You can ask the Couch Baron — the minute Trog mentioned the other night that Premiere had a 20 Most Overrated Movies list, I clapped my hands and wiggled in my seat like a little girl. Sitting with a pint of beer and arguing about the ratedness, whether over- or under-, of movies, books, TV shows, bands, actors, subway lines, paper money denominations, seasons, restaurants, writing implements, fonts, Post-It sizes, condiments, sexual positions, business-card layouts, colors, soft drinks, and/or hair-care products is one of my favorite activities, and the Couch Baron is one of my favorite people to do it with, not just because he usually agrees with me, but because few other people have the patience to sit with a pitcher of margaritas and a pad and paper and program the Movies To Slit Your Wrists By Film Festival once, never mind four times because I keep forgetting where I put the list the last time we did it.

Alas, Trog didn’t have the mag with him, so he didn’t remember all the movies and he didn’t remember why the Premiere staff had deemed some of them overrated, but from what he did recall, it sounded like I agreed with a lot of them, and violently disagreed with a few — perfect column fodder. And thanks to the Rite-Aid on 5th Avenue, I’ve got it in front of me right now (excellently, the lead graphic is a drawing of the close-up of Keir Dullea in his spacesuit in 2001, but with a tomato splattered all over the visor. Hee).

At the risk of positioning myself on the sidewalk under a falling piano’s worth of spluttery emails, let’s take a look at the list, shall we? (Warning: may contain spoilers, but most of the movies came out at least two years ago, so…get over it.)

2001: A Space Odyssey
Why it’s allegedly overrated: Slow, “painfully obvious” symbolism, crappy acting and dialogue
Agree or disagree? I agree that it’s slow; I agree that the acting is not the best. I disagree that it’s overrated. The overrater in Premiere contends that it’s stoner film, which is the conventional knock on it, but I’ve never watched it stoned and frankly I can’t imagine doing so, because either I’d fall asleep or I’d flip my shit, probably the latter. I’ve always found 2001 enormously affecting — not fun to watch, or even “good” in the sense that it’s a tight story or the dialogue is good or whatever, because it isn’t, and it isn’t. It’s the sense of tension that makes it great, in my opinion — the initial sequence with the monkeys is too heavy-handed and goes on too long, I agree, and if your objection is that it’s half an hour too long, yeah, I can think of several spots where Kubrick could have made five-minute cuts.

But two and a half hours is, by today’s movie standards, not that long; a bloated Ron Howard bio-pic routinely comes in at 145 minutes, and once the movie shifts out into space, Kubrick’s stretching out of scenes; his use of sound (or, often, no sound at all, or no sound except breathing); the stillness in the shots, which isn’t peaceful but rather the stillness of holding oneself rigid…it all builds a unique anxiety, and in the last sequence, we don’t know where Dave Bowman is, quite, or when, and the shots just sit, silently, and he’s alone, and it’s just enormously disquieting. I find almost everything else on Kubrick’s c.v. overrated, but 2001 is a masterpiece.

So, I disagree, but I understand the reasoning. If it doesn’t resonate with you on that level, it doesn’t, end of story.

A Beautiful Mind
Why it’s allegedly overrated: Incomplete portrait of the subject; cheap use of mental illness as a plot device
Agree or disagree? I’ve watched all of ten minutes of it, so I can’t really comment; in the ten minutes I did see, the scenery was a smorgasbord and Russell Crowe hadn’t eaten in weeks. I don’t know if it’s fair to dismiss the movie based on the fact that it didn’t show enough of the dicky side of John Nash, because if that didn’t fit neatly into the story Howard wanted to tell, well, it didn’t. It’s Ron Howard; you have to adjust your expectations in terms of how many chances you can expect to see taken, i.e. not that many.

I didn’t realize anyone considered it an all-time great as a film in the first place, either. Yeah, it won a bunch of Oscars. So did Rocky. Doesn’t necessarily mean anything. So, I’ll agree. And speaking of “winning Oscars doesn’t necessarily mean anything”…

American Beauty
Why it’s allegedly overrated: Sitcommy, stagy plotting; parodic, one-note characters
Agree or disagree? Agree. Could not agree more. It’s not a bad movie, but it’s like it got built from an Anomie By Numbers kit, and anything unpredictable felt cynically so, like Alan Ball thought, “Well, this is what they’d expect me to do, so I’ll do the opposite,” and I’ve often gotten that sense from certain developments on Six Feet Under, too. We know it’s hard to tell a compelling story that isn’t derivative, but…plot tropes exist for a reason, so trust your dialogue and stop trying so hard.

