The Most Overrated Films Ever

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Hello, Dolly with Barbara Streisand and Walter Matthau. The only redeeming quality of this movie is a cameo appearance by Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong

I think that all of the Dark Knight films (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight Rises, etc) are pretty overrated. Everyone hates on the Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher Batman films of the 90's (especially the Schumacher ones), but I liked them because they were all campy. I just can't grasp the concept of making a serious drama of an action film about a rich playboy who dresses like a flying bat and goes around fighting dangerous criminals without using guns.

I like the Burton flicks, it's just the Schumacher films that are overrated and an absolute insult. Forever and Robin basically took away all the dark, brooding vigilantism and turned it into a circus sideshow. At least Begins, Knight and Rises took inspiration from the classic novels like Year One, Long Halloween and Dark Knight Returns, they crush the Schumacher films any day.

I think that a movie has to be liked by a lot of people to be considered overrated. Schumacher's Batman movies are considered by many to be the most hated films in the franchise, but I'm one of the few people who liked them. I guess because I grew up with the Animated Series on Cartoon Network and it was more light-hearted compared to the comic books (and I've never really been a fan of the comic books), so I appreciate Schumacher's attempt to make Batman more campy and light-hearted like the Animated Series and the TV show of the 60's. I like Burton's Batmans too but his were also campy in a sort of gothic way. I just don't like Chris Nolan's Batman movies because they take themselves way too seriously.

The Nolan series doesn't take themselves too seriously. After Batman and Robin killed the original franchise with Arnie's lame puns and George Clooney's wooden acting, the realism setting and element of fear made Begins vastly superior. Even BTAS and the Under the Red Hood film are better than Schumacher's abortion films. So what if there is no light hearted puns and homoerotic campness? Give me Heath Ledger's Joker or Tom Hardy's Bane over Arnie and Uma anyday.

It's like the comparisons between Dredd 95 and Dredd 2012, the latter with Karl Urban is miles better.

Different strokes for different folks

Titanic

Twilight series I don't understand the hype
Avatar ripping material from Ferngully, Pocahontas, the Smurfs, and Dances With Wolves you'll be snoring through a Human/Alien relationship on another planet.
Many things that get Oscars these days.

Last edited by AntDog on 22 Jan 2014, 12:33 am, edited 1 time in total.

The whole "Bourn ..." stuff. I really dont get into it.

I would agree, that this oppinion might depend on being a child of the old Batman television series or not. Both my partner and I were cheering when we read in reddit about someone having programmed a mod for the actual Batman games, that would create that "Ka-zamm", "Boom", "Bang" ... bubbles, when fighting NPCs. XD

Sadly it was only an hoax, but it would be really, really cool.

For me personally?

Avatar

Take away the fancy CGI and what you're left with is a ropey Dances with Wolves in space, with extra can't-believe-it-got-by-the-censors tentacle bestiality and Michael Bay-esque robotic suits fighting. It's a visually stunning film, I agree, but my word, is it un-engaging writing. Seriously, Unobtainium??

The Dark Knight

A very cynical part of me wonders whether survivor's guilt played a huge part in this movie's reception; I fell asleep through the middle of it (no disrespect is meant to Heath Ledger- he was a talented actor; I just don't think his Joker was him at his best.)

Avenger Assemble (US original title: The Avengers)

I only went to see it to see if Joss Whedon could tell a coherent movie without prior information on the events leading up to said movie being an absolute necessity (ie. Serenity). He failed, you needed to have seen Thor to understand parts of it. Still, not a half-bad leave-your-brain-at-the-door cinema though in some circles, you'd think the movie was the Second Coming or something...

Toy Story 3

Pixar fans and now-adults wallowing in nostalgia. It was an okay movie - typical emotional manipulation at its finest - but Andy's voice freaked me out.

Up

I thought it was terrible, almost like one of those straight-to-dvd movies well-meaning but not-very-well-informed adults get their little nieces and nephews. There's a plot in there somewhere but it's gotten lost. Personal opinion.

The Sound of Music

I could never understand as a child why everyone loved this film; I found the sanguineness rather nauseating (which is hypocritical as I loved Disney's Mary Poppins; maybe I just liked the animation bits?)

Miracle on 34th Street

Again, too sugary-sweet for my liking but in my house growing up, it was illegal to dislike it as a Christmas Day movie.

Shrek. The first 2 movies were excellent but by that time that they were really squeezing the proverbial milk out of that goat. My mother really LOVES Shrek and has even watched that Christmas special at least a hundred times (I watched it once). I think this is the first time she's loved a cartoon more than I do. She never gets that excited or cares that much about the cartoons that I make...

The Kings Speech - It's a good film, but the amount of praise it recieved was ridiculous. All I can say is I'm glad Helena Bohnam Carter was nominated for an Oscar because of it.

Brave - Beautiful film. Obviously people worked very hard on it and it's set in my country, which is nice. However the story and character development was seriously lacking. Pixar's weakest film. But my country hyped it up like nobody's business to encourage tourism. In some touristy places, they elwill sell Brave merchandise among other Scottish paraphernalia and it's nauseating, like being force fed shortbread and haggis while being forced to watch Braveheart.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (original Swedish version) - it's okay. Pretty watchable, but guys it's not the first film to address misogyny. It's not even that great at doing so. It's a little exploitative actually. Even worse is that my local cinema screened it to celebrate international women's day.

28 days later - the premise is dumb. The characters are dumb. The effects are dumb. The logic is dumb. The director isn't dumb. Why?!

Slumdog Millionaire - I know the film attempts to portray the reality of Indian culture while juxtaposing it with a bollywood aesthetic (kinda) but it was kinda meh for me. I think the hype is mostly down to people discovering that India exists.

And to whoever said Up had no plot, I think you need to watch it again because the plot and story are very easy to grasp.

No blasting here. Braveheart was really over rated too. I even had a thread about how I thought it was over rated. I think Mel Gibson is over rated as a director period.

It's a Wonderful Life. I grudgingly like most of Capra even though he was a far right racist (at least toward the Japanese), but not It's a Wonderful Life. He also probably stole most of the original ideas for it from my favorite movie, A Matter of Life and Death too.

I will stick with recently made overrated so my list stays short:

Les Miserables
Cloud Atlas
Melancholia

Pixar movies - particularly Up which I find to be ridiculously overrated if not THE most overrated animated film ever made. I don't think it's a bad film but I prefer Toy Story 3 and Finding Nemo over it.

Mean Girls - ugh. I hated this movie and I had so many high expectations for it too when I saw the previews. But I felt the film got too cliched with its characters and the jokes were just more disturbing than funny. It's like watching an episode of Glee.

As for Harry Potter, the books are probably one of the greatest achievements in storytelling ever. The movies, however, kept degrading with each one. Why on earth did they keep allowing David Yates and Steve Kloves to work on these films? They kept dumbing them down with painful results. Instead of treating their audiences like adults, they treated them like giggling teenagers!

The Muppets - the 2011 film. The title should be considered false advertising as the film used them more as a plot device than the actual heart of the movie.

Rio - Uh...I did not expect this movie to be a musical at all so you could imagine how shocked I was when I was watching it.