Movies that failed to live up to their potential

Pearl Harbour
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Snow White and the huntsman

 

Can you elaborate further?

This is one of my all-time favorite movies, and in contrast to The Road, a really good Cormac McCarthy adaptation.

At the same time I know a lot of people didn't like it, so I'm always interested to hear why. I know some people I know hated the ending, but I'm guessing your criticism goes deeper than that...

Just curious.

 

This one is easy for me: Any Given Sunday

I remember being so fired up to go see this. With that cast, the budget, the director, the subject matter, I thought we were about to get a movie that really captures what life in the NFL is like.

Instead, Stone went so far over the top that the movie was laughable. Save for Pacino's "inches" speech, there were almost no redeeming moments for me. Without question it's my all time most disappointing movie.

 

Not only that, but it won Best Picture. Pretty much the definition of "living up to its potential."

 

It was boring, uninspiring and Bardem did nothing for me.

 

Never really heard anyone attach those adjectives to the movie, but okay.

Another movie that comes to mind is The Good Shepherd. Great cast. Sounded interesting. DeNiro had previously been a solid director. But, THAT was a long, boring movie.

 

I watched it twice, gave it another chance in case I missed something the first go-round. I didn't.

It just bored the shit out of me even though -- yeah, yeah, I know -- it won Best Picture.

 

For what it's worth, I don't think a Best Picture Oscar is necessarily indicative of a movie reaching its potential. Plenty of "meh" movies have won Best Picture.

 

Some of the things that bothered me:

Bardem. I may have mentioned this years ago here but the actor I envisioned playing that character was Brad Garrett, mostly famous for playing Ray's brother in Everybody Loves Raymond. Garrett's face when he is angry is a thousand times more frightening than Bardem's face.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Garrett

As noted, the movie crawled along at times.

Then we get Josh Brolin's character rollin' along, rollin' along, rollin' along ... and then he shows up dead in that motel room. You know what? I want to see the character get killed. Weak-ass shit to just see his body on the floor without seeing him die.

Woody Harrelson seemed totally out of place. And so on an so on.

I wanted to like it the second time. Just didn't deliver for me.

 

It probably wouldn't make you feel any better, but the film is almost word-for-word and scene-for-scene taken out of the book (with a couple of exceptions).

 

Great call on The Good Shepherd.

 

Seconded. Would also add The Departed to that. Bad accents, unattractive woman caught between them (Vera Farmiga? Really?), hokey "Look! It's a RAT! Did you catch it!?!?!?" ending.

Saving Private Ryan. Overrated snoozefest, with one-dimensional characters, poor casting, unimpressive performances, and Spielberg doing one of his patented "tie it all up with a pretty bow!" endings.

Inglorious Basterds. It was fun, but too much "Look! I'm TARANTINO!" and not enough movie. So much so that I haven't seen Django Unchained yet, and don't feel too bothered by that.

Dark Shadows. Depp, Burton, Pfeiffer, Eva Green . . . thud.

L.A. Confidential. Everyone said it was so great. And it was fine, if you like dumbass cops who let a woman manipulate them. Then it deteriorates into a dumb shootout at the end.

District 9. See "shootout" note above.

The Hurt Locker. The two dudes with Renner couldn't act their way out of a paper bag. And the "coming home" segments just seemed so tacked on.