10 Well Liked Movies that I Don't Like

This is an article where I am opening myself to accusations, ridicule or just plain name calling. As a movie buff one of the best things about film criticism is the differing opinions people have. How enjoyable it is to disagree and then try to argue your points with, hopefully, someone open minded enough to at least listen if not accept what you say.

I have compiled ten movies for this article that I am not a fan of. Ten movies that all made large amounts of money and seem to be loved by most people who have seen them. These are the type of movies that when I tell someone I don't like the film they look at me as if I have betrayed them, stolen money from them or kicked their dog. I get looks like I am an idiot or an alien.

Of the ten movies on this list there isn't a one I truly despise but there is one I truly dislike and a few I think are just ok. Most of them are entirely watchable at times but, for me, fall short of being a good movie. I will try to explain myself with each film and at least get you to see where I am coming from even if you don't agree with me.

One of the biggest that isn't on my list is Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, a film I have never been able to wrap my arms around and embrace. I have written an entire article about that so please feel free to search the archives. I also have not included any of Adam Sandler's comedies because it would have been a fruitless task trying to pick one over the other when I dislike all of them at many different levels of hate.

Here are the ten movies I dislike enough not to recommend that most people either like or love. Please be nice in your comments and just remember that in the future when I can get even when I write about ten movies I like that most people don't.

BLADE RUNNER - One of two movies I consistently argue with my brother over is this Ridley Scott Sci-Fi /thriller with Harrison Ford. Having seen the movie several times through the years I find myself more distanced from it now then ever before. My brother even talked me into the shortened re-release and liked that version even less. I haven't seen the definitive director's cut and really have no desire to. So where do my complaints lie in the film? It is needlessly complicated at times enough so I needed a second viewing to clear certain questions up that I had. None of the characters are remotely likeable, especially Ford's Dekker so I found myself not caring about the main character and what would happen to him. I grant the film's visual style and musical score but the film never fails to make me feel empty at the end (this does not necessarily make a movie bad. Think Platoon.) and it leaves me wishing for a better script consistent with its star cast and top director.

CADDYSHACK - Okay here it comes. This is the film for which I take the most grief. I have been accused of having no sense of humor or just plain being dead. I have been told I need to be a golfer to add to the experience. Hogwash. Never living with a messy roommate did not extinguish my love for The Odd Couple. Never being part of a college fraternity didn't diminish Animal House.Caddyshack, for me, is just not that good of a movie.

Where do I start with my complaints? Let's go with the script first. There is no central story. The back half sort of hinges on a golf tournament for the caddy's and then another round of golf with some big, big money at stake but those are only asides for the comedic action. There is no central character to the film, only characters that come in and do their bit and then go off to make room for the next character. There are too many characters. Some could have been eliminated at no cost to the movie. The prime example being Danny Noonan's girlfriend who speaks with a Scottish accent for absolutely no reason whatsoever. She adds nothing to the movie. Cindy Morgan as Lacey Underall is, admittedly, very sexy in the movie but she comes in long enough to excite the teenage boys (in the audience) and sleep with a few of the men on screen. Totally unnecessary.

The main stars, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Rodney Dangerfield and Bill Murray all seem to be in different movies. Chase has his scenes with Michael O'Keefe as Noonan but I always found it odd that he hated the snobs at the club so much why he would still shoot golf there. Murray ambles around the golf course ogling women and chasing a gopher (wouldn't this loser have been fired a LONG time ago?) but his talents are under utilized with the exception of a nice moment when he pretends to be playing in the Masters and uses flowers as his golf balls. And what a waste of time having Chase and Murray, two of the best comic actors of that era, in the same movie together and give them only one flimsy scene together? Rumor has it the two hated one another but there comes a time when you put swollen egos aside for the better of your movie. Perhaps first time director Harold Ramis wasn't comfortable enough butting heads with his stars. Dangerfield is a hoot in his role and the best thing about the movie. Knight is basically playing the same character he did on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

How about the gopher? I HATE the gopher with such a passion that every time it appears I want to turn off the movie. It is so obviously fake and so unnecessary to the rest of the movie. Get it the hell out of there. Now, on the plus side there are some funny moments in the movie. The priest playing golf in a torrential thunderstorm (to the theme from The Ten Commandments) and its aftermath is quite funny. The Baby Ruth scene is and will always be a classic piece of comedy. In the end I just thought the film could be more with the talent involved. It's not a bad movie but just one of those comedies that never made me laugh as much as it did every one else.

