A few days ago, Premiere put out one of the most inane movie lists I have ever seen - the 20 Most Overrated Movies of All Time. Now, "overrated" is an easy adjective to overuse, but this is just a weird collection of titles. I haven't seen the actual article, so I don't know how they defend these, but it really plays mostly like a list of films that shouldn't have won the Best Picture Oscar. (And once I get ahold of the complete article, I'll probably weigh in with my thoughts on their defenses of their choices, because I am a movie tool).
2001: A Space Odyssey
Hard for me to judge, as I like it more than anyone I know. But assuming that Premiere trots out the usual criticisms (too slow, make no sense), I would argue that it's the viewer's problem if he or she is impatient. The film comes as close to deliberate experimentation as narrative film ever has, and it gets allowances for that. Yes, the Dawn of Man is too damn long. The acting is bad, but not inappropriately, given the themes. And I'm sorry that the ending is unclear, but I have never believed that movies need to wrap themselves up with a little bow (and if 2001 is unclear to you, stay the fuck away from the European films of the same decade). I'd have to argue that it's rated really quite well, especially given that it no longer seems to be the consensus favorite Kubrick.
A Beautiful Mind
I haven't seen it, and never will; but did anyone, besides the Academy, ever really like this film? To be overrated, I think that somebody, somewhere, has to like it, and I don't think that's true of this one.
An American in Paris
If anything, this one is underrated - its reputation seems to be mostly "stultifying, with a great ballet at the end." Sure, it's not Singin' in the Rain or Meet Me in St. Louis, and Leslie Caron is neither a great actor nor dancer, but it's very pretty, and has a soundtrack composed entirely of Gershwin songs. It's a fine entrant in the Freed Unit canon.
American Beauty
Four years ago? Definitely overrated. It's a potty-mouthed sitcom with offensive cartoons as characters and a ludicrously overdeveloped sense of its own profundity. But does anyone still talk about it, for any reason?
Chariots of Fire
What? Who under the age of 30 has ever even seen the damn thing? (I have, but y'know). And do any of them have fond memories of it? Seriously, what does anyone remember about it besides the theme song?
Chicago
I wholeheartedly agree. For the film that ushered in the New Era of the Musical (and which Phantom of the Opera and Rent will finish off), it's really not a very good one - the numbers would be good on stage, but they aren't cinematic in the least. It seems clear to me that Rob Marshall doesn't actually understand what cameras are for in the movies. And - no arguing - Renee Zellweger and Richard Gere are horribly miscast.
Clerks
Hm. It's certainly not very "good." But it is very "important." And I think that even the most rabid fanboys admit that it's a much better screenplay than movie. I don't know of anyone who loves the film who tries to call it more than it really is, which is a really simple, fun comedy directed for about six bucks.
Easy Rider
Probably overrated, entirely because of nostalgia. It's a very important cultural document - maybe the most important in cinema history - but it is a fucking awful movie, if coherence and thematic development are what we're looking for. And it was dated pretty much the week after it came out. And yet, it does have a sterling reputation. So yes, I agree. Overrated.
Fantasia
I'm tempted to dismiss it just because it's experimental and the rules don't apply, but let's not. Instead, I have to ask: a) does it really have that great a reputation? I don't know of anyone who talks about it except in animation discussions; b) doesn't the animation - some of it the most beautiful in the history of the medium - count for anything? "Toccata and Fugue," the sequence, might be overrated, but not the whole piece.
Field of Dreams
Not overrated. I have never heard of one person who tried to claim it was anything more than a well-done male weepie about dads and sons. Which it is.
Forrest Gump
I guess, maybe. I remember when the DVD came out a few years back, and everyone was hugely excited, thinking it was a bit overrated. But I thought it was more of a punchline by now.
Gone with the Wind
It's right up there with Casablanca as one of those Hollywood films where everything is firing at 110% just to make something really goddamn entertaining. Is it as good as non-scholarly polls tend to rank it? No. But calling it overrated is pointless. It exists solely to be a four-hour EPIC, with luscious cinematography, sets, costumes, title cards. Sure it's racist, and sure the acting is, let us say, mildly overdone, but it's literally impossible to overrate something whose entire point is to be the most massive film in history.
