex scenes at all, IIRC), no old guy (unless you consider Jon Voight as the old guy).

Val did kind of look like an ass with the long hair and all.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\
**Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564/116 "2006-05-23T06:13:16Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=DxZero]  
Hmm… **Heat** , eh…There was no boat, no gratutious sex scenes(No sex scenes at all, IIRC), no old guy (unless you consider Jon Voight as the old guy).

Val did kind of look like an ass with the long hair and all.  
[/QUOTE]

There were some sex scenes, but no nudity. More of some kissing followed by a “lean her down over the bed…” and then a “later, with sheets wrapped around as they talk.”

But more importantly is that **Heat** wasn’t an action film. Certainly it does have some shoot outs, but that is a very small portion of the film and definitely not the focus. But going into a film expecting something entirely different can certainly ruin a movie for you. Popcorn flick, Heat is not.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![lobstermobster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobstermobster/32/10033_2.png) [@lobstermobster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lobstermobster)\
**Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564/117 "2006-05-23T06:16:59Z")

</div>

Napoleon Dynamite  
Waking Life  
I Heart Huckabees  
Donnie Darko  
and I hate Monty Python and Princess Bride so much that I could just stab myself in the head with a pair of scissors

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![SurrenderDorothy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/surrenderdorothy/32/1221_2.png) [@SurrenderDorothy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SurrenderDorothy)\
**Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564/118 "2006-05-23T08:21:49Z")

</div>

I hated **Casablanca**. I don’t understand at all why people like it so much.

I also hate most Christmas movies. **A Christmas Story** is not my idea of a good time and I can’t stand **It’s A Wonderful Life**.

Also, while I didn’t hate it, I did find **Breakfast At Tiffany’s** pretty overrated. I love Audrey Hepburn and really really want to love all her movies, but that one does not make my list of favorites.  
but I love Forrest Gump.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mr.Wiseguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Mr.Wiseguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Wiseguy)\
**Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 10:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564/119 "2006-05-23T10:04:24Z")

</div>

Another vote for Napoleon Dynamite here. The story wasn’t terrible, but I did not laugh once.

But my real nemesis since the day it was released is **Titanic**.

Maybe it was because I went in to see it a little peeved (I have an inherent bias against films based on true stories) but that boat didn’t sink nearly fast enough.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\
**Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564/120 "2006-05-23T14:45:38Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=Lemur866]  
Back to arguing about “Signs”. Thing is, the aliens just don’t make any fucking sense. But I have the feeling this was intentional. Shamalayan wanted the aliens to be incomprehensible, because, hey, they’re aliens doing mysterious things, and it would be unrealistic if we understood what they were up to.  
[/QUOTE]

Unfortunately, that particular evasion is all too common when a lazy hack attempts to evoke Mysterious Alien Stuff. :rolleyes:

Personally, _The Triplets of Belleville_ bored me half to death.

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564.md?page=5)

[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564.md?page=7)
