Most Overrated Movies: Or Unpopular Opinions but I Hope that We Can Still be Friends

In this blog, I'll be taking on some of the movies that, despite mainstream popularity or critical praise, I'll tell you just aren't that good. When coming up with some of the movies to discuss, I realized there are countless Academy Award winners that I can tear apart (Will save for a later post), but I decided to stick mainly to ones here that are more mainstream popular. I write this at the risk of angering more people, but someone has to say these things. I hope we can still be friends, but then again, if you're the kind of person that thinks Argo is a better movie than Django Unchained or Zero Dark Thirty, I quite frankly don't want to be your friend.

• American Hustle (And basically every David O. Russell movie, but especially American Hustle). Okay, I like Jennifer Lawrence just as much as the next guy. She's a decent enough actress, she's pretty, and she seems likable enough in interviews. But she's not Meryl Streep, okay? When I first saw American Hustle, after appearing on screen for no more than 20 seconds, I could hear the people sitting behind me in the theater say, "Ugh, she is just such a good actress." Let's just calm down here a little. And although J Law is surely one of the more enjoyable parts of American Hustle, did anyone really like this movie that much? It had a great cast also featuring Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, and Jeremy Renner, an interesting enough real live event for the basis of the script, but I can't say I really enjoyed much of any of this. Every character is either annoying or a fairly despicable person, specifically Christian Bale, and I personally wasn't rooting for him, but in the end, everything works out for everyone except Bradley Cooper's FBI Agent, who gets majorly screwed over despite him being the only character in the movie I liked. For a movie nominated for Academy Awards in several big categories, does anyone remember this movie or look back on it that fondly? That's sort of the case with all of David O. Russell's movies, except arguably Silver Linings Playbook, which holds up but is still a bit overrated. The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle, and especially the unpleasant, melo-dramatic white people problems saga that was Joy; David O. Russell keeps using great actors in movies that fall flat but people seem to love (Usually because they're starring Jennifer Lawrence or Bradley Cooper). And while we're on the subject of Joy, let me just say that Joy, which follows the inventor of the Miracle Mop, was such a catastrophe that a Miracle Mop was definitely needed to clean up the overrated shit show that Jennifer Lawrence chose to star in. 
• Avatar. Yes it looked cool. Yes it became the all time biggest grossing film of all time because everyone just had to see it in 3D. But let's be real, it was just an expensive production of Fern Gully... or Dances with Wolves... or Pocahontas. Honestly, the list of films goes on and on. But we didn't pay money for the story of Avatar, we came to see blue aliens fight an army with robot battle suits. Fair enough, but even still, did this movie really warrant all the sequels that James Cameron has in production for it? It's been roughly seven years since Avatar, and you don't hear anyone saying "Oh man, you know what I can't wait for? The sequel to Avatar!" 
• Fight Club. This is the title that's probably going to anger the bourgeoisie twenty something white men of the internet with their "Feel the Bern" bumper stickers and Anonymous Masks who nihilistically quote this movie and cackle in contempt at those who naively think this movie is just about fighting. I get it, okay? I get what this movie is about, I just think it's insanely overrated, not nearly as clever as it thinks, and quite frankly, the movie is just all around unpleasant. Sorry, not sorry.
• Natural Born Killers. Much like Fight Club, just very unpleasant, not nearly as clever as it thinks, and self indulgent to the point that whatever Oliver Stone was trying to satirize becomes hopelessly lost in this ugly, overly violent, bad looking, inconsistent, (And for all these reasons, heavily debated) hot mess. 
• Slumdog Millionaire. No matter how "uplifting" and deceivingly "feel good" this movie makes itself out to be, it's just all around overrated. Star crossed lovers? A Bollywood dance number? Heavy handed themes of fate that are meant to otherwise cover up lazy writing? The last part is the most unforgivable. When "fate" is interwoven with the story to account for all the laughably implausible occurrences in the plot, the movie becomes so hammy, it should be served with a side of pineapple. And for the winner of Best Picture at the 2008 Academy Awards, it just isn't that memorable.
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens. If you claimed to have loved The Force Awakens and were completely satisfied by Spielberg-Wanna-Be J.J. Abrams's attempt to reboot the saga, then we both know you're lying to yourself. Look, I get that J.J. had basically the whole world to please, but it really irked me when everyone seemed to fall head over heels for this installment for the sole reason that it wasn't bad per se. Were audiences so desperate to like this movie that they were willing to overlook the bad acting, bad special effects, wasted potential, and the recycled plot of the original film? Judging by the acclaim and love for this film, I'd say audiences evidently were. I get that after the prequels, people were disappointed, but is that really any excuse to blatantly rip off A New Hope? Come on JJ, I know that actually probably is the best you got, but with unlimited resources and the original screenwriter to Empire Strikes Back, you definitely could've done better with all that help. But instead, we have wasted characters (one of the best actors on the planet, Max Von Sydow? Hell, let's kill him after two minutes of screen time. Captain Phasma, a badass chrome woman stormtrooper played by Brienne of Tarth herself, Gwendoline Christie? Let's turn her into a joke and never use her to do anything cool), bad special effects (Snoke, anyone?) and bad acting (the original trilogy actors are all slumming it, and most of the new players were all merely adequate, save Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver, while Oscar Isaac just didn't have enough to do). And let me just sum up this film's plot compared to that of A New Hope: "It's not a Death Star, it's bigger! Starkiller Base doesn't blow up one planet, it blows up five! See??? Different!" 

