# Movies you were greatly surprised not to like **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 6, 2009, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923 "2009-06-06T14:39:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![wonder9](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c57346/32.png) [@wonder9](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonder9)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2009, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/41 "2009-06-06T22:33:31Z")
There Will Be Blood Ponderous, tedious, nasty. I agree that Daniel Day Lewis is a great actor but oh, my, god. Why did people like this film? ---
**Author:** ![LVBoPeep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/858c86/32.png) [@LVBoPeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LVBoPeep)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2009, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/42 "2009-06-06T23:20:00Z")
Really hated _The Curious Case of Benjamin Button_ and was even more pissed off about it when I read the short story (which really isn’t filmable in the first place) which only casually resembles the movie. I like Cate Blanchett in almost everything but could find nothing redeeming about her in the movie and nothing at all special about Benjamin except the obvious. Ditto for _Lost in Translation_, rolled my eyes about a million times during that movie. ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2009, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/43 "2009-06-06T23:32:19Z")
_Office Space_. Bigged up regularly on this board, and it sounded on paper like exactly my kind of film. But I thought it was slow and obvious and boring. Ron Livingston was part of the problem. Is there a less charismatic actor out there? With a stronger lead, it might have been decent, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2009, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/44 "2009-06-06T23:36:49Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > Anything based on a Tennessee Williams play. There’s something about his plays that demands the intimacy of a theater. Yes, it’s as if they were WRITTEN for the stage. 😃 More seriously, I find msyself vexed by the notion among many persosn (and I don’t mean you, **panache45** ) that the ultimate realization–bringing to live–of any story is live-action cinema. A tale can be simply wonderful without working on screen. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2009, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/45 "2009-06-06T23:39:52Z")
> [@wonder9](#): > > Ditto. So many fight scenes with our plucky band of, what, 6 tiny people? battling incredible odds and somehow coming out unscathed. And really, just SO MANY fight scenes in general. Loved the books, hated the movie (just the one since I couldn’t bring myself to see the other two.) Um… I don’t think it’s fair to say they come out unscathed. Boromir dies. So does Gandalf, only he comes back to life through the direct agency of some “God” person. Merry is badly injured in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields (though I concede this is glossed over in the movie, which is part of the reason the third one sucks). Theoden dies. Eowyn gets an arm broken in the Pelennor. And so forth. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2009, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/46 "2009-06-06T23:42:32Z")
> [@Soul\_Brother\_Number\_Two](#): > > Tropic Thunder. I did not laugh once. Agreed. Our local DVD rental place generally gives good recommendation, but I thought this movie sucked. It was the movie that finally helped me admit how irritating I find Jack Black. He mistakes shouting and mugging for funny. > [@ivylass](#): > > And after the credits rolled for \*Star Trek Reboot \*or 0.0 or whatever they’re calling it, I sat in my movie theatre seat, trying to wrap my head around the betrayal. I’m not remotely a Trekkie (more of a D&D nerd), but this movie was really disappointing to me. I can deal with a few plot holes in a summer blow-em-up movie, but this one felt like more hole than plot, and my suspension of disbelief, pretty slack in most cases, just fell apart. My wife loved it, though, and given how annoyed I was when she criticized _Batman Begins_ (which I adored), I kept my mouth shut. > [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > Also, Rushmore and all the Wes Anderson movies. Again, I like a lot of weird stuff, but what I’ve seen of Anderson irritates me. It just feels like weird for its own sake. I enjoyed _The Royal Tenanbaums_. _The Life Aquatic_ was both boring and annoying. And halfway through _Darjeeling Limited_, I found myself promising to be a good Christian from now on if only the movie would turn into a man-eating-tiger-hunts-down-all-the-asshole-brothers horror movie, like _From Dusk Til Dawn’s_ mid-movie transformation. It didn’t happen, sadly–but at least I get to stay an atheist. I’ll never watch another Wes Anderson movie unless a sadistic mad scientist is involved, either in the movie or by strapping me to a chair and forcing it on me as torture. My own contribution to the genre: _Wings of Desire_, by Wim Winders. I could tell it was a good movie. It was beautiful. It was foreign. And halfway through it, I found myself sympathizing