What is the most overrated movie of all time?

[Casual Shinji]

Let's just call every popular movie overrated right now and call it a thread, okay?

Well then... Every movie that has ever been loved or appreciated by anyone or anything is the most disgusting overrated piece of garbage ever spawned.

There.

 

[Vegetunks9000]

I felt Avatar was way overated. It went the same way as Titanic in the sense that it relied on the 'CGI wow factor' and delivered a very rehashed, below par story. Shame really, as Cameron can be a good director (Terminator 2, Aliens). Just seems to focus his efforts in the wrong direction now, no pun intended.

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

The most overrated film of all time? In my opinion, the most critically acclaimed one: Citizen Kane.

I had to watch the film at uni for film studies (twice actually) and I just didn't like it. While I appreciated the masterful cinematography (I'd have to if I was watching it for film studies), the story felt cumbersome and I just couldn't relate to the characters. Yes, the film is a study about how Kane's hubris and pride destroy him and leave him empty, but I just found it depressing, bleak and miserable, not to mention WAY too long.

Ironically, my FAVOURITE movie of all time is the one I call "the Citizen Kane of anime": Satoshi Kon's Millenium Actress. Similar kind of story, complete opposite in feel, tone and enjoyability, while still being a breathtaking cinematic experience. But that's a story for a different thread.

 

[tzimize]

Citizen Kane.

Yes, I said it. It's boring. I haven't seen it in years and have never wanted to, since. Not a fan in the slightest.

Right there with you. Just because someone was the first to do something doesnt mean they were the best, or good at all. Boooooooooooooooring movie.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

I would have said the Nolan Batman movies if they weren't mentioned in the OP. So I'll say...

Spirited Away. Just never liked it. I preferred Grave of the Fireflies.

Also The Notebook. How that movie can be regarded as one of the best romance movies is totally beyond my comprehension.

Citizen Kane.

Yes, I said it. It's boring. I haven't seen it in years and have never wanted to, since. Not a fan in the slightest.

Right there with you. Just because someone was the first to do something doesnt mean they were the best, or good at all. Boooooooooooooooring movie.

What was Citizen Kane the first to do?

 

[Nazulu]

Let's just call every popular movie overrated right now and call it a thread, okay?

Well then... Every movie that has ever been loved or appreciated by anyone or anything is the most disgusting overrated piece of garbage ever spawned.

There.

There is always someone that over-reacts to these threads. Yes, it's usually about very popular entertainment (that's the point), and yes, the reasoning will never cover everything (just like 95% of the discussions on the net and real life), but for fucks sake, just let them have their fun.

When you think about it, it just shows how much of an impact some of these films have had just by being mentioned.

Great, I had one movie and now I forgot it.

 

[Hero of Lime]

I'll say the Avengers, not a bad movie in any way. Yet, after seeing it, I don't understand how it got the sales and praise it did. Maybe it's because I'm not interested in super hero comics to begin with, but I was disappointed when I had gotten around to seeing it.

 

[MrBaskerville]

I think The Deer Hunter is incredebly overrated, mostly because it's so poorly edited with loooong drawn out scenes that really doesn't add much to the movie. The wedding scene is endless and it achieves what it sets out to achieve long before it ends. To me, the only highlight is a couple of the final scenes in the end, but still i don't really see what's so great about it. What i'm trying to say is that the movie feels aimless and a lot of it feel like raw footage that probably should have been left at the editing floor... No wonder Cimino ended up making Heavens Gate...

I was also a bit confused about vertigo (The movie that replaced Citizen Kane on BFI's list last year), mostly because the ending seems so weird and sloppy, but i might be missing something here as i have only watched it once so far. I also think TDK is overrated, people who compare it to Heat are delusional. It's a fine action movie, but not some masterpiece in the thriller genre and i also had some problems with the lenght of the movie. I think it drags in the end and overstays it's welcome and the hamfisted ferry scene was pretty awful and unnecesary. Aside from that it was a decent action movie, but i prefer Begins and Rises (for it's campiness).

 

[Woiminkle]

Prometheus.

I know a lot of people rate it as terrible, but it honestly surprises me that some professional critics liked it so much.
It's just so damn stupid and pulls out so many cliches that I can't believe people defend it. For example nerdy guy says something to gruff scottish geologist dude, who grumbles back something about not being there to make friends and then 20 mins later they're all buddied up getting lost despite being in charge of the mapping robots and in constant communication with the ship.
Stupidity like this negates any claim that there is anything deep going on in the film and it's vague connection to the Alien franchise was unnecessary and adds insult to injury to me.

 

[MrBaskerville]

Stanley Kubrick movies in general are overrated, in my opinion at least. They might have good points but they tend to be too long and slowly/poorly paced. 'Full Metal Jacket' could have easily been cut in half (focusing just on the boot camp training). 'A Clockwork Orange' could have been trimmed by about half an hour, or more, and still been good. I was only able to stand half of 'Barry Lyndon' and found it soul-crushingly slow and boring.

You should watch Path of Glory, it has a fairly quick pace and it might be one of the greatest war movies ever made.

