Overrated movies

[canbelto]

We've done favorite movie romances, so I'm curious as to what you think are overrated movies. I have several:

1. The Philadelphia Story. I find this picture arch and annoying on repeated viewings, and none of the stars did their best work here, IMO. James Stewart was certainly better in a whole slew of movies, but he got his Oscar as Mike for reasons that still baffle me. Especially considering Henry Fonda's Tom Joad was also up for an Oscar that year. Grant's less delightfully sarcastic/wicked than he is in other movies, and Hepburn I found too mannered.

2. Jules et Jim. I'm stepping into hot water here, as I know how beloved this film is. But for me, I just couldnt get into it. I found that character of Catherine so unpleasant I literally couldnt stand to see her onscreen by the end of the movie. The back and forth menage a trois never really touched me -- I just found them all to be rather selfish and annoying.

3. Million Dollar Baby - sure it's good, and it has some touching moments, and Morgan Freeman is wonderful to watch as always. But I found Swank's performance as Maggie rather insincere and unconvincing, and why such an apparently gentle, salt-of-the-earth young lady is so determined to become a female Ali I found puzzling. Don't get me wrong, I liked the movie, I just didnt think it deserved all the accolades it got. I think Sideways was the better movie and should have won best picture.

[richard53dog]

It's a Wonderful Life.

I know, I know it's considered a classic by many but I can't stand it :yawn:

[Mme. Hermine]

Finian's Rainbow.

2001: A Space Odyssey

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

[klingsor]

It's a Wonderful Life.

I know, I know it's considered a classic by many but I can't stand it :yawn:

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Couldn't agree more.

Oh, gotta run. My doorbell just rang. Another angel just earned his/her wings.

[canbelto]

How could I forget the Sound of Music. I know many people love this film, but it makes me want to barf.

[carbro]

We've done favorite movie romances, so I'm curious as to what you think are overrated movies. I have several:

1. The Philadelphia Story.  . . .

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I much prefer the musicalized version, High Society -- although even that can't sustain the level of Louis Armstrong's early cameo.

[klingsor]

The Searchers

I just don't get it.

There are great movies I don't like (Suna no onna (1964)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058625/ comes to mind), but The Searchers isn't one of those.

[canbelto]

Klingsor, I think The Searchers is a classic because it epitomizes something about the American mythology of the lone pioneer. It's the Swan Lake of Westerns -- it had all the Western movie values rolled into one film. Manifest destiny, fight against Indians, importance of individuality, misogyny, isolation from society.

The second reason I think The Searchers is a classic is because it had the subtlety to question those very values listed above. Is Ethan really just a murderous racist? Is he isolated from society because he chooses to be, or because he *has* to be? It also lacked the "happy" ending of most Westerns -- Debbie is saved, but Ethan is still as isolated and alienated from society as ever.

[dirac]

I have ambivalent feelings about the “overrated” label. There’s a scene in Woody Allen’s Manhattan in which two of the characters are playing a “most overrated” game, and Allen loses his patience and says firmly, “All of those people you mentioned are great.” Or words to that effect, this is from memory.

I would define a work as “overrated” if there is a critical consensus that it’s really great, and I think it’s not so great. The Sound of Music would not qualify as overrated for me because although it was very popular, the more discriminating critics didn’t care for it, and although it has achieved classic status there’s no one who’d call it art. (I’ve always liked it, myself, although I don’t think it’s a great movie.) I would call Million Dollar Baby overrated, because it won a slew of awards and there was a powerful critical consensus on its behalf, and I disagreed with pretty much all of it.......

Canbelto, I think you’re giving the Western genre waaaaaaaay too much credit.

One candidate: Psycho. A virtuoso slasher pic, but still a slasher pic, and people write about it as if it’s a great aesthetic experience. Gives film criticism a bad name. Yuck. I prefer earlier Hitchcock, when he wasn’t allowed to cut up the ladies with such graphic enthusiasm.

[Estelle]

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

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I suspect that my dad would agree with you, because he's completely allergic to Michel

Legrand's music...

[Helene]

I wouldn't classify these films as "overrated," but two much-lauded films that nearly everyone loves but which left me cold are The Bicycle Thief and Children of Paradise.

