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Unfairly maligned TV shows and movies

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Dick Whitman, Dec 7, 2012.

  1. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Riffing on the "Friends" tangent from the Sepinwall thread (and also rescuing the Sepinwall thread from said tangent).

    I give you:

    "Friends."
    "Forest Gump."
    Late-period M. Night Shyamalan, particularly "The Village" and "The Happening."

    OK. Go.
     
  2. Buck

    Buck Well-Known Member

    I don't think the Sepinwall needs rescuing. I don't understand why people get upset about interjections, jokes, side discussions, naturally morphing conversations - especially in a medium that is not linear or time sequential despite the way it appears on screen.

    However, I agree that 'Gump' is unfairly. Just because it shouldn't have one the Oscar doesn't make it a bad movie.
    I also agree on Shyamalan, whom I've defended here many times. 'The Village' and 'The Happening' were ultimately unsuccessful movies, but they were very interesting attempts, which puts them ahead of 90 percent of mainstream theatrical releases.
     
  3. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    I feel like critics - and audiences, too, perhaps influenced by critics - did not get "The Happening." They took it seriously. It's not meant to be taken seriously. It's meant to be a B-movie.
     
  4. Double Down

    Double Down Well-Known Member

    The Nicki and Paolo episode of LOST.
     
  5. Uncle.Ruckus

    Uncle.Ruckus Guest

    Season 2 of The Wire.
     
  6. Songbird

    Songbird Well-Known Member

    The moment Ross gets on bended knee, puts his face against Rachel's womb and pretends to cry was god-awful.

    Ernest Borgnine dressing up as Santa in an episode of The Single Guy was pretty funny.

    Californication lost its shit after the second season save a few quality episodes.

    The Notebook and The Bridges of Madison County are movie excellence, and Superbad sucks.
     
  7. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    Not sure how "Friends" is maligned. It's one of the most successful shows of all-time and it holds up remarkably well.

    It's not as revered as Cheers or Seinfeld, but with those two shows you're talking about possibly the best two 30-minute shows of the last 30+ years.

    Forrest Gump is a very good movie that does not hold up on any level. I loved it when I saw it for the first time in the theater and when I saw it a second time it was like, "Why did I like this?"

    It also doesn't help that two of the movies it beat in the best picture race that year (Pulp Fiction and Shawshank Redemption) hold up incredibly well and are two of the most beloved movies of the last 20 years.
     
  8. Versatile

    Versatile Active Member

    The Village is the angriest I have ever been at a movie theater. I was ready to hunt down M. Night Shyamalan to make him watch his piece of shit movie.
     
  9. Songbird

    Songbird Well-Known Member

    Funny about Seinfeld.

    I've seen every episode 10 times, some of them 25 times or more -- and it's laugh-out funny pretty much every time.

    My best friend watched the show with the same frequency as me but recently said he can't stand it, that now it feels contrived on so many levels. I've tried watching it the last few weeks from his perspective but can't. It's still rock-solid funny.

    To that end, he refuses to watch Curb Your Enthusiasm, which I think is near-perfection.

    Versatile, I felt the same about Love, Actually ... I just walked out halfway through.
     
  10. Zeke12

    Zeke12 Guest

    So, I recently went back and watched all of How I Met Your Mother. People kept telling me to, but then I watched some of whatever season was on last year, and I was baffled that people enjoyed this show.

    It really was better the first few seasons. It had the interconnected thing, sure, but it was also funny and had a certain philosophical resonance to most episodes. A few were always throw-aways and a few advancing the plot, but it really felt like it was building toward something.

    I say all of that to ask a question: When do people think it went off the rails? The obvious problem is they got trapped by their own success -- they had to keep making seasons that didn't advance the overall plot. They've been vamping for time for years, now.

    Follow up question: Does that ruin the entire show? Because I kind of think it does. When a show is so heavily influenced by a frame reference and a connected quality, the worst thing it can do is abuse that.
     
  11. Webster

    Webster Well-Known Member

    I hated Forest Gump and was shocked how popular it was.

    I remember seeing the movie with a group and there was a woman that I was interested in. After the movie, a bunch of us were having a drink and while I was disparaging the movie, she was in tears over the movie. That kind of killed the vibe between us.
     
  12. Versatile

    Versatile Active Member

    Well, I think it could, if that's why you're watching. I never really built an investment in Ted finding the mother because he's my least favorite character and I enjoyed the ride so much early on that I didn't want to hit the finish line. The biggest problem for this season, and to a degree, the previous two, has been stale jokes.
     
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