In honor of a recent CyniCritics review of Fight Club which found the film to be a little… well, overrated. Matt and I decided to compile a whole list of other films that we think get way more credit than they deserve.
Forrest Gump
The 1994 box office jumbo-hit not only made a sea of cash at the box office, but went on to sweep six Oscars, stealing the Best Picture award from Pulp Fiction and Lead Actor from Morgan Freeman. When Forrest should have been uprooted, excavated and forgotten to make room for new, brilliant filmmaking life like Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and Shawsank Redemption, it’s popularity grew and thickened with time, becoming a home video must-have.
It is little wonder why the film is adored, given it is a capsule of the second half of the 20th century. But even with all the nostalgia of Vietnam, AIDS, and growing up in the south, the film was flat and dull just like the comely narrator America was so in love with. The movie hinged itself on half-baked melodrama, a popular soundtrack and a beloved, mediocre movie star (Twilight anyone?). Not saying the film was complete shit, but its no masterpiece. Forrest Gump was as awkward, clumsy and cheesy as its gumpy title suggests.
The Royal Tenenbaums
Okay, so this movie is not all that widely rated as a classic in the first place, but to many indie-cinema lovers this film is number one on their list, and if it isn’t, Rushmore, Bottlerocket, or Fantastic Mr. Fox probably is. Maybe what we’re getting at is that Wes Anderson is the one who is overrated. After watching all his films and searching for what exactly it is that makes him indie-royalty, all we can come up with is cookie cutter characters and futura font which pass as “style”. Sure it’s unique, sure it’s different, but it also happens to be pretty lame and uninteresting.
The major issues with The Royal Tenenbaums and company are the characters that Anderson creates, who are often flat, emotionless, stripped down characters that speak their mind and act rashly on freewill. They’re so stylized and doped up, that they become caricatures of themselves and make audiences lose interest quickly. It’s uniqueness cannot be ignored, but it shouldn’t be praised like the second coming of Christ on your Facebook’s favorite movies either.
Blade Runner
After hitting mainstream success in sci-fi with Alien, Ridley Scott went on to direct Blade Runner starring 80’s superstar Harrison Ford. It should have been a dead hit, right? But the film earned only modest critical reception and a meager amount in the box office in comparison to Tron or E.T. that same year, which makes us all wonder how Blade Runner surpassed a slew of other potentially iconic films in that year to earn a spot among the best-of-all-time.
It’s often noted for it’s visual effects and scouring action, both of which it lacks completely. Blade Runner was slashed in the visual effects race of that year by E.T. and looked like shitty video game commercial in comparison to earlier films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars. For nearly two hours the film went on and on, without any action and without any real run in with its claimed allegory.
The Maltese Falcon
The 1941 directorial debut by John Huston became an automatic American classic for two reasons. The first is attributed to the hero image created by Humphrey Bogart whose onscreen performances would become iconic for the hard-nosed American male. The second is that The Maltese Falcon would pioneer and popularize the film-noir movement, especially to the French who took it as a major inspiration for New Wave Cinema. Iconic and important indeed. But, good?
The film finds itself on countless best-of-all-time lists, for all the above reasons, not because it’s all that great. Besides constructing society as a social catastrophe (men=good, women=untrustworthy, foreign/gays=scummy weak criminal), the film is shoddily put together. It doesn’t help that the whole mystery ends up being completely null.
The Matrix
A revolutionary science fiction mythology is great and all, but as we saw with Blade Runner it isn’t enough to carry a movie. Add in Keanu Reeves as Surfer Dude Jesus, and you’ve got a sci-fi cheese fest to rival Ridley Scott’s Bladeless dud. The Wachowski Brothers can make cinema, see V for Vendetta, and the concepts they tackle here would be great to tackle in a philosophy class, but there is no spoon mostly because there is no movie either.
Garden State
The adorable indie gem from Zach Braff, right? How can you hate on a movie where Natalie Portman laughs at everything and listens to the Shins? Here’s how. Take an underwhelmingly quirky script from the overrated Braff and add in his underwhelming direction and acting, and you’ve got yourself a pretentious white pity-fest that puts even Wes Anderson to shame. It’s got a great soundtrack, though, so it’s a masterpiece.
Rocky
The “ultimate” sports comeback movie is actually kind of lame. Probably the most cringe-worthy Best Picture winner before Forrest Gump stole the unholy crown, this sappy, dull, and unrelentingly uninteresting boxer movie will punch the hell out of your intelligence and pummel you with sap. Sylvester Stallone gives a campy performance if ever there was one, making even more pathetic sequels. Underdog fantasies gained their momentum here, but some comeback stories should remain untold.
