Most Overrated Movie of 2008

Can't decide whether to vote for The Visitor, which is respected by critics I don't generally trust, or The Wrestler, which is respected by ones I do.

i voted for 'in bruges' but a lot of these arent out in europe yet.

If it helps you, I respect The Visitor more than The Wrestler.

I'm going for the feelgood liberal-racist trophy horse!

"Overrated" is not a valid criticism of anything.

but it is a valid way to kill time before lunch.

Frost/Nixon. Dick's books were punchier and funnier.

Yeah, I used to be a lot more sensitive about using "overrated," but I'm sort of over it.

based on sheer volume, dark knight? still haven't seen hardly any of these

Highbrow division is a coin flip btwn A Christmas Tale and Flight of the Red Balloon.

ugh, fuck The Dark Nought. "Overrated" is too kind.

overhyped, overwought, and overexposed then

of the 4 i've seen, In Bruges was my least favorite, but i didn't really dislike it. based on the trailers I think the one I'd dislike the most is Frost/Nixon.

uh -- overwrought xp

I ended up voting The Wrestler because The Visitor's appeal is a little bit more spotty. The Wrestler somehow cracks the top 5 on MCN's critics collective, which is insane to me.

In Bruges has a 64% Metacritic score and 66% from Rotten Tomatoes 'top critics' -- it really wasn't "rated" by anybody until those Golden Globe trash hounds had to root around for Comedy/Musicals that were more pretentious than a real pleasure like Be Kind Rewind.

(Note: I did alphabetize them to sort of eliminate the distinctions between critics, popular and snob, et al.)

Tempted to go Dark Knight. Watched it twice, enjoyed it twice, but it's not a quarter as good as some people think (or itself thinks) it is. Slumdog and Rachel Getting Married are also in the running.

i dunno, i heard about In Bruges enough that it was on my radar well before the GG nominations and i don't follow awards season hype closely at all.

In Bruges playing for 6 months in Minneapolis = more than just a few people out there rating it

that is weird, Eric, cuz the total American gross was under $8 million.

As Colin Farrell movies go, that doesn't even match The New World

Ugh Edge of Heaven.

Gotta be the Dark Knight which was fine, but not worth all the ink spilled over it.

I liked Edge of Heaven quite a bit. Why ugh?

but it's not a quarter as good as some people think (or itself thinks) it is

Such a bizarre formulation. How can a movie think anything of itself? I assume you mean it had pretensions to being more than it is, but I find that formulation bizarre to. It's exactly what it says it is. You can talk about the director being pretentious, but a film is always itself.

Heard that WENDY AND LUCY sucks. Haven't seen it yet, so I'm voting FROST/NIXON.

I supposed it could just be that the lack of distribution of anything else in town just left a slot open for IB for weeks and weeks on end.

Alex -- The pileup of coincidences in EoH was just too heavy-handed and melodramatic for me. I don't remember much more of why I hated it, but I left the theater feeling more cheated than by any other movie last year.

Ah okay I can accept that. I still thought the stories/performances were really good.

my boring and noncommittal answer is a tossup btwn frost/slumdog

i haven't seen many of these but i thought "Let the Right One In" wasn't good and that "Paranoid Park" was awful. having saif that i'm sure there are much worse films than "Paranoid Park" on this list.

"Let the Right One In" was probably my best-pf-year.

WALL-E was pretty underwhelming, and gets my vote.

i liked all the ones on the list that i saw - voted vicki christina barcelona cause it looks like the biggest pile of shit - the real answer tho of course is silent light

Isn't Silent Light the one by the guy who did Battle Of Heaven?

yes. I'd have liked it a little more if he hadn't lifted the climax from Ordet.

Not seen a lot of these. Tempted to say the Dark Knight, but I did quite like it. Man On Wire, maybe?

I voted for "Iron Man." A movie about a dude who wears a bad-ass suit to blow things up and fly around should have good action scenes, and imo this didn't.

It did, however, have adults speaking wittily. Will take the trade.

Slumdog.

If there was an "underrated" poll I'd vote for be kind rewind.

Dark Knight for me. Couldn't sit through it second time around.

I have seen seven of these & thought they were all very good to excellent (Slumdog included - sorry haterz). Missing on this list is Doubt, which was worthwhile for the sort of quality scenery-chewing you'd expect from Streep/Hoffman (& Viola Davis totally deserves the props she is getting), but seemed like such calculated critic/awards bait that I ended up being kind of annoyed by it. Great set design too, though.

though each had its redeeming features, out of the six i saw (The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Milk, Rachel Getting Married, Slumdog Millionaire, Synechdoche NY), i would only unreservedly recommend TDK & Milk. but for the purposes of this poll, the honor goes to slumdog.

Silent Light is very overrated but i still thought it was good or very good. the bathing scene in the pond is, in itself, quite possibly better than anything else on here.

Frost/Slumdog sounds like a great title.

Slumdog.

If there was an "underrated" poll I'd vote for be kind rewind.

I'm with you on both counts, ryan.

slumdog, though In Bruges is my least favorite of the ones I've seen (which is slightly more than half)

in bruges was pretty bogus, guess im going for that

man on dire amirite

^^doesn't even make sense btw

wd also vote for be kind, rewind as underrated

man this year kind of sucked for movies

I dunno: I saw lots of good foreign ones (thank god for Netflix).

I turned off Be Kind Rewind after ten minutes because basically I can't get past my irrational hatred of Jack Black.

