There has been a lot of bashing of movies that I like as well, Braveheart, Dances With Wolves, A Clockwork Orange and Gladiator being a few, but IMO the following really define overhyped:
1. Unforgiven - this lame attempt of Eastwood to try and shed his "man with no name" image failed miserably. Too many times when they TRY and make characters flawed, you end up just not caring about them. That, plus a lot of other things in this movie never held water.
2. Spiderman - OK, it takes the high school kid to point out to the scientist that one of their spiders, supposedly monitored 24/7, is missing? And has created a nest up in the rafters of this place no less. And while most villians have a plan that needs to be thwarted, the Green Goblin had nothing. Gotta love (and wonder) why the billionare bad guy and his son hang out to eat Thanksgiving dinner with the peasants from the hood (how did they know each other again?)- VERY BELIEVABLE! And this has made over $400M???
3. Anything by Woody Allen in the last 10 years - need I really get into why?
4. Platoon - ditto what others have said. As my father once said. "I'm still waiting to see the 'Nam movie where somebody came back 'normal' and wasn't involved in a massacre of civilians". So I guess a long list of Vietnam films can be thrown on this heap, from "Born on the 4th of July to my next film...
5. Apocalypse Now - I know I'm going to catch Hell on this one but this is one of those movies where the ending kills a good thing. Yes,yes, I know about the Joseph Conrad parallel but when a movie is a narrative for it's first 2-1/2 hours, don't turn it into a impressionistic experiment for the last 1/2 hour. The pink, red and white smoke while arriving at Kurtz's lair is too over the top as is the whole surreal set. Restraint in this area would have justified the rest of this, otherwise, worthy film. But hey, I love Citizen Cane too and my wife hate's it - go figure.
6. Pearl Harbor/Armeggedon/Con Air (or anything else that Jerry Bruckheimer is involved in) - For the love of God, I don't know of anyone else that can serve up the visual pablum of this producer - each flick always has the slo-mo "americana" thing that is so pandering it literally makes me sick. Think Armeggeddon after the meteor explodes and there is a slo-mo of 3 "small town" kids (ethnically diverse, of course) waving the flag, while running past the red brick General store that has a portrait of Kennedy painted on the side of it. Or the explosion (pick a film) that is shown from every possible angle ad nauseum. Subtlety is not in this guy's dictionary.
I'll stop there, although there are a ton of movies that fit into this category. I feel better now...:-)!!
