In the brilliant Playstation 2 game NCAA Football 2004, there is a beautiful little feature that always fires me up. When the college team you're controlling is upsetting a high-ranked team at home, late in the game you will sometimes hear your fans chanting the instantly recognizable "Overrated! (clap, clap, clap, clap, clap) Overrated! ..."
It is in that spirit that I present my Top Five Overrated Movies Ever (That I've Actually Seen).
1. Contact.

This is a dumb film that thinks it's smart, perhaps because it was made from such a smart book (by the well-known TV astronomer Carl Sagan). The interesting things from the book are either completely eliminated, or rendered unrecognizable in the stew of ridiculous characters, dialogue, and melodrama.

The whole "science-religion" conflict the movie tries to emphasize is unbelievably simplistic; if you want to know what people mean when they say a movie insults their intelligence, then this vacuous, sentimental storyline is Exhibit A. The episode of the Simpsons that tried to explore these issues (with guest star Stephen Jay Gould) failed as well, but at least it didn't take itself quite so seriously. Did people who liked this movie really think that Matthew McConaughey was doing a great job speaking for faith and religion? Is he the representative you want? (The movie also completely subverts Sagan's view in the book on this conflict. Read the book.)

I read a lot of reviews that say "This is a thinking person's movie." Well, maybe it tackles more issues than Independence Day or Alien; but those movies never pretended to be anything they weren't. Contact is an incoherent, sappy mess.
2. Pleasantville.

Tedious, dodgy moralizing packaged as an incredibly unsubtle allegory. The character development is one step up from nonexistent; each of the characters has exactly one thing that defines them, and when the main characters accomplish whatever stupid allegorical task they need to, they magically change from black-and-white to color (the movie's gimmick).

I guess that a common feature of many of the movies on my list is that they try to be smart and instead settle for condescending. Such movies inspire rabid reviews by fans who can't tell the difference (read some of the reviews to this movie by clicking the above link). The prevailing attitude is "Anyone who doesn't like this movie must have something wrong with him or her, or at least have nothing artistic inside of them at all." (That's a direct quote from one of the reviews on IMDB.) Well, what can you say to something like that? Except: "You couldn't be more wrong." That'll do nicely.
3. Star Wars, Episode I and II.

Ok, so I'm combining two movies here. But it's my list, and I'll do what I want. All right--I get it. It's a sweeping story and it's setting the stage for the later stuff, so it's not going to be great on its own. You know what? That's a load of crap. So is the movie. All the stuff about myths, and all the awe-inspiring special effects you can throw on the screen--none of that can disguise the absolutely wooden dialogue, the stupid, needlessly complex plot, the unlikability and utter dullness of all of the main characters, and the dumb, vaguely racist renderings of the alien races.

Episodes IV-VI were good, and sometimes great, because the characters were interesting. Darth Vader was Luke's father. Han Solo struggled with his conscience. Leia struggled with her love for Han Solo. Even C3PO struggled with his cowardice. These weren't enormously complex struggles, and in fact their appeal came partly from their universality and simplicity. (All that stuff about Joseph Campbell and mythology--ask a hard-core fan if you want to hear about it--made some sense with respect to those movies.)

But this stuff is just boring. There's no struggle with these characters; we already know how Anakin is going to turn out, and we don't much care anymore. He's awfully unlikable, whether as a whiny kid or a whiny teenager. Everyone else is just dull, especially Natalie Portman. Oh man, those love scenes. Maybe the worst ever.
4. Searching For Bobby Fischer.

When I was younger and I watched this movie, I seem to remember thinking it was all right. I played a lot of competitive chess before college, enough to get pretty good. And I'd read the great non-fiction book, and been at a couple of national tournaments where the real Josh Waitzkin played. So maybe I was just flush with recognition, like with Good Will Hunting (they filmed a block away from where I lived! I remember when they closed the street off!)

Now that I don't play nearly as much, I can see the movie for what it is--just like the other movies on this list, it's an oversimplified, sentimental, overdramatic mess. The book was great--dramatic story, interesting conflict (the father loves the son, doesn't want to live through him, but wants to encourage his immense talent). It had a dramatic happy ending, and, best of all, it was NON-FICTION!

Why did Hollywood have to screw it up so much? The casting was great, with Joe Mantegna a great choice for the dad, and Ben Kingsley to play Bruce Pandolfini, a famous chess personality and the kid's coach (who in real life looks like a guy with those Groucho glasses permanently affixed to his face).

But instead of the real story, we get typical Hollywood crap, with curtailed storylines (Laurence Fishburne is wasted as the hustler Josh meets in Washington Square Park, who is barely in the movie but still manages to show up for the climactic final game) and inexplicable plot points. (What's the deal with the rival kid's coach? There's like a two-second scene that alludes to some back story with him and Pandolfini, a ridiculous, pointless allusion. Again, the real story of that kid was quite interesting.) This movie, while it has more good moments than the previous three on the list, is nevertheless so disappointing that I could not overlook it.
5. Pearl Harbor.

Does a movie have to be rated highly to be overrated? No, not if it's the worst movie I've ever seen. And it very well may be. This is insulting in so many ways, not only to its viewers but to the people it pretends to honor. Did I actually see FDR stand up during a crucial scene? How could this big-budget drivel have made it onto so many movie screens across America? Isn't there someone at the studio who could have changed it, or just canned it? How do Bruckheimer and Bay sleep at night? (The answer to that last question, of course, is "On top of a pile of money, with many beautiful ladies."
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