Movies that are regarded as "classics" that you hate?

Old Yeller

Casablanca- cheesy dialogue and hammy acting. Ingrid Bergman is the best thing about the movie. Also Roman Holiday with Audrey fucking Hepburn. It's basically an inferior remake of the great It Happened one Night.

Citizen Kane

Casablanca

Gone With The Wind

On The Waterfront

I liked Citizen Kane the first time. After that, this list.

Is My Fair Lady a classic? I didn't like the movie version.

I second Citizen Kane. Rosebud my ass. Love the first half of Gone With the Wind. Its all downhill after Scarlett marries Frank Kennedy.

A Star Is Born - all versions

Actually, I didn't see the latest version.

OP = worse than a Zemeckis movie

Star Wars and its progeny.

2001: a Space Oddysey. I can't believe I let someone talk me into seeing this borefest last year because they were showing it at our local IMAX (or whatever super-duper iteration) theatre.

It is the opposite of interesting.

Star Trek

Rebel Without A Cause. I'm fond of it, I appreciate it but I can't sit through the over-the-top acting. Yeah, I know, he's a teenage character, and yes I felt guilty laughing at "YoU'rE tEaRiNg Me APAAART!" . It's still unsufferable. No matter how good the film looks.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I went to see the first one in the cinema. I fell asleep about forty minutes in during a scene where a bunch of Renfair cosplayers called things like Bingle and Hrith-la were seen in long shot walking over the brow of a hill. Ninety minutes later I woke up and they were still walking over the brow of a hill. Having caught snippets of the sequels on TV I gather it goes on the same fashion for the full nine hours of the trilogy.

Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Blow Up, The Graduate, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Beverly Hills Cop, The Color Purple, Shawshank Redemption, Forrest Gump, Eyes Wide Shut, Avatar.

It's a Wonderful Life

ET

The one about a kid wanting a gun for Christmas, A Christmas Story?

Lost in Translation

Burglar starring Whoopie Goldberg.

Breakfast at Tiffanys is vastly overrated and kind of creepy.

Singin in the Rain is hailed as the best ever musical even though it hardly contains any original songs.

M*A*S*H* It just drags on and on and seems to be a series of vignettes rather than one cohesive story.

Tootsie. The very premise is insulting. Imaging the outrage if they made a movie about an out of work white actor who dons blackface and becomes the leader of the civil rights movement.

California Split. A bunch of obnoxious actors shouting their lines over each other.

Oh, that was awful, r23. I had completely forgotten it.

The Princess Bride

The Wizard Of Oz. For foreigners, the homage paid to it is like seeing Americans get teary at the Star Spangled Banner.* A totally bewildering What The Fuck moment.

(*The only time I've ever seen a Britisher look moist during God Save The Queen was during the Hong Kong handover.)

The Wild One

Animal House was a favorite of mine as a kid, tried watching it again several times over the years and not even a feeling of nostalgia could keep me hooked. I think this film helped create the legion of middle aged douchbros we all have to deal with today.

Definitely the Godfather. Marlon's hammy turn was ridiculous then, and is ridiculous now. The first Oscar awarded for stuffing one's jowls full of Kleenex.

Off the top of my head:

Forest Gump

All About Eve

Jules and Jim

Dances with Wolves

TERMS OF ENDEARMENT

Dr. Zhivago

Children of Paradise

The Wild Bunch

Braveheart

all Jacques Tati & Alejandro Iñárritu & W.C. Fields & Mae West films

I hated Animal House in 1978. The following week, I broke up with the guy who insisted—INSISTED!—I see it with him.

Querelle. I kept going "he's dead. He's dead. And he's dead too". Gone With The Wind. The Poseidon Adventure.

Sound of Music and Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Some of you don't like anything...you must be a real joy to be around...I am talking to you, op.

Forrest Gump - The Sound of Music - West Side Story - The Social Network - Precious - An American In Paris - On the Waterfront - The Music Man - Lenny - Rocky - Taxi Driver - Rain Man - Million Dollar Baby

Some of you bitches have peculiar ideas about what a classic movie is.

What classic do you hate, r35? I don't see that you've named any.

R1 Old Yeller was the work of sadists.

Gigi starring Charles Jourdan and Leslie Caron. Always thought it was sick and twisted not a love story. About a wealthy man and his uncle who are involved with a family of professional whores. The wealthy man basically grooms the teenage girl, who's being trained in the family tradition, to be his underage whore. Then the movie turns "romantic" when he realized that he loves her and marries her. Vomit inducing.

Forrest Gump, is a truely terrible movie.

I agree that CASABLANCA is a talky bore.