        Sorry, not sorry.

Mother's Day Review

There are films that, although cliched and only mildly funny, have enough charm to them to be fairly enjoyable. There are also movies that are so bad, they end up being an enjoyable, guilty pleasure experience for the audience. Mothers Day is neither of those. It is a film that may have tried to be both,  but is so misguided, so without merit, so utterly painful and cringe worthy to watch in its depictions of motherhood, that any mothers whose children take them to see this movie would be forgiven in thinking that this is payback for being late to picking up the kids from soccer practice 10 years ago. Director Gary Marshall continues the pattern of ruining holidays with ensemble romantic comedies (Valentine's Day, New Year's Eve) that are about as romantic as the Anakin Skywalker-Padme love story in the Star Wars prequels, and about as funny as Saving Private Ryan.

To make my point about just how terrible Mother's Day really is, let me list some examples from film and TV that celebrate motherhood exponentially better than Mother's Day:

• Dirk Diggler's alcoholic, verbally abusive mother in Boogie Nights.
• Norman Bates's dead mother in Psycho (Yes, even the remake).
• Carrie's psychotic, fanatic mother from Carrie (1976).
• Stiffler's Mom from American Pie.
• Serial killer Mrs. Vorhees from Friday the 13th.
• Macaulay Culkin's forgetful, and criminally neglectful mom from Home Alone.
• Livia Soprano from The Sopranos, after she conspires to have a hit placed on her son.
• Hilary Swank's white trash, tax evading mother from Million Dollar Baby. (Played by Margo Martindale, who appears in this film as well.)

Where to even start with this film? I suppose with its train wreck of a plot. There's Sandy, played by Jennifer Anistion, a struggling mom raising two boys, whose dirtbag ex-husband (Timothy Olyphant) marries a girl half his age. Sandy complains about the obnoxiously millennial new step-mom not wearing enough clothing (Despite the fact that the movie has Jennifer Anistion walk around in a towel for 10 minutes for seemingly no reason). Then there's Jesse (Kate Hudson) and Gabi (Sarah Chalke), two sisters who are estranged from their wacky racist parents. Gabi is in a lesbian relationship and Jesse is married to an Indian doctor and has a son with him. When the parents stop by for a surprise visit, wacky and inconceivably racist hijinks ensue! Almost every word out of the red neck parents' mouths are cringe worthy and racist (Upon seeing Jesse's husband they ask who that "towelhead" is). The movie also seems hopefully confused over the differences between Indian and Arab as the inconsistent stereotypes are spouted out throughout the film, which unfortunately, garnered genuine laughs from the audience I was in. There's a subplot about a painfully unfunny comedian  named Max helping to raise his infant daughter with his would-be fiance, and in one of the film's most bizarre WTF bits, when they finally marry at the film's end, there are gangly, white pre-teens that were seemingly pulled off the street to do cart wheels at their wedding; "It's just how I always pictured it," Max says with tears rolling down his face. Jason Sudekis also has the misfortune to be in this Titanic sized mess of a movie as a widower raising two teenage girls (He has to buy tampons for his teenage daughter. Hardy har har). He plans on treating Mother's Day like a normal day since his marine wife (Jennifer Garner) died. He obsessively watches tapes of his wife, while his daughters criticize him and tell him to get over it. Despite that, they yell at Papa Sudekis that they have to honor her, and end up running off to the cemetery to visit her grave. Then Jason Sudekis has a karaoke related accident. Still with me? Didn't think so. Julia Roberts also stars as founding Three Stooges member, Moe Howard, or at least that's what her haircut would suggest.
Mother's Day is the cinematic equivalent to having wisdom teeth removed, something I just recently had done. Unfortunately, I was put to sleep and given pain killers for the surgery, something I desperately craved while watching Mother's Day. But honestly, when a movie starts with a song that goes "You might have a mom, she might be the bomb," what else could you possibly expect?