I’m still astonished at how many cult favorites are being cited here as examples of movies “everybody loved.” A huge percentage of the movies being slammed here were flops, or only found small, appreciative audiences. I enjoy slamming bad movies as much as anyone, but it’s silly to point to a flop or a cult hit and ask “Am I the only one who hated this movie?” To use a personal example, I was bored and annoyed by The Rocky Horror Picture Show the one time I saw it as a teenager, but I would never suggest that “everyone liked it except me,” because only a small, fringe group loved it.
Look, even a movie that grossed 200 million bucks at the box office probably only had 20 million viewers (perhaps fewer, considering there was probably some repeat business). In other words, even a seemingly popular movie was only seen by six or seven percent of the population.
“Everybody” didn’t love Titanic or*** Avatar***, let alone ***Napoleon Dynamite, Magnolia ***or Big Trouble in Little China. Unless people are, as I suspected, using “everybody” to mean “all the people in my small circle of friends.”
Therefore, when people talk about movies that “everyone loved”, it’s safe to infer that “everyone” is not being used literally, or even in the sense of “a majority of the population”. I’m not sure why this is getting your knickers so twisted.
If other posters are interpreting the phrase “movies everyone loved” too loosely for your taste, I think you need to spec some quantitative metric that people can apply to achieve astorian-approved usage. What, exactly, qualifies a movie as one that “everyone loved”? Minimum IMDB rating? Minimum box-office gross? Minimum number of Academy Awards? Video sales? Number of stars from a given critic? Let’s see some figures here.
Or else just get used to the fact that people are using “movies that everyone loved” to mean “movies that got a lot more popular or critical approval than I feel they deserved”, and get over it.
If the title of this thread was “Movies I Hate,” I wouldn’t argue with ANYTHING that ANYBODY posted.
You hate*** Superbad***? Fine by me, post away! You hate Juno? Post away! You hate Escape from New York? Trash it all you like. I just scoff at the whole, “Am I the Only One Who” meme that we see all over the SDMB.
NOTHING is popular with more than a small percentage of the population. NOTHING. The most popular TV shows in prime time have a little over 25 million viewers a week. So, you are NOT the only one who doesn’t love ***Desperate ***Housewives or CSI. The vast majority of Americans aren’t watching either show.
A hugely popular CD might sell 10 million copies. In a land with 300 million people, that’s a drop in the bucket. So no, you are NOT the “only” one who doesn’t like Britney Spears or Lady Gaga. The overwhelming majority of Americans aren’t listening to either of them.
You thought ***Napoleon Dynamite ***sucked? Fine, slam it to your heart’s delight! But no more than 5 or 6 million people have even seen it. Stop asking, “Am I the only one who didn’t love it?” Few people saw it, fewer loved it.
Again, astorian, either supply some quantitative criteria to determine which movies can be properly classified as “movies everyone loved”, or else please quitcher bitchin.
To say that top-grossing box-office smashes like Titanic or Avatar don’t count as “movies everyone loved” makes the entire concept kind of meaningless, IMHO. If the topic of this thread is intrinsically too ill-defined for your taste, nobody’s making you read it.
This was extremely popular when I was in high school, and I went to two midnight showings to appease my friends, most of whom dressed up and knew just what to do.
I fucking hated it. It was unfunny and completely unenjoyable for me.
E.T. as well. I hated it when it first came out, and I hate it today. I thought it was sentimental schlock, designed to bring a tear to the eye. I wasn’t buying it.
American Beauty. When it first came out, I was sixteen, and thought it was amazing and profound. When I saw it again a few years later, I came away feeling bored and vaguely sullied.
Oh, and Good Will Hunting, which has actually been featured in one of our bad movie drinking games (house rules: take a drink every time you hear a line so bad you can’t believe a sentient being has actually written it).
My friends told me I would love the movie Once. The music in it was nice, particularly the song “Falling Slowly.” I’m not one of those people who needs an explosion every five seconds, but the plot just kind of put me to sleep. To this day I have yet to meet anyone who didn’t adore that movie. I feel like a freak, but it just didn’t do it for me.
All of my friends raving about it was what gave me that impression. Their wonderful reviews made me think I was really going to like it.
It has a 93% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, leading me to remain solid in my belief that everyone (except me and Anaamika) liked it and making me wonder what gave you the impression that everyone else hated it.
If I, as the OP, ask you to please stop threadjacking will you? And if I tell you that whether you think you are or not, I definitely feel like you are threadjacking, will you politely listen and acquiesce to my request? We are discussing, as has been pointed out, movies that have been critically acclaimed and watched & loved by lots of people that we hated. Whether they fit some arbitrary definition of “popular” is less than important. Thank you.
Dirty Dancing - yeah, I envy you people who had a lot of esteem when you were 17 (wasn’t that how old she was?) I didn’t, and so it felt wonderful to me and a completely charming movie. I absolutely understood how people could not like it; it was corny as all get-out, but I still loved it. She was Me.
Written by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon… I guess you could debate the presence or absence of sentience… (nitpick: maybe you mean sapience? Unless BA&MD don’t have nervous systems?).
When I picked that movie for movie night, my friends made me shut it off after half an hour. Based on the box office numbers, I suspect that 95% of the population have never seen the movie and wouldn’t like it if they did. I watched the rest of the movie later by myself and liked it. I thought it had an interesting idea and did a pretty good job of presenting it.
No movie written by Charlie Kaufman could ever be remotely considered popular even though critics like him.
I couldn’t stand PIRATES OF THE CARRIBBEAN. An amusing Disney ride, sure, but the movie was terrible, bloated, nonsensical junk. I can’t believe they made two more of the things, let alone are considering a fourth. Everybody else thought the movie was swell, though, and they all made tons of money, so I guess I’m insane. Geena Davis and Renny Harlin took a lot of abuse for CUTTHROAT ISLAND, but you know what? Their pirate movie had ACTUAL PIRACY in it.
I thought SHREK was pretty weak - **MONSTERS INC **came out that same year and had it beat six ways to Sunday - but who got the Oscar and the sequels? Shrek. Go fig.
1.** The Big Chill**
2.** Silverado**
3. Anything with Meg Ryan, including When Harry Met Sally
and, most of all,
3. Love, Actually. The only thing I didn’t hate in Love, Actually was Bill Nighy. I hated every single storyline in the movie.
The Blair Witch Project Napoleon Dynamite Kill Bill, Vols. I and II Dodgeball Old School School of Rock Forgetting Sarah Marshall (excepting Russell Brand’s inspired performance) Men In Black
Practically any movie starring Will “Ah-HELL-Nah!” Smith
Any movie in the Martin Lawrence œuvre.