Movies that fell below your expectations...

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Has anyone ever taken the time to watch a movie that was extremely popular, but at the end of the movie you were like, "Wow, this movie really sucks. I don't understand why everyone else is raving about it".

For me, those movies would be:

Napoleon Dynamite
I remember how everyone was raving about this movie, so I took the time to view it, and didn't care for it one bit. I even gave it a second chance not long ago, and even then I didn't like it.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Three words: too damn long! This movie was so long I began to lose interest during the middle of it.

Casablanca
The beginning of this movie wasn't bad, but once it started progressing I only found myself confused as to what was going on. In short, I did not care for this film.

How about you?

Schindler's List - I finally saw this movie three years after I became a WWII buff, and my expectations were so inflated that there was nothing poor Spielberg could do to please me.

Pulp Fiction; really, what is so great about it? I found it completely boring and I almost fell asleep.

I tried watching Pirates of the Caribbean, but it's too long (3 movies & a 4th on the way). I personally didn't care for Captain Jack Sparrow, either. I feel that Johnny Depp truly shines when he does characters under Tim Burton's direction, but I didn't feel very attached to Captain Jack.

I remember that Pan's Labyrinth didn't do much for me. Would've kept watching it, but my dad sent it back to netflix. Ark of Truth really dropped the ball too. There's plenty of others, but titles don't come to mind right now.

Hancock didn't meet my expectations.

Lets's see...Hancock did. I am Legend definately fell below expectations.
However the one that completely sunk in my expectations and I ended up hating the film was Burn after reading I thought it was a terrible film and a total waste of my money.

Lord of the Rings. That's right, the whole thing. I could spend literally hours telling you each place in the story that he made unnecessary changes. I'm not the kind of fan who thinks a film made from a book should copy everything in the book down to the last exclamation point. I understand the distinction between the written word and a story told through a visual medium. I made a lot of allowances for changes made for the sake of continuity, time, even the injection of little bits of humor or extensions of things that were not so prominent in the book, as well as omissions of characters that were in sequences that flowed outside the main storyline. I even could see where including the Scouring of the Shire would have made too much movie for the theatrical release. And even with all that, he couldn't keep his hands off the rest. He made noble characters ignoble, made proud people silly, created enmity between friendly nations, added melodramatic conflict where there was already reasonable conflict, out-and-out made things up, replaced characters with others, turned Frodo and Sam into soap opera characters, and killed my favorite moments one by one. The more my husband and I reread the book and watch the movies, the worse they get, so that to good about them isn't enough to overcome the bad. He did some pretty awesome work with costumes, sets and scenery, casting, and of course the incredible music by Howard Shore, and I just can't sit through them without Rifftrax anymore.

Also, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has been a sweeping disappointment... I was actually okay with it since I didn't read the book recently. But my tween daughter was practically yelling at the movie screen. "The Burrow never got burned down!! !" "Where's Bill?" "Snape gave a whole speech just there! Where is it?"

There's just no theatrical disappointment like a movie based upon a book you love. Unless it's X3. That was sucktastic. Or Spider-Man 3. Hoo.

Now I'm bummed.

Juno
Knocked Up
The Hangover
Up
(500) Days of Summer
WALL-E

I think these movies were way overrated. I expected so much more because of all the buzz surrounding them and I was really disappointed every time. They were all mediocre movies, some less than mediocre.

It's one reason I haven't yet watched the Star Wars movies. I really want to because I love science fiction, but I think my expectations might be too high because everyone says they're so amazing and I don't to watch them and be disappointed. So I'm either stuck as the one sci fi fan who hasn't seen Star Wars or I risk it and potentially become the only person not to like the Star Wars movies. For now I think I'd rather just assume that I'd like them but pretend to myself that I don't have the time to watch them.

Tropic Thunder

I remember my older brother talked me into watching borat. I had absolutely zero expectations for that movie. it failed to meet even that.

My grandpa talked me into seeing the hulk. again, zero expectations. and again, it failed. at lease borat made me laugh once. the hulk was just... there. on the screen. not being exciting. not being insightful. not being funny. it just... existed, and there was no way I could escape it. *shudder*

and samwise, you are wise to avoid star wars. it is the poster boy of overrated.

Indeed, Star Wars is another. It doesn't rate my disappointed list just because I wasn't expecting much, but the wooden Anakin combined with the really awful dialogue still managed to be a let down.

And can anyone tell me what happened between the first three films and the prequel films? I swear Luke Skywalker didn't sound like such a petulant, stilted twit, not like his "dad" does... And Han and Leia managed to have more chemistry seemingly hating each other than Ani and Padme had smooching.

No offense to anyone, but It's a Wonderful Life did it for me. The movie didn't get interesting until towards the end.

Other films are:
-Any of the Pixar films (except for Up, Monsters Inc. and the Toy Story movies)
-Twilight (I hate both the books and the movies. They deserve to be burned)

Can't think of anymore at the moment.

Van Helsing

I really like vampires and gothic novels and the Victorian era, so I was really looking forward to it. It was just...so lame. Not funny, not fun, not entertaining. I went to go read something instead.

Rob Zombie's Halloween
Goldmember
Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back (the other ones were good)
Lord of the Rings series
Apocalypse Now (only saw Redux, not the original cut)

Movies that rose above my expectations:

The Thief and the Cobbler (the "Arabian Knight" version) - When I first saw some previews of it on some Disney videos when I was a little kid, I expected it to be a dark-looking fantasy film set in the Middle East, and I thought to myself "This looks better than 'Aladdin'". About a decade later, I finally brought a VHS of it and I really enjoyed it!

Happily N'Ever After - I expected it to be a romantic comedy with fairy-tale characters, and yep, I enjoyed it, too.

Movies that fell below my expectations:

The Cat in the Hat - I expected it to be a cute, family-friendly adaptation, but all we got was a rude, crude comedy (with a few sexual innuendos and cusswords) that didn't follow the charm of the book at all!