# Name an unjustly derided movie.
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-an-unjustly-derided-movie/704549
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [November 13, 2014, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-an-unjustly-derided-movie/704549 "2014-11-13T18:22:06Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 5
### Author:  [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2014, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-an-unjustly-derided-movie/704549/81 "2014-11-14T15:23:13Z")
> [@Moe](#):
>
> **Dutch**. Always my first thought with these kinds of threads. I wouldn’t use the word _unjustly_ because I don’t know how to gauge that, but it’s 14% on RT and I don’t think I’ve ever heard or read anyone say anything good about this movie. Yet I find it a rather touching, well-acted, more-or-less solid film within a common genre/formula. Ed O’Neill gives a very good performance and I think there is surprisingly good chemistry between him and the kid. I’m not saying the movie’s a masterpiece, but I find it mystifying why it seems to have left almost no positive impressions at at all.
I haven’t seen it, though I know it was supposed to be a bomb. There was an episode of Married With Children, set in a video store, and a quick silent bit where Al Bundy looks askance at a display of tapes the store was practically giving away: copies of Dutch!😛
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### Author:  [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2014, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-an-unjustly-derided-movie/704549/82 "2014-11-14T15:40:12Z")
_Die Another Day_. Pierce Brosnan’s _Bond_ films were never less than watchable and this one had some very witty performances. Madonna a little long in the tooth for you here? God forbid you should focus instead on Halle Berry or Rosamund Pike. Yeah the invisible car was a little over the top, as was Moneypenny’s sendoff, but you’d think Brosnan tried to rap in blackface from the critical hits this movie took!
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### Author:  [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2014, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-an-unjustly-derided-movie/704549/83 "2014-11-14T15:53:08Z")
> [@MrDibble](#):
>
> I dunno, I’m not seeing cultural appropriation in it. It’s ahistoric, but that’s not the same thing, IMO.
Well, maybe that’s the wrong term to use, yeah. But it’s still the whole “white guy learns the exotic ways of the Nipponese, becomes a better exemplar of samurai values and virtues than actual samurai”.
I can never not roll my eyes at the point where Cruise manages to draw the gruff bushi who has it in for him - the guy has been living by and perfecting that one form of swordsmanship his entire fricking life but hey, nothing a white guy can’t pick up and top over a single winter :rolleyes:.
And then he goes on to tell the fucking Emperor of fucking Japan what it \*really \*means to be samurai… I mean, come the fuck on, right ?
[QUOTE=planetcory]
The Spider-Man reboot gets unfairly derided just because it’s a reboot and people reflexively roll their eyes at reboots.
[/QUOTE]
It’s not so much that it’s a reboot, but it’s a needless reboot. You don’t reboot a franchise a mere 10 years after it started (and long before it has been explored in any kind of depth), that’s just silly and nakedly cash-grabby. Especially when your “new” franchise isn’t saying anything new whatsoever.
But nobody had any issue with the Batman reboot for example - partly because the Schumacher version never existed ; and partly because Tim Burton’s Bat was the _previous_ generation’s Batman and this generation is cool with having their own, with its own very different tone and themes.
If someone rebooted Batman _again_ in the very near future, that would be another story entirely IMO.
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### Author:  [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2014, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-an-unjustly-derided-movie/704549/84 "2014-11-14T15:54:56Z")
I thought AI was a very thought provoking movie.
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### Author:  [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2014, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-an-unjustly-derided-movie/704549/85 "2014-11-14T16:00:55Z")
Joe VS The Volcano
Starship Troopers was good for what it was, but then I’ve never read a Heinlein novel.
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### Author:  [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2014, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-an-unjustly-derided-movie/704549/86 "2014-11-14T16:11:28Z")
> [@Alessan](#):
>
> Was he? IIRC, the only thing he was better at was shooting a gun, and at the climax oif the movie, the Sioux rescued _him_ and not the other way around.
Yeah, but then the Sioux tell him all about he’s become one of them and they all love & respect him so much, the dying old chief makes him watch over his family, etc… By the end of the flick he’s quite obviously become The Wisest, Most Important Person In The Tribe.
I have no problem with the Outsider Becoming An Insider story. It’s when Outsider Becomes First Insider that I start feeling uncomfortably post-colonial and shit.
Contrast with _Little Big Man_, which is also at heart the story of “a white guy becomes a Cheyenne” - and Hoffman’s character also becomes acclimated to the tribe and a friend to the chief. But he’s still kind of a weirdo, and the film takes the piss out of the noble savage thing (while still keeping respect for N-A philosophy and so on).
