While exploring a new (to me) social media site, Tapiture, I ran across this video, which tells some home truths about what may have been the most overhyped film of the past decade.
There are other movies that get the “honest” treatment by the same outfit, but none deserved it so much as “Avatar.”
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You know, as much of a movie person as I am, I never really had much of a desire to see Avatar. Anytime the big draw of a movie is the special effects, I become extremely wary. (See also, Star Wars Episode I-III).
Initially thought it was okay until I realized that “Avatar” is the typical “white savior” movie. It has the same cliche plot as such movies as “The Last Samurai,” “Dances with Wolves,” and “The Help.”
Ok, this post is screaming for Top 5 Most Overrated Movies List:
1. Shakespeare In Love: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138097/ (Honestly, this wasn’t even the best film of 1998, because Saving Private Ryan holds that honor. This movie is artsy, and very “reviewable”, but it’s not very memorable.
2. Star Wars Episode I: I was so excited for this movie to come out. It was the first of the “new” Star Wars movies, and the originals were amazing. Unfortunately, it was the worst movie making experience that I think I’ve ever known. This almost rates #1, except for the fact that it didn’t win any awards. Horrible acting, horrible writing, horrible plot, and it really makes me sad for what could have been great.
3. Pearl Harbor. I think Ebert had a line about this movie being something about how the Japanese attack ruined a love triangle…or something. Anyway, this was an awful movie because no one cares about your over-the-top directing style with the love triangle. It’s Pearl Harbor, not a romance. Again, a great opportunity wasted. I’m gonna go watch Tora, Tora, Tora again.
4. Avatar: See original post. Basically relied too much on CGI. (Full disclosue, I have not seen this movie,)
5. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Too many trite scenes, very plodding, and it can’t live up to the prior Jones installments, most notably the prior one of “Last Crusade”. Harrison Ford should have just called the Jones series quits. Also, who does a fourth movie? Most of the time one or two are all you can get, and three is pushing it. I don’t even know what the word is for 4 movies: a Quadrolgy?
Anyway, that’s what I’ve got.
2. Yousa thinkin yousa people gonna die?
4. Awful, but watch it before you judge it.
5. Lead-lined fridge.
I am still in denial that Saving Private Ryan didn’t win.
Oh, absolutely.
Earlier this week, I made reference to the fact that I gave up on football on that day in January 1969 when the Jets beat the Colts in the Super Bowl. It showed me how amazingly capricious the game was, and underlined how wrong it was (in my mind) that so much could hang on a single game. Unlike baseball, in which you get up and go to work every day, and lose a lot, but in the end are rewarded for consistent excellence. (At least, that’s the way baseball was back in those days, before the playoff system, which gives lesser teams a chance to win the pennant.)
Well, when the Academy gave the Best Picture Oscar to “Shakespeare in Love” instead of “Saving Private Ryan,” it was another last-straw moment. Before that, I actually cared which pictures got awards, even though I knew the whole thing was a self-stroking exercise on the part of Hollywood. After that, I just pretty much wrote off the whole process.
Pearl Harbor wasn’t an overrated movie. It was always regarded as lousy by just about everyone. Therefore it was correctly rated. But I concur it was awful.
2001!
I cannot watch 3D movies without getting motion sick, which is cool, since the kinds of movies I like are just as nice to watch in the comfort of my sofa, with a Weimaraner draped over me.
The Gap Khaki Collection….good observation!
I must concur about the crystal skull. I apparently saw it and then blotted it from my memory it was so bad. I was on a road trip with a friend and had a big argument with her insisting that there was no 4th movie. She said well then what was the one with crystal skull. So strong was my denial/revisionist history that I convinced myself and her that the crystal skull must have been an artifact mentioned in Temple of Doom or something (there was a skull in that one, right?). Then it came on TV that night in the hotel room. I was appalled that it actually existed. Then I was more appalled the more I watched and slowly realized I HAD seen it and then remembered how bad it was. And it was. Really.
Avatar was formulaic but it was not bad as The Crystal Skull.
E.T. + Shia Labeuf + Harrison Ford + Spielberg & Lucas = Raping my childhood memories.
I concur. Ever seen South Park’s take on it?
I liked how South Park inserted Indiana Jones as the Jodie Foster character from “The Accused”!
One of South Park’s more brilliant recent moments.
I will never ever ever see it. Just like I will never ever ever watch MIke Myers’ Cat in the Hat or Jim Carrey’s Grinch. Sexual innuendos and bathroom jokes in Dr Seuss? They are ABOMINATIONS.