 

[Mikeyfell]

Inception. hands down.
One of the worst scripts I've heard (Even by summer blockbuster standards) And it's painfully obvious that after a certain point in production everyone except Christopher Nolan stopped caring, so most of the acting plays out like everyone involved was wishing it was over.

A cool concept can only get you so far, at some point you actually need to execute.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

2001 A Space Odyssey. It was just really god damn slow. Seriously, that trippy wave thing near the end lasts like 5 minutes. So does the space walk, but that lasts even longer.

This one! I had to watch this movie for a project I was doing and it was one of the most boring films I've ever had to suffer through, not the most boring, that dishonour goes to The Last Man on Earth starring Vincent Price. Seriously the film is paced like a snail running a marathon. It only got interesting once it got to the part with HAL9000, then once that part was over it got boring again. And for fuck sake did that ship really need to take 15 minutes to land?

 

[Fox12]

Probably Apocalypse Now. It was basically a dumbed down version of the book. I understand it was trying to be a criticism of the Vietnam war, but some of the scenes are so absurd and sloppy it was ridiculous. I actually agree with much of the films message, but I think it's heavily overrated.

The boat scene actually had me in tears of laughter, it was ridiculous. Don't get me wrong, I'm against the Vietnam War, and I understand atrocities were committed, but the scene was so over the top I'm surprised hey didn't pull out sticks and start clubbing baby seals.

The surfing scene was completely random too. The whole film just felt like a random cluster fuck of ideas.

Also, anything by Stanley Kubrick. Almost all of his films are lesser adaptations of better novels. A Clockwork Orange missed the point of the book entirely. Same thing with the Shining. He was also a huge ass hole of a director. In the end, even his best films were usually descent films and terrible adaptations.

DR. Strangelove was weird and over the top enough to atleast be fascinating in it's strangeness.

 

[C2Ultima]

SNIP

I'm sorry, but I think this is really just all kinds of silly. You are absolutely nitpicking and going out of your way to find flaws to assign to the movie, from a wrongheaded standpoint of "This couldn't really happen in the real world, and thus the movie is bad!".

How a movie feels is much more important than realism or whether anything would "really happen that way". In this case, for most people, the themes and concepts that The Dark Knight tackles are so engaging and resonant that plot logic makes very little difference. We don't care the Joker's plan makes no sense. We don't care about what "should have happened." We don't care that Dent realistically couldn't survive his injuries. We care about how these characters collide, and the implications of it.

I think that sounds better than a movie where the Joker dies in the first 5 minutes, and Batman shrugs his shoulders and plays golf for the remaining two and a half hours. The Dark Knight isn't a perfect movie, but I think claiming that it's the most overrated film to ever exist throughout the entire history of cinema is absolutely ridiculous.

OT: Little Miss Sunshine is beloved by quite a lot of people, but I think there are a lot of fundamental problems with it. It glides by on texture and aesthetic and great performances, but every moment seems forced and unearned. Very little of it ever really works; It just carries itself like its working.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

The Dark Knight may or may not be overrated but if we're gonna get finnicky with goofs and plot holes why don't we point out the letters of transit in Casablanca weren't even needed to board the damn plane in the end, and that there's no way the maid could've heard Kane's last words in Citizen Kane, and that the Eagles could've totally flown the Fellowship into Mordor (fuck that "they're a proud race" argument, they did it all the time in The Hobbit). Now do these flaws make these wonderful movies critically overrated? Hardly.

Also, anything by Stanley Kubrick. Almost all of his films are lesser adaptations of better novels. A Clockwork Orange missed the point of the book entirely. Same thing with the Shining. He was also a huge ass hole of a director. In the end, even his best films were usually descent films and terrible adaptations.

Fortunately, this is a thread about overrated movies, and not about personal appreciations of people we've never met and books we've never read (or did you read Red Alert, the source for Dr. Strangelove? Because that's one mediocre Cold War thriller. You also read Schnitzler's Traumnovelle? Eyes Wide Shut goes in another direction but I still find it a good adaptation). Descent (sic) films are good enough for me, if they can hold themselves on their own. I don't think a movie "owes" the book it's based on, and vice versa.

/OP Inception, which I liked a lot, was vastly overrated. I didn't find it that clever, and for a movie about the subconscious and the intrincacies of dreaming I found it (and its characters) lacking in imagination. I enjoyed it a lot, it was quite the spectacle, but come on, people blew it out of proportion like it wasn't just another action movie.

 

[Fox12]

Also, anything by Stanley Kubrick. Almost all of his films are lesser adaptations of better novels. A Clockwork Orange missed the point of the book entirely. Same thing with the Shining. He was also a huge ass hole of a director. In the end, even his best films were usually descent films and terrible adaptations.

Fortunately, this is a thread about overrated movies, and not about personal appreciations of people we've never met and books we've never read (or did you read Red Alert, the source for Dr. Strangelove? Because that's one mediocre Cold War thriller. You also read Schnitzler's Traumnovelle? Eyes Wide Shut goes in another direction but I still find it a good adaptation). Descent (sic) films are good enough for me, if they can hold themselves on their own. I don't think a movie "owes" the book it's based on, and vice versa.

