The 20 Most Overrated Films in Recent Times

What exactly was the point of this film? While many thought of it as a brilliant war film, perhaps some got so swept away by the Godfather films that they thought FFC's next film would be another master stroke. Unfortunately, this turned out to be jumbled, incoherent, boring, occasionally incomprehensible, overbaked and it was difficult to really identify with the protagonist. The war scenes were nothing special and there were no memorable parts.

Oscar for best picture? You have to be joking. This is hollywood (inaccurately) pontificating about race relations in America from Mulholland Drive. The coincidental interconnections of the characters was ridiculously contrived and there was an extreme over-reliance on cliches to get it over the line. After all, all white LA cops are racist, right? It was dramatic stupidity at its worst and the fact that many respected reviewers raved about it was mystifying to say the least.

This overhyped, cliche-riddled mess was not insightful and was fairly idiotic and stupid. The father quits his job so he can "live." Though his definition of "living" involved smoking pot, pumping iron and fantasising over his teenage daughter's best friend, who is an extremely bitchy, outwardly slutty virgin. His wife seems to be an emotionally collapsable character who listened to too many "positive thinking" tapes and is having an affair. His disrespectful daughter is in a relationship with a wooden neighbour who thinks there's something wonderfully artistic about watching a plastic bag blowing around in the wind and his father is a strict, conservative homophobe, who of course, turns out to be gay. What's the insight this drivel tries to provide when one decides to "look closer"? .... Not much!

Was this supposed to be a comedy? Was there supposed to be a deep insightful point? Despite the impressive cast and many people saying it was a "must see" film, I was not entertained in the slightest and couldn't work out what all the fuss was about. It was complete and utter nonsense, wavering between unfunny and unengaging. Never should have been considered, let alone made.

Watching someone dying of a painful terminal illness is more funny than this load of crap. And just when you thought that they had milked the "Focker" surname for everything it was worth, plus some, along came a sequel with "Focker" in the title - which was probably slightly worse than this turkey. Being strapped to a lie detector machine so the fiancee can be probed on his sexual past was nothing more than silly, undergraduate humour. What was Robert De Niro thinking signing up for this one anyway? By the way, I don't actually recall laughing once in this film, though it was widely regarded as the comedy of the decade.

"Unwarranted Self-Importance" is the only way I can think to describe this film. The acting was generally uneven, the plot was designed to simply showcase the horrors of war rather than genuinely tell a story, and the champagne oscar-bait footage of Dafoe dropping to his knees at the end was the last straw. Why this is regarded as such a brilliant film has me completely baffled. Much better films about Vietnam have been made.

Halle Berry's husband is electrocuted, she is evicted from her house because she fell behind with the rent, her overweight son is killed in a hit-and-run, she shags one of her husband's jailers after he stumbles across her immediately the hit-run incident, he is dealing with a racist father and recent suicide of his son. All this seems to take place in the course of a few days! The story is ridiculous, the film seems to just bath itself in tragedy and despair, though the acting is good. There wasn't really any point to the film and there was no reason why this should be held in any regard. The scriptwriter needs prozac though.

In all fairness, I had to choose between casino royal and this, so I chose QoS because it was worse. This incoherent mess shifted focuses, was overlong, confusing and featured a villain that no one seems to remember. The action was woeful, Daniel Craig is a boring, expressionless, humourless Bond that lacks the fun and slyness of all his predecessors. Why did they have to reboot the series in this way? In any case, it's definately a 1 out of 10 type movie.

Silly, lacking credibility, unfunny, poorly conceived, badly scripted and odd. I think there were many who were so in love with the idea of far-fetched government manipulation that they found this to be entertaining and, somehow, moderately believable. Well... it wasn't! It certainly managed to reel in some hollywood A-listers. In their absence, this would have been even worse, which is difficult to imagine.

Silly, unfunny, smutty film that relied way too much on trying to get laughs from its shock-value and gross-out moments. It almost seemed to be written by a group of 18 year old boys and definately didn't entertain me in the slightest. Congrats Ben Stiller, seems you've got three films in my top 20. Try choosing better scripts that actually have a comical side perhaps?

