# 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:** 4
**Author:** ![The\_Punkyova](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@The\_Punkyova](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Punkyova)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/61 "2009-06-07T04:40:03Z")
Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Dead. I think it’s the only time I’ve fallen asleep in the theater. I love the play, but the only thing I remember is Richard Dreyfus overacting his heart out in a void. The other characters were vacuums and there was nothing escaping - emotion, interest, empathy, humor. It was awful. ---
**Author:** ![BrassyPhrase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ea666f/32.png) [@BrassyPhrase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrassyPhrase)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/62 "2009-06-07T04:44:23Z")
> [@Merijeek](#): > > 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 I loved that movie though not everyone does. And you’re right–that part is great. Now I’m giggling. ---
**Author:** ![PetW](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d2c977/32.png) [@PetW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PetW)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/63 "2009-06-07T07:24:19Z")
**Blade Runner**. I’d heard so much about it I finally decided to buy it in HD on the cable box. It was so slow paced I ended up taking a four hour nap - after dozing through the ending. ---
**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, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/64 "2009-06-07T07:29:24Z")
> [@Tengu](#): > > most of the 'Cons who died were murdered by Galvatron… Conversely, why have Galvatron kill them, only to have Unicron salvage them later? He killed Starscream, but weren’t the others heavily damaged by the Autobots, and then jettisoned by the other Decepticons? I didn’t think Megatron/Galvatron was responsible for any other Decepticon casualties. ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/65 "2009-06-07T08:49:33Z")
> [@Surbey](#): > > Lord of the Rings. > > My friends loved it, the internet raved about,and I think every nerd I knew blew a load in their pants during it. But I hated it. HATED HATED HATED it. They were so boring I fell asleep in the theater and have never watched a single one of them again. Have you ever seen the animated movies? Those defined Tolkien and The Lords for me, books unseen, the Jackson soliloqy repentant… totally wrong vibe. If I had never seen the Jacksonian Demention, I would be finer. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/66 "2009-06-07T08:53:53Z")
_Magnolia_ I kept hearing about coincidences that rule our lives but there was nary a coincidence in the whole movie and most of it was just overacting. You want a ball-twister of a movie like _Magnolia_ wanted to be, rent _Grand Canyon_. ---
**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, 9:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/67 "2009-06-07T09:03:52Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > He killed Starscream, but weren’t the others heavily damaged by the Autobots, and then jettisoned by the other Decepticons? I didn’t think Megatron/Galvatron was responsible for any other Decepticon casualties. Galvatron was the one who ordered them jettisoned - he’s the one who killed them. They didn’t die because the Autobots injured them, they died because Galvatron would rather save weight than loyal soldiers. ---
**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, 9:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/68 "2009-06-07T09:22:13Z")
> [@PetW](#): > > **Blade Runner**. I’d heard so much about it I finally decided to buy it in HD on the cable box. It was so slow paced I ended up taking a four hour nap - after dozing through the ending. Ridley Scott is severely over-rated. Which is not to say he’s a bad filmmaker, but his stories are incredibly shallow and simple, but hidden in amongst great production values and cinematography. For some reason this puts him near the top of many people’s lists, whereas I think he barely deserves top 100 status. ---
**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, 9:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/69 "2009-06-07T09:27:09Z")
> [@Tengu](#): > > Galvatron was the one who ordered them jettisoned - he’s the one who killed them. > > They didn’t die because the Autobots injured them, they died because Galvatron would rather save weight than loyal soldiers. It was Astrotrain who gave the order, so that they’d get back to Cybertron at all. Megatron/Galvatron was one of the ones jettisoned. ---
**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, 9:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/70 "2009-06-07T09:52:36Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > It was Astrotrain who gave the order, so that they’d get back to Cybertron at all. Megatron/Galvatron was one of the ones jettisoned. OK, I guess you remember the scene more clearly than I do - since I hated the movie, I’ve never bothered rewatching it. The twin points of ‘the Autobots never scored a kill, despite being thoroughly decimated’ - every kill was a Decepticon kill, even the 'Cons - and ‘killing them, then immediately using their bodies to create completely different characters was silly, when Galvatron was nearly identical to Megatron’ remain however. And the whole scene is full of problems endemic to G1 - the weight thing can be forgiven, but the complete and utter inconsistency of the characters’ scale is ridiculous - Astrotrain shouldn’t be able to hold one other Decepticon (aside from the Cassettes) in Bot mode - and Megatron and Soundwave are the only ones whose alt-modes shrink enough to fit (well, if we assume his alt-modes are hollow shells, one Insecticon could probably fit, or one of the spindlier Constructicons). ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/71 "2009-06-07T10:43:16Z")
The Patriot. I expected some over-the-top “ain’t America great ?!” in it… but not \*that \*much. That movie was so bad, it made me dislike Braveheart in retrospect, when I had loved it at first and watched it god knows how many times. ---