“But the acting is so great in it!” I…don’t see that. Neither Bening nor Spacey has much range; if this is the only thing you’ve seen them in, it looks like pretty good work, but it’s nothing special, to my mind. Again, it’s not bad; it’s just not special.

I don’t recall 1999 as having a dearth of good movies (at least, not compared to any other year); I saw all the other nominees that year and I felt that three of them deserved Best Picture more than American Beauty did. Overrated for sure.

An American In Paris
Why it’s allegedly overrated: Too campy; Gene Kelly is icky in it
Agree or disagree? I haven’t seen it, so I will confine myself to remarking that calling a movie musical “over the top” is like complaining that the acting in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan isn’t naturalistic. Maybe it’s overrated; I’ve never heard this movie talked about as the best Gene Kelly movie, even, so I think maybe Premiere overrated its importance.

Chariots Of Fire
Why it’s allegedly overrated: Sound design and pacing both stink; characterization is uneven
Agree or disagree? For my birthday one year, my mother brought me and all my friends to see Chariots of Fire at the local movie theater, so I guess what’s really overrated here is the attention span of a group of nine-year-old girls whacked out on ice-cream cake. Heh. It bored the shit out of us then; I rented it again years later, thinking I’d obviously suffered from seeing it at too young an age, but…nope, still boring. Weird race scenes alternate with stagnant interpersonal-drama scenes, lots of shots of running, then a shot of the heath…the acting is okay (and Ian Holm is great), but I suspect that it’s one of those Best Picture winners where it beat a weak slate because it had a lot of British accents happening. (Also nominated that year: top-five all-time overrated “tearjerker” On Golden Pond, so at least it beat out that mess.)

Embarrassing trivia alert!: The soundtrack is the first LP I ever bought.

I was nine. Mistakes were made. Shut up.

Chicago
Why it’s allegedly overrated: Editing doesn’t disguise crappy singing/dancing by Gere and Zellweger; thin story, stagy production
Agree or disagree? I haven’t seen the whole thing, but again, I think accusing a movie musical of staginess misses the point. I don’t like musicals, generally, and it’s hard for me to say whether a given movie musical is good or not because I spend most of the movie rolling my eyes, but on the other hand, I really liked Moulin Rouge!. I know, I don’t get it either.

Anyway. I’ll give it a no-decision.

Clerks
Why it’s allegedly overrated: It’s only funny if you’re drunk; the acting is terrible; people only like it for “slacker cred” reasons
Agree or disagree? Well, I’d like to strongly disagree; it’s one of my favorite movies. That notwithstanding, dismissing it as one of those things, like some of the less accessible Radiohead stuff, that people only claim to like because it makes them sound “with-it,” is a cheap shot — because the other points, I can’t argue with. Three quarters of the acting is just wretched, especially Veronica and Caitlin Bree.

But part of that comes from Kevin Smith’s writing, which is…it’s not stiff, exactly, but it’s not quite how people really talk, either, and, as with Whit Stillman movies (Barcelona, for one), in order to sell it, he’s got to cast actors who will do it all the way and not stumble over it or cross-check themselves with a half-assed line reading. It’s not about casting good actors; it’s about casting committed actors. Brian O’Halloran did great as Dante, even though he’s got some of the clankiest, most robotic lines in the movie, because he got behind his lines and pushed. Ben Affleck is twice the actor O’Halloran is, but I hated Chasing Amy and I hated him in it, because you could almost see Affleck looking over the top of the camera at Smith all, “…Really? That’s the line?” Jason Lee’s in the traces, pulling his ass off, and Affleck’s floundering. I hated that movie for a lot of reasons, but Smith’s inability to cast for his own writing is an ongoing problem (op. cit. Dogma — same set of actors, same problem. Lee and Matt Damon get in there and break some eggs; Affleck’s just waiting on an omelet).

But. I don’t think it’s overrated. I think people who love it know that it’s got serious flaws and that Smith isn’t Orson Welles. I haven’t seen it fifty times because I admire Smith’s stick-to-it-ive indie spirit, for God’s sake; I’ve seen it fifty times because the street hockey guys hit their last ball off the roof and ask the guy on the ground if he’s seen any balls down there, and he says, “Biggest pair you ever seen…dingleberry.” And the “I’m a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class, especially since I rule” line is a classic. Randal is my co-pilot, totally.