with a fox caught in a leghold trap, wondering if I could free myself from the misery by gnawing off my own leg. Ooh, another one, one that very few people (blessedly) know of: [Wax: or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105791/). It’s one of only two movies I’ve ever walked out on, and the only one I’ve walked out on because it sucked so bad. Then I had the misfortune of taking a college course in which the shitty professor showed it, and I had to sit through the whole thing. And I guess I’ll add the other movie I walked out of: _The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover_. I think it’s the sort of movie that I normally enjoy, but I saw it soon after an ugly breakup in high school with a girl whose parents were horrible, and our clandestine meetings reminded me too much of the meetings in the movie, and I had my own sort of overwrought adolescent PTSD, and I left. ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/47 "2009-06-07T00:04:52Z")
> [@Soul\_Brother\_Number\_Two](#): > > Tropic Thunder. I did not laugh once. I did. Once. Leader Kid: First you said you were a rice farmer. Then you said you were a poppy farmer. Which is it? Downey[Whips out guns]: I’m a lead farmer, motherfucker! -Joe ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/48 "2009-06-07T00:14:09Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > And I guess I’ll add the other movie I walked out of: _The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover_. I think it’s the sort of movie that I normally enjoy, but I saw it soon after an ugly breakup in high school with a girl whose parents were horrible, and our clandestine meetings reminded me too much of the meetings in the movie, and I had my own sort of overwrought adolescent PTSD, and I left. Ohh. I liked that movie a lot but I didn’t see it within any relationship context, so I was just seeing it as a movie, not really as anything relating to me personally. Actually have you posted on this before? I seem to remember reading this detail. My mom also walked out on it but because she thought the guy was just too awful. I think it’s the only film she’s walked out on. My dad stayed. ---
**Author:** ![Erdosain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/erdosain/32/7284_2.png) [@Erdosain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Erdosain)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/49 "2009-06-07T00:51:19Z")
For me it was _Drag Me to Hell_. (I didn’t want to crap all over the _Drag Me to Hell_ appreciation thread, so I didn’t mention it over there.) I love Sam Raimi, _Evil Dead 2_, and _Army of Darkness_, but I actually walked out of this movie. Part of the problem was that the theater turned up the sound noticeably after the previews and this is a completely sound-dependent movie. Every single scare is set up by a bone-jarring explosion of sound, and after 20 or 30, it got a little old. It was like someone sitting in the seat in front of me was turning around and blowing an air horn in my face. Two to three times a minute. Every minute. BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM! The best moment in the movie (at least the first 40 or 50 minutes that I saw) was when a scare was revealed finally in complete silence. The bank teller turns around in her car, after a few false alarms sound blasts, and you gradually notice that the old woman is sitting in the back seat. This moment was remarkable because it was so different from everything that preceded it. Maybe I’d enjoy the movie at home, where I can control the volume, but I thought it was a bit of a crutch, kind of like a laugh track. Be scared… NOW! And NOW! Of course, the movie has a 93% fresh rating on [RottenTomatoes.com](http://RottenTomatoes.com), so I guess it’s just me. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/50 "2009-06-07T00:54:53Z")
I thought **Alien** might be an interesting science fiction/horror adventure story. It turned out to be a bunch of morons running around like headless chickens – basically, a poorly plotted dead teenager movie. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/51 "2009-06-07T02:03:07Z")
> [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > Both **AvP** movies. I mean, it’s Aliens and Predators. How could you possibly mess that up? They apparently didn’t realise it’s supposed to be Aliens vs. Predators vs. Colonial Marines, not Aliens vs. Predators vs. Scientists. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/52 "2009-06-07T02:28:59Z")
_Atonement_. I thought maybe it would be a romance, or a war movie, something akin to _A Very Long Engagement_. But it wasn’t. I don’t know what the hell it was - a long interminable stretch of nothing was all I saw. Pretentious and empty. ---
**Author:** ![River\_Hippie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/river_hippie/32/26_2.png) [@River\_Hippie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/River_Hippie)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/53 "2009-06-07T02:42:30Z")
I can’t believe I’m saying this but… **The Wrestler**. I guess it wasn’t _that_ bad, I was just primed to REALLY, REALLY like it. I can’t put my finger on exactly what was disappointing to me but I was hoping for more after all the hype. ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/54 "2009-06-07T02:45:09Z")