Good Will Hunting
I haven't seen it...but the general tenor of the "New" Gus van Sant crowd seems to suggest that everything between My Own Private Idaho and Gerry sucked. So I don't think it has that good of a reputation anymore. I doubt it deserved the Oscar nom, but it had to be better than the same year's Titanic.
Jules et Jim
This is their only foreign film? Assholes...anyway, it's not the best film of the Nouvelle Vague, like people often say, so it is "overrated," but actively disliking this film is like stepping on a puppy: it's vindictive and pointless. There are some gorgeous shots, great performances, and one of the most candidly adult views towards sex in the cinema.
Monster's Ball
I haven't seen it, but nobody gives a damn about the movie now, and nobody gave a damn about the movie then - it was all about Halle Berry. Again, it needs to be liked before it can be overrated.
Moonstruck
I don't get it...it's a serviceable romantic comedy. It's one of the better romantic comedies of its decade. That's all anyone has ever said about it. So who's overrating?
Mystic River
Ooh, fighting words...my favorite English-language film of 2003 is on the list, eh? I'll grant that the rhetoric surrounding the film probably oversold it, and there are flaws, especially if you think (as many do) that Sean Penn is too hammy. But, come on, this is one well-directed movie. I guess it's overrated in the sense that it's not the best film of the decade, which was the tenor of some of the reviews, but the pervasive criticisms of this film have always struck me as irrelevant and niggling. But frankly, anyone who really just hates this film has a sense of cinema which is totally incompatible with my own, and therefore our opinions shouldn't matter to each other.
(Anyway, if I'm thinking of a 2003 Best Picture nominee that's seriously overrated, the one I'm thinking of isn't Mystic River.)
Nashville
If it's overrated, I'm right at the top of the ones doing the overrating (it's my favorite film of the 1970s - absolutely the best "portrait of America" film ever). Moving along.
The Red Shoes
FUCK YOU PREMIERE.
...
How the fuck do you watch this and not love it?
The Wizard of Oz
Why? Because it's the one film that everyone in America thinks they must see? It's one of the best-made MGM musicals (which is sort of like saying "one of Shakespeare's best soliloquys"), and has some of the best songs ever written for a film. The perfect example of "everyone loves it because it's really that good." The acting, the writing...what is wrong with this film?
To conclude, while I have no such list of my own, if I did it would certainly include Bicycle Thieves, Rebel without a Cause, Children of Paradise and The African Queen, and probably Potemkin and The Usual Suspects. Also, no honest list can avoid including Citizen Kane, because...who really thinks it's No. 1?
Your own overrated films, and thoughts on Premiere's in the comments.
18 August 2005
8 comments:
Just a few rules so that everybody can have fun: ad hominem attacks on the blogger are fair; ad hominem attacks on other commenters will be deleted. And I will absolutely not stand for anything that is, in my judgment, demeaning, insulting or hateful to any gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion. And though I won't insist on keeping politics out, let's think long and hard before we say anything particularly inflammatory.
Also, sorry about the whole "must be a registered user" thing, but I do deeply hate to get spam, and I refuse to take on the totalitarian mantle of moderating comments, and I am much too lazy to try to migrate over to a better comments system than the one that comes pre-loaded with Blogger.
Ooo! This is a question I must mull over on my 6 hour drive to LA, but I have one to start with:
ReplyDeleteMy Best Friend's Wedding
...is perhaps the worst *serious* movie I've ever seen (ie not things like Plan 9 From Outer Space which are purely about "let's see if we can make a movie!" I don't understand why everyone loves this film (MBFW that is). It's about horrible characters which drippingly smarmy actors and has the most god-awful plot in the world. Plus, what is the message of this film? "If you are Julia Roberts the audience will loveyou even if you hatch a dastardly plan to steal someone else's fiance." Hate it. Hate it hate it HATE IT HATEHATEHATEHATE.
Also, if I may (and perhaps I may not in your presence)... anything by John Cassavettes.
More later, I'm sure.