Dances With Wolves
You could put almost any Kevin Costner vehicle here, but this is the one that won him undeserved Best Picture and Best Director Oscars. This boring period drama lasts a punishing 181 minutes, and really fails to achieve much of anything in that time. You’ll watch the action scenes unfold with mundane complacency, not really thrilling or redefining the methods for constructing a good one. Sure, a lot may happen, but by the end of this so called epic you won’t feel like you’ve witnessed anything of the sort.
West Side Story
This 1961 musical adaptation of Romeo & Juliet is about as stale as they come. The best musicals are the ones that come alive through the synchronization of song and moving images. This one fails to achieve that in almost any way. Iconic songs like “I Feel Pretty,” may have staying power vocally, but it does nothing for Shakespeare’s immortal story. In fact, it makes it seem less like a romantic tragedy and more like a Hollywood glitter fest with less substance.
Fight Club
The very film that inspired the list (read review here). The 1999 David Fincher movie may not have been a hit in its day, but thanks to the launch of Brad Pitt’s career, a DVD hit, and an unexpected 21st century male emasculation movement of high school boys that coincided with the launch of half-rate knock 0ffs like Never Back Down and Fight, this mediocre beat em’ up flick just happened to have the right amount of mediocre aphorisms on consumerism to makes the high school nerds blow their loads like they were reading Socrates for the first time. Yeah, it’s not bad stuff, but it’s not all that cleverly woven in with the film either.
CyniCritics 
Hmmm very interesting list and I have to say that I do enjoy a couple of the films you have on the list. Those being Forest Gump (as watching it now, I think its amusing that he was supposed to be at a lot of historical events without even realizing) and I love Rocky.
But I think your explanations for choosing certain films are great, as you can say exactly why you think they are overrated. I still have to watch a couple of them on the list.
I’ll admit some of the choices I don’t agree with, but hey we all have our own opinions and I can respect that. I do agree with Rocky, while it may have heart, the dialogue is pretty pathetic.
I totally disagree with The Royal Tenebaums! I think that the comedy, and humor for some, and I know a lot of people that don’t get it, and hated it.
Yowza! I’ll give it to ya on Blade Runner (or as I once heard it called, “Blade Crawler”) but the rest of those are some winners up there. Welp, different strokes for different folks, ya know.
Yeah, obviously this would be one of the more controversial type lists to put out, like you all said, with everybody having their own opinion. They are all still quite and enjoyable and many are even good or great, but the masterpieces they are made out to be. Thanks for reading and thanks for the comments!
THANK YOU for putting “Forrest Gump” on this list! The whole time I was watching it I could practically hear “We want Oscar! We want Oscar!” chants in the background. It was maudlin and emotionally manipulative. Boo. I also agree about “Blade Runner,” though I’m a little scandalized to see “The Maltese Falcon” on here. But to each his own.
Oh the audacity! 🙂 Hey, that’s cool that you’re not bashful for sharing your opinion and you’ve presented some valid arguments as to why you think that way. I used to think Fight Club was overrated, but after I watched it I was blown away by it. I agree with you & Meredith about Forrest Gump, it was a good movie but yeah, it wasn’t a masterpiece by any means. The Matrix was quite memorable so I probably won’t put it on this list. Sure, the story might be lacking but there are lots of iconic scenes there that kind of have a timeless quality about it. I’m only talking about the first one though, the sequels are all duds.
Btw, I’ve tagged you for the internet meme thing that’s going around. I’m sure you’ve been reading ’em on other blogs. Mine should be up by now.
Haha, it’s just frustrating sometimes to see people go along with the consensus that “classic” films are classic just because they are the films are good. I wish people could watch movies without knowing their reputation, then it would be interesting to see them have to make opinions of the movie on their own. I feel alone when I say, “I don’t get what all the fuss is about in Pulp Fiction.” But nobody is willing to say they don’t get it or care for it because then they will feel stupid for not getting it.
Thanks for visiting and we will get to that. Also, I added you to our links.
This is way too late, and you’ll probably never get to reading this, but Pulp Fiction is the worst movie I’ve ever seen, and I have about a billion arguments to support that –
first of all, the story/premise itself is completely flat. It’s just a series of loosely told stories that doesn’t form a grander scheme of plot. That alone isn’t enough to make the film suck, but I’m just getting started.
Then, there’s the major issue of dialogue. Sure, people really love Tarantino’s dialogue, but other than the fact that people all sound like Tarantino and talk ALL THE TIME, there’s nothing to the dialogue. There’s no wit because everything is completely stale. And if it’s not stale, it’s redundant. By the time Samuel L Jackson gets to shooting the guy, I don’t care anymore because I got the point 5 minutes ago – he’s going to die. Tarantino just fills out as much time as possible with stupid dialogue to make the film flashier. Like the whole “Royale with Cheese” thing? It doesn’t add up to anything in the plot, and it doesn’t show anything about the characters. The WHOLE MOVIE is just a series of mini-plots with dialogue that feels more forced than The Social Network or The Dark Knight, and not to mention it doesn’t make sense half the time.