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2014, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-an-unjustly-derided-movie/704549/87 "2014-11-14T16:13:10Z")
> [@Horatio\_Hellpop](#):
>
> _Die Another Day_. Pierce Brosnan’s _Bond_ films were never less than watchable and this one had some very witty performances. Madonna a little long in the tooth for you here? God forbid you should focus instead on Halle Berry or Rosamund Pike. Yeah the invisible car was a little over the top, as was Moneypenny’s sendoff, but you’d think Brosnan tried to rap in blackface from the critical hits this movie took!
I’ll second this **Die Another Day** was a well-executed movie. The swordfight sequence was excellent. The overall film was a gift to longtime fans – it’s filled with references to and homages to all the previous Bond films, yet managed not to be obtrusive about it. I’ll bet most viewers were completely unaware of that facet of it.
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### Author:  [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2014, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-an-unjustly-derided-movie/704549/88 "2014-11-14T16:16:35Z")
> [@BOOM](#):
>
> Fwiw i agree - don’t know about ball games but it foreshadowed an awful lot about the second Iraq invasion. Very smart.
ROFL! No, it actually didn’t. It made ham-handed comments about propaganda in general that a lot of people projected onto modern politics.
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### Author:  [@Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Intergalactic_Gladiator)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2014, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-an-unjustly-derided-movie/704549/89 "2014-11-14T16:27:58Z")
[Payback](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payback_(1999_film)) was slammed when it came out and I never understood why. It’s a homage to noir films. Mel Gibson wants revenge on the guys who done him wrong but mostly he just wants his $70,000 back.
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2014, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-an-unjustly-derided-movie/704549/90 "2014-11-14T16:44:09Z")
> [@CarnalK](#):
>
> Yeah, maybe he thought it extended to modern propaganda, but the obvious target of mockery felt like WWII newsreels and war pumping. I doubt a single person watching the film felt personally mocked.
Is that why people think it was obvious? I don’t think that was the target of mockery at all: that was the **vehicle** that mockery rode up in to point at the audience.
The movie was an ostensibly normal action movie about the good guys fighting the bad guys, the inhuman Bugs. Only it turned out that the good guys were dressed in Nazi uniforms and subjected to Nazi-style propaganda, and there were some grotesque near-rape scenes of the captured Bugs, performed by good guy scientists.
The mockery was of you, the audience, thinking you were identifying with the good guys. Nope, says Verhoeven, you’re just little Nazis soaking up your own government’s propaganda.
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2014, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-an-unjustly-derided-movie/704549/91 "2014-11-14T16:56:08Z")
> [@NDP](#):
>
> I think the main reason **Dances With Wolves** gets a lot of flack is because it beat out the better regarded **Goodfellas** for Best Picture.
No, I think it’s mostly because “all us round eyes are EVIIIIL! but the Indians are noble savages”. I threw up a little watching it.
My nomination is “Doc Savage- Man of Bronze”- watch it as camp.
I agree about _Last Action Hero._
\*John Carter \* is actually pretty good. The critics thought it “derivative” where in actually most SF of that sort is derived from ERB.
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### Author:  [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2014, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-an-unjustly-derided-movie/704549/92 "2014-11-14T17:10:44Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#):
>
> Is that why people think it was obvious? I don’t think that was the target of mockery at all: that was the **vehicle** that mockery rode up in to point at the audience.
>
> The movie was an ostensibly normal action movie about the good guys fighting the bad guys, the inhuman Bugs. Only it turned out that the good guys were dressed in Nazi uniforms and subjected to Nazi-style propaganda, and there were some grotesque near-rape scenes of the captured Bugs, performed by good guy scientists.
>
> The mockery was of you, the audience, thinking you were identifying with the good guys. Nope, says Verhoeven, you’re just little Nazis soaking up your own government’s propaganda.
The problem with that is, he made the movie so horrible that no one BOTHERED to identify with the “good guys.” That’s what I mean by un-subtle and blatant. If he’d made a well-produced, well-thought-out SF action flick with the production value of something like Edge of Tomorrow and put the twist into THAT flick, it might have been a good movie. I might not have agreed with it politically, but it would have been a good film with a good political argument couched inside it. Sort of like Winter Soldier.
Instead, he made a SHITTY SF action flick with horrible acting and nonsensical plotting and by the time the “twist” comes, it’s like “So what? The movie sucks, the characters are vapid cardboard and I couldn’t give a shit if any of them live or die, much less if they’re Nazis or good guys.”
The only scene that held my interest in that flick was the one that showed us Dina Meyers’ breasts.