The _1986_ Transformers movie. It suffered from everything the TV series did, except the low budgets. The ‘cynical marketing’ aspect is there in full force - Hasbro wanted to introduce some new toys, and stop selling the old ones…so 90% of the cast is slaughtered, offhand, several of them off-screen, a couple of them twice. Having some of them - maybe a lot of them - killed, is one thing, but…put some effort into it, for Primus’ sake! Optimus Prime, Starscream and Ultra Magnus were done (mostly) right - Prime went down in a heroic self-sacrifice, Screamer was taken by surprise, Magnus was overwhelmed… But the majority…the Autobots became seriously incompetent - slaughtered by neither superior numbers, nor superior firepower, without making a major dent in the Decepticons - most of the 'Cons who died were murdered by Galvatron. And the 'Cons who were reformatted - if they’d just been murdered by Galvatron, great. If they’d been reformatted the same way he was (or, like Bumblebee was reformatted into Goldbug, later) - their physical form changed, but their minds left (mostly) intact, great. Having every one of them killed, then turned into a completely physically and mentally different characters…that’s weak. There’s no reason to use Bombshell or Thundercracker, for instance, if their character, form, or powers, would not carry over. (OK, Scourge is a flier like the Seekers were, so technically, Thundercracker’s ‘power’ carried over.) Conversely, why have Galvatron kill them, only to have Unicron salvage them later? If they wanted to combine the two possibilities, at least having Galvatron actively sacrifice them to Unicron would have kept it consistent. If I’d seen it in 1986, I’d have enjoyed it more - but I didn’t see it until 2004, if you believe it. Granted, it was still better than the GI-Joe movie. At least they didn’t decide that killing Optimus was a bad idea before release and change the dialogue of his death scene, but not the animation. (You’re still dead to _me_, Duke!) ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/55 "2009-06-07T03:06:46Z")
Oh, I thought of one: _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind_. All of my friends loved it, it sounded interesting, I was all set to really enjoy it. And I did think the plot was good, and I liked the…awake…parts well enough, and it was certainly a well-made movie, but I found the memory sequences to be _way_ too long and boring. If about half of the memory stuff had been cut out, I would have liked it twice as much. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/56 "2009-06-07T03:15:07Z")
> [@HPL](#): > > For a while, I thought I was the only person on earth who didn’t love _Transformers_. I’m glad to know that’s not the case. Really? I’ve never in my entire life met anyone who liked it. My brother in law sort of liked it, in a laugh-at-it sort of way. He described it as “like a French farce, but with robots.” That’s about as positive a review as I’ve ever heard of it. * * * I was disappointed with the Peter Jackson remake of “King Kong.” It had a lot of great moments, but it was a terrific two-hour movie packed into three and a half hours, and Jack Black was not up to the task. I also agree with the cite of “Office Space.” I have never understood the appreciation that movie gets; it’s a great idea with very few actually good jokes. ---
**Author:** ![Gcat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c0e974/32.png) [@Gcat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gcat)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/57 "2009-06-07T03:28:42Z")
Burn After Reading. It took a long time for the plot to start and I was hoping the funny would start after the plot started, it didn’t. Then I realized it was suppose to be a dark comedy, which I then tried to find some of the perverse humor that makes those great and nothing. The movie was a whole lot of me thinking “That’s suppose to be funny.” and “Mildly humor here, not laugh worthy.” ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/58 "2009-06-07T03:47:10Z")
I’m looking through this list going…loved it…loved it…seriously? that film was amazing…it was ok…loved it… My wife and I are apparently blessed with catholic tastes (seeing _Up_ and _Drag Me To Hell_ on the same day and loving both) and enjoyed the majority of the films mentioned in this thread. Except for _Closer_ (hateful bunch of jerks, not a decent human being in the entire set of characters). Films I thought I’d like that I didn’t: _Snakes on a Plane_ - was actually at a midnight show for it. _The Producers_ - The original was great, everyone praised the musical, but it was the ultra-rare film I actually walked out on. ---
**Author:** ![MOIDALIZE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@MOIDALIZE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MOIDALIZE)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/59 "2009-06-07T03:55:32Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > They apparently didn’t realise it’s supposed to be Aliens vs. Predators vs. Colonial Marines, not Aliens vs. Predators vs. Scientists. Or Aliens vs. Predators vs. small town teenagers. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/60 "2009-06-07T04:13:39Z")
“Episode I” :rolleyes: 'Nuff said. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923.md?page=4)