Was Billy Jack really any more popular with the public than it was with the critics?
(It is worth seeing, BTW, but only for educational purposes, as a kind of remarkable cultural artifact of a remarkable anything-can-happen period. You will sit in amazement wondering how this film got made. “Low budget” seems too weak a phrase.)
The list of movies that critics panned that were loved by the public had to be loooooong. Same for the reverse. Public and critical opinion divergence isn’t exactly rare.
Piss Christ: The Movie
(ok, I made that up).
[stuns Lumpy with a tire iron]
No, I made that up!
[catches plane to Hollywood]
Am I crazy but don’t both of these things happen almost all the time? There are countless small and medium sized movies critics rave about that audiences ignore and there are dozens of movies that make kajillions of dollars that no critic that isn’t a quote whore said anything good about.
Is making money the same thing as being loved by the public? Some of those small movies are adored by the people who actually see them, and some of the blockbusters are considered disappointing by audiences. IIRC, the 1998 Hollywood Godzilla movie made plenty of money but wasn’t particularly well-liked by theatergoers. It currently has a 38% “liked it” score from Rotten Tomatoes voters, and according to Wikipedia while the movie had a huge opening weekend its revenues dropped nearly 60% in the second week of release which suggests it had bad word of mouth.
I was in high school when Godzilla was released and presumably people around my age (or more specifically boys around my age) were the target audience for this movie, but while I knew people who saw it I don’t remember anyone ever describing it as being good. I do remember some lunch room jokes about how dumb it was. I did know people who liked, say, Independence Day, so it’s not like my young friends were all a bunch of little hipsters who only watched foreign art films.
I’m glad someone else already said this. I’ve never met anyone who actually liked the movie. The best I’ve ever heard anyone personally say was that they didn’t get it. It seems to me that a lot of people must have thought “oh, look at all this weird stuff and it doesn’t make sense. It must not make sense because it’s all artsy and over my head.” When it’s really just that it’s really just a terrible film.
Titanic suffered from bad advance buzz because of its sheer cost and stories of overruns and difficulties on the set. Then IIRC it didn’t open huge, just opened well - so it took a while to realize it was getting tons of repeat business which was how it made such big $$…
I do. Do you post about movies much here? I’m sure I am not the only one.
This is an empty criticism. If you don’t like it, fine. Arguing that nobody else really likes it - either their opinions don’t count (the opinions of cinemaphiles don’t count?) or they’re pretending to like it - is just bullshit.
Armageddon. 16% Rotten rating, made half a billion dollars worldwide. Terrible movie.
It opened at number one in the weekend box office. Beating a James Bond film. It stayed at number one from December to March.
There was an “early” review, Time Magazine that was not kind. It was published before it was supposed to be. (before the movie opening)
I’d say any action film. Transformers.
You are not. I think it’s a masterpiece.
The example that first springs to my mind is Tyler Perry and his Madea films, which are either panned by critics or not even screened for them - it’s less controversial that way - but are consistently popular. The first three grossed $50m, $60m, and $90m respectively. The disconnect between the critics and Perry’s audience is notable in itself (Roger Ebert was accused of racism for giving the first movie a bad writeup, although he wasn’t entirely scathing).
Here’s an article on that very subject, from the Chicago Tribune.
"Read the reviews of last weekend’s top-grossing movie, “Diary of a Mad Black Woman,” and it’s pretty clear that most mainstream critics had never before heard of Tyler Perry and thought Madea was a misspelling of the woman associated with Euripides. It’s clear evidence that entertainment in America remains a largely segmented business.
But for the 4,300 crammed – and every last seat was taken – into the Arie Crown Theatre Thursday, Perry and Madea (his drag alter ego) have been familiar and beloved for years.
Perry (and Madea) are megastars of the “urban attraction” touring theater circuit, a black-owned entity that floats perfectly happily under most white cultural radars because it doesn’t need white audiences. In this world, the pistol-packing Grandma Madea is like a black version of Dame Edna Everage – an iconic authority figure who can be stuffed into any plot and still send her fans into hysterics."
I can’t prove it, but I think there were at least a couple film genres that tended to be badly reviewed yet do OK at the box office. Eventually critics became more accepting. I’m thinking horror in particular, but I suspect that science fiction, monster movies, blacksploitation, teen films, etc. also suffered bad reviews by critics who just weren’t the target audience.
The original Night of the Living Dead is generally recognized as a classic now, or at least as influential. Some critics admired it at the time, according to Wikipedia. I guess the best you could say is that it got mixed reviews. The Exorcist also received mixed reviews but did well at the box office-- second highest of the year. Possibly in recognition of how well it did, it received a couple Oscar nominations, including the first nomination ever of a horror film for Best Picture.
I think that last sentence says a lot. There were dozens of classic horror films prior to 1973. Not even Bride of Frankenstein, Rosemary’s Baby, or The Haunting deserved a Best Picture nomination?
I’ll also chime in that I like 2001 OK. It has some great scenes and is one of the few films marketed as science fiction that resembled science fiction. I’m not a fan of the psychedelic ending-- which is, IMO, just a trope that used to be popular. I guess it helps that I tend to like Kubrick’s other films.
It’s like that snoozer Hamlet: just a lot of overused devices strung together.
Quite famously D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance was hailed by critics as a total masterpiece, but was a total flop commercially.
The Boondock Saints could very well be the definition. It’s been torn apart by most all critics, but it’s got one hell of a following.
The Thing received what was, at best, a middling reception from critics at release. But it’s been more than redeemed in the following years.
2001 is a good movie, even great. I just figure the last part was where everyone was supposed to toke up.
The story of the making of the movie was as you speak, but early reviews were extremely positive. Just check out the 1-1-2000* reviews of Titanic over at Rotten Tomatoes. You’ll see such quotes as:
Are there negative reviews? Yes, every movie has them. Regardless, of the 62 reviews dated 1-1-2000, 11 are negative and 51 (81%) are positive.
So Titanic doesn’t really fit this thread. Tyler Perry, who I mentioned in post 25, does.
*No reviews are dated earlier, so we can assume many of these were original (1997) reviews for the film.