It’s one of those “cool” and “endlessly quotable” movies that lacks in both. It’s not cool because it twists between UNREALISTICALLY BORING to unrealistic completely! And to top it all off, only about 4 minutes of the entire thing is quotable. I don’t hear ANYONE quoting John Travolta’s character or Tarantino’s character. It’s honestly pathetic how dull the movie is.
Rant over.
Man that was the biggest crock of shit ever , but yes you are entitled to your opinion. However, your points really don’t make sense ? The Royale with Cheese conversation is used to make the film seem REALISTIC and to show the innocence of Travoltas character ? What do you want them to talk about ? A movie is supposed to predict real life especially in the dialouge …. So your wrong 🙂
My god please read at least ONE analysis of the story before posting your dribble! You don’t even understand the plot!
I CANNOT STAND QUENTIN TARANTINO’S MOVIES!
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Completely agree with The Royal Tenenbaums. It is on so many Top movies of the decade list, I was like “really?” Incredibly bland film
Wow, you *totally* missed the point of Rocky.
Another good list. : )
I actually think of 2009 as being the year of the Overrated Film. Avatar was visually stunning but, as Duncan Jones put it, was there ever a moment when you didn’t know what was going to happen next? Both Precious and The Hurt Locker were well-acted but again, predictable and heavy-handed, the type of films that people watch so they can pat themselves on the back for loving them.
I agree with you about Avatar, but I enjoyed both Precious and The Hurt Locker. There were definitely many people who seemed to force themselves to like them, but I actually enjoyed them quite a bit.
I wouldn’t call Avatar overrated purely because of the massive amounts of detractors out there. There are too many people bashing this film to call it overrated.
Really? Actually, the reason that it seems like there’s a lot of people bashing Avatar is because it’s still a fairly unique occurance. Yes, there are more of us now who are willing to admit that they didn’t love Avatar but for the most part, people are still having the same Pavlovian reaction to the film. In three years time, once people get over how much money the damn thing made, Avatar will no longer by overrated. In fact, it will probably be underrated in much the same way that Titanic is. But until then, Avatar is still definitely overrated.
Incidentally, I can tell just by watching the trailer that The Social Network is going to be this year’s Avatar, a film that sucks but people feel obligated to enjoy.
I like that you call Titanic underrated, as it definitely is. Its reputation precedes it and turns a lot of people away from it. But as for Avatar, maybe we walk in different circles? I come across more people who bash Avatar becaus4e they want to go against the grain then I do people who actually like the movie.
I agree completely. Avatar wasn’t anything special, but so many fickle people loved it so much, you feel obligated to enjoy it, and if you don’t, people say that you’re just trying to be different. I know from experience. I don’t think the Social Network will have quite the same effect because no one’s really expecting it to be that serious of a movie, given thatit has Jesse Eisenberg from Zombieland and Justin Timberlake from no good movie ever, and don’t even think about saying Alpha Dog is a good movie, because it’s terrible.
I suspect that the Hurt Locker and Precious were the victims of my own high expectations for both of those films. Which makes things even worse for Avatar because I went into that movie with very low expectations and it couldn’t even meet those! lol.
I loved Fight Club 😐
Edward Norton was awesone, like Brad Pitt
And of course Helena Bonham Carter : D
She was PERFECT!!
fucker (:
Sorry to punch a hole in your well-educated opinion, but the Wachowski Brothers didn’t actually direct V for Vendetta.
Wow, thank you for the correction. Apparently they only wrote the film… good to know.
Dude get your facts straight.The Wachowski brothers didn’t direct V for Vendetta.They produced it along with Joel Silver and James McTeigue directed it.Totally agree about Blade Runner,the movie was underrated when it appeared and now it’s overrated =))
I liked the rest,some less some more.
Dude! Alright pointed out in the comment directly above yours. Thanks for pointing it out though.
P.S:The Wachowski brothers also wrote the screenplay for movie as well.
I agree with you about Wes Anderson – I’m not a fan. I also failed to see what was so great about Garden State.
The other films (with the exception of West Side Story) I rate very highly.
I am completely with you on Fight Club. I’m thinking of going my own list and it will be very near the top. A lot of films I like are on your list (Dances with Wolves, Matrix, Gump), but I cant begrudge you that. I am with you on Tenenbaums, but is Garden State really all that popular?
As for Blade Runner, I was completely underwhelmed when I first saw it. But this is a case where its high reputation has me thinking maybe I should try it out again. Maybe I missed something?
IantheCool —
You know, you may have a point there as far as Avatar is concerned. Around the time of the actual Oscar ceremony, it does seem like a huge backlash started to form. I think a lot of it has to do with the a lot of the more hardcore Avatar fans going overboard when arguing that it deserved to win best picture over The Hurt Locker. On more than one occassion, I came across Avatar diehards who said, “How can a movie that made no money win best picture over the most popular movie of all time!”