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### Author:  [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2014, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-an-unjustly-derided-movie/704549/93 "2014-11-14T17:11:48Z")
> [@DrDeth](#):
>
> \*John Carter \* is actually pretty good. The critics thought it “derivative” where in actually most SF of that sort is derived from ERB.
Agreed. I thought it was an enjoyable enough movie. Nowhere near as bad as the rep it got.
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2014, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-an-unjustly-derided-movie/704549/94 "2014-11-14T17:20:06Z")
> [@RikWriter](#):
>
> The problem with that is, he made the movie so horrible that no one BOTHERED to identify with the “good guys.”
Except that it has a [51% metacritic rating](http://www.metacritic.com/movie/starship-troopers) and a [63% Rotten Tomatoes rating](http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/starship_troopers/). Apparently more than half the reviewers disagree with you, so your appeal to (un)popularity doesn’t quite work.
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### Author:  [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2014, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-an-unjustly-derided-movie/704549/95 "2014-11-14T17:35:29Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#):
>
> Except that it has a [51% metacritic rating](http://www.metacritic.com/movie/starship-troopers) and a [63% Rotten Tomatoes rating](http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/starship_troopers/). Apparently more than half the reviewers disagree with you, so your appeal to (un)popularity doesn’t quite work.
Sorry, I don’t base my judgment of movies on what critics think of it. I never appealed to unpopularity or popularity, I said that the movie was poorly made and I didn’t care about the characters enough for it to be meaningful to me if they were in the right. It’s a bad movie.
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### Author:  [@dasmoocher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dasmoocher)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2014, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-an-unjustly-derided-movie/704549/96 "2014-11-14T17:41:35Z")
> [@Mr.Miskatonic](#):
>
> It does have massive shortcomings but it isn’t a total failure. People tend to look at movie budgets and act as if they would get that money if it weren’t spent on that movie.
It ain’t the greatest movie, but **The Lone Ranger** seems to get a lot of undeserved hate.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2014, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-an-unjustly-derided-movie/704549/97 "2014-11-14T17:57:39Z")
> [@DrDeth](#):
>
> No, I think it’s mostly because “all us round eyes are EVIIIIL! but the Indians are noble savages”. I threw up a little watching it.
>
> My nomination is “Doc Savage- Man of Bronze”- watch it as camp.
>
> I agree about _Last Action Hero._
>
> \*John Carter \* is actually pretty good. The critics thought it “derivative” where in actually most SF of that sort is derived from ERB.
I’ll third **John Carter** , which I thought was actually a Great movie, managing to interpret ERB’s first hero in a way that managed to be pretty faithful to the books in general, yet quite accessible to a modern audience, and with great effects. Mike Sellars’ book _John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood_ neatly dissects the controversies that lead to the film being trashed and mishandled by the very company that made it.
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### Author:  [@Face\_Intentionally\_Left\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Face_Intentionally_Left_Blank)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2014, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-an-unjustly-derided-movie/704549/98 "2014-11-14T18:50:30Z")
> [@Intergalactic\_Gladiator](#):
>
> [Payback](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payback_(1999_film)) was slammed when it came out and I never understood why. It’s a homage to noir films. Mel Gibson wants revenge on the guys who done him wrong but mostly he just wants his $70,000 back.
Someone thought that wasn’t GOOD? Damn. I could have done without the Lucy Liu character, but everything else was great. David “You’re gonna fuckin’ kill me, aren’t you?” Paymer was good in his role, Gregg Henry was awesome, Bill Duke, James Coburn, John Glover. . .some great touches of humor to offset the brutal violence as well. Gibson’s eventual exasperation over no one being able to remember he JUST wants $70,000 cracked me up.
Reading your Wiki link shows they made a director's cut, \*Payback: Straight Up\*, that introduces more changes than I've ever seen in a re-cut. Gonna have to look this one up, but I'm not sure I like the changes from what I've read.
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### Author:  [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2014, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-an-unjustly-derided-movie/704549/99 "2014-11-14T19:02:09Z")
> [@Intergalactic\_Gladiator](#):
>
> [Payback](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payback_(1999_film)) was slammed when it came out and I never understood why. It’s a homage to noir films. Mel Gibson wants revenge on the guys who done him wrong but mostly he just wants his $70,000 back.
I \*\*
\*\* this movie.
Hand to God, one of my all-time favorites.
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### Author:  [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2014, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-an-unjustly-derided-movie/704549/100 "2014-11-14T19:14:36Z")
Adding another one: Contagion. Everyone laments how dumb movies can get. They made a smart one and no one went to see it.
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