**Author:** ![Weston](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8797f3/32.png) [@Weston](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weston)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/72 "2009-06-07T11:03:16Z")
I didn’t really like _Slumdog Millionaire_ all that much but to this day I can’t quite figure out _why_ I didn’t like it. I _should_ have liked it. It’s got all the stuff I generally like in a film, good story, unconventional narrative structure, good acting, excellent production values, dry humour, an absolutely _gorgeous_ female lead, and loads of other stuff, too. I’m really not sure why I didn’t “connect” with it like everyone else seems to have done. I think it _might_ be to do with the fact that it was marketed as the “Feel-good movie of the year” when in fact it’s _anything but_ a feel-good film. There’s a lot of menace in it, and a couple of scenes which are absolutely horrific. I mean it has a happy ending and everything, but I certainly wouldn’t call it “Feel-good”. I think I went in with the wrong expectations. Maybe if I saw it again I might like it. I was also somewhat disappointed by ‘Ironman’. Again, I’m not 100% certain as to why. But I think in this case it’s because I went into the cinema expecting to see something that wasn’t a retarded piece of shit. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_Wright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@Steve\_Wright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_Wright)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/73 "2009-06-07T11:19:54Z")
Of those already mentioned, I’d agree on _Prizzi’s Honor_ (just didn’t see the appeal of that at all) and - sorry - _The Princess Bride_ (some often-quoted good lines, but the story is slight, gimmicky, and overly sentimental). I found _Ghostbusters_ a huge disappointment - I think it comes down to humour being such a personal thing; I’m obviously just not on the same wavelength as its creators and its fans. I think I did laugh a couple of times. And _Conan the Barbarian_ should have been right up my street … but shots of Arnie’s rippling thews (and, much better, Sandahl Bergman’s rippling thews) don’t make up for a plot which seems to have been written on the back of a postcard. ---
**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 7, 2009, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/74 "2009-06-07T18:20:39Z")
> [@Kyla](#): > > 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. :eek: Madwoman! This is a movie so great that even the fact that Kate Winslet is not naked in it doesn’t matter! ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/75 "2009-06-07T20:12:58Z")
Another vote for “Borat”. Maybe it was just oversold to me but I kept hearing about how it was so edgy and smart and satirical and thought-provoking and so on and so forth. I got it through Netflix, watched maybe half of it and was so bored and unamused that I just turned it off and sent it back. ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/76 "2009-06-07T21:15:20Z")
> [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > _Prizzi’s Honor_. It had great reviews, friends, recommended it, so my wife and I rented it. Boy, did that suck! I saw it long ago, but I don’t think I liked it. I didn’t like **Withnail and I** either–can’t figure out why anyone does. **The Cook, the Thief…** is just disgusting and misbegotten. **The Reflecting Skin** was even worse. **There Will be Blood** just blew. So dull, with irritating music that was pervasive, no one to be interested in or to care anything about, a stupid scene in the bowling alley and a non-ending. **Atonement** : After ten minutes of watching gross, strident, thoroughly unpleasant people, I just wanted them all to die. Had the same problem with **Gangs of New York**. I saw **The Departed** but can’t remember a darn thing about it. That doesn’t seem to speak well of it. **Magnolia** : a self-important piece of crap from a self-indulgent director that took half an hour’s worth of story and dragged it out to 3 hours. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2009, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/77 "2009-06-07T21:44:24Z")
> [@Steve\_Wright](#): > > I found _Ghostbusters_ a huge disappointment - I think it comes down to humour being such a personal thing; I’m obviously just not on the same wavelength as its creators and its fans. I think I did laugh a couple of times. I understand this one. I liked _Ghostbusters_, don’t get me wrong. But I had no idea it was supposed to be a comedy. The closest I can get to the OP is _Prince Caspian_. They totally screwed that one up. I mean, it wasn’t bad enough to make me stop watching it. But I was heavily disappointed that they screwed it up so badly. I no longer wonder why it didn’t do better financially. ---
**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 8, 2009, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/78 "2009-06-08T00:40:41Z")
_The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford_. As long, slow, and meandering as its title. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2009, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/79 "2009-06-08T00:50:38Z")
Batman is my second favorite super hero. I was a big fan of Christian Bale. What could be better than Christian Bale as Batman? Turns out a whole hell of a lot of stuff could have been better than Bale as Batman. The only really interesting part of either movie is I now think I understand what people mean when complaining that anti-depressants like prozac leveling out emotional highs and lows, because nothing was too sad in the movies and nothing was allowed to be too exiciting, either. In The Dark Knight is Batman _meant_ to be clinically depressed throughout the entire thing, including before anything sad happens to people he knows? ---
**Author:** ![gravitycrash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@gravitycrash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gravitycrash)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2009, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923/80 "2009-06-08T02:22:28Z")
I was looking forward to the remake of **Rollerball**. I loved the original so I thought they would just update the special effects and leave the story pretty much the same. How did they manage to make a more cheesy and less realistic movie than one made 35 years ago? Unless they tried to, in which case they succeeded. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-were-greatly-surprised-not-to-like/498923.md?page=5)