I think as a result of that, a lot of people who originally liked Avatar but still considered Hurt Locker to be the better film were transformed into people who hated Avatar and James Cameron. At times, it was almost as if people felt as if you couldn’t be excited about Kathryn Bigelow being the first woman to win best director without really disliking Avatar as well.
The fact that Bigelow was Cameron’s ex-wife also contributed to this, at least for me and several of my friends. We’d listen to James Cameron talk about how Avatar was the greatest film in history or whatever and he’d just come across as so arrogant and full of himself that our reaction to him and his film had less to do with Avatar and more to do with the fact that we would have divorced him too.
So, I think Avatar is a case of a flawed film that was overrated when first released but now, things are starting to go in the opposite direction and eventually, we’ll spend so much time criticizing Avatar that we’ll forget what people liked about it in the first place. Once an overrated film is generally agreed to be overrated, it often becomes underrated.
Now, I have to be honest. I hated every second of Avatar. (I wasn’t a huge fan of Hurt Locker either). However, some of my best friends absolutely love this movie. So does that mean my friends are wrong? No, it just means that the movie appealed to them in a way that it simply did not for me. To me, the film is not overrated because I disliked it. Its overrated because, especially when it first came out, people like me were repeatedly told that we didn’t have any right to dislike Avatar, that somehow we weren’t true film fans unless we just embraced Avatar and Cameron without a second thought.
For whatever reason, movies like Avatar, The Dark Knight, and the Star Trek remake (and I liked both of those last two films) seem to bring out the inner fascist in a lot of film fans.
That’s probably a good explanation as to why Avatar has such a bad rap now, but even before then there were a lot of decent towards it. Mind you, you’re probably right that it started off quite overrated, which I suppose is why it has the box office numbers that it does.
To both ianthecool and the writer of this article:
Contrary to the extremely misleading title, Blade Runner is not an action film. It’s cerebral, dream-like, science fiction, much like 2001 A Space Odyssey. Try watching it again with that mindset, and you might actually retract the movie from this list.
I think you’re right about the whole Avatar-Cameron-Hurt Locker-Bigelow thing. I personally think that this past year was an overall weak year for the oscars. Why they picked a year without five good movies to nominate ten, I have no idea. The best movie in my opinion was Inglourious Basterds, but that was too rough and politically incorrect for the Academy to condone, so I never really expected it to win. As soon as I found out that Bigelow was James Cameron’s ex-wife, I knew the Hurt Locker was going to win. The Academy knew they had no good options, and they didn’t want to pick Avatar because even they knew it wasn’t a good movie and it would totally seal their image of being whores,selling themselves to appease the fickle, naive American public, so they decided to play off the Cameron-Bigelow marriage and give Hurt Locker the win for spite. Still, they managed to make some big mistakes. They knew the Hurt Locker didn’t have enough quality to be a low count winner. A low count winner is a movie that wins best picture, but not many other oscars. I liked it when the academy used to do that though. They were honest. The best example is in 1972. Caberet, maybe you’ve seen it, won eight oscars, but not best picture. The movie that won best picture only had two oscars in its pocket leading up to the final award. Seems like a travesty so far, right? Wrong, the movie that won best picture was The Godfather.
So, getting back to the present, the academy decided to be responsible for one of the biggest oscar travesties to date, giving Mark Boal’s dry, awkward, completely predictable, garbage screenplay the oscar over Quentin Tarantino’s absolute masterpiece of a screenplay, almost as good as Pulp Fiction, the best of all time, in my opinion. They robbed the statuette from Tarantino so the public would believe that the Hurt Locker was truly worthy of the greatest honor in cinema. What an epic fail.
I agree with every picture on here. I say every picture because I don’t agree at all that the Matrix is overrated. I do agree that the Matrix Reloaded, which is the film showed in the picture for the Matrix, is overrated. I have one thing to clarify about Forrest Gump though. It was overrated, but not anymore. It was overrated in 1994 when it came out. Now however, it is in a way, underrated. That’s because it used to be overrated. That overrating has caused it to be the most hated movie of all time because it beat out two far superior films, Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption, for all the credit and awards they deserved. Because of that, everyone says it sucks and that is simply not true. Forrest Gump is a very good movie, it’s just not as good as Pulp Fiction or The Shawshank Redemption.
As a follow-up to my previous comment, Dances With Wolves is in the same boat as Forrest Gump because at the time of its release, it took the credit and oscars that Goodfellas deserved.
