Movies you really really wish were good but just… aren’t.

Mermaids starring Cher and Winona Ryder. It was alright and fun in parts, but overall felt lacking. Winona's character should have been crazier, not just quirky.

The Godfather is boring as hell to me. Could never get into it.

Elvis, any Star Wars movies, as I love science fiction but hate all things Star Wars, and any Bond movie. Those all suck too.

Spaceballs

Fahrenheit 451

Interstellar

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

The parts with Phil Silvers, with Dick Shawn, and (amazingly) with Ethel Merman are hilarious, but the rest of the movie isn't very funny.

Fight Club.

Moulin Rouge! Sorry but it sucks. I just might hate Baz Luhrmamn, because his Romeo & Juliet was even worse.

The Front Room, starring Brandy. I love horror movies and was looking forward to it. Nothing scary about it other than the writer was majorly into scat.

A waste of time and I thought I was going to vomit.

Who does she run over, R9?

OP 😆

Star Wars and Ghostbusters for me

Carol. It was boring and so damn dark.

This is a "I noticed this one thing, what are some other things like the one I noticed" thread. It's amazing how many threads fit this pattern.

You're easily amazed, r14.

The Golden Compass, largely due to being butchered in the editing room.

Every single Streisand movie.

Godsford Park

Boys in the Sand

Godfather III - there's a lot to like about it. But the script and Sofia Coppola just drag it down.

And Cruising. I only saw it when it came out, so maybe it deserves a re-watch.

Godfather III was such a disappointment. I don't know why but anything based on John Le Carre novels, doesn't translate to the screen well.

OTOH Nosferatu was an excellent atmospheric gothic horror film.

R21 - The Spy Who Came In From The Cold is excellent, at least I think so.

Bros

MAME

[quote] I don't know why but anything based on John Le Carre novels, doesn't translate to the screen well.

The Alec Guinness miniseries of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy is fantastic.

And so are The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (as someone else said above) and The Tailor of Panama.

Barbie. The first half had so much potential. It all went downhill after America Ferrera and the virtue signaling.

"A Real Pain". Eisenberg makes it a chore to sit through.

"Juror #2" directed by Eastwood. The ending was abysmal.

"Bye Bye Birdie."

The opening (and closing) title number is nearly unforgettable, and so is the incredibly fast-moving, uptempo rendition of "The Telephone Hour,." But the rest of it is awful.

Concussion

"American Beauty." I couldn't see what the hype was all about. Not that bad, merely mediocre for all the acclaim it received.

"Gone Girl." Carrie Coon was the best thing about it, the rest was just grand guignol executed by someone with no camp sensibility and who took the source material too seriously, instead of treating it as enjoyable schlock.

[quote] the rest was just grand guignol

That term you use... I do not think it means what you think it means.

Oh, Gotta Lotta Livin’ to Do from “Bye Bye Birdie” is s lively number, R28.

R10 actually, she runs over her mother-in-law, but it's just in a fantasy sequence. She gets tired of cleaning the shit that the incontinent old lady has spread all over the bed, walls, furniture, etc...

Day after day after day...

[quote] The Front Room, starring Brandy. I love horror movies and was looking forward to it. Nothing scary about it other than the writer was majorly into scat.

Sounds like a masterpiece!

Death Becomes Her

It's loud and rude and vulgar, but incredibly unfunny. I didn't laugh as often as I cringed.

The "Songbird" opening was sort of funny.

Out of Africa. I've tried to watch it a few times, but it's just dull.

Ad Astra. Brad Pitt doesn't have the acting chops to be a leading man. He sounds bored and stupid when he does the narration. It's a shame because it's a beautiful movie.

[quote]The "Songbird" opening was sort of funny.

You find the least amusing part of the movie to be the funniest.

Velvet Goldmine - utterly boring

Magic Mike - it shouldn't be that hard to make a fun movie about male strippers

The Hobbit trilogy. I didn’t even bother watching the third movie. The cgi fest of the first two (especially the barrel river escape in part two) put me right off. Martin Freeman’s Bilbo was kind of an asshole and he had zero charm or charisma.

The LoTR trilogy was so good and I wanted the Hobbit to be equal to that, but it definitely wasn’t.

