The Most Overrated Movies of 2002

**dave durbin** · 02-12-2003, 12:30 PM

1. Chicago

-please read review-

2. The Hours

-please read review-

3. Gangs of New York

-Daniel Day-Lewis sizzled but the script was mediocre and so was the direction. But Marty will probably be rewarded at Oscar time because they've snubbed him so many times before.

4. Catch Me If You Can

-the best things about this film were the opening title sequence, John Williams's score, and Walken's performance. It's nice to see Tom Hanks taking over for Dan Akroyd as well. (Great story though!)

5. About Schmidt

-please read review-

6. Minority Report

-a suped-up, special effects laden, sprawling Twilight Zone episode that looked like it could have been directed by anybody. Great performances from Tom Cruise and Samantha Morton though.

7. The Good Girl

-the acting was fine and the script played by its own rules but they might as well as had someone come out after the end credits rolled and hold up a sign that read 'Don't let this happen to you!'

8. My Big Fat Greek Wedding

-an old man sitting behind me turned to his wife after this movie ended and said "And 'ya see? There wasn't any swearing, nudity, sex, and nobody got killed." Yeah, I saw.

9. Spiderman

- Sam Raimi is a great director but the digital effects were laughably cheap. I forgot about it an hour after I left the theater. Great performance from Williem Dafoe though. (PS- I'd rather watch Superman with Christopher Reeve.)

10. Time Out

-sensationalistic true life story turned into a dull French film about a corporate conformist.

Honorable mention: The Road to Perdition and 24 Hour Party People

**Chris Knipp** · 02-13-2003, 12:24 AM

I agree on five of these and that's a good percentage. I would add Far from Heaven (really more irritating than The Hours), and I would move Road to Perdition into the main list instead of one of the ones I personally really liked, like The Good Girl and Time Out or Catch Me If You Can. I think we're all becoming touchy about "period" flicks, especially when that period isn't all that far back. The tendency of American directors to overdo and falsify a period like the Fifties or Sixties, and then get lavishly praised for it, is becoming increasingly annoying. I thought Catch Me If You Can had a relatively light touch with that, but you could still argue that it too was overdone, even when as with the opening credits and Leo's Italian vest outfit and the uniforms, it was fun.

**Perfume V** · 02-13-2003, 08:31 AM

I'm surprised Minority Report's ending doesn't come in for more stick. I thought it was much worse than the vilified last half-hour of AI, which at least had some sort of narrative drive to it. With MR, the plot just seemed to stop and there was an agonisingly long twenty minutes that largely consisted of people standing around talking through plot-holes that hadn't yet been closed. It was one of the most stunning cases of sloppy writing I've seen since Godard randomly inserted a PA on the Evils Of America into Elogie L'Amour and I'm amazed that it wasn't redrafted, considering this film had two highly-paid writers.

**pmw** · 02-13-2003, 01:17 PM

Agreed, I was disappointed that the movie didn't end with Tom Cruise in a halo. It seemed like a more natural end to such an dark, overreaching system, future crime. Are we to believe that his wife with her husbands eyeballs in ziplock overthrew the regime?

P

**dave durbin** · 02-13-2003, 01:56 PM

I don't mean to change the subject but I love it when directors tip their hat to their own work -the Night Gallery episode with Joan Crawford in this case- as well.

**tabuno** · 02-13-2003, 09:52 PM

I don't agree with most of your Over-rated list because most of the movies your selected were in my mind great movies. You must have some fascinating criteria for what you consider to be good movies - so far it's a mystery to me, especially when I consider the movies that you do like. Our minds must come from alternate universes - that's what I get for having read so much science fiction when I was young.

**dave durbin** · 02-13-2003, 10:37 PM

I think it's safe to say that we're oil and water, yes. But that's cool with me. I respect your choices even though I can't stand most of them -and I hate science fiction by the way- but what a terribly boring world this would be if we all felt the same. Peace, my brother.

**tabuno** · 02-13-2003, 11:09 PM

What if we mixed it up and tossed about, what would we have?

**dave durbin** · 02-13-2003, 11:19 PM

Pure crap.

**tabuno** · 02-14-2003, 01:57 AM

John Stuart Mill, the 18th Century British political philosopher believed that only the full allowance and free flowing debate of combatants of opposite poles would led to the "truth." The correct answer therefore is "truth."

**Perfume V** · 02-14-2003, 05:55 AM

I love John Stuart Mill, and his amazing proto-feminist wife, Harriet Taylor Mill. Whenever I try to imagine what the greatest romance yet to be filmed would be, it always materialises in my head as a bipoic of those two.

On another note, I adored Spider-Man as an obsessive fan of both the character and pretty much everyone involved. The CGI didn't bother me because - with a few exceptions - CGI always looks abysmal to these eyes. It must be the most ruinous trait in modern movies.

**tabuno** · 02-14-2003, 04:08 PM

Why is it that in Spiderman as well as in Batman and Superman, we can't seem to get something going with the girl? It's so blase. At least Smallville makes for some interesting emotional complexities and relational substance that it seems the more lavish, big-budget movies would rather avoid

**Perfume V** · 02-17-2003, 06:20 AM

I must say, if I had one complaint to make about Raimi's film, it's that Kirsten Dunst didn't have much to do. Which is a shame, since from the small amounts we saw, she seemed a more likeable, rounded character than anyone else in the movie. Maybe in the sequel?

If I had to make choices for the most overrated movies of 2002, they would be:

1. Signs - see above. Incidentally, does anyone else think Shyalaman is getting bogged down mainly by his own ego at the moment? When he started out, he was a writer-director who said he made modest little supernatural thrillers. Now he's a writer-director-actor who makes searing investigations into metaphysical issues. With rubber aliens in them.

2. The Hours. Julianne Moore is my favourite actress of all time, but this film is little more than wanking for Oscars.

3. Y Tu Mama Tambien. Neither the best nor the worst product of the Latin New Wave, but certainly the most inexplicably overrated. I was ready to hit someone every time I heard that dreadfully unsubtle voice-over started telling us that everyone in this scene died years later.

Arguably the only good thing about this film was that it got some of the more pretentious critics to make utter fools of themselves discussing the sociological relevance of some jizz in a pool.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding - obviously.

**tabuno** · 02-17-2003, 12:19 PM

I have to assume that winning an Oscar means something. It's based on hundreds of people's opinion in the industry and considering the public's opinion isn't always the most highminded or that critics seem to operate on a different plane altogether why are the people that actually have to put up with all the crap not to be counted as relevant in deciding the quality of a film?

**pmw** · 02-17-2003, 12:33 PM

It certainly seems to mean a lot to the winners. But I think its more often a reflection of commercial success, paid for by our friends who "aren't always the most highminded", than you'd think. Hollywood is pretty money oriented and if a film does well at the box-office it's likely to get a pat on the back from other industry folks who are trying to do the same thing. "Bigger is better" seems to be the mantra of recent Oscar distribution, with the occassional sentimental award thrown in to stoke suspicious fires of Hollywood's artistic merit.

The FilmWurld Awards are generally thought to be the most representative of good film ;>
P