Also, another movie that should definitely be on this list is Avatar. It’s basically the Last Samurai with a terrible script, mediocre acting, an SNL season’s worth of cheesy moments, and cool special effects. And it’s the highest grossing movie of all time? That’s not actually true though. It’s the highest grossing, unadjusted for inflation, movie of all time. Still, it’s rediculous, and it got nine oscar nominations? Come on. Shame on the academy and shame on the American public.
The amount of Avatar hate you have made me chuckle. After seeing it a second time, I can appreciate its visual beauty, but multiple viewings do further flesh out the fact that it is kind of recycled. Cameron tells the story well with pictures, but as far as the script goes it could use some major work. Just be grateful the Academy didn’t kiss his ass enough to actually nominate it for Best Original Screenplay.
“The Matrix”? Um, no. The sequels were total crap, but no one rates them highly. The original spawned an entire franchise, revitalized/launched the careers of pretty much every main actor, set an unsurpassed new standard for scifi action, and introduced at least one entirely novel, ground-breaking special effect (bullet time). Not overrated.
I don’t think “Fight Club” is tremendously overrated. It is a pretty good movie, rewatchable even knowing the twist, and is one movie I think is better than the book. Maybe it was overrated back in 2002 or something, but it’s over 10 years old now and seems to have settled into its rightful place. You even admit “it’s not bad stuff”.
“Garden State” and “Tennenbaums” is sort of unfair. Every year there is always one quirky/hipster/independent film that the critics all adore but it’s really mostly bllsht and hype campaign. “Juno”, “Lost in Translation”, “Little Miss Sunshine”, “American Beauty”, “Crash”, “Slumdog Millionaire” …take your pick.
“No Country For Old Men” is probably the most overrated film I have ever seen.
I give The Matrix credit for its philosophical musings and some of the nifty visual tricks, but the dialogue is piss-poor and the acting is terrible.
Fight Club hype seems to be dying down, but as you can see from some of the comments here and the ones we got on our review, there are people who seem willing to die for this movie.
I agree with your point that there are a lot of “hype campaign” type movies, but Garden State and Tennenbaums kind of transcend that niche because they have a very loyal band of followers. Nobody gives a shit about Slumdog Millionaire anymore, but there are still tons of people I know who think Garden State is the best movie since Citizen Kane.
As far as No Country For Old Men goes, we’ll have to agree to disagree. On purely a technical level it is astoundingly perfect even if you can’t get into the story, which I definitely can.
Fight Club is possibly the most overrated movie of all-time. I was so completely bored watching it that it took me two attempts just to get through it. Combine your typical cheesy Hollywood actors (come on, Brad Pitt? Seriously?!) with a horridly stale premise (it was all in his mind… ooh, how original) and you have the recipe for a downright pathetic movie.
As someone else mentioned, I’ve never known any ACTUAL people who like this movie. I think all of the fans must be kids, or at least were when it came out.
Thankyou for putting the Maltese Falcon up there. definitely one of the most overated films of all time. Don’t know if Borat or this film is the most overated film of all time. John Huston and Humphrey Bogart would make better films.
The first time I saw Blade Runner I wasn’t impressed at all. It seemed like a slow-paced, boring detective story, but the second time I saw it I was completely overwhelmed, and think of it now as one of the best movies I’ve ever seen! It’s one of those movies that you just have to see again before making an impression.
Most overrated movies, off the top of my head…
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Most of this movie so boring that by the end I wanted to shove a railroad spike through my brain. The bulk the film consists of just the deconstruction of their memories by the extreme overuse of Hollywood special effects… for like an hour and a half! I just kept checking the clock to see when this dreadful and trite piece of garbage would end. Fortunately for my sanity, it did end. Eventually.
Fight Club: The first half of this movie was so terribly boring that I couldn’t even watch it all the way through on my first sitting. Later, when I finally mustered the fortitude to watch the whole thing, it turned out to be one of the biggest letdowns in movie history. Ooooh, it was all in his mind! Yeah, real original. No one has EVER thought of THAT before. And has Brad Pitt ever been anything but an unbelievably annoying d-bag? Seriously?
Pulp Fiction: For starters, you can’t put Bruce Willis in a movie and actually expect him to be able to act. The guy has been nothing but a total hack since Moonlighting, as the only character he seems to be able to play is himself: just a big, dumb guy. Toss the mildly-comical-but-mostly-just-irritating Travolta and Jackson into the ridiculous plot, and you have one hell of a stupid movie. The only reason that Pulp Fiction got the attention it received was because of the acclaim from Reservoir Dogs (the only thing Tarantino ever did that was worth a damn, IMO). Good soundtrack, though.
Kill Bill 1 & 2: (see Pulp Fiction, above).
Fargo: Okay, I must have really missed something when I saw this, because I didn’t find it interesting or funny in the slightest. It’s the kind of film you watched with friends, and then afterwards everyone just shrugged and forgot about it. Oh, and by the way, everyone I’ve known from the upper Midwest was horrified by the mockery of the accent. Just shameful. What is so good about this movie, exactly? It’s a mediocre crime drama that tried way too hard to be quirky.