Alien 3 (though, it’s grown on me)

Alien Resurrection (blah)

Alien vs. Predator (could’ve been better, I wanted this one to crush it- it didn’t)

AVP Requiem (so damn dark I had trouble seeing the action)

Prometheus (visually impressive, great score, didn’t hate it)

Alien Covenant (horrid, a bunch of dipshits)

Alien Romulus (not awful not great)

The last Matrix movie in the trilogy. A free-fall in quality from the first. I actually thought the second movie in the trilogy was all right (a lot of people dump on it), but that too wasn't as great as the first.

Megalopolis

R39, the awful Cody Horn aside, I think Magic Mike is just about as good as a movie about male strippers could be. But then again, I think Steven Soderbergh has more raw talent than almost any director working today, and the only thing hindering him is his lack of ambition.

R43, prepare for the eventual reconsideration of Megalopolis as a masterpiece. I didn’t hate the film, and it definitely falls into the category of fascinating folly, but you know it’s going to be resurrected by people who are going to be really insufferable about it.

Mary Poppins.

So many boring scenes at the bank and even though I love Glynis Johns her suffragette scenes stopped the show and not in the good way.

Hillbilly Elegy

Why was Brandy brought in from the pastures to star in a horror film? Terrible actress and singer. Very lowbrow.

'Eyes Wide Shut.' Every time I re-watch I fool myself that this time it'll somehow be better, but it never quite is. I really wanted Kubrick's swansong to be a masterpiece or adjacent, like so much of his great work.

It looks fabulous, Kubrick-perfect, and individual scenes lodge in the memory. But somehow it never coheres as a convincing narrative. The fact that it's based on a 'dream novel' is no excuse. As a great novelist once observed, 'Tell a dream, lose a reader.'

Nicole Kidman's final line in Eyes Wide Shut was the stupidest thing ever.

At a certain age directors need to just accept that they can't do it well any more. I'm looking at you Francis Ford Coppola and you Ridley Scott.

L'Année dernière à Marienbad

S.O.B.

Licorice Pizza. Two uncharismatic, unattractive, boring leads, and a meandering, disengaging storyline. It could have been better, based on how much I loved Anderson’s previous work (especially Boogie Nights). I know it was based on the life of former child (the original Yours, Mine and Ours) and current producer, Gary Goetzman, but I think giving the son of Philip Seymour Hoffman the lead role was a mistake. Skylar Gisondo has a small role in the movie, and I think he would have been a better choice. Plus, the woman, Alana Haim, was really hard to watch, especially in her bikini.

Prometheus: The first two acts are amazing. But the third is a total disaster.

Nosferatu: Visually beautiful, with great atmosphere and attention to detail. But it's slow, plodding and not scary at all.

The Star Wars sequel trilogy: Didn't anyone involved in the productions of them think they needed a story mapped out before a single frame was shot?

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Cusasck was a poor casting choice.

R14 good example, I was bored shitless and Rooney Mara is awful. However the period design is the most immersive of any 1950s recreation I have ever seen. It’s a good film to put on in the background and time-travel with a joint and drink in hand

Sorry meant to type R13

[quote] Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Cusasck was a poor casting choice.

I agree on Cusack. I have always wondered if it was have been better as a TV minseries adaptation instead of a movie adaptation.

Steel Magnolias. I needed more from it.

Making Love

CRUISING

Anything with Madonna. Especially Evita.

Steel Magnolias could have been better made by high schoolers, it's just awful!

Titanic, like a girl with any money is going to riverdance to get some third-class dick.

How about comments about a movie since 1995? I know R53 mentioned Nosferatu and I agree. But do any of you ever leave your houses?

If Steel Magnolias were actually good, it wouldn't be anywhere near as fun as it is.

I haven't found anything to settle on tonight and I wanted to watch a movie.

Hey r58, I gave my all, dammit!!!!

I just finished The Substance and was disappointed. It started strong but got so boring and ridiculous by the end.

“Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?”

"The Bonfire of Vanities." The source material was good but the movie was a complete turd. Whoever was the casting director should've never worked again.

R54; "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Cusack was a poor casting choice."