[Hans]

I prefer earlier Hitchcock, when he wasn’t allowed to cut up the ladies with such graphic enthusiasm.

Maybe I watch too many scary movies, but...Psycho? Graphic?

Heavily-praised though it may have been, I couldn't stand Sideways. Pretentious, trite, heavy-handed, and dull, IMO--I was so bored I actually contemplated walking out (something I've never actually done).

[dirac]

Psycho isn't graphic by today's standards, but along with later Hitchcocks like Frenzy I think it helped open the door. Frenzy is actually a better example of what I was objecting to, but it wasn't as widely praised as Psycho.

[Giannina]

I go to few movies and choose them carefully; therefore I'm rarely disappointed. Except for "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"; yikes. In my defense I must add that my friend picked it rather than I.

Giannina

[Helene]

Heavily-praised though it may have been, I couldn't stand Sideways.  Pretentious, trite, heavy-handed, and dull, IMO--I was so bored I actually contemplated walking out (something I've never actually done).

I lasted about 10 minutes while watching Sideways on a plane. I didn't even last for Sandra Oh, who's one of my favorite actresses. I couldn't quite walk out, but I went back to my book.

[canbelto]

Let me add, I also think "On the Waterfront" is overrated. It is basically saved by Brando and Eva Marie Saint -- rarely has a movie relationship been as achingly tender and poetic. Brando's performance is of course unforgettable. It also has many good moments -- nearly everyone loves the scene at the bar, or the "I coulda been a contender" scene. I do too. But overall the picture gives me a nasty taste -- after all, it's Elia Kazan justifying his chicken#$%! decision to name names at the HUAC. I thus hate the smarmy subtext behind the picture. Father Barry may also be the single most irritating character in movie history.

Another overrated movie I think is Godfather II. Some critics said it was better than Godfather I, and I heartily disagree. Godfather II has some memorable moments (like the final scene with Michael sitting in front of the lake) and is a very very good movie. But it's nowhere near as memorable as Godfather I. For one, Michael is such a single-sided monster in Godfather II -- you forget how complex this character was in I.

[Mashinka]

Two movies I consider terribly overrated are Titanic and Pretty Woman.

Apart from some of the SFX, I found Titanic a travesty of what was after all a disaster of awful proportions and that laughable love story just trivialized the tragic loss of life in what was an actual event. A Night to Remember, a black & white film from 1958 starring Kenneth More, was by far the better film and more importantly it was made at a time when the manners and mores of forty odd years before were still remembered and understood. The restraint and heroism depicted in the earlier film is far more moving than anything in the multi million-dollar movie that succeeded it.

Pretty Woman is a film that seems to suggest life’s ultimate goal is to engage in orgies of rampant materialism and left a very bad taste in my mouth. Hey girls, meet a rich enough man and you’ll be rewarded with lots of stuff. And do girls as beautiful as Julia Roberts voluntarily become prostitutes (unless they have a drug habit)? I don’t think so.

[canbelto]

I'm going to REALLY get in hot water over this, but I find three Ingmar Bergman films overrated: Scenes from a Marriage, Wild Strawberries, and Cries and Whispers.

I've never seen the full television mini-series that Scenes from a Marriage was based on, but the resulting film feels distinctly underwhelming. Maybe it's because the issues of that film (wife/mother finds her own personality, faithless husband is humbled) seem trite today.

Same with Wild Strawberries. The symbolism is about as subtle as a sledgehammer, the issues also seem trite and overfamiliar, and I wonder if it would be the "classic" that it is today without Bergman's patented gloom-and-doom style.

And Cries and Whispers? I just couldnt sit through that one.

[Old Fashioned]

I wouldn't call Titanic overrated because there are many who do consider it to be a bad movie.

I hated High Society, although I haven't seen Philadelphia Story to compare it to. What did you mean by that comment on the Satchmo cameo, Carbro?

Breakfast at Tiffany's is far from being my favorite A. Hepburn film.

Funny Face. Didn't like that one too much, either.

[Petra]

Lars von Trier's movies are hugely overrated IMO.