There are other films that I didn’t include because while they may have won more awards than they deserved (like these awards aren’t all just BS anyway), they don’t actually show up on that many serious critics’ lists as truly being great movies. Call it the “Titanic syndrome”: popular as hell, but not taken as seriously by true movie aficionados, and so therefore not really as overrated as the trendy choices I have mentioned.
WHAT!?! Blade Runner is a masterpiece. The first time I watched it I didn’t find it that appealing, but on a second viewing I put it right up there with my all time favourites. Its a unique genre of sci-fi film noir and I think people weren’t expecting that and that accounts for alot of its dislike
“When Forrest should have been uprooted, excavated and forgotten to make room for new, brilliant filmmaking life like Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and American Beauty” Wow, you just called my two favorite movies of all time BRILLIANT in one sentence. Thank you for that. This was also a surprisingly good list. Most overrated lists piss me off. Yours, surprisingly didn’t. 😀 The only one I disagree with is Fight Club. Other than that, these are all definitely overrated.
“When Forrest should have been uprooted, excavated and forgotten to make room for new, brilliant filmmaking life like Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and American Beauty” Wow, you just called my two favorite movies of all time BRILLIANT in one sentence. Thank you for that. This was also a surprisingly good list. Most overrated lists piss me off. Yours, surprisingly didn’t. 😀 The only one I disagree with is Fight Club. Other than that, these are all definitely overrated.
I’m a Bogart fan and can’t stand “The Maltese Falcon.”
Moderation?
With exception of Wes Anderson, your opinion is overrated. Even then I can’t give you credit for being accidentally right. Let me understand; you didn’t like the movie therefore it was bad? Most these movies are worth seeing. You obviously don’t like movies as genera, why do suffer through them.
Oh please explain to how Forest Gump slighted American Beauty, these movies came out five years apart.
You should really read the descriptions before talking. We didnt say anything about not liking it. We described why it is overrated.
Don’t like movies? That would be silly to start a movie blog then…
I agree that “The Matrix” should be on this list, but couldn’t disagree more about Blade Runner. Where “The Matrix” was convoluted and silly, “Blade Runner” was thought provoking and suspenseful. Where “The Matrix” was all style, “Blade Runner” had style AND substance.
But this list omits the most overrated series of films in the history of film making – The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Fantastic books, horrible movies by a an overrated hack of a director.
Agree totally with list but could lengthen it by a good two dozen more! Rushmor,Lost in Translation,Ghost World,most James Bond movies(especially Daniel Craig ones),Groundhog Day.In fact,Bill Murray is probably the most overrated actor in hollywood,sarcasm & charmlessnss personified!
It could be, but it’s nice to keep it concise with “most” … Rushmore should be up there instead, but wasn’t as famous as the other… I dig Lost In Translation though.
I despise Bill Murray and that God awful Groundhog Day. Ugh!!!
One can argue this way and that so I will boil it down.
BLADE RUNNER is and, I imagine, always will be a great movie.
THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS nay not be great, or maybe it is. Whatever. I thought it was a hoot and really enjoyed it. Besides, it was hardly “overrated”—as I recall the critics were mixed and it was not a huge hit.
But then, I think THE BIG LEBOWSKI is the third-worst Coen bros movie.
You lost me with Fight Club. The rest I could agree with, but Fight Club was amazing. Only women and guys raised by women don’t like/appreciate this movie.
Aren’t most people raised by women? 9 for 10 is a pretty good accuracy.
You were mostly right until the part where it seemed you find it a good thing to be part of a male steriotype. Is it true to say a women’s opinion of Fight Club doesn’t mean anything about it simply because she isn’t part of the intended audience. The movie is incorrect on many levels, as it is also correct and humorous on others. You simply cannot omit an opinion because it is subject to male/female equality in the spirit of its purpose. Man raised by woman? Maybe if you mean single parent, but even then you have a person with male tendency taught to appreciate female opinion. Doesn’t get much more equal than that. You should get over your fixation on masculinity.