Oh, but there was another film in which he was even MORE miscast, and it is my contribution to this thread: LOVE & MERCY.

I decided to watch "Good Times" with Sonny and Cher last night. I wanted it to be good but it just... wasn't.

Torn Curtain

Can't Stop The Music

Every time I try to watch it I fall asleep - and I'm really invested in it!

The pacing on Midnight in the Garden was dreadful. DREADFUL.

Xanadu My heart broke for Olivia when I saw that shit.

Wicked was a bit flat musically.

Xanadu was so dull, and not at all the camp fest I had been led to believe.

Annie Hall. I just rewatched a few Woody Allen movies. Was going to give Annie Hall a 2nd try, then said nah.

Magic Mike was about as good as I expected it to be. Maybe better, frankly.

That piece of shit Licorice Pizza. Love the director, obsessed over anything 1970s, love indie films, and this was just....wtf? It was like a romcom between a pimply horny 15 year old doofus and some pathetic 25 year old that cant relate to people her own age (and we're supposed to find that endearing, not weird, not creepy or pedo adjacent. This great romance's pinnacle scene is when after much pleading and begging, the female love interest shows the horny teen her tits.

In short, it had everything I would love in a film, except for an toxic ephebophilic "love story" that I was clearñy supposed to be rooting for.

Crash. Has there ever been a more forgotten Oscar winner?

R79 agree about AH, I watched it with my mom a few years ago, we both love Woody Allen and yet at the end of this one we were just sort of confused how THIS has been considered Allen's masterpiece.

R2 I believe when Hallestrom was attached the little girl was supposed to die and was nixed. Not sure how it is in the book but the end really did seem not not bring anything together. A more tragic ending might've cancelled out some of the fluffier bits. Ryder was fantastic and really carried the film but I'm with you. The overall quality of the film was missing something.

Agree Licorice Pizza - what a mess. And the leads were tough to watch for two hours much less root for.

Want to add Saving Private Ryan - while beautifully shot just about everything after they found Ryan sucked. And I hated the memorial type bits at the cemetery. Jeremy Davis was the real standout to me in the cast. I wish he had been Oscar nominated.

Sorry meant R1 above

[quote] [R79] agree about AH, I watched it with my mom a few years ago, we both love Woody Allen and yet at the end of this one we were just sort of confused how THIS has been considered Allen's masterpiece.

R82, have you seen Manhattan Murder Mystery? That one's also starring Diane Keaton (as Woody Allen's wife). I enjoyed that one. It made me laugh and I rewatched it a couple of times.

I'm giving Best in Show another try and I'm liking it.

Fred Willard is always the same character. Disappointed in the Jennifer Coolidge and Parker Posey characters.

Love Catherine O'Hara and Michael McKean. They're my favorites in these movies. Also love Michael Hitchcock (Parker Posey's husband) and Linda Kash.

Larry Miller is so good at playing creepy.

Ed Begley was very good as the hotel worker.

Christopher Guest did a pretty good accent. But I'm not from the south, so I'll leave that to others to say if it was passable.

Everything, Everywhere, All at Once

Oh, yeah, I had to stop watching that movie about 20 minutes into it.

Emilia Perez I had to bail after 30mins

As far as Reality Bites, agreed, and Singles should be considered the definitive Gen X film.

Not Slacker, r90? Singles feel like a movie about young people made by older studio executives and marketing types.

I finally sat down to watch "Inglorious Basterds" recently. Pitt is so bad that I couldn't make it thru. It felt like a joke.

LA LA LAND wins this thread! Utter shit!

The Piano

The English Patient

Both excruciatingly painful to watch.

I walked out of The English Patient.

I also walked out of Evita.

Star Wars & Jedi (though I loved Empire Strikes Back)

And Phantom Menace & Sith (though I really liked Attack of the Clones)

Bonfire of the Vanities (1990). It should have been a brilliant and entertaining film, but failed miserably in those respects and every other. It's a foul stinking dog turd of a film that gets everything wrong not one little throat detail right.

dePalma is at best an interesting director, but not a very good one, pulling out bad performances, ridiculous casting, and hundreds of big wrong decisions in the focus of the plot and the layering on of details.