Unless you find Bogart and/or Bergman endlessly fascinating.

I don't--they're both very capable actors, and he may be underrated, she overrated in terms of sheer ability--but nothing about the characters and the plot is terribly involving, let alone timeless.

I can't help but think a lot of people lie about loving CASABLANCA.

I really did love Tootsie, so thanks for bringing it up.

Butterfly with Pia Zadora

Citizen Kane (zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz)

Out of Africa

Fantasia (good for insomnia, though)

It’s a Wonderful Life. Sleepless in Seattle. Forrest Gump.

This is the perfect thread for people with baby tastes.

Which of your faves got pissed on, r46?

I second It’s a Wonderful Life

Wait for it....The Sound of Music

Midnight Cowboy and Forrest Gump leap immediately to mind.

Raging Bull is the most overrated movie ever made.

Most of these films are just old, not films that are “classics” in any way. Everyone always knew films like Avatar, Pretty Woman, and Forest Gump were garbage. I do agree with R21 that M*A*S*H — which really is thought to be great — is dreadful. Altman is always episodic, that’s just his style, but he’s hateful and homophobic in this as well.

Five Easy Pieces.

I don't care how brilliant Jack Nicholson was suppose to be in the movie, the character of Bobby was a self-important prick who felt he was the smartest guy everywhere he went and that most people he interacted with were beneath him.

He may have run away from his upper crust musical family, but he took his feelings of superiority with him everywhere he went.

A man with no redeeming qualities who contributed nothing to society.

It's hard to fathom Forrest Gump having an 8.8 rating at IMDb and a 95% percent 'audience like' at Rotten Tomatoes. Nobody I've know likes this movie.

Agree on Raging Bull Also, GoodFellas

Not hated by any means, but Brokeback Mountain was very disappointing. Two ripe young cowboys discovering their inner lust for each other turned into a dreary drama centering on their relationships with their women. A gay movie made by straights with straight sensibilities. I mean, anal on the first encounter? And even so, no lube? Have one of them stick their hands in a can of pork and beans and lather up. This could have been the gay Last Tango in Paris.

They should remake it with a gay director. And perhaps two out gay actors as the leads. Bomer and Ricky Martin would be good choices.

Pretty Woman was garbage, Julia Roberts was okay but Richard Gere was a handsome but charmless automaton like he has been in every movie he's ever been in.

I hate Sergio Leone Westerns, Meg Ryan romcoms, and anything by Dario Argento.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind and most of Spielberg's "great" films in general. Even Disney movies don't baby their audience the way Spielberg movies do.

He panders to the Everyman r59, that’s what makes him so successful. There nothing highbrow about what he does, but it’s made him wealthy.

Steel Magnolias. That flick annoys me. Can't stand that "Gals-R-Us" schtick and the forced dialogue. It made me hate Olympia Dukakis.

R60, very true.

Breakfast at Tiffany's - too twee and I can never take George Peppard seriously.

Pretty Woman - loathsome glamorization of streetwalkers. I'd see a bit I liked, like Larry Miller as the obsequious store manager, then Gary Marshall would do something cheap or annoying and I'd start fulminating again.

The Empire Strikes Back - I hate Yoda. Hate, hate, hate him.

I loved M*A*S*H as a kid. When I watched it as an adult, there were some funny moments, but the meanness of it killed a lot of the fun.

Jill Learns About Periods

Midnight Cowboy.

I get it. We're supposed to feel sorry for and get emotionally involved in the two main characters whose lives turn out to be shit.

I just couldn't really find myself giving a shit about Voight's and Hoffman's characters.

Too gritty and dark.

Voight has always been a terrible actor so his performance alone ruins the movie.

Titanic.

Titanic was too boring to hate. I did finish it, however, and wanted at least one of the hours back. I have never been a fan of Leo or Kate. If any actors drew me in, they were Billy Zane and TGVN.

The Red Shoes

Pulp Fiction

Jimmy Stewart screaming like an out-of-control girl ruins "It's a Wonderful Life", though most of the film is so utterly grim, I'm surprised so many folks like to watch it every Christmas

High Noon

The Third Man - who can even see what is going on?

McCabe and Mrs. Miller - what the fuck is gping on? I can't see the actors

R73, the Third Man bored me to tears.

A lot of 70's "new director" cinema is lost to us, as it's specifically shot to be seen on enormous screens in darkened, hushed theatres.

Needless to say, it looks (and sounds) like crap on TV, even (especially?) high-def flatscreens.

That's okay. IMHO, so much work from that era is self-involved and incredibly overrated (thanks to Kael, Sarris, others). It's not a huge loss.

Moonstruck. Bloated Lifetime/Hallmark crap.