Considering FIGHT CLUB is among other tings about the way to keep male sexual contact unspoken and unrevealed to the general popluace, this comment is rather curious. Not wrong, but interesting. Part of the FIGHT CLUB’s supposed rules of honor include being able to gather in both the never-spoken, no-kiss male-male sex enjoyers from those who don’t do that and would be shocked if they understood that the other half does! You see, a FIGHT would break out in the CLUB between its factions if that were allowed to be upfront. The consumerism is ok social criticism but is just an aside compared to the let’s=role-play-during-our-gay-sex so we can say “it never happened to us” (it happened to those guys role-playing). Hey, I am only breaking the rule here because it is anonymous and no one hardly reads this thing! I would go insane if this secret broke out to my wife or the other half of men who don’t get it. So maybe if the movie is the first secret confirmation of alll this a guy has, he would think it was the best thing since the Bible or something.
thank you for putting ‘maltese falcon’ here , this shoddy acted timepiece is the most overrated movie in history, people put it on top 100 lists without asking the question ‘why’
Though I generally love vintage detective movies, I did find ‘The Maltese Falcon’ to be a bit dull and plodding. I think it enjoys an exaggerated reputation because we all tend to lump it together with Bogart’s later, greater vehicles (‘Casablanca’, ‘The Big Sleep’, ‘To Have and Have Not’, et al.).
I love ‘The Matrix’ — arguably the best action flick of the 1990s — but I’ve never agreed with its reputation for intellectual sophistication.
And speaking of movies that aren’t nearly as smart as they pretend to be, the pop philosophy of ‘Fight Club’ is really just an ode to Gen-X self-absorption. That “Our war is spiritual” monologue has become downright embarrassing in light of subsequent real-life events.
I unconditionally love ‘Rocky’, though. Yes, it’s cheesy, but there’s nothing wrong with a little cheese in your diet.
While I’m here, I might as well add my own list of overrated movies, with the important caveat that I actually like most of the movies I’m about to mention; I just don’t think they’re as great as they’re often made out to be.
‘The Searchers’ — A slightly-better-than-average John Wayne western that for some strange reason has been pumped up by the film school crowd as ‘Citizen Kane’ on horseback.
‘Camelot’ — A run-of-the-mill ’60s musical that has been placed on a pedestal due to Boomer nostalgia for the Kennedy Administration.
‘Return of the Jedi’ — Closer in quality to the Prequels than the first two Star Wars movies, this is another one that benefits from generational nostalgia — in this case, Gen-X nostalgia for the 1980s.
‘High Fidelity’ — I did not find myself particularly entertained by watching a guy wallow in self-pity.
‘School of Rock’ — The release of this very average summer comedy was met with a baffling avalanche of critical acclaim. It was weird. I still don’t really understand why professional movie critics seemed to almost unanimously fall head over heels for this unremarkable flick.
Also overrated:
Star Trek: First Contact
Spider-Man
Austin Powers
Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond
I agree with some of the list (Bladerunner in particular), but suggesting a movie like Pulp Fiction – which is fairly shakey movie largely filled with drivel linking some scenes which are entertaining solely because of drugs, and the use of the word “fuck”, and gun shooting; typical of about 8500 cheesy 80’s action flicks – is actually deserving of praise, sort of destroys the consistency of the article. You see, you followed up with Wes Anderson bashing when Tarrantino is the epitome of an overrated filmmaker.
Just because a move is good, doesn’t necessarily make it overrated. Except for Dances With Wolves, not good and overrated.
Watched Blade Runner and fell asleep 20 years ago. Thought I might be wrong, watched the Directors Cut last night, fell ASLEEP…~
Nope I wasn’t wrong, this movie is boring crap, I also didn’t realise elitism was alive in well in sci fi movies of the eighties…
You are soooo wrong about The Matrix though, waaay off, one of the defining movies of the 00’s
Definately agree with Royal Tenenbaums. No idea why some people thought it was great. It was boring, stupid, shallow and unfunny, which is a combination that doesn’t make for a great film.
Though I object to Dances with Wolves and Fight Club. With the latter, your opinion is your own and fair enough, though I generally don’t agree. Dances with Wolves was an outright epic. It was patient story telling which many regard as “boring” because it wasn’t less that 100 minutes. Moving, powerful, telling, deep and sobering. Acting was sublime as was the direction – it deserved all the awards and praise that it received.
where is the list of 10 most underrated films?
We may write one some day!
Forrest Gump (1994) ranks high among Best Picture Winners That Didn’t Deserve It.
My 10 most overrated movies are…and in no particular order
1. Citizen Kane…HATED IT!!! Rosebud can kiss my ass and so can Orson Welles, one of the most narcissistic, overrated “talents” in cinema history.
2. Casablanca…BORING!!!
3. The African Queen…BORING!!!
4. Rear Window…BORING! I personally think this is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s worst films. Plus…I loathe Jimmy Stewart. There, I said it!
5. The Usual Suspects. OMG…where do I even begin with this pile of crap.
6. The English Patient…If I ever had to sit through that film again I would rip my hair out of my head.
7. The Constant Gardener…probably THE most boring film I have ever seen.
8. Kramer VS Kramer…What a snoozefest, and would someone just please slap Meryl Streep and her overacting in this film.
9. The Hours…The most depressing movie I have ever, and not particularly that good. They give Nicole Kidman a Best Actress Oscar for being on film for 33 minutes, because she wore a fake nose and looked homely. BRAVO BRAVO…piss on that!!!