If it was an improvement then maybe I could agree with you. My issue isn't that Kubrick was a sadist, though he was, it's that his films were all lesser re-tellings of other stories. I consider that a completely valid criticism, especially when the depth and themes of a good story are completely betrayed by a poorer adaptation. Furthermore, I do consider these films overrated, as his movies are held up as the gold standard of cinema, and yet they're mostly average. A Clockwork Orange is not nearly as good as some will claim. It was overflowing with superfluous detail, characters, and nudity that not only detracted from the film, but also hurt the pacing. Parts of it were cringe worthy. He also has a tendency to make the characters FAR less complex than their literary counterparts. He's a great technical director, a perfectionist, and he's great at lining up a shot. The man knows how to frame a movie. Unfortunately none of this matters when he's producing a work that is more narratively shallow than the source material. If you haven't read the books in question then I don't know what to say.

Also, I don't think Dr. Strangelove is a great film. I think it's an entertaining film. It's too weird not to love, but I don't actually take it too seriously from a critical standpoint.

The best film I've seen by him was 2001 a Space Odyssey. I haven't read the book in question, so I can't judge whether it was a great adaptation. It was a good movie. Maybe even a great one. That was the exception though.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Also, anything by Stanley Kubrick. Almost all of his films are lesser adaptations of better novels. A Clockwork Orange missed the point of the book entirely. Same thing with the Shining. He was also a huge ass hole of a director. In the end, even his best films were usually descent films and terrible adaptations.

Fortunately, this is a thread about overrated movies, and not about personal appreciations of people we've never met and books we've never read (or did you read Red Alert, the source for Dr. Strangelove? Because that's one mediocre Cold War thriller. You also read Schnitzler's Traumnovelle? Eyes Wide Shut goes in another direction but I still find it a good adaptation). Descent (sic) films are good enough for me, if they can hold themselves on their own. I don't think a movie "owes" the book it's based on, and vice versa.

If it was an improvement then maybe I could agree with you. My issue isn't that Kubrick was a sadist, though he was, it's that his films were all lesser re-tellings of other stories. I consider that a completely valid criticism, especially when the depth and themes of a good story are completely betrayed by a poorer adaptation. Furthermore, I do consider these films overrated, as his movies are held up as the gold standard of cinema, and yet they're mostly average. A Clockwork Orange is not nearly as good as some will claim. It was overflowing with superfluous detail, characters, and nudity that not only detracted from the film, but also hurt the pacing. Parts of it were cringe worthy. He also has a tendency to make the characters FAR less complex than their literary counterparts. He's a great technical director, a perfectionist, and he's great at lining up a shot. The man knows how to frame a movie. Unfortunately none of this matters when he's producing a work that is more narratively shallow than the source material. If you haven't read the books in question then I don't know what to say.

The best film I've seen by him was 2001 a Space Odyssey. I haven't read the book in question, so I can't judge whether it was a great adaptation. It was a good movie. Maybe even a great one. That was the exception though.

From what I've read, Clarke's Odyssey novel was spun from his and Kubrick's script, and published at around the time of 2001's release. So it's not exactly an adaptation, but rather, the book is a novelization of the script that became the movie more or less at the same time. I also hear that the book is much clearer and less vague around stuff, but I wouldn't know.

Regarding the adaptation thing, I find it's the same case with Hitchcock - he was more interested in what he could do with a book than with the book's "greatness" on its own. Red Alert is your average best-selling commie thriller, outdated 10 years into its publication. Gustav Hasford's "The Short-Timers", which provided the source for Full Metal Jacket, and which I've read, is also a pretty mediocre novel. The film takes a massive downturn halfway through, but I still find it better than the book. The "bathroom scene" is so much more haunting in the film. The book is so... matter of fact.

The most criticism I've heard regarding Kubrick was that he was cold and wasn't much in touch with the human element in his movies (i.e. Jack Torrance is an asshole whose true evil is just waiting to be untapped, as opposed to being "possessed" by an outer presence). To that I can only recommend they watch Paths of Glory, which is probably his most passionate and humane film. He may not be very "viewer-friendly" on a number of counts, but I don't think it's because he wasn't able to - that's just not what he was going for most of the time.

 

[pilouuuu]

Recently? The Tree of Life.

I wanted to take a drill to my own head during that film. I hang out with a lot of other cinema fans and they would not shut up about how deep and complex it was. I found it manipulative drivel.

Oh, I totally agree! That movie is total garbage and I deeply hate it.

It must be one of the worst movies ever. It's a pretentious, nonsensical, boring, disgusting, hateful piece of crap. Its only redeemable feature must be that it looks good like an screensaver at times. Those moments are totally dull and boring.

Even Brad Pitt was dislikeable in this movie and Sean Penn... Why was he in the movie at all? He seems to be embarassed to participate in that shit and maybe he didn't even read the nonsensical script.

I want those 2 hours of my life back. I pity anyone that went to the cinema to see that bullcrap.

Don't watch this movie. You'll regret it.

Anyone who thinks this movie is deep is right. It is deeply awful.