Torn between Dark Knight and Revolutionary Road. RR was much worse, but I didn't see a lot of serious praise for it. Be Kind Rewind was certainly bad, but it seems like it was barely mentioned after March, I forgot it came out this year tbh.

i had an epiphany abt be kind rewind a while after i saw it which was that jack black was supposed to be playing an actual mentally ill person not just lol jacky wacky - it made a lot more sense then - still not v good tho

Gran Torino

voted slumdog for the mouthbreather npr demo that loves it, but dark knight comes in SOOOOOOOOOOO close.

dark knight was at least somewhat tonally consistent!

I really really really hated Slumdog Millionaire

haven't seen a lot of these, but going with TDK for all the already stated reasons.

Iron Man. "More than just a comic book movie."

Er, no.

if anyone rates the visitor then it's the visitor

i did. why u hate?

without having seen it, happy go lucky.

This was my vote too.

Man the poster for that movie annoyed me every day I got off the tube.

I feel that you are not Happy Go Lucky enough.

I only saw like 8 of those, TDK would be safe choice, so let's go for something else, Happy-Go-Lucky which wasn't all that good and ended a string of awesome Leigh films i saw. The man CAN actually do great comedies (or at least one Life is Sweet!) but not this one.

from what ive seen, a christman tale.

i guess i got a bacon wrapped challop here but i voted WALL-E. was a good movie but was a tad boring (too meditative i guess). ill take finding nemo any day

i'd kick it with WALL-E though

The most overrated movie I saw last year was Tropic Thunder. It just was really not good, and my expectations were pumped up some by all the rave reviews.

The Dark Knight was better, but could have used more rhythm--it just grinds on. And I loved Batman Begins.

I voted In Bruges, which had its moments, but I don't remember them.

I mildly liked Iron Man because it was mostly a comic book movie and not a graphic novel movie.

did people really think going in that in bruges was gonna be good?

ppl who like McDonagh's plays, maybe.

If Tropic Thunder was on this list, I would have voted for it sight unseen.

There are a few great moments in Tropic Thunder, but it's no Dodgeball.

TT is just a big wtf lost weekend coke binge writ large. i don't know that it's meant to be a "good" movie.

Iron Man. "More than just a comic book movie."

Er, no.

Yeah, it was top notch eye candy, and perhaps deserves its spot on some year-end lists for that alone, but the less fantastical narrative elements were way overpraised IMO. So this gets my vote, then.

I liked TT just fine, but I laughed a lot more at the unfairly disregarded Stepbrothers.

cant believe ur all hating on tropic thunder its at the v top of the stiller/90s-00s snl alums comedy pile

robert downey for performance of the year right there - totally transcendent

how bout discussing overcelebrated films that are actually in the poll you drooling comedy morons

morbs tropic thunder has some screwball aspects u should see it totally

step brothers was very funny! immature, yes, but funny.

i liked step bros by tropic thunder pwnd all - one of the v best movies of the year no doubt

I liked TT just fine, but I laughed a lot more at the unfairly disregarded Stepbrothers.

― Pillboxxx/The Lol Belol (Pillbox), Thursday, January 15, 2009 6:49 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

otm

but jho also itm, RDJ gave perf of century.

that said, adam scott in 'step brothers' was epic.

Happy-Go-Lucky by miles.

thx morbz for new name

I've only seen one of these - which I liked. So I guess I can't vote. But I do suspect that most of these were overrated - hence my lack of enthusiasm for seeing them.

Bump and shit.

of the 17 i've seen gotta go with Waltz With Bashir. Was mostly underwhelmed by it's structure as a mystery.

morbz should definitely see TT

Happy-Go-Lucky by miles.

― DavidM, Thursday, January 15, 2009 1:49 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark

Are you in the UK? 1) I really liked this and 2) I didn't feel like it got much attention in the States so I hardly could think of it as overrated.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

go Slumdog go

let the right one win, bitchaz

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

The right one won.

aye

Juno

WALL-E 8

>: (

Probably should've put The Reader in there, in retrospect.

I'm glad I wasn't the only one underwhelmed by The Dark Knight.

i didn't predict a margin of victory being THAT big

At this point, I didn't expect Slumdog to lose.

I mean, it was mostly an enjoyable film, but it definitely isn't a five star masterpiece or anything. At the moment it's rated the 5th best movie off all time in IMDb! It's not even the 5th best comic book movie in my opinion.

(xx-post)

8 suggest bans just waitin here for the wall e voters.

I suppose one could call it overrated considering there are people like me who say it makes every other Hollywood flick this year seem not only irrelevant but almost worthless in comparison.

Of movies I actually saw this year, the most overrated one was Chop Shop, which isn't up there (and which I've also seen listed as 2007, so maybe it doesn't count.) Loved Gran Torino; liked Wall-E and The Visitor. A few others up there are in my Netflix "wait" queue, but yeah, some of the ones near the top sure sounded overrated to me, so this thread helps confirm my suspicions. Glad nobody voted for Wendy & Lucy, which sounds like I might like it a lot.

Dark Knight's pretentiousness admittedly dwarfed by its repellent morality (see Armond White's review)

wow morbs is talking about repellent morality

well, only when i'm not practicing it.

"see armond white's review" is not good advice, in any context.

OTM

Revolutionary Road: Two Hours of Marital Problems with No Ending
starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet
In Theaters Now

And how the hell did Benjamin Button not get 867 votes that shit looks disgusting

Because it's not exactly 'rated' by anyone?

Thought it was funny how so much of the handicapping the Oscars coverage this year mentioned how most of the nominees were neither well-reviewed nor popular with audiences.