According to friends, I just had to watch this idiotic mess about a crass hockey player who takes up golf in an un-gentlemanly way. Childish, dumb and unfunny (unless Adam Sandler yelling at everything is supposed to be funny), but so many regard it as a modern comedy classic... hmmm....

It had a good start and seemed like it was going to be grand, but it somehow lost its way and became an underwhelming murder investigation film. The big key of the plot was based around the ridiculous suggestion that on the same night of a tragic murder, a childhood friend of the victim's father beat up a child molesterer in a completely unrelated incident, resulting in him become a key suspect. Aspects that clearly should have been fleshed out were overtly ignored. Far-fetched, not memorable and somewhat constipated, though highly praised on release.

What was the big deal? Russell Crowe got his breakthrough oscar, yet I wouldn't regard this as a challenging role for him. The story was a meek, the pace was slow and boring, the battle scenes were not particularly exciting, the emotional nature and acting was overdone, but the soundtrack was good. It has all the elements of an epic except an interesting story, interesting characters and "feeling." In the end, it just didn't come together very well. Scott is a very overrated director indeed. Many people say they liked it. Almost no one has watched it a second time.

Whatever the initial intention of this film, it ended up as more of a montage from the 60s and 70s, connected by a simpleton with a box of chocolates. This really was one of those "I get it, but I don't get it" films where Gump is a war hero, table tennis champion, successful businessman, successful investor, football hero and just when it couldn't get anymore ridiculous, he decides to go running non-stop for a year or so. But what's the point? Why someone wrote this story is beyond me - perhaps I should just accept it as a fun fantasy film used as an excuse for people to wonder down memory lane, even thought it's..... ultimately stupid.

In fairness I'm not here to rubbish this film. It was good.... but not incredibly great. At the time of writing this, it sits at number 8 on imdb's top 250 films of all time. This hardly is of the calibre of The Godfather, Pulp Fiction and Schindler's List... Ledger was sublime and it was well produced, but the editing and script had trouble settling on a core focus, leading to plot contradictions and things that didn't quite make sense. The ending seemed to be bolted on rather than being born out of the story. Slightly overlong and definately not one of the greatest films ever made.

Stupid, unfunny, idiotic, childish, moronic. Enough said.

Day-Lewis is a good actor, but not the messiah that everyone makes him out to be. The film itself is factually inaccurate, portrays the British as one-dimensional villains and the ending was so gloriously celebratory that it made me physically sick. Certainly not the great film that people made it out to be.

After the tremendous Fellowship of the Ring came the moderately enjoyable Two Towers. Everyone, including the academy, just assumed that ROTK was going to hit new heights and be the best of the lot, including the Academy Awards. Unfortunately, this film was not particularly inspiring or good. I grew tired of it early and the excessive length made things even worse. It was the worst of the three and while many claimed to love it, again they only watched it once.

This trite piece of "left wing politics for cash" did not reveal anything new or of interest. As Manufacturing Dissent showed, a lot of manipulation went into this film and the objective of getting Bush out of office took precedence over presenting strong, coherent analysis and argument. In fact, it jumped on the wrong train several times and at other times, it seemed to be unfolding a line of thinking before cutting it off and jumping onto some unnecessary Bush outtake. Undeserved popularity and praise; and it certainly wasn't a good follow on from Bowling for Columbine. By the way, did you know that Moore's private trust invests in Honeywell stock, which makes money providing weapon and intelligence technology to the military?

Hmm... a portal into the brain of.... John Malkovich of all people? And then getting spat out into a large drain pipe next to the freeway? I have no idea what this oddball, eccentric film was trying to do, but it seemed obvious that they had a concept to run with, but didn't know where to go with it. Ultimately I couldn't wait for it to end, yet some critics and movie-goers through it was fantastic. I think someone needs a portal into their heads to see if anything is actually there...