Works you once thought were brilliant, but later decided weren't all that...

Cafe Society
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Works of any artistic branch: literature, music, cinema, fine arts…what once enamored you as a younger, possibly less sophisticated person, that you later changed your mind about?

Cinema: As a teenaged, stoner deadhead, I thought the apex of cinematic artistic statements was (ahem) “Easy Rider.” I just thought it was the coolest, most stunning film EVER. A few years ago, I happened to rent it. I wasn’t even sober at the time (in fact I felt compelled to take a few tokes before hitting “play”.) But watching it again after so many years, I realized it was a plotless, pointless and just basically dull bit of self-indulgent tripe. To say that Peter Fonda (whom I must admit I had kind of a crush on) was wooden is an insult to wood. Dennis Hopper was just irritating. (By the end, I was rooting for the two of them to get offed.) The entire movie has a tone of somber, self-importance, and Hopper & Fonda want to say “something…IMPORTANT” about America in the 1960s, but apparently can’t think of anything to say but “wow, man!”

Literature: I first read “Wuthering Heights” in college (15 years ago). At the time I was blown away at the ferocity between Heathcliff & Cathy, and the book seemed utterly what I imagined a ‘romance novel’ could or would be like. I re-read it a few months ago, and thought “meh.” I still think it’s a good book, but not necessarilly a GREAT book. And at the risk of sounding bombastic, I’ve had enough life experience to realize that all-consuming, ferocious, life-shattering romances tend to be delusional, fizzle out quickly, and you eventually look back on them and think “what the hell was going through my head?”

Art: M.C. Escher prints. I chalk my fascination with Escher up to that stoner period I mentioned above. In reality, his prints are obvious, not especially deep or moving, and just plain gimmicky.

music: “Bitches Brew” by Miles Davis simply doesn’t hold up as well as “Sketches of Spain” or “Kind of Blue.”

What have you changed your mind about as you got older?

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Glengarry Glenross blew me away when I saw it in a pack theater of people that just *hated * it. I loved it. It stayed with me for weeks.

I hadn’t seen it since it was in the theater and I caught twenty minutes of it or so on cable. and…it didn’t hold up.
The other movies that I/we as a group loved but when we watched it again (trying to capture the glory days of our youth) and it was like, " Man, what the hell happened? this movie use to be brilliant?"

Slapshot & Kelly’s Heroes are the first two that come to mind. Both have their moments, but Slapshot is painful to watch with the clothing. Hansen’s rock.

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I remember watching “Jaws” in a theater and being amazed at how real the shark looked.

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When I was a teenager, I had a huge collection of Edith Piaf records. Played 'em over and over. Thought Piaf was immensely deep and tragic.

Now when I hear Edith Piaf, she seems like a mopey, melodramatic drag queen, not a profoundly tragic muse. I guess I have acquired some cynicism. Sometimes I miss the old, easily-impressed me.

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I used to think that Apocalypse Now was a brilliant film. Today I wouldn’t say it’s a terrible film, but it’s not nearly as interesting to me as it once was. Jane’s Addiction was one of my favorite bands back in the day…now they seem like a pathetic joke.

There are probably dozens of other bands, books, films that I’ve grown out of, but it also interests me to observe that in my “old age,” I seem to be discovering value in works that I once thought were complete crap. E.g., back in high school, when I thought that Jane’s Addiction was God’s gift to rock n roll, I also thought that Bruce Springsteen was a complete joke. Now I know better.

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Jane Austen, the entire oeuvre. This is going to get me killed here, but I realized after rereading one of her books that she’s the originator of the Harlequin Romance: dashing, handsome hero, beautiful, spirited heroine, etc. She’s a good writer, but geez – predictable beyond anything.

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The first thing that comes to mind whenever this topic comes up: The Fountainhead or anything by Ayn Rand.

When I was 17, I thought she had it figured out.

