Halle Berry. Monster’s Ball has to be one of the most overrated movies I’ve ever suffered.
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We could also segue into the subject of Woody Allen (since his films are often described as under- and over-rated) - was it right to give him a lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes?
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underrated: Jennifer’s Body. I thought it too suffered from mislabeling.
Overrated: almost anything by James Cameron. Terminator 2 was great, sure as was Aliens, but most of the time I see his stuff and I’m just like… meh.
I’m sure I could think of more, but it’s lunch time. 
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There’s something seriously wrong with the UK writer that came up with that list. All I’m gonna say about it. The reddit thread, OTOH, has some of my favorite and least favorite movies.
I absolutely love The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. I don’t care what you Philistines think about that. It’s got everything: Bill Murray, Bowie songs in French, Owen Wilson dies, the impeccable Kate Blanchett, and a submarine with a hot tub. what more could you ask for?
As for Coen movies, I did not like George Clooney one tiny bit until I saw O Brother, Where Art Thou? That movie is one of their best. That said, it will never displace the corner of my heart reserved for The Dude, the most loveable loser of all time.
Probably the most underrated movies I’ve seen recently are Hot Tub Time Machine and Moon. Make of that what you will.
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I think the first two movies that I found to be breathtakingly overrated were E.T. and Titanic. I was twelve when E.T. came out, and I found it insufferably sentimental. And I remember going to see Titanic reluctantly, feeling it was my civic duty to go see that horrifically expensive movie, to do my part to keep Hollywood from going bankrupt. I was already incredibly pissed off that Kevin Costner had singlehandedly caused the extinction of the big-budget postapocalyptic sci-fi epic for a generation, after the lameness that was Waterworld and The Postman made studio execs allergic to spending that kind of money on that kind of movie (as if it were the genre’s fault rather than Costner’s). So I really didn’t want Cameron to kill off the big-budget disaster movie the same way.
Who knew that all those 12-year-old girls would keep going to see Titanic over and over and over again? Who knew that anyone would actually like the love story? You could have knocked me over with a feather when I learned how profitable Titanic was to become. I know people, actual educated and intelligent people, who still call Titanic their favorite movie. Oof.
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I didn’t see that version—did the little girl who we were supposed to care about getting rescued in the previous movie survive the opening credits?
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My brother reports that the director’s cut of Dark City did exactly what he always does when playing that movie – it cut the first few minutes of spoilerific intro that was apparently inserted by a studio exec who was afraid people wouldn’t understand the film without it.
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So is someone going to condense this thread into a “get it or forget it” list, for folks to refer back to?
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I almost listed Waterworld as a film that’s better than its reputation suggests 
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I think Waterworld and The Postman suffer the same reputation-defect as Heaven’s Gate. All three would have been perfectly respectable little movies had they been made for a small fraction of their eventual budgets.
It wasn’t that they were bad, just incredibly wasteful and unprofitable.
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Man, I love Dark City. I don’t know if it’s underrated; everyone I know who’s seen it loves it, too.
To my way of thinking, it’s what The Matrix should have been.
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Aw. I know several people who like Unbreakable a lot, including myself. I assumed it was one of those things people liked if they’d seen usually. I’m kind of sad to hear it’s not more well liked.
I wouldn’t say I hated Life Aquatic but it wasn’t my favorite Bill Murray/Coen Bros. venture. O Brother definitely made Clooney’s career of me caring about his acting.
I’ll preface this by saying that I enjoy really bad movies for their badness. In fact, the first Twilight movie is a fucking laugh riot and Battlefield Earth is unending hilarity. I enjoyed Waterworld in the same vein.
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There is a subset of movies that I have refused to watch over the years. Anything James Cameron and anything family-friendly by Spielberg. I will not ever watch Titanic or Jurassic Park or Twister (with that one, it’s personal; I was finishing university where they filmed it), and I damned near got away with not watching Avatar. Come to think of it, there’s one ridiculously overrated movie. Paper-thin plot, equally deep characters, the expected terrible Cameron dialogue, and jammed packed with 3D gimmickry. I was 9 when ET came out, I think that put me square in the demographic that it was aimed for. It was OK, but I recall not being happy about going to see something else. Maybe Tron, Secret of Nimh or Blade Runner. All these movies were released within about a month of each other, and back then movies stuck around theatres quite a bit longer (which I’m sure you recall quite well, but the yunguns might not).