FIGHT CLUB - I am a HUGE admirer of director David Fincher. If you start with his breakthrough movie, Se7en, and come forward I find this movie to be his only mis-step on his resume presently (I don't even acknowledge Alien 3). The Game is a tremendous thriller that nearly collapses with one of the worst endings ever. Here it is just the opposite. Fincher crafts a violent tale about a man (Edward Norton) who meets and becomes friends with another man (Brad Pitt) and soon they form a violent society called fight club, where members beat each other up. Norton's character suffers from insomnia and begins attending self help meetings, pretending to be suffering from the same illnesses as the other patients. It is here that he meets the lonely Helena Bonham-Carter and soon falls in love with her but she ends up having an affair with Pitt. Fincher tells the story at a deliberate pace that is fine and suitable but he showers his film with the most unlikable characters you can find. You literally want to run to the bathroom and wash yourself clean. But the biggest complaint I have is that Fincher peppers his film with gory violence that is necessary for the first few times but then becomes a geek show from then on. The film does offer an unexpected twist which saves the movie from being an all out disaster but I watched this film feeling more uncomfortable then I could remember.

THE GOONIES - I just re-watched this movie within the last few weeks and because of it decided to include it on this list. I was never a big fan of the film in its initial release and I have always seemed to be in the minority. Watching it closely I paid particular attention to the pacing and tone of the film and that was where the film ends up losing me. The story is fine albeit VERY far fetched but you go with it. What child didn't dream of finding buried treasure within the walls of their house or behind a brick in the basement or buried somewhere in their backyard? The kids, for the most part, do a credible job - especially Josh Brolin and Martha Plimpton, who delivers the film's best line when reminding her fellow goonies that a large rock sitting in place was probably placed there by God for a reason and shouldn't be moved. Jeff Cohen's portrayal of Chunk began to wear on me as all he ends up doing is screaming for his life for a good portion of the movie. I even accepted young Data's James Bond-like contraptions.

Now on to the complaints starting with the pacing. For me the film runs about twenty minutes too long and a good portion of the problem is the opening act when we meet the main characters. It takes far too long to meet the kids (and adults) with director Richard Donner feeling obligated to giving each person a scene of their own to establish who they are. One scene could have accomplished all of this and then moved ahead with the action. As an overgrown child even when the film was first released I wanted the kids to get into the caves. Once there the action is fairly exciting and very enjoyable. Who can forget the terrific shot of the pirate ship heading back out to sea (accompanied by the theme of The Sea Hawk - a beautiful touch)?

The other element of the film I didn't like was the tone. Donner had this same exact problem with his big budget Superman movie seven years earlier. He made an exciting, competent adventure film but then made the arch villain, Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman), something that seemed right out of the old Batman series with Adam West. Here Donner does the same thing with his villains, the Fratelli boys and their loyal mother. The film opens with a shot of one of the brothers seemingly dead by suicide hanging in his prison cell. He then knocks out a guard and is soon escaping jail. But first he has to stop and argue with his brother about the locked door and you just know from then on they are going to be caricatures of villains and not villains. Sure enough we get more the same with loads of pratfalls and fights that don't belong in the same movie with the rest of the material. Making the characters more serious (thus more frightening) would have made this film much better in my eyes. But I suspect producer Steven Spielberg tried to see his way to making the film appeal to people of all ages, much like he successfully did with Gremlins, and it doesn't work as well.

One last MAJOR problem I had was the character of Sloth, the disfigured creature-like Fratelli brother who is kept chained to a chair in the basement. Most of his performance he is treated like a cross between Frankenstein's monster and the Hunchback of Notre Dame but soon enough he is revealed to be nothing more then a kitten (a REALLY ugly one) but is gentle at heart. When he rips his shirt open to reveal he is wearing Superman's S insignia I threw my hands up and realized Donner had given in and only wanted to amuse little ones. An admirable goal but not when you have a faked suicide, a dead body with a bullet hole in his head and swearing already in the film.

HOME ALONE - Okay I know the rocks are going to fly at my head for this inclusion but I am afraid I had more then my share of problems with the film. There are plenty of good things in the film but yet I found myself a bit disenchanted throughout. Of course almost everyone else on the planet disagreed and still disagrees as it is one of the most successful film comedies in movie history.

