The Most Overrated Movies of 2002

[Chris Knipp]

To Tabuno: Of the items on your list I have not seen Death to Smoochy, White Oleander, and Secretary. I never heard about Smoochy till it was out of the theaters and the other two I was warned off of by friends or reviews, but doubt in my rejections has since grown and I now think I need to rent all three. This is a lesson to me that being "warned off" is a dubious thing. You have to go out there and see things and judge for yourself.

To Oscar Jubis: I have great faith in J. Hoberman (he's a very clever fellow and was great on "The Believer" -- which so few unfortunately have yet seen -- this past year) and if he speaks well of Death to Smoochy, then I need to see it.

[dave durbin]

Yes, always see a film regardless of what the critics say and J. Hoberman is a good judge of solid filmmaking but remember that he did gave a rather blase, slightly stiff review for The Pianist.

[Chris Knipp]

Indeed I do remember that, and nobody can be relied on 100 percent.

[dave durbin]

And he favored The Rules of Attraction. ; )

[Chris Knipp]

Ah.
Well I can't comment because I haven't seen that one.

[tabuno]

I think the nominations that The Hours received comes at an appropriate time because it definitely flies in the face of the Old Boys Club. While an argument can be made about how subjected the women are in this movie, I think that it correctly portrays the opinion of a majority of women across the United States, probably the world in terms of the role that women continue to be given in terms of jobs, pay, and their social roles in society. By promoting this movie showing the progression of women's individual expression from suicide, to escape, to finally liberation, I believe that the Oscars has finally captured some insight into quality films and that by pandering to the Oscars it has elevated the level of motion pictures.

I also think the A Beautiful Mind did a marvelous job of exposing to the general public the difficult concept of schizophenia in terms that the public could identify with and understand. Again by attempting to win an Oscar, this movie projecting a socially important mental illness into the general public. I mean if you want the public to truly understand mental illness perhaps we might just all insist on documentaries and educational programming on PBS. But A Beautiful Mind from a motion picture, entertainment standpoint and also instilling some sensitivity and some understanding on the issue of mental illness did a wonderful job. The movies wasn't supposed to be a college course on the DSM-IV (TR).

Tab L. Uno, Certified Social Worker

[Perfume V]

Tomayto, tomahto. You say A Beautiful Mind presented schizophrenia in an easy-to-understand way, I'd say that A Beautiful Mind presented schizophrenia in the same simplistic, slightly patronising way it presented everything on screen. I've suffered from mental illness, I've had friends who've suffered from mental illness, my mother and my grandmother both work with the mentally ill, and whereas I might be shaky with the hard facts, I do know that schizophrenia can not be cured by the love of a good woman. Even if that woman is Jennifer Connelly.

As Mary Ann Johansen put it:

A Beautiful Mind is pure made- for- Hollywood pap about the mentally ill in which schizophrenia is treated by Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman the way doctors used to treat it in the bad old days before we (some of us, anyway) were enlightened about diseases of the brain: Hey, snap out of it! Get over it! It's all in your head! If Howard had made A Beautiful Liver, about someone who cures his cancer through sheer willpower, or A Beautiful Leg, about someone who mends his broken limb by merely wishing hard enough, he would have been laughed out of the Oscars.

In fact, there wasn't anything in this film that wasn't dumbed down. Howard and Akiva Goldsman assumed the audience wouldn't be able to understand game theory - fair enough, I can't. But did it need to be presented as a way of getting laid at a party? Howard and Goldsman assumed the audience wouldn't be able to understand Nash's tightrope walk between intelligence and insanity, so they presented his mathematical abilities as the result of some indefinable, near-supernatural power. Most poisonously of all, Howard and Goldsman assumed audiences wouldn't be able to sympathise with a bisexual character, so they 'straightened out' Nash in a way that I thought would have died out with the demise of the Hays code.

This won best adapted screenplay? There's barely a word of the book left in it.

[oscar jubis]

There is no way the previous post can more accurately reflect my thoughts and feelings. Thank you.

[dave durbin]

I second that.

[Chris Knipp]

I agree wholeheartedly with Perfume V, Oscar Jubis, and Dave Durbin, and would like to add that as for the "good woman" who saved Nash, in real life she didn't stay with him during that time. She left him, but came back later -- a little detail among many in the biography that Ms. Goldman chose to tweak in the interests of her fanciful, condescending, dumbed-down package. The huge discrepancies between the real Nash and the Hollywood version were pointed out in a New York Times article when the movie appeared.

[dave durbin]

Now that this has degenerated into a disturbing A Beautiful Mind debate, I would like to sum all this up with the words spoken by Ronnie Howard in the beginning of his DVD commentary for Mind: "We had to find a way to make John Nash's story appeal to a mainstream audience."

Case closed.


Here's a depressing and morbid news flash worthy of a spit take:
Anyone else know they've turned Greek Wedding into a new t.v. show called My Big Fat Greek Life?

[Chris Knipp]

I'm not sure I would want Ron Howard to have the last word on Beautiful Mind, but we can always move on. I feel that pushing the right buttons in the "right" way is how movies get overrated, and Beautiful Mind came up for a good reason: The Hours, one of the most overrated movies of the year, is the Beautiful Mind of 2002. This is a real issue, and what's justified in making a "story appeal to a mainstream audience" is a real issue. Case not closed.

[dave durbin]

Yes, it is a real issue -and one to easily address- but with mainstream America happily lapping all of it up, can it be resolved? I don't think so. It's been this way for years and I don't really see an end in sight; if anything, this sort of numbing entertainment has shockingly become more accepted than anyone could have ever imagined. If you go-with-the-flow you're 'safe' and have nothing to worry about, if you dare call attention to the child-like persuasiveness and obviousness of the movies we've been discussing, look out -Hell hath no fury like the mainstream scorned. What answers can you provide or how would you suggest bringing this to greater attention? What answers could ANYONE provide for that matter? I don't feel there is one aside from just trying to champion the smaller films that make the same points and have the same messages.

[Chris Knipp]

I don't have quite your rueful, head-shaking view of things, I guess. I tend to see things in terms of specific movies always. I think Ron Howard's way of working material over for a "mainstream" audience is simplistic and unconsciously condescending, but there are always times when a movie with mass appeal is a nice, well made movie. With all its fakery, I don't think Beautiful Mind is a well made movie. The Hours is pretty well made, but it's based on a book with a dubious premise; it's designed to push buttons, as is Beautiful Mind. Examples of good mainstream movies that don't condescend are Erin Brockovich and Traffic. Those two are both informative and well made, I think. They bring a reasonably sophisticated treatment to themes in a way that may make a mass audience better informed about the drug nexus and corporate pollution coverups. You can say Traffic isn't as good as the English series Traffik that it's based on and that neither is the whole story distortion, but I I learned a lot from Traffik and I thought Traffic was an excellent adaptation. Another example, not of anything uplifting, but of a mainstream movie that is made with a lot of grace, is Catch Me If You Can. If you don't like any of these examples, maybe you can find some of your own. How about The Godfather, for instance? Isn't that a great movie that's mainstream in its appeal? Last year, weren't Lord of the Rings and Chicago good movies with mass appeal?

[dave durbin]

Didn't mean to come off as some sort of bitter old man with a bleak view of the future in that last posting; I agree with your statements about some of the examples you offered and I like your observations overall. It's easy to forget everything and jump on a "fuck the mainstream movies" bandwagon while forgetting that most independents can be just as frustrating. The 'Most Overrated' category sections are always the most interesting to me in that they offer some sort of peace to many film lovers who didn't see eye to eye with the box office receipts, critical accolades, and various award groups.