Easy Rider
Why it’s allegedly overrated: “Plays more like a music video set to a self-indulgent song about counterculture victimization”; contrived; symbolism used as bludgeon
Agree or disagree? Kudos to Premiere West Coast bureau chief Tim Swanson for that elegantly constructed “…pfft,” with which I heartily concur. It’s boring; it’s overly earnest about smoking weed and following your star; the ending is a corker, viscerally, but before the credits even roll you realize it’s an unearned shock.

In college, Ernie and I used to get stoned and “create” — Ernie would draw big loopy abstracts with her pastels, and I would write long, dense tone poems. And then I would get up the next morning, have a cup of coffee, look over what I’d written, and chuck it as unusable. Profundity is only interesting to others if it has a framework. Easy Rider doesn’t.

It’s an excellent time capsule, and if you watch it that way and don’t expect the movie qua movie to hold up, it’s enjoyable. And Peter Fonda is a fox with those sideburns, mm hmm. As a cultural artifact, I think it’s rated correctly; as a film, wildly overrated.

Fantasia
Why it’s allegedly overrated: Incoherent; poorly animated
Agree or disagree? It’s not intended as a coherent narrative; it’s a montage. That’s the point. So I have to overrule the overrated objection on that count. The accusation that some of the animation “now seem[s] dangerously akin to screensavers” is, I guess, a matter of opinion; I haven’t seen the movie in a while, so I don’t remember, but let’s give 1940 a break, shall we?

It’s a weird creature, Fantasia. The narrator is a bit creepy, and if you don’t like Mickey Mouse, the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” section is a trial; unless you spend a lot of time getting baked, or you have kids, it’s not something you’d watch repeatedly, I don’t think, and I’d never heard a ton of praise for it (except, again, from stoners). So, I have to disagree that it’s overrated, both on the grounds claimed by Premiere and just generally — I think I’m the only person I know who’s even seen it.

Field of Dreams
Why it’s allegedly overrated: Cliched characters and resolutions; illogical, plotting doesn’t make sense
Agree or disagree? Disagree.

I love the movie; I cannot stop watching it once it’s on. That doesn’t mean it’s not overrated, and it certainly doesn’t mean that certain aspects of it don’t work — the characterization of Shoeless Joe as an aw-shucks sweetie, James Earl Jones’s speechifying. A lot of it doesn’t work. Moonlight Graham is miscast. Ray spends too much time in Boston. It’s ungainly and moist.

But this is a movie, like 2001, where either you love it because it plugs into something in you, or you don’t care and don’t get it. It’s going to strike a chord or it’s not; it’s not a movie people love because it’s objectively outstanding, firing on all cylinders, however you want to put it. No way is Liotta playing Joe Jackson correctly; the man ran a liquor store after baseball, he’s a rough guy. Not the point. Busfield looking around all befuddled and asking, “When’d these players get here”? “Want to have a catch…Dad?”, followed by Sarah bawling into a Kleenex or the side of the nearest cat? That’s the point.

It’s not overrated; that’s not the right way to think about it.

Forrest Gump
Why it’s allegedly overrated: “Cloying nostalgia and faux empathy”; shticky and contrived
Agree or disagree? I didn’t know anyone considered it a great movie or that it qualified for overrating; the people I hang out with, admitting you even liked it is a cardinal sin. And I did like it. It’s manipulative, in spades, and the “cloying nostalgia” and the shtickiness charges? Dead on. It’s a cynical movie in a lot of ways, a lot of jury-rigged redemption and synecdochized characters, and Hanks didn’t deserve that Oscar (although to his credit I think he knows that).

But it does what it sets out to do. “Yeah…sell soundtracks.” Well, yes. It’s a great soundtrack. It’s straight down the middle of the road, but ain’t nothing wrong with driving there now and then.

If anyone’s going around calling Gump a classic and talking about shooting it into space with the next Mars probe as an example to aliens of what American culture hath wrought, that someone is high, because it’s not a great film, but it did what it set out to do. Everyone saw it. It spawned catchphrases and controversies. That fact alone doesn’t make it a worthwhile movie, but if anything, I’d say it’s under-rated — Sinise is putting in a lot of thankless work as Lt. Dann, and for all the CGI crap and the running across the country and the blah, it’s quite watchable. It’s not good; it’s not as bad as people say. It’s just eminently mainstream, which I don’t think is a negative (or a positive). It just is.

Tune in next week for an evisceration of Ashley Wilkes, hate mail for the French New Wave, and the beating of the Shitstick River joke to death.

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