10. The 10 Commandments…First of all let’s get this straight. CHARLTON HESTON WAS A HORRENDOUS “ACTOR”! Secondly, Hollywood trying to sell religion would be like a serial killer being a school counselor. Practice what you preach, mother fu**ers!
Yes to everything except Casablanca and The Usual Suspects.
Not enough car crashes for you? Not enough special effects, or CGI?
Oh come on! The Matrix?! Ok 2 was ok and 3 was a massive disappointment but the first one is pure genious.
And Forrest Gump, now that is also a great movie. Yes I think Pulp Fiction was not only the best film of 1994 but of the 90s. But I’m still ok with Forrest Gump winning best picture, and Robert Zemeckis direction was perfect.
Other than that, I agree with your list.
You either like Fight Club, or you are wrong. Great movie. Anybody who says its overrated has zero taste in movies.
valid arguments my shit. this list must be a joke, except for blade runner. That was truly boring.
Agree with everything but West Side Story, which I love … Richard Beymer is not very exciting, but the score and the dancing left me breathless, and Natalie Wood and Anita Moreno are terrific.
Agree with everything except Fight Club which was brilliant. Just ask Ed Norton which film he’s most proud of.
An actor like Norton, who is often good, can be proud of his work but that does not necessarily confer greatness to the overall movie. But although I think FIGHT CLUB is indeed overrated adolescent philosophy about homosociality (look it up) and Alcoholics Anonymous-style coded living, I will agree to disagree with you about it. Its fans think it is wonderful and they deserve to have that opinion. I, for example, don’t know why more people don’t love ZELIG, among other examples. But I won’t try to pound it in to you, even in an imaginary state of projected being. (Applies to both movies I noted here maybe???)
forrest gump is so fucking overrated. it’s long, boring & unoriginal. I don’t think people know what creativity is anymore. cuz, honestly people, writing books & making movies about how some shitfucker raped some girl or how some slut showed some dumb perv her ugly nasty tits or how someone turned into a slut is not original & certainly nothing to praise. u ppl r retards. Fuck you all! I don’t think you’d know a good movie or book if it punched you in your fucking face! Here are a bunch of other vastly overrated movies that you forgot: apocalypse now (too fucking long & so fucking boring & totally unoriginal), green mile (also too fucking long & so typical, no originality whatsoever), to kill a mockingbird (so fucking typical, not unique in any way & boring; this should be a throwaway movie cuz it’s shit & so is the damned book. My only question is: how did that dumb bitch get a Pulitzer Prize cuz her book is nothing but a waste of our beautiful trees), the notebook (nothing but porn & also very typical; nothing unique or original), scarface, sin city, black swan, donnie darko, silence of the lambs, pulp fiction, shawshank redemption, godfather 1 & 2 & all that shit! Why am I wasting my precious time writing this? You people still don’t understand anything I am trying to say. I mean, this is like talking to a wall. So, wtf’s there left to say? You’re all fucking perverts is all I can say! U r idiots! I’m just pissed! I’ll write a book about the rape of a man & it will be the best book ever!
well u know what would i say
that u r an idiot admin & didnt understand the movies coz some of them are greatest movies
I don’t understand all the love for Avatar. Sure the visuals are damn good but other than that what does the movie have to offer? My biggest problem with Avatar is the way the the two sides are portrayed. Whether it’s Avatar, Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, or Disney’s Pocahontas these sort of movies pretty much always make one side a bunch of evil greedy bastards and the other side is always a peaceful, spiritual bunch who just want to be left alone and blah blah blah. The only movie I’ve seen that doesn’t paint the two sides in black and white is Princess Mononoke which is a much better movie than any of the others I listed.
never heard of you…
mr miller ..never heard of you till i came across this sight. after i posted my last comment i decided find out who you are… i couldn’t find anything interesting or worthwile that you have accomplished. though this column verifies once again when one lacks the talent that he envys that others have…one can always become a critic to gain the attention you that you deserve
your so wrong about west side story!
I disagree with your choice of Fight Club, but the explanation is sound and it’s still an agreeable list.
The Matrix overrated?
Blasphemy.
I came here because after having seen the Final Cut of Blade Runner I do think that one is slightly overrated. But then to read you think The Maltese Falcon, Dances With Wolves and The Fight Club are overrated? Seriously? The Maltese Falcon the template of a Film Noir. The one film that they have tried to copy and never been able to come close or top it. I am sorry The Maltese Falcon is a masterpiece. I can’t take your list seriously at all.
You essentially nailed it. I’ve always considered The Matrix and Fight Club to be some of the most overrated movies ever. The Hangover is also a horrendous piece of awful acting I’ve never been able to sit through for more than 10 minutes. Other than the omission of the that film, a good list.