Kingdom (a TV series, not a movie, but I saw it in a cinema as a two-part screening), Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark - I suffered through them all and then I stopped going to see his movies. They are misogynistic (sp?), manipulative and hypocritical.

[Helene]

Lars von Trier's movies are hugely overrated IMO.

Kingdom (a TV series, not a movie, but I saw it in a cinema as a two-part screening), Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark - I suffered through them all and then I stopped going to see his movies. They are misogynistic (sp?), manipulative and hypocritical.

I completely forgot about von Trier. Breaking the Waves, ugh to the nth degree.

I forgot The Piano, too.

[dirac]

Sideways was overpraised, IMO, but not bad – just not that great; it stood out because last year was not a very good one for movies. It’s a good candidate for the category under discussion. (Note: I am not saying no good pictures were released, only that the pickings were not especially stellar.) Much depended on how you took the character of Miles (the Giamatti role) and I didn’t take him well at all. I agree with canbelto that in a choice between Million Dollar Baby and Sideways, the latter wins hands down. But I'd prefer not to choose.

I'm not sure that I would classify von Trier as overrated, because there is actually a very sharp controversy as to the nature and quality of his work, and as a rule his pictures receive highly mixed and polarized reviews.

The Piano was insanely overrated, in my view. The few things I liked about it were vastly outweighed by the demerits. My heart went out to poor Sam Neill.

There were many, many people who didn’t like Titanic, and most of the reviews were more negative than not, so I’d agree with Old Fashioned that we can’t call it overrated. I’m prepared to mount a defense of it, should anyone ask.

Wild Strawberries is a classic, but I’ve actually read quite a few critics who were not that enthusiastic about it for the reasons you’ve cited, canbelto, and I’m not sure we can call it overrated, either.

[canbelto]

The reason I put "Sideways" above "Million Dollar Baby" was that in Sideways, I didnt have the feeling I was being manipulated. Alexander Payne presented Jack and Miles, warts and all, and filmed their adventures. I thought it was funny, although I know a lot of people who thought that the duo were just tiresome and unpleasant. (And as someone who pops a xanax before going into a restaurant, I can identify with Miles ) But the movie offered a slice of life, and I liked it. Plus the gentle ribbing of wine snobs -- my boss at work is a wine snob, and ... he's exactly like Miles.

MDB, otoh, I thought was blatantly manipulative and overplayed the sentimentality factor. It's not enough that Maggie is 30 and still a waitress -- her mom has to be a greedy, unpleasant welfare queen. The film just piled on misfortunes for poor Maggie, and with each misfortune I drew further and further away from the picture. I thought Hilary Swank's performance was overrated -- it's a one-note caricature of Appalachian hillybilly. And why this apparently sweet young woman would want so desperately to punch the living daylights out of someone else is something I didnt really get. The only thing I enjoyed about the picture was the always wonderful Morgan Freeman.

As for a defense of Titanice, here goes: Kate Winslet and Leonardo di Caprio. They save this film. Winslet is her luminous self, and Rose's spunkiness is a joy to watch. Likewise, di Caprio is one of the few young actors of today who can convey joie de vivre effortlessly (you'd see that in the underrated Catch Me if You Can).

Another film I thought was overrated was "The Hours." Meryl Streep has an inexplicably poor, unconvincing hour as Clarissa. I didnt for a moment believe her "breakdown." Nicole Kidman put on a fake nose and lowered her voice a few octaves, and ... that's about it. She was much, much better in Moulin Rouge or To Die For.

[carbro]

I hated High Society, although I haven't seen Philadelphia Story to compare it to.  What did you mean by that comment on the Satchmo cameo, Carbro?

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Singing and playing the song "High Society" with Crosby, Armstrong spills out that magical, infectious joy that was his trademark. A moment with Louis is an automatic mood elevator.

In 1970, a friend took me to the Newport Jazz Festival. Minutes before Armstrong was to appear, the sky opened, and it was pouring. Many people were without umbrellas. Not a soul left. You could feel the reciprocity of love.

[Old Fashioned]

Thanks for sharing that story. I wish I was old enough to have seen him in person. Those moments in High Society were the only ones I truly enjoyed.