Partially inspired by the “piss all over my work” thread.
I’ll first go with Akira - what the hell was going on in that movie? And the second half of it just consisted of the name “Tetsuo!” being yelled over and over.
Catcher in the Rye - the protagonist is an ass, we get it after ten pages. The rest is just unnecessary.
OK Computer - supposed to be some seminal moment in music making, in truth it only has two decent songs in it, the rest is just whiney pap.
Blade Runner - So bored… must… stay… awake… Again, no idea of what is going on most of the time and its so dark you can’t see anything.
In fact, anything and everything by Disney. Disney characters are sugary cutesy sweet and soulless. I just don’t get any of it. This goes beyond mere “Stuff I personally don’t like” to “stuff which is so obviously appallingly bad I wonder how its creator ever made a nickel let alone was taken so seriously.”
Give me Warner Bros cartoon characters any day. Interesting, flawed, fun, real.
I will go to my grave convinced that these are considered a classic only because they survived to the present. It’s like if in 750 years Tom Clancy is considered some sort of great master because his work is still around.
Agree with the OP on Blade Runner. I’ve really tried a couple of times to watch it with an eye to understanding why people think it’s so great and I just don’t see it.
I’ll add Hamlet to the list. Oh, it’s the most perfect tragedy in drama! Yeah whatever, it’s not even the best tragedy from Shakespeare. King Lear is way better and more interesting, as is MacBeth.
Until last night, I’d have agreed with you. Last night, I saw the newest super duper special deluxe director’s cut at The Music Box. It’s pretty pretty now! And the print’s been brightened, or something, or maybe it just works better when you shine a light through film instead of on VHS, 'cause I could actually see what was going on! There seemed to be more of a plot there than I remembered, too, and no voice over to accomplish that. The effects that needed to be (like the big pyramid building) were made much better with CGI, but the ones that don’t (the aircars) weren’t obviously messed with, and they did a great job marrying the two. Plus, the scene with Joanna Cassidy going through plate glass no longer looks like a dude in a wig.
Anyhow, Blade Runner’s off my overrated list now. It’s moved onto my Misogynist List, but off my overrated list.
Star Wars, on the other hand…look, I know we were all 6 years old when it came out (whatever your chronological age, you’re six when you see that movie), and it was the coolest, bestest most original thing ever. But remove that childlike glee and you have a ridiculous script, hammy acting, clumsy directing and the most obnoxiously heavyhanded editing (really? we’re using wipes?) I’ve ever seen in a major summer blockbuster. And I’ve seen Armageddon Day.
I’ll just mention The Lord of the Rings - the books - and run out of the thread before the flames start. Just…too many words.
Foundation. Also Ringworld. I don’t get it - some of the “Great Classics of Sci Fi” are incredibly awesome. The Stars My Destination, for example. A Canticle for Leibowitz. Cordwainer Smith. And then you look at the Big Guys and they’re just nowhere near as good. I don’t get it.
I would like to add (to the dismay of my Beginning Film Interpretation 101 teacher) … Citizen Kane. The protagonist is a self-absorbed ass, the dialog is hurried and Rosebud was the friggin sled for crissakes! The bitch gave me a D on the report because I trashed the movie.
Seconded for The Lord of the Rings – books only, however. Long winded and confusing tangents to the plot. I’ve tried many times to re-re-re-read the trilogy and stopped 1/2 way through the Fellowship. The Jackson movies, however did a great job in moving the plot line along nicely. They remain in my favorites.
I could go on and on with absolute drivel being presented as “classics”…
The Princess Bride - loved it when I was 8, watched it again as an adult and it wasn’t funny or clever. At all.
And I agree with Star Wars, it’s a B-movie that was succesful. All those people who whaled on the prequels for being travesties and besmirching the honour of the originals needed to get a life big time.
Football - Jesus it’s 22 men kicking a piece of plastic around a pitch, anyone who conflates this with life-and-death significance is missing a piece of their brain (and I include my father in this).
I was about to come in, guns blazing, and get myself banned for flaming you. Then I read it again and realized you were talking about soccer. Carry on.
Well then, OneCentStamp, you’re not going to like this one:
All of professional sports. Baseball, football, basketball, soccer, hockey, figure skating, what the hell ever, I don’t get it. Yeah ok, physical activity is supposedly fun or something. But the sheer fanaticism that goes along with that is, IMO, completely unnecessary.
I think Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Fitzgerald all wrote crap. Can’t stand any of their writing. None of the characters generate even the slightest interest or sympathy. Many of them die, and frankly I don’t care that they died. The ones that don’t die are impotent, or whiners, or lazy, or just plain self-absorbed. There’s nothing to see here. You can go about your business. Move along.
I agree that Blade Runner is an overrated movie. You could say the director creates a futuristic world, but it is a world where nothing interesting really happens, and where uninteresting people interact with other uninteresting people, or uninteresting robots. As a result, I have very little interest in watching it.
I would also add 2001. It breaks one of the cardinal rules of movie making, and that is that your film ought to be ENTERTAINING. No one wants to watch spaceships dock for an hour. And they don’t really care for “descent into the monolith”/psychodelic acid trips either, unless they happen to be doing LSD while watching the movie, in which case I am sure they are very entertained.
