Most overrated films...

[Guido]

None of these films are bad by any means, but I thought all of them were overhyped and rather more shallow than most people seem to think they are. What is your list?

Slumdog Millionaire - Make your characters archetypal, viewers will know what emotions to apply to them; keep the story familiar, perhaps a fallen angle that, against all odds, finds redemption. No matter if the dialog is crap, we know what the archetypes meant to say. It's comfort food, a reaffirmation of cultural myths.

Death in Venice - none of the beauty and depth of the book, and almost no development in the relationship between the boy and the professor is made - the idea to have the film largely devoid of dialogue could have worked, but the acting and directing just isn't good enough to pull it off - there's not enough subtlety. The substitution of Mahler for the author is pointless and adds nothing to the story (why are the flashbacks in here?) It's bloated and dull.

Broke Back Mountain - unconvincing acting, not least the relationship between the two leads. Also somehow the musical score won the oscar!! (Over John Williams' Memoirs of a Geisha which is certainly one of his best. Which leads me onto...)

Memoirs of a Geisha. Dull.

Schindler's list - traumatic but too Hollywoodish (see: the ending) to be really truly powerful.

The Dark Knight - a fun action movie, but there's nothing particularly controversial about making the bad guys more than card board cutouts.

Cinema Paradiso - Sentimental. In every way ersatz.

Crash - story doesn't quite come off as a whole and the message is rather hamfisted and unsubtle (Racism is bad. Erm... yeah we know). Race is the only thing that seems to motivate and matter to people in this movie which just makes it rather one dimensional and uninvolving. Just not as good as everyone thought.

House of Flying Daggers. Overlong, not as as beautiful as Crouching Tiger or Hero. Acting not great.



And I can already feel it coming, but I strongly disagree with anyone who says American beauty!!!

[karlhenning]

In brief:  partial and qualified agreement;  partial dissent;  and some of them, I just haven't seen.

[zorzynek]

Pulp Fiction - trashy, dull, not so witty as one might thinks
Сталкер [Stalker] - boring & pretentious like most of Tarkovsky's work
Citizen Kane - all characters in this movie should be lying. instead everyone tells the truth. why is that?
Mulholland Dr. - few nice Fellini like scenes can't challenge the sea of bullshit

[Scarpia]

Saving Private Ryan, starts out as a very touching film, but the latter part, when the handful of US soldiers defeat a Nazi Panzer division with a hand grenade and an oily rag, reverts to stereotypical Hollywood nonsense.

[PerfectWagnerite]

Casablanca.

[karlhenning]

Everyone agrees on what overrated means? . . .

[Scarpia]

Everyone agrees on what overrated means? . . .

General consensus holds that it is better than I find it?

[Todd]

There are quite a few, but some that stick out:

Gone With The Wind - Long, bloated, and soporific.

Lawrence of Arabia - Great in parts, bland in others.  Still a great film, just not that great.

Titanic - Truly awful.

Crash (the oscar winner, not the Cronenberg film) - Um, why the fuss?

The Hangover - About 15 funny minutes.  Maybe.  (Okay, not a great film, but shouldn't comedies be funny?)

American Beauty - Slick crap.

A Beautiful Mind - Zzzzzz.

Memento - Lots of praise for a not particularly compelling thriller, or whatever genre it is.

[Marc]

Gone With The Wind - Long, bloated, and soporific.

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

American Beauty - Slick crap.

I always 'preferred' Happiness.

[Brian]

Slumdog is an interesting case: it is very much an American/Western movie, not an Indian movie, and its story is quintessentially American, but somehow it gets away with it. Remember, Star Wars is a claptrap assembly of cliches too!

Here is my list:
- Star Wars. I like Slumdog. I don't like George Lucas' dialogue, or Mark Hamill's resolutely charisma-less hero (who, in that respect, is a lot like the film Harry Potter, actually), or the first two prequels, or the underwhelming "climax" of Episode 4. Great soundtrack, of course.
- Lost in Translation. It's like celluloid melatonin. Truly a yawn.
- V for Vendetta. Not that most people rate it that highly, but this is a vote against the people who have deluded themselves into thinking the movie has philosophical depth or a deeper meaning. It doesn't.
- The Matrix. Ditto.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship. This movie made me laugh. All the way through. I just could not stop laughing at how bad it was, how cheesy, how stupid. The group I was watching it with ended up hating me because of all the laughing. Oh, and I loved the books, by the way.
- Annie Hall. Loved the movie, thought it was very warm and very funny, so don't think I'm bashing it. But this was the last comedy to win Best Picture, and (at the time) the first in 17 years (The Apartment, 1960). Is Annie Hall really the best comedy in the last 50 years? Does anybody really believe that?
- West Side Story. The original musical is (in my opinion) the Great American Work of Art. Too bad the film didn't serve it well. Somebody needs to remake the movie with two compelling lead actors and a cast of Puerto Ricans (and Poles, maybe) with natural accents.
- Moulin Rouge!. You can tell a romance is bad when you don't care whether the lovers get together or not, for even a single second, through the entire movie. I loved Jim Broadbent's work as the impresario, but then, Jim Broadbent is consistently great no matter the quality of the movie he's in.
- Mulholland Drive. Can think of no better description than zorzynek's:

sea of bullshit

[DavidRoss]