I’m at the point where if a movie has more than a little CGI I hate it. Look at the latest baseball movie “42”, the scenery is so fake I bet most of it was shot indoors against a green screen. Then look at another baseball movie “61” which has no or very little CGI, it’s like night and day. I don’t even bother watching movies like Avatar, if I want to watch a cartoon I’ll watch something like Up or Cars.
I still don’t know how Cameron didn’t get sued silly by the makers of FernGulley. Except for the names and a few other changes, the story’s the same one (speaking of overrated). Avatar was entertaining, but FernGulley did a better job of selling the message. Avatar I watched as an action movie and as an aficionado of 3D stuff in general.
My List of 5 Overrated films (defined as everyone else seems to love them, but I can’t stand them):
1. Titanic makes my list easily, though I’ve never been able to bring myself to sit through the whole thing, so I’m not being entirely fair to it. Historical fiction works better in print.
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey I’ve never fully understood. I watched it as a young man and as a much older man. It’s just tedious. HAL one of the best bad guys on film, though. Put HAL in a Star Trek movie.
3. Apocalypse Now had so much pre-release hype in Rolling Stone (which I was reading religiously at the time), that my expectations far exceeded what it delivered. Martin Sheen is better as James Dean reincarnate. Or as President.
4. The Matrix–take away the special effects, and you have just a pretty unbelievable story, even in sci-fi.
5. Forrest Gump–Yea. Sorry. I watched it because everybody else did. I don’t do that any more. (Forrest beat out ET for this position on my list.)
On the other end of the spectrum, we saw The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel recently. A neat little gem.
@Norm:
Couldn’t agree more on your #1, #2.
I would add The Departed (#51 on IMDB Top 250), American Beauty (#55), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (#83)
Wow Norm, you cut me to the quick. I agree with the Matrix but the other 4 are among my faves.
My overrated list:
1. The Godfather
2. Django Unchained
3. Goodfellas
4. Saving Private Ryan
5. Lord of the Rings (the last one)
6. West Side Story
The Godfather is ok but really it doesn’t deserve the amazing hype that it gets. Godfather 2 is better.
Django Unchained was simply awful. Dark humor is hard to get right and Tarantino did get it right with Pulp Fiction. But aside from a few amusing moments this film was just not funny.
Goodfellas was little more than a Godfather knockoff. A whole lot of gratuitous violence for no real effect.
Saving Private Ryan was good but the way folks go on and on about it really is undeserved. Seemed like a pretty good episode of the 60s TV show Combat and nothing more. Plus I really didn’t get into the jiggly camera thing. The Academy’s choice of Shakespeare in Love was spot on that year.
The Lord of the Rings movies and books for that matter are either something you get or you don’t. The first two movies plus about the first 3/4 of the last one were reasonably fun to watch. But the last one lost me towards the end. It just lost credibility at some point and I mentally shut down on it. Plus the loooong drawn out ending was too much.
As for West Side Story; a musical with switchblades just is not a good fit.
Goodfellas and Saving Private Ryan are on your over-rated list? Your taste in movies must suck.
I’m having a nice day so far, so I’m not going to get into a big debate about why you’re wrong. But you’re wrong. Just sit there in your wrongness and be wrong.
Actually there is no right or wrong on this issue. It’s 100% subjective.
While we’re on the subect of movies I’ve seen 5 of the 9 nominated best pictures so far: Argo, Lincoln, Life of Pi, Zero Dark Thirty and Django Unchained. Lincoln is my favorite. The details were terrific and Daniel Day Lewis performance was one of the absolute greatest acting performances in movie history. Argo, Pi and Dark Thirty were also very good. Django was awful.
I haven’t seen Django, and don’t intend to. When you combine Quentin Tarantino and blaxploitation, I tend to run the other way. Not a good combination of flavors. Although, I must admit, I kinda liked “Jackie Brown.” But that was based on an Elmore Leonard story, which makes the difference. And it starred Pam Grier, so how could it go wrong?
What astounded me was that I actually saw reviews that treated Django seriously. Come on. I saw the trailer…
Django was definitely NOT a serious movie. It was a dark comedy. Admittedly that is probably the hardest of all genres to get right. You have to walk a fine line between being offensive and using dry humor in a creative way.
Norm, if you liked Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, I suspect you’ll love “The Quartet.
It’s on my list to see…
Anyone else here like “Catholic High School Girls in Trouble” or “A Fistful of Yen”?
Catholic High School Girls was a bit from Kentucky Fried Movie, correct? For a teenage boy, that was at the same time one of the funniest and and most stimulating scenes ever on film–one of those that is recalled to memory in technicolor detail. Is Fistful of Yen from the same source?
yup!
I haven’t seen Avatar, but she has hot bloobs!