For the life of me I just could never buy the initial premise of a family leaving a child home alone. Director Chris Columbus and writer John Hughes do a fairly credible job of explaining it but (and I am speaking as one who has no children) I just can't fathom a mother taking so long to realize one of her own kids has been left behind. With all the hustle, bustle and confusion I can grant forgetting a child for a short period but wouldn't someone have noticed before the airplane took off? Sadly, once I didn't buy that it was hard for me to swallow much of the rest of the movie. Yes I did laugh watching Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern, as idiot burglars (so idiotic you wonder how they have gotten away with any burglaries), getting the crap knocked out of them as they try to break down the booby traps young Kevin (a totally adorable Macauly Culkin) has set out for them. But it's just a script conceit that the two continue to allow themselves the pain and torture time and time again. It's also a script conceit that Kevin creates booby traps no adult smart enough to conceive of and then build in the time allotted. You would also think the burglars might just forge ahead instead of continually retreating so they can meet more traps to be hurt with.

For me the best parts of the film were the ones most grounded in reality. I liked the chaos of the opening scenes as the family prepares for their trip. The urban legend that follows the old man next door. The terror of having to go in the basement alone for the first time. The two best scenes in the film involve the old man (Roberts Blossom) who lives next door. First is a one on one chat with Kevin in charge as he secretly watches his granddaughter because of a falling out with his son years earlier. The other scene is the last, when Kevin stands at his living room window and witnesses a tear inducing reunion between the old man and his son and family.

The performances are universally fine, especially Culkin and Catherine O'Hara as his mother. John Heard, as the father, is just right, as is Stern and Pesci as the burglars. Only John Candy, so great in other roles, is completely wasted in his role as a musician who plays a key role in getting mother home to son.

This is not a bad film but just one that could have easily been better.

INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM - Quite possibly the biggest film disappointment in my many years of film watching, I am still shocked and amazed at how far a fall this film takes from its predecessor. Director Steven Spielberg does little more then simply tries to one up himself from Raiders of the Lost Ark to this film. Snakes in the original? How about LOTS and LOTS of bugs in this one? A grand opening in a cave and the jungle in the original? Well how about a nightclub, airplane and mountain range to open this film? A truck chase in the original? How about a mine cart chase here? Spielberg simply follows the formula of the original film and by outdoing himself here he also hurt the film he was trying to make.

I will grant that the opening scene in the nightclub (Club Obi Wan by the way) is terrific (especially a musical number over the credits that makes you long for Spielberg to try his hand at an old fashioned musical) and it is great fun watching him try to chase down a antidote to a poison he has just consumed. But then the chase continues to the airport and on an airplane and by the time the sequence is over (almost fifteen minutes into the film) you are exhausted. And this is all before the main action of the film has begun.

I also admired the mine cart chase with crisp and exciting editing.

The film's problems are three. First is the addition of young Short Round to the mix. Apparently meant to appeal to younger audiences, Short Round comes off sometimes fun and heroic and sometimes just plain annoying. Indy would have whipped his hide to the curb long ago. The second and biggest problem of the film is the character of Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw - the future Mrs. Spielberg). Unlike the terrific Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) from the original film, Capshaw's Scott is nothing but a whining, complaining little baby. Indy would have whipped her to the curb even sooner. She has no spunk, no guts or toughness about her. Perhaps I was just spoiled by Allen's Marion, one of the best female characters ever to grace an action movie. In contrast you just want to tell Willie Scott to shut up. Every time she is on the screen I cringed. Lastly the villains are too one dimensional and cartoony. They didn't come close to living up with Beloque or his henchmen from the original.

On the whole the film has its moments of greatness but too many moments of mere mediocrity. The film is much too violent for children (which would lead to the PG-13 rating two months later) even though a child is a major character. If Spielberg and executive producer George Lucas had chosen not to make a prequel but a true sequel with the return of Allen's Marion character they could have had something special. Instead it's an action packed adventure with a leading lady and child sidekick you will spend half the movie hoping get left behind by our hero.

MAMMA MIA - Before anyone asks, no I don't have an aversion to movie musicals nor to the music of ABBA. In fact I would call myself a fan (though not a huge one) of each. In recent years I have enjoyed Moulin Rouge, Chicago, Dreamgirls and Across The Universe. I happen to think Milos Forman's Hair is the best movie musical of the last 40 years. It just so happens I went into Mamma Mia with great anticipation only to have it turn into one of the most dreadful movie experiences I have had in ages.

Like I said I thought I was a fan of ABBA's but yet the movie takes a full hour to get to an ABBA song I even recognized. I was, by then, bored to tears almost enough to not care which of the three men were father to the bride to-be. Meryl Streep, as her mother, does something she hasn't done in a few years and that is to amaze us all over again. She is so good at what she does it doesn't even make us blink when watching her perform but here she sings and proves she can carry a movie with her voice as well as her acting ability. Alas, the same cannot be said about co-star Pierce Brosnan who may be handsome and suave but cannot sing to save his life. Believe me he tries more then once. A duet with Streep is particularly embarrassing. The musical numbers seem quite amateurish in their staging and none of the characters outside of Streep are worth more then a fleeting thought. The film turns desperate at the end with an unexpected homosexual revelation (unexpected even to the character) and the film's main plot line solution is never revealed. Talk about cheap and exploitive. Yet the film made millions. This is one movie I can guarantee never to watch again.