Loved Slumdog Millionaire, Memoirs of a Geisha, some of the scenes in House of Flying Daggers (film is a visual medium), Pulp Fiction & Citizen Kane (both examples of great inventive film-making), Casablanca (greatest movie ever made!), Lawrence of Arabia, Star Wars (genre buster—you had to see it on release and be old enough to have seen the movie serials that inspired it), The Fellowship of the Ring (the others, especially the last, failed to deliver on this one's promise), Annie Hall (great in its time but it hasn't held up well—still, the scenes with Christopher Walken are priceless!), West Side Story (the music, the color, the choreography).

Liked Death in Venice, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, The Matrix, Moulin Rouge (the color, the flash, the chutzpah!).

And I despised American Beauty for its vicious, self-righteous bigotry.  Since it got "Best Picture" it might be a contender for most overrated film of the past 20 years, even worse than Titanic...but hasn't it been forgotten already?  Lost in Translation is a strong contender, too—all that acclaim for such sophomoric dreck?

My contenders, though, for most overrated are the fictions by Michael Moore that have won Oscars as documentaries. WTF?  Not only are they not documentaries, but they're so horribly, tediously clumsy and disrespectful of the audience's intelligence that they're unwatchably BAD!

[Bulldog]

Three overrated movies that immediately come to mind:

Doubt
Star Wars
Last Tango in Paris (worst movie I recall ever watching)

[greg]

- Lost in Translation. It's like celluloid melatonin. Truly a yawn.

I agree here. It was probably just slightly more interesting than watching cement dry. Then again... maybe not.

[Guido]

I absolutely adore American Beauty. It also has maybe the best film soundtrack of the last 20 or so years. Why's it bigoted?

Lost in Translation is getting a bad wrap - really liked that one - similar in a sense to Death in Venice in its slowness and minimal dialogue, but this one has the subtlety and style to pull it off. I understand why people don't like it, but I think its very touching and hugely evocative.

[drogulus]

I absolutely adore American Beauty. It also has maybe the best film soundtrack of the last 20 or so years. Why's it bigoted?

Lost in Translation is getting a bad wrap - really liked that one - similar in a sense to Death in Venice in its slowness and minimal dialogue, but this one has the subtlety and style to pull it off. I understand why people don't like it, but I think its very touching and hugely evocative.

      American Beauty was very effective propaganda for the standard Hollywood view that suburbanites "got no reason to live". It was well made and acted but left a nasty aftertaste. Curiously, the director made at least partial amends by making Revolutionary Road, which by Hollywood standards is a quite mature look at the phenomenon of the quasi-bohemians who live in the suburbs, despise their neighbors while dreaming of moving to Paris and doing something really important like writing a novel. But then the story goes a little....wrong when you learn these people are just phonies with attitude, and then things go really wrong because they realize it, too, and one of them actually grows up. Coming from the film industry this is almost heretical, and certainly not what you'd expect from Sam Mendes.

      Lost in Translation depends on the 2 main characters played by Bill Murray and Scarlett Johannson. There you have the strength and weakness of the film. Scarlett can't carry a film, she's not very interesting. Murray did all the work and then some but that actress is a black hole sucking all the meaning and interest right down the drain.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

- Annie Hall. Loved the movie, thought it was very warm and very funny, so don't think I'm bashing it. But this was the last comedy to win Best Picture, and (at the time) the first in 17 years (The Apartment, 1960). Is Annie Hall really the best comedy in the last 50 years? Does anybody really believe that?

I love Annie Hall, too. Wouldn't know about "best comedy in 50 years" but don't really care. It's screaming funny. I mean, who has a house under a roller coaster?

- Mulholland Drive. Can think of no better description than zorzynek's:

I'll add my voice to this one. Total garbage and worse: a waste of my time.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

... Annie Hall (great in its time but it hasn't held up well—still, the scenes with Christopher Walken are priceless!)...

Those Walken scenes are indeed priceless...might be some of the finest comedy ever put on film.

[Brian]

I love Annie Hall, too. Wouldn't know about "best comedy in 50 years" but don't really care. It's screaming funny. I mean, who has a house under a roller coaster?

I love the one-liners. What is it he says - something like, "Sorry I couldn't come; my weasel had hepatitis"?

[greg]

Add Superbad to the list, which I just finished watching. Complete trash.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

I love the one-liners. What is it he says - something like, "Sorry I couldn't come; my weasel had hepatitis"?

Shoot...I forget where that line comes from...oh well, I'm sure the context is funny!