Having not read the article, I'm guessing you are unaware that the list contains both a "why it's overrated" and a defense of the film, each written by a different member of the magazine's staff. It's more of a published version of what goes on at the Premiere watercooler.
ReplyDeleteAs for what you have to say, yes, people still talk about American Beauty. They say it's overrated. The one thing I remember from when I watched it was knowing instantly that Kevin Spacey was going to win an Oscar. It wasn't even for overall performance. It was for one moment (and do I even remember that moment?) that just felt like what every member in the Academy lives for.
I wouldn't say our views on cinema are totally incompatible. And I think you should know what I mean. But I have to say that of the movies on this list I have seen, I believe Mystic River fits the most. I leaned towards hate for a bit, but then I realized I didn't hate the movie, I just hated the hype. Yes, it was overrated.
And as for my own list, I just wrote about The Outsiders (also after reading the same issue of the same magazine), so I won't go into detail. Although, after September 20th, I may or may not think the same thing.
What an interesting list! Fascinating! First of all, there seems to be the "grumpy about recent Oscar seasons" contingent of A Beautiful Mind, American Beauty, Chicago, Monster's Ball, and Mystic River. I dismiss all of these for the same reason I refuse to consider these great films... it's too soon. These border on overhype and not overrated. A candidate like Easy Rider, which I'll agree to, is truly overrated. Until more time passes, these others are merely still in our memory as being overhyped. And they all legitimately were. But I disagree that people still talk about American Beauty. I hear it brought up only in regards to Conrad Hall's (impeccable) cinematography, and given the fact that the man recently died and left few late-period works to analyze, that's a fine reason to bring up American Beauty. Other than that, these films are too young to be overrated, and were simply overhyped. As someone who saw Mystic River early and before the hype machine, I thought it was a great film on its own merits. Maybe it became overhyped (Million Dollar Baby sure did), but that doesn't make it less of a film, or less deserving of its lasting reputaton, which, as far as I can tell, is nearly nonexistant.
ReplyDeleteThe rest of the picks range from "right on!" (Easy Rider) to "what the fuck is wrong with you" (Wizard of Oz, Fantasia, An American in Paris). Then there's the "I went to film school but had no patience for nonAmericanMainstream cinema, so I hated when they made me watch these" picks of Red Shoes and Jules and Jim. I intend to read the article, and I won't be the least bit surprised if either of these films mention film school.
The rest of the list, for the most part, feels like a "movies I want to pick on" list, more than a legitimate "overrated" list. As you pointed out, Tim, no one holds a picture like Moonstruck in too high regard, and what is thought about these films is deserved.
Chariots of Fire and Field of Dreams have perhaps been over-refferenced in our PoMo age, but is that their fault? Does it mean anyone believes them to be more than what they are?
And of course, 2001. A film I've called overrated on numerous occasions. Dirty sitting at the top of such a miscalculated list because it's easy to brush away as part of their lunacy.... which it might be, but shouldn't be. I resent your implication that I'm too impatient for it... I adore the original Solaris, so patience in long sci-fi epics shouldn't be a claim levied against me.
As for my overrated films? I'll probably check back in with those, but African Queen is certainly at the top of my list.
And what about underrated films? I'll submit 12 Monkeys and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? for now, with more on the way.
-W
"Underrated" is insanely hard, although Roger Rabbit is an inspired choice.
ReplyDeleteI also should draw a distinction between people who hate 2001 because it's slow, and people who hate it because it's undeservedly slow. The first group says there's not enough plot; the second group says there's too much self-aware pretention in having no plot. You, Will, are not of the first group. My point remains that I think the film's stature has been sinking lately.
I do not, anyway, believe that the good folks at Premiere would think very highly of Solaris.
It's really interesting to see them rating Nashville on this list, though obviously it's rated highly enough to be considered. Who doesn't reference this as a seminal work? Not PT Anderson, I'll tell you that. As a totally unearned sidenote, how wild is it for PT that he gets to be Altman's buddy on the Prarie Home Companion movie? And how could they have lost Lyle Lovett and Tom Waits as cowboys Dusty and Lefty? But enough of my Minnesota/Altman fetish...