PREDATOR - The other film my brother have consistently argued about for over twenty years now. I realize this was Arnold at his prime doing what he did best but, for me, Predator is a good action film but a fairly lame monster movie. I actually prefer the first half of the movie to the second before the creature makes his appearance. In the first half we follow a group of soldiers go into the jungle to rescue a group of hostages not knowing an alien creature is stalking first the kidnappers and then the soldiers. One by one the soldiers start dying off in violent fashion in a film that offered nothing new and exciting to me once the creature makes his appearance. Dozens are movies prior to this one used the famous 'kill em off one at a time' routine and director John McTiernan offers nothing new to the story. Even the locale is similar to Walter Hill's terrific Southern Comfort about a group of national guardsmen lost in the swamp being picked off one by one by Cajun locals. The ending is also terribly ridiculous as some characters survive what can only be described as an explosion comparable to the A-bomb. Still there are things I enjoyed like the first half of the movie, the terrific musical score by James Horner and the revelation of what the predator looks like. But the film dumbs down to level of its characters and that took some of the thrill away from me.

SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE - This is another film I have taken a lot of flack for over the years but I am sorry if I require believability in a story. The basic premise is nice as a young son, desperate for his father to be happy after the loss of his mother, calls into a radio station so the father can tell his sob story. Touched, dozens upon dozens of letters pour in and the kid sets his sights on Meg Ryan. As has become the romantic comedy cliché, Ryan is engaged to Bill Pullman who is a nice guy but a bit of a dork. Every time we see him we are reminded that she can do better. She decides to fly to Seattle to just watch the son with his father (Tom Hanks) and she does just that. She watches and watches. If you travelled all that way wouldn't you strike up a conversation of some sort? The real howler is the final act. The boy is able to order a plane ticket, fly from Seattle to New York and safely get to the Empire State Building with no problem. Not bad for a kid who hasn't reached puberty. Hanks, of course, follows the son and finds him in an instant so naturally you just know they are going to run into Meg Ryan, but not without some screenplay contrivances to put them all together. Actually I more enjoyed the scenes with Hanks and his married friends - especially a moment when real life wife Rita Wilson tells about crying at a movie only to have Hanks and his pal make fun of her by claiming how sad The Dirty Dozen is. It's a great moment in a movie that should have been filled with great moments.

ST. ELMO'S FIRE - A box office success in 1985 due to its extremely popular cast, today the film plays more like a giant bore with pompous, losers for main characters who speak in a language all their own. Trust me you will never meet any real people like these characters. The basic story line follows seven best friends who have graduated Georgetown University and each has their own difficulties in grasping the future and all the responsibilities that lie ahead. Each character has their own soap opera story line and, for the most part, we could care less. There is Ally Sheedy and Judd Nelson as a couple who have just moved into together. Nelson is desperate to marry Sheedy while pursuing his political dreams. Sheedy wants to be an architect but is starting to feel tied down and unsure about their relationship. Rob Lowe mirrors his then real life as a wild ladies man who misses the college party life despite being married and having a child, though that doesn't stop him from cheating and staying out all night. He plays the saxophone at the local hangout but can't seem to hold on to a job. Mare Winningham plays the good girl in the group who comes from an upper class family and is secretly in love with Lowe's character. She spends her time helping the needy and figuring a way to escape her parents who are pressuring her to marry a man she doesn't like. Demi Moore plays the wild girl of the group who has little to do but care for her ailing stepmother and do drugs. Andrew McCarthy plays the writer who is searching the meaning of life and hoping to write about just that. He is secretly in love with Sheedy as the two characters are the oldest of friends. The last character, and the film's only interesting story, is Emilio Estevez' Kirby, a hopeful lawyer who becomes obsessed with a girl he dated once in high school and pursues her to no end in the hopes of finding true love with her. His story feels real with an outcome that is genuine. The rest is time filler with 80's music blaring on the soundtrack and characters saying lines that are totally ridiculous. The capper is when McCarthy actually gets his 'Meaning of Life' story published in the newspaper. He shows the headline to Sheedy and it actually says, "The Meaning of Life" by..... Do you think the presses worked overtime creating more papers that day? This was easily the worst of the so-called "Brat pack" movies of that era but younger generations continue to discover it.