The material is so rich the same film could easily have been written and cast and directed as a dozen very different takes on the same outline, but not at all.

R98 There's a great book called "The Devil's Candy," which is all about the making of Bonfire of the Vanities and the shitfest it became. If you like Hollywood behind-the-scenes stories, this is one of the best.

My favorite part is Melanie Griffith going to get breast augmentation halfway through the filming. DePalma had to go back and reshoot all her scenes from before she had the surgery because the contrast between before and after was so pronounced.

Terms of Endearment - I really dislike this. Even the name "Flap" irritates me. I haven't seen it in decades, but I remember it felt disjointed and it seemed like I was watching a third-rate TV movie. At least the "GIVE MY DAUGHTER THE SHOT!" scene made me laugh.

Spartacus and Paths of Glory - I love Kubrick movies, but I can't take anything with Kirk Douglas starring in it seriously. He's like a parody of a bad actor.

Everything David Lean made after Summertime, with the exception of Passage to India (which I like a lot). Those overblown movies are a snore-fest.

Agree with above posters about Everything Everywhere. I gave up after a half hour. The cast is really good though.

And Barbie - it has a good first half and then goes downhill. At least it looks great.

I wanted Beetlejuice Beetlejuice to be better. They had over 30 years to create a great script, but we got kind of a mess. There was too much going on. What was the point of the wife and Willem Dafoe’s character? Didn’t add anything. I didn’t hate it, I’ll give it a C+, but I doubt I’ll rewatch it.

I did love the use of MacArthur Park near the end. That was lively.

R100 "David Lean....Those overblown movies are a snore-fest."

Such seering critique...

[R100] "David Lean....Those overblown movies are a snore-fest."

Such searing critique...

The stutterer at R102 / R103 with his "Anything over 30 minutes is a brain-teaser..." remark = typical

My point isn't that long (or even slow) equals boring. If that were the case, I wouldn't be a fan Tarkovsky's Solaris, Kobayashi's Human Condition trilogy, Ray's Apu trilogy, the Godfather films or The Best of Youth - or Lean's A Passage to India.

I think it was Andrew Sarris who said about Lean that with his films, there's "less than meets the eye."

R99 is right. "The Devil's Candy" is an incredible book. I couldn't put it down. One thing I learned from that book is the plane landing scene, just a few seconds, is considered the best scene ever filmed. Yeah I don't get it either I guess it's all the timing and everything that went into everything lining up. The plane, the colors, the sunset.....OK. It's YouTube so the quality is lacking.

R105 That was one of my favorite parts of the book, too. How they spent so much money and so much time trying to get the brief Concord landing shot just right.

Isn’t that just the opening shot of the Golden Girls credits?

The hell with having to hang on for 30+ minutes to start appreciating a movie. The beginning of a movie should be like the beginning of a book. It should grab you and be fucking interesting and make you want to turn the page.

Stephen King said something about it. I guess it's copyrighted and I can't find it online.

[quote] You find the least amusing part of the movie to be the funniest.

I thought that was by far the funniest part too.

I just watched American Hustle for the first time and I wish the WIGS could've been better. The only actors who weren't wearing obvious wigs were Amy Adams and Louis CK.

Casting is everything.

The remake of The Stepford Wives. What a mess. And I feel bad that I dragged a friend to see it with me.

I love seeing old airliners in movies and the fact that it's a Concorde makes it even better. I guess the movie isn't a total waste of time. The long opening shot at the Winter Garden is also pretty fun to watch.

Supposedly the original ending was much darker and closer to book, r112. Test audiences hated it so they had to do reshoots and come up with some corny bullshit where no one is killed and Matthew Brodrick is still a good guy.

The You're Wrong About podcast has an episode on the book vs the two adaptations.

L'Avventura

The ending of American Hustle was really stupid with the Christian Bale character turning out to be some type of good guy. And Christian Bale and Amy Adams holding hands with Bale's son, walking into the sunset. Ugh!

Annie Get Your Gun (1950). It was a huge hit, and the credit must go to Betty Hutton, who was very big then and who I think is fine in it, and believable as that character. Though I get tired of her singing voice. It wasn't bad, but to carry all those songs that Annie has, in a musical that starred Ethel Merman...maybe they should have gotten Doris Day to replace Judy.