ReplyDeleteAnyways, to me, without Nashville we have no Linklater (where the scope of a culture becomes the focus of a film) or Anderson (where you have a filmmaker who, psychotically, tries to wrangle about eighty-nine characters through, again, a culturally and thematically unified world), and so on and so forth. I'm no film guy, but I think like you folks, I do think the historical significance counts for something. Apart from which, from a sheer acting standpoint, it's pretty damn delightful to see so many actors from extremely varied backgrounds able to bounce off each other in the way actors only seem to bounce in Altman films.
Anyways. That was my only "WHAT?" on the list, but mostly because it seems so obviously subjective an exercise. Like all lists, it's all about bias and just throwing out titles to start a conversation, but with the Overrated distinction, it anchors it far more deeply in subjectivity than any Greatest Film list I've seen. Because, you know, and I'm guessing here, but aside from recent films (where, as you're all noting, there's no real such thing as overrating because -- this is my revision of the theme -- Every Damn Thing That Comes Out Ever these days has to be the GREATEST or WORST film of all time. Witness Deuce Bigalow, witness... well, Mystic River and American Beauty, I guess)the overrated argument inherently has to reduce to "Yes, it was groundbreaking and historical and paved the way for X, Y and Z, but I did not enjoy it fully, and therefore deem it unworthy of its progeny." So it's hard to give a damn how much the Premiere writers enjoyed The Red Shoes or The Wizard of Oz, I suppose, and likewise it's hard for me to spend time thinking, "What movie did I really expect to be great and then not really enjoy that much?" I actually had that Citizen Kane experience, but then when I re-viewed it at NU, it blew me away. Go figure. Now I own it. That's $20 I'll never have back. Thanks a lot, all you RTVF swine.
Anyways, I find the underrated arguments much more interesting, because it's not about dismissal so much as it is elevating and critically making arguments on behalf of a film typically given less attention and respect due to its subject matter, tone, etc. In fact, for almost a week now I've been thinking that I need to do a post on MY blog (should I ever stop writing this note to Tim's blog, wasting mine and everybody else's time) on Dazed and Confused. Yeah, I think it's underrated, and you can all go to hell.
Anyways, I could rail on about the injustices of the world in terms of recognition of Great Art for a good while longer, but I am instead going to end this post, and go back to doing what I do best: railing on about the injustice of living in Wheaton: just close enough to civilization to know what's going on, but just far enough away to participate in nothing. I adore and miss you all, and I need to get my copy of Taxi Driver back from whomever I loaned it to.
Ciao, y'all.
American Beauty was just recently parodied in Madagascar which I enjoyed in leiu of something with Ashton Kutcher while being delayed for 3 hours on my flight yesterday.
ReplyDeleteI like American Beaty, I like that it is over the top, and I like how the film looks... Not going to say it is th best thing since sliced bread, but I liked it. I know we'll simply have to agree to disagree on that one...
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, I must say that I completely agree with your commentary, especially regarding Mystic River. The issue with doing an over-rated list is getting a consensus as to how people rate the films.
Note: I can only agree to 2001 being over-rated if it is over-rated because people say it is the best Kubrick film. if that is how it is over-rated I agree, as I prefer Dr. Strangelove and A Clockwork Orange, but otherwise there is no way a Kubrick film is over-rated. Speaking of Kubrick, Full Metal Jacket, Paths of Glory, and Eyes Wide Shut could be candidates for under-rated films...
I'm trying to think of overrated films, and three pop to mind. The unfortunate thing is that I suspect you LOVE/WORSHIP them but I found them a waste of my time: No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood, and The Dark Knight. I'm tired of hearing how they are all the Citizen Kane of this, that, or the other. (Side note: I STILL stand by Kane).
ReplyDeleteI was bored by the first two (fighting to stay awake) and the third was too long and too wrapped up in its 'importance' and 'brilliance' to be remotely entertaining. I would add one more: James Cameron's Titanic. HOW could THAT be better than L.A. Confidential? Yeah, seeing Kate Winslet sans clothes is always fun, but that doth not a Best Picture make.