By the time I was 23 or so, I couldn’t stop laughing at the awfulness of the prose and the arrogant immaturity of her philosophy.

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Once upon a time I thought Nicholas Roeg’s film 1976 The Man Who Fell to Earth was brilliant. I talked it up to my husband over the years. We saw it recently and boy, was my face red! Zzzzzzzz…

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My view of American Beauty has come down a lot, though maybe that was inevitably because I thought it was so good when it was new. I haven’t watched it all the way through in years, but when I’ve seen bits, it comes across as kinda whiny and pretentious. Not bad, and still with some funny moments, but sort of teen-aged all the same. Maybe it was just one of those movies that speaks to you at a certain time in your life; when I saw it I was a senior in high school.

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The Democratic Party? :smiley:
Virtually any epic popular with the college crowd is an embarassment when you grow up: Atlas Shrugged, Dune, anything by Robert Jordan, Lord of the Rings…

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When I was about 12 I thought Escape From New York was the coolest, baddest, most-ass-kicking movie ever made. I watched it about a year ago on DVD – for the first time in ages – and I was amazed at how incredibly blah it really is. Cheesy, dated, cheap-looking, and most surprising of all, there’s very little action. I remembered a roller coaster ride and it turned out to be a merry-go-round.

I suppose you could say I’ve been spoiled by the likes of Aliens, T2, and other intense action films, and so EFNY only looks tame in comparison. But a lot of John Carpenter’s other movies have held up amazingly well. (**Big Trouble in Little China ** is just as much fun today as it was the first time I saw it.)

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It seems like most of the things I’m disillusioned with fall into two categories:

  1. novelty - it was new and wonderous and neat when I was first exposed to it but now seems pedestrian. Examples would be alt movies like Liquid Sky or The Man Who Fell to Earth. Surrealist art. A lot of early punk.

  2. youthful passion - when I was younger I could reallly empathize with forbidden love, tragic drama, etc. Now that I’m older, a lot of the histronics just seem kinda silly to me.

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I’m a big fan of the Harry Potter books, but I’m re-reading #5 before I start #6, and JK Rowling is not the great writer I thought she was. I think someone gave her the Big Book of Adverbs and she’s determined to use every last one of them.

She’s still a great storyteller, but the writing could use a good edit.

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I’d agree with Tremorviolet’s explanations for this waning of enthusiasm for stuff that we used to be into. I’ll add another one: a sense of perspective that comes with having been around the block a few times. E.g., it’s only possible to get excited about a dumb punk band like Green Day if you’re unaware that there are hundreds of other dumb punk bands that came before them and sound just like them (or better). It’s only possible to think that Ayn Rand is a great philosopher if you haven’t read any other philosophy in your life, etc.

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Substitute Escape From New York with Judge Dredd for me.

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The Magus. When I first read it, I thought it was astonishing and recommended it to everyone, including a girl I had a crush on. Terrible plan that; she saw it for what it was right away, but I was deluded for years.

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Marley23 - great choice; I never got that movie.

silenus - while I have to agree with you, I am a sucker for Dune and still love it.

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I was, and still am a big fan of Rush, and of comic book artist Steve Ditko. As I understand it, they are both big fans of Rand. So, I sat down to read some book of hers’ or another. Blehhhhhhhhhhhchhh!

Stopped after 50 pages. What crap. Still, I suppose it must be the, “There is such a thing as right and wrong, non-connected to religion.” message that I see in Ditko’s work that I like, no matter where he got it from.

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Space: 1999

I was a SciFi crazed 14 year old when it was first aired. I even bought the soundtrack. I know the show still has a lot of fans, but geez.

I wonder if I’m gonna look at Firefly the same way in 30 years, providing I live that long…? (74 doesn’t seem too optimistic, does it?)

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I should think before hitting submit.

The biggest one is of course LoTR. A masterpiece when I was around 14. It was not fiction but history in a way that was suppressed in school. These things had happened, were real.
Incredibly boring now.