Then there's the stage-bound opening. Like, 20 or 30 minutes, set in the yard of a hotel--as several songs are performed (3, I think, including one by Howard Keel). Didn't anyone figure out this was stagey? The film was on its third director, and its second star. In all that time, no one tried to open it up, even go inside for a minute or two?

It's not bad but I wish it was better.

*Was, or were.

I walked out of The Piano. I couldn't handle any of it. The cutesy fake voice of Anna Paquin, the dowdiness of Holly Hunter, the nudity of Harvey Keitel. What the actual fuck?

When they washed up on shore and people started vomiting on the beach, I actually had to vomit as well.

Back when Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson could 'do no wrong' in the 90s, with a string of quality British films....they put together this dreadful "Much Ado About Nothing".

The whole thing was terrible, boring, and fake. I can still hear Brian Blessed's phony Viking laugh through the whole thing, laughing at nothing, with every scene.

Conclave (2024)

Mother (2017)

The constant close-ups of Jennifer Lawrence's distressed and confused face (which I did buy on her) were annoying.

R121 That movie looks tedious.

R120 he was so bad but looked so good

The '74 Great Gatsby. Redford was such a bad choice for this role. I haven't seen the others and I believe the silent is lost.

I love big chunks of Birdie but some of it is TV sitcom embarrassing.

The bank scenes in Poppins are saved by Van Dyke and are necessary to the story. Disney kept in the slow part because they give more emotional weight to the point of the story and the ending.

r72 so at r14 you were complaining about this thread, but later decided to join in. It's amazing how many posters do that.

I'm amazed at how young Keanu doesn't look as gorgeous to me as he did when I was young like him. I thought he was insanely hot and beautiful. Now I think: attractive.

2001: A Space Odyssey

I’ve watched it three times hoping I will finally get it, but each time I found it a complete bore

How To Marry A Millionaire. As a kid it was on Dialing For Dollars (that dates me). I liked it, had these memories of it (not in wide screen, often missing a blonde). I watch it every once in a while trying to recapture what I saw in my childhood. It's not bad, but it's not that involving or hilarious. There's a long prologue with Alfred Newman conducting the studio orchestra in an overture. And longish stretches of snowy landscapes, New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty, or planes touching down from the point of view of the wheels, to exploit "the wonders of CinemaScope". I do like it, but it's not very good.

Iron fucking weed.

R127 cataracts

I’m interested in The Brutalist but I’m over depression inducing films

[R6]: I saw the original roadshow version of “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” in Cinerama back in 1963, and wasn’t impressed. It kept leering at the audience, as if saying,, “Look how funny I am!” Unfortunately, I couldn’t look away. All those comedians, and it was only amusing in small bits and pieces.

The female companion of the pilot looking at the biplane and crossing herself. Ethel Merman’s pratfalls, which she did herself. The penultimate glimpse of the Firefighters, and they’re the Three Stooges. Barrie Chase’s deadpan boogie. Jimmy Durante kicking the can. Funny bits, but just bits.

It predated the ponderous, deadening pace of the later “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” with its overdone, over-the-top, Spot the Stars approach, but a case could be made for both of them to be cut from the same pretentious cloth.

Long since, I’ve met men who are devoted to IAMMMMW, chiefly because of all the period cars displayed in it. There are even annual conventions celebrating this. Go figure.

James Cameron's Waiting for the Iceberg aka Titanic

Went to premiere of Birth of a Nation. Fail.Ending sucked.

Gummo

Aguirre, the Wrath of God.

Noah

R137, I like that movie, but I am sooooo glad I didn't see it as a kid. it would have disturbed the hell out of me.

"Queer" directed by Luca Guadagnino is a bloody bore.

It is a slightly less creepy "Naked Lunch", which I also hated.

Naked LUnch the porno was really good.

Mad World is so unfunny except Merman who gives the best performance in the film and the gas station sequence with Jonathan Winters. I do find that scene good. But all that together is how many minutes out of its epic length? Very few.

Howard The Duck