For me the first thing that comes to mind is Tales from Earthsea. I don’t think it’s excellent or anything and has plenty of problems but people act like it killed their dog. While it has its problems that have been covered extensively, I think it has a beautiful atmosphere and art.
IMO it would have been better received if it wasn’t advertised as an Earthsea adaptation and was just its own thing.
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We’re back: a dinosaur story
Rock-a-doodle
The Pagemaster
Once upon a forest
Aladdin 2 and 3
Jetsons: The Movie
I’m probably overrating these because I saw them as a kid.
Here’s the flipside of this phenomenon:
The Little Mermaid (2023)
Absolutely awful, atrocious, lazy cinema. It had a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. When they do the whole under the sea scene, none of the sounds align with anything happening on screen. The plot was garbo. They’ve got a whole song dedicated to the cruelty of eating fish as if fish never eat any fish, and then that’s still not as bad as the fucking “scuttlebutt” song.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills regarding The Fifth Element for this exact same phenomena. I watched it for the first time a few years back and it…just isn’t good? But people absolutely rave about it. I don’t know if I’m missing something or if people are just too blinded by nostalgia glasses. But the CGI doesn’t hold up, I found all the characters annoying, and the plot felt really basic and random. Someone’s probably mailing me anthrax now just for saying this.
Counterpoint, nobody watched it for the CGI. The characters only seem annoying now because they were over the top then and moved the goal posts for that over the course of a generation of being repeatedly aired on broadcast television and cable. The plot seems basic now because so many sci-fi movies afterwards we’re influenced in some way by it. The 5th Element is a fun bombastic sci-fi romp and you’re taking it way to seriously to enjoy it the way everyone that does enjoy it will do. But, you do you. I’m not telling you you’re wrong. Sometimes entertainment endeavors fail us, sometimes we fail to enjoy entertainment on its terms because of our predispositions.
That’s how I feel about 2001 a space Odyssey. I’m sure it was amazing for it’s time, but it’s so dry and boring. I wouldn’t recommend anyone to torture themselves watching it. I know tons of people love it, I just don’t get it.
Yup I watched this for the first time recently as well, it’s in the top 50 films ever made yet I don’t know a single person that actually thinks it’s a good film.
It’s unusual in that it requires a bit of extra work to really appreciate how absurdly rich and deep that one is. It’s honestly fascinating. And it looks like it was made 30 years ago, which is an absolutely monumental achievement considering it was made over 50 years ago.
Though I can of course completely understand it when people don’t want to have to read books and listen to Ted talks about a movie to figure it out.
Wait, really? I thought it was pretty universally hated. I wonder if critics gave it good scores for fear of being lumped in with the idiots who were pissed with Ariel being played by a black woman.
The 94% is an “audience score”. The only way I can rationalize it is they used a bot network, but I’ve got no proof. Maybe just a bunch of parents who took their kids rated it highly? 10,000 of them.
Ever considered you weren’t the target demographic?
I bet tons of little kids loved the movie. It became like a frozen to them.
Let me stop you right there, 10,000 children ages 5-11 did NOT write a Rotten Tomatoes review.
Yeah, of course not lol. It was actually 20,000 children ages 5-11, because each review was written by two kids in a big coat to get past the bot filters.
The number of times I’ve watched a highly rated movie only to find it’s not good. cough oppenheimer cough
watching oppenheimer felt like watching a 3 hour compilation of trailers for oppenheimer. everything was so dramatic, there was no downtime, and they always had some kind of music playing. it felt like every scene wasn’t allowed to last more than 5 minutes
Reviews after the 2010s or so get increasingly more untrustworthy, because studios realized that box office returns rely on these ratings now. So now paid reviews and bot ratings become much more important for a newly released movie.
Another prime example: the newer avatar has a higher rating than the first.
Agree with you on that. Many of the “oscar bait” movies are not that great for just watching. For instance, “the Revenant” was not a great picture in my opinion.
What probably elevates them is watching for all the minutiae in the acting and really focussing on the actors instead of the greater picture. However, I think great moments have to be earned through screemwriting. A great example is “the Wire”. Lives caught short, loves truly lost, and a realisation you are just part of a greater machine. These are all earned moments of pure emotion that films often do not get because of their tight focus. I do not mean to encourage film makers to lengthen their movies, please for the love of god, your movies are lengthy enough.
My rule is that if the critic score is too high I won’t like it, and the audience score needs to be higher than the critic score and we have a banger on our hands
My general personal rule is “If I’m entertained then it’s good” hmrm I don’t care what anybody says.
Obviously nothing wrong with that but I personally think it’s important to distinguish between “It’s good because it’s a bunch of moving pixels and it’s not terrible, and I’m lazy and have nothing else to do” and “it’s so good I thought about it for weeks after watching it”
I would call the first example mediocre at best even if I technically enjoyed watching it that time.