And I pretty much refuse to watch anything starring The Surfer Dude of Sherwood Forest. He’s got the emotional range of a block of wood with a monotone voice to match.
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Costner? My sister was obsessed with his films. Knew Prince of Thieves word perfect, played Everything I Do on constant repeat for weeks. Kind of biased me against him (to put it mildly!) I’ve even sat through American Flyers. In hindsight, No Way Out is okay, and he actually makes good sports films, which is tough. I liked Tin Cup a lot.
Never watched Avatar. Don’t like 3D and CGI, and there didn’t seem to be any other reason to watch it. Old, cliched storyline already done to death, then as it got more and more popular it became a bit of a point to me to remain a refusenik. And now I see there are three (count 'em!) sequels in the pipeline. I liked old Cameron - nowt wrong with The Abyss, Aliens and The Terminator. When the sequel came out I had a hell of a time convincing the cinema I was 15 - mostly because I was a shortarse 13yo.
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I think just about every movie that has been listed in this thread as “overrated” was a movie that I enjoyed when I saw it.
One of the movies that I absolutely love, that absolutely nobody I know has seen? Big Fish.
One of the movies that everybody seems to love, that I just cannot for the life of me learn to like? O Brother, Where Art Thou
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And Kevin Costner fatigue by then…
@WearySky : I saw Big Fish fully expecting to love it, but it left me empty. The film hit all the right notes visually and narratively, but there was something about it that didn’t congeal for me. It was like watching a magic show but knowing every trick and sleight of hand and then seeing the parts overshadow the whole.
On the other hand, everyone else I know who saw it liked it…
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Well, you just found someone on the webtubz that no only saw Big Fish, loved it and owns a copy of it. I’ve been a big Tim Burton fan going back to Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.
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Two articles in the nytimes rehabilitating Heaven’s Gate
The Second Coming of Heaven’s Gate
Time has been kind to Heaven’s Gate
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Underrated: Map of the Human Heart (due, no doubt, to that terrible name.) Out Of Sight. [Chameleon Street.][1] Everything Must Go.
Overrated: Disney animated films. it just seems that they’re a recursive loop of formula and an audience that goes out of brand loyalty.
[1]: http://boingboing.net/2012/06/11/mind-blowing-movie-chameleon.html[quote=“daneel, post:1, topic:19345”]
The Cable Guy … It’s a really good, very dark comedy thriller.
[/quote]
I figured it would suck because Jim Carrey blockbuster, but when I caught it on TV, that’s the same conclusion I came to–astute call, Daneel.
no. observe the chart. as D says, there are hits to void his misses:
yes.
Oh god yes, but it was tailor made for me: a guy who was a camper during the time the film was set and who later went back as a counselor. And it was a jewish camp, so the subtle jewish humor applied, too (when they think the meteor will hit, the “inside children” and Pierce all start praying a B’rucha–I could plotz!) Everything depicted was absolutely pitch perfect, it was uncanny.
I totally feel this. the prominence of him, Hunt, and Gooding, Jr. made me want to hate AGAIG, but it turned out to be an awesome flick. Kinnear was pretty OK in Little Miss Sunshine I’ll admit, too. But something about him really rubs me the wrong way.
so, so good.
yep.
yep. and speaking of underrated Cronenberg fare, Spider was off the motherf’ing chain.
I never watched ER to be annoyed by him/it, so when Out of Sight came out, I was coming to him (and J-Lo!) with an open mind. So he’s always been more-or-less cool with me. J-Lo seemed to have no interest in roles that are interesting and well directed after that (same deal for music) but I’m glad my first exposure to her was untainted because I’m pretty sure I’d be too cynical of her if I saw OOS today for the first time.
insert the thing I wrote to IronEdithKidd directly above.
/wall of text
yeeeah, it took me a while to get to this thread, sorry.
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Ah, fuck me. Well, I was thinking Zissou vs. Tenenbaums and Moonrise
Kingdom anyway so it was at least a clean substitution.
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