Any Vacation movie with Chevy Chase.

Don't know if it's considered a classic, but I do hate The English Patient.

Does everyone who hates that movie hate it just because of [italic]Seinfeld[/italic] or was it really that bad?

All of Miramax's Oscar wins are suspect.

I hated The English Patient the night I saw it, before the Seinfeld episode was broadcast. It's a bloated, mawkish, self-important load of malarkey. But the friends I saw it with were both crying at the end. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

I want to live in r18's universe where Burglar is considered a classic.

[quote]It’s a Wonderful Life.

Actually it was quite unsuccessful when released. Seemingly endless Christmas time reruns on TV made it a "classic".

I can't say I hate Pulp Fiction, but I've never made it through the movie without falling asleep. I think that pretty much sums it up.

The Sound of Music is a bloated, maudlin mess. But it's a vast improvement over the stage version. How it became one of R & H's biggest hits is beyond me.

All of those bloated, award winning "prestige" pictures from the 80's & 90's - Ghandi, Out of Africa, The Last Emperor, The English Patient, Sophie's Choice et.al, Almost none of them hold up when viewed today. They're all cinematic Valium with impeccable sets, costumes and cinematography. Being beautiful to look at does not make them engaging.

Most movies before the 60s.

I can appreciate them for their cultural relevance and camp, but most classic Hollywood movies from the 30s to 50s were stagey, melodramatic cheese. The actors, writers, and directors came from the stage and Vaudeville and it shows. The cinematography is almost non-existent; it just looks like someone pointed a camera at a stage play, and the actors of that era have OTT, affected mannerisms and play to the back row.

I still enjoy them for the camp, but that's about it.

Feel free to disagree.

If you read the short story it was based on Brokeback Mountain is a masterpiece on how close to the written story it is. Even the tone is right. It's not a movie about two guys following in love but a movie of two married men forced to cheat and the guilt it brings them. I don't even like this story that much but just because the movie didn't tell the story you wanted it doesn't mean it's bad.

I remember liking Ben-Hur when I was a kid, but when I saw it again as an adult it seemed endless and corny.

American Beauty is definitely a classic that doesn't hold well today. I rewatched it recently and was laughing my way through how bad it is which is sad because Allan Ball is a great writer specially for TV.

"Inception", "Fight Club", and "American Beauty". Obvious drivel masquerading as some deep social commentary, always quoted by middlebrow people when they want to flex their pseudointellectual credentials.

R63, I feel that way, although I would say the 50s is where I draw the line. I feel like anything made before the 50s is, like you said, wayyyy to stagey. Some of my favorite films are from the 50s (Kiss Me Deadly, for instance) but I like little before that decade. In some ways, silent films are easier to watch than "talkie" films from the 20s through the 40s.

I prefer older movies and TV shows (pre-1990s) because the performances look less like they were created in editing.

[quote]Breakfast at Tiffany's - too twee and I can never take George Peppard seriously.

Mr. T should have played Mr. Yunioshi but he was too young at the time.

Fight Club and American Psycho are both exercises in alpha male ego masturbation.

One of the great things about Casablanca is knowing that so many of the actors in the film actually HAD fled the Nazis.

The back stories of the actors is fascinating.

Did you know that ...

1. The actor playing the young husband trying to win passage money was an Austrian who had been in a concentration camp. His wealthy, prominent mother managed to get him out and sent him to America.

2. The man who played Major Strasser was friends with the man who played Victor Lazlo and both of them had fled. The actor (Conrad Veidt) would only play Nazis if the characters had NO redeeming social values.

3. The woman who played Yvonne and the man who played Carl (who ran the casino) were actually husband and wife and fled to the US together.

4. S.Z Sakall, a Hungarian Jew, lost many of his family in the Holocaust.

Knowing the back stories of the actors makes the scene where they sing "La Marseillaise" fascinating to watch.

Once Upon a Time in America. It’s a mile wide and an inch deep.

[italic]A.I.: Artificial Intelligence[/italic]

"Gilda" -- well, I like Rita Hayworth, but find the story and Glenn Ford kind of boring. I've fallen asleep to it a couple of times.

I have watched Angels in America six times trying to make myself like it. in my opinion it is among the worst gay themed films ever made.

Why is Inception considered deep? It has cardboard characters you cannot get interested in, a stupid ending and moved so fast you didn't have time to follow it. Also Di caprio is his usually tedious self, and Nolan managed to take a genuinely interesting theme of dreams and turn it into a shallow action movie. It is one of the highest rates movies on imdb, 8.8???

Silence of the Lambs- should be called, Silence of the Hams

Agree with R98 wholeheartedly. I actually prefer "Manhunter" to it - the performances in SOTL are too camp for a movie that wants to be taken very seriously.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind was a bore, even though it made me believe that the much better E.T. was a follow-up involving the baby of the aliens being left behind.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Next was the most boring piece of crap I ever tried to watch.

Can't believe I talked my friends into renting it because it was a "classic."

None of us could finish watching it.

White Heat made me dislike James Cagney.

R29 thank you. Marlon Brando is just TERRIBLE. MOST OVERRATED ACTOR IN HISTORY. apocalypse now is such a pompous bore. He ruins everything he is in, except for "reflection in a golden eye" because he is just being himself in that one. A big fat self indulgent repressed queen.

I think Brando was really quite good in a lot of the film he did in the 1950s, but then through a combination of 1) getting lazy acting-wise, later not even memorizing lines and having them posted off-camera, and 2) praise going to his head, started to turn in lots of performances not in the same sphere as her early work. I actually dropped what had been a good acting class when the teacher started with the same stories about Marlon Brando after a few terms. It's like I get it you worship Brando, but I think there were a lot better actors. Not that I told him this, but it started to get annoying and repetitive. Besides, John Garfield was doing similar kind of stuff that Brando did and that some of the rest of the Method people were doing, and while he had been a big star, it seems like they wanted to anoint a new king in Brando and not acknowledge Garfield's work.

as "his" early work

All of the "mob" movies...Godfather, Goodfellas, etc

R98, Silence of the lambs isn't even scary. And Jonathan Demme should have been awarded years ago for his other movies.

Big Chill and that mess with Nicholson, Mcclain, and Winger are the 2 worst films of the 20th century.

[quote] as "his" early work

You were right the first time!

ANY movie with Katharine Hepburn in it. How the hell did she ever make it in Hollywood and then, be rated as the greatest film actress EVER?!!! All tics and twitches; spastic rather than dramatic! Can't take the other Hepburn, either (Audrey) with her bony frame, big feet and bushy eyebrows. My Fair Lady...what a shitshow.

Brando's Godfather is wildly overrated

I've seen amateur films that were scarier than [italic]The Exorcist[/italic].

[quote]that mess with Nicholson, Mcclain, and Winger

And I wrote such a good book.

A second for Cuckoo's Nest. I loved the Ken Kesey book but that overbearing movie made me root for Nurse Ratched.

I’ve never seen any of The Godfather movies. For some reason the Italian mafia bores the shit out of me. Why anyone wants to watch a movie about a bunch of criminals is beyond me.

Wizard of Oz is creepy. I sat through Braveheat thinking each battle scene would be the last but, no, it dragged on and on. Pretty Woman starred an unpretty actress who can’t act convincingly.

"Equus" is pretty bad, except for the nudity.

Pianist

STAR WARS - hated it in 1977, hate it now

IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

SOME LIKE IT HOT

SINGING IN THE RAIN

THE GRADUATE

SUNSET BOULEVARD

GREASE

NASHVILLE

DOUBLE INDEMNITY - even though I worship Stanwyck, couldn't stomach this one

For all of you Titanic haters, another one - a better version - in on TCM Friday night at 8PM. It takes a lot of license, and there's a boring opening sequence to set up the story . But there are some very fine scenes, especially between Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

The Big Lebowski

Raising Arizona

Lawrence of Arabia

GREASE was a ridiculously bad movie.

Chariots of Fire was the dullest fucking movie I ever sat through. Amadeus the same.

Try "Out Of Africa". I certainly don't mind "slow" movies; "L'Avventura" and "... Marienbad" are some of my all-time faves, but that one was the only time I fell asleep in a movie theater. There was absolutely nothing interesting about except for generically pretty cinematography.

Plus Meryl's accent was all wrong. The Danes were amused by it.

[quote] Is My Fair Lady a classic?

Yes. Now go to your room.

Cool Hand Luke

The entire Christ savior metaphor is heavy handed.

Kung Fu Creatures On The Rampage 2

I agree with everyone about Out Of Africa. Dir Sydney Pollack must have given buddy Redford a pity job (he was getting older and blonder), he was so miscast and as boring as usual. The Streep-Redford pairing was like an overly studied high school girl hoping for a Julliard scholarship and dull HS boy "acting" between baseball and tennis practice because he needs the credits. A disaster, I wonder how anyone could think this is worthy of a Best Picture Oscar.

Sunrise

L 'Atalante

The Searchers

Lola Montes

Jules and Jim

Cinema Paradiso

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial

How could no one mention Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? It's sophomoric and as predictable and dumb as a sitcom. The